The Chronoliths, by Robert Charles Wilson

Time paradoxes galore made this an interesting read. I'm not sure I should say it is great, but I enjoyed it. After trying to read "The Light Fantastic" and getting nowhere for two weeks, I picked this one up and finished in three days without ever feeling I was making an effort to read it. The premises are that 20 years into the future, someone called Kuin conquers Thailand and sends back in time a monument to commemorate this feat. The old question of whether the future can be changed is explored here in an original and very thoughtful way. I found this to be a book to be read at least twice and I imagine that a second reading will make it even better.

The Light Fantastic, by Terry Pratchett

The Sisters of Mercy, a band that I hold dear to my heart, did a tour a few years ago called "Trip the light fantastic". When I first discovered this book, I thought there might be a connection and for this reason alone I got interested. Well, not exactly for this reason alone: I read "Good Omens", which Pratchett co-wrote with Neil Gaiman, and enjoyed it a lot. In spite of these good motivations, I could bring myself to read past page 40 in this book. I tried and I tried, but for almost two weeks, every time I started on in I had the distinct feeling it was a waste of time. I know someone who will want to whack me in the head for saying this, but I felt there was not a whole lot to gain from this read. I put it down and I think I may just stay away from Discworld novels for good.

The Grand Complication, by Allen Kurzweil

This is a great read with special appeal to those interested in books. Well, why would you be here if not for your interest in books, anyway? The story starts in a library, where the main character, who works at the reference desk, first encounters a mysterious man dressed in anachronistic attire. This man's request for a book kickstarts the plot, which jumps around from missing antiques, to museum robberies, to discussions of catalog systems, to intrigues between co-workers, to backstabbing among friends, and to a romantic comedy, among possible other elements.

I found this an excellent book to the extent of wanting to read whatever else Kurzweil has written. "A Case of Curiosities", his debut novel, may have some kind of connection to "The Grand Complication" and for this reason I ran to buy it almost as soon as I finished this book.

Fatherland, by Robert Harris

Consider what the world would have been like should the Nazi's not have been defeated. Imagine what Germany, or the mighty Third Reich, would have become and how the political lines that divide today's nations would have consolidated. In this exercise, we could imagine that the Reich would have taken most of Eastern Europe, that 12 European nations would have remained political units on their own (though somewhat friendly to the Reich), that the Cold War would have happened not between the USA and the USSR, but instead between the USA and the Reich. As it happened throughout most of the WWII, imagine that the citizens of the Reich never quite got to know the complete truth about the National Socialist Party's ideology and actions and that today it is 1964.

Now, in this scary universe, consider an officer of the SS who's not so keen on climbing up the socio-political ladder, who doesn't quite care about The Party, who's a free-thinking individual. Imagine that he is charged with investigating the deaths of prominent political figures and that this investigation risks uncovering a terrifying truth that, although widely-known in our reality, remains just a suspicion in the minds that inhabit this alternate universe. These are the premises of "Fatherland".

At the same time that this book reads like a thriller, it is an interesting exploration of "what could have been" if history had taken a different turn. As a thriller, it is very effective, intelligent, and enjoyable. Given what we know today about the holocaust, we know exactly where the plot is leading, but that doesn't matter much. What matters is the trip through this alternate history, and it's a heck of a trip.

Humans, by Robert J. Sawyer

This is the second installment in Sawyer's "The Parallax Trilogy", a story centered on the premises that two parallel universes are suddenly linked by a portal after a quantum computing experiment. One of the universes is ours, in which Homo Sapiens flourished while Homo Neaderthalensis faced extinction. The other universe is exactly the opposite.

Whereas the first book, "Hominids", was plagued by an insipid love story delivered like the worst of the American soap-operas, this book looks into what is really interesting: the why's and how's of the development of two different societies. We get to learn a lot more about the Neanderthal's version of Earth, the rules that govern their society, and, at the same time, confront their values with ours. There are interesting explorations into notions of personal privacy, theology, ethics, and government. I found it very enjoyable and feel that in this book Sawyer went back to the style that lead me to believe, after reading "Calculating God", that he is one of the few sci-fi authors who tread the terrain that Isaac Asimov has paved.

Enigma, by Robert Harris

This is a fictional story set in the universe of Bletchley Park, site of the Ultra project that lead to the breaking of several ciphers, including that of the Nazi's Enigma machine. The focal character of the story is a top-notch mathematician who had been instrumental in breaking the German Navy's Enigma-based "Shark" code, whose life is in shambles after a nervous breakdown brought on by an unsuccessful love affair. The story evolves around his re-recruitment at a point when suddenly "Shark" messages could not be cracked anymore and he's brought back to Bletchley Park. There he reaches out for his old love only to discover that she has mysteriously disappeared. The story is very tense, exciting, and somewhat didactic in that it takes place in a setting that has close ties with read history. It's a clever read that will leave amateur enthusiasts of cryptography scratching their heads and lovers of a good mystery flipping pages all the way to the end. Never mind the few historical inaccuracies, especially in what regards the fictional character Tom Jericho taking credit for Alan Turing's accomplishments: this is still a good read.

Fermat's Enigma, by Simon Singh

Fantastic walkthrough the history of Mathematics as the author presents the work of Andrew Wiles, the man who was able to prove Fermat's Last Theorem. At no point this is a boring book, not even when discussing details in higher level math. Singh's unparalleled talents allow him to impart excitement and bewilderment for science and its history onto the most uninitiated reader. The book is an excellent appetizer for number theory.