J. Brit. Astron. Assoc., 106, 5, 1996
John Wiley & Sons, 1996. ISBN 0-471-12580-6. Pp xiv + 210, £18.99 (hbk).
Dorling Kindersley, 1996. ISBN 0-7513-5371-X. Pp 48, £9.99 (hbk).
reviewed by Roger O'Brien
Books about Black Holes are seldom a complete success and this may be the reason for publishing yet two more. The 'Traveler's Guide' is an example of an interesting attempt that doesn't quite make it. Pickover tries to tell a story about you (the presumed male reader and spaceship captain) and your servile assistant, Mr. Plex, who is a scolex (look it up for a laugh) made of diamonds and his human wife, whom you dear reader (without reference to you) seem to fancy and who seems to fancy you. Apparently, you are keen on sending Mr Plex into great danger in the immediate vicinity of a black hole. The biblical story of David and Uriah came to mind. Mr Plex writes computer programs about everything and reports his experiences with a grovelling and verbose pomposity; your replies are patronising. Pickover uses a variety of units (feet, kilometres, tonnes, miles, solar masses, etc.) to confusing effect. I got very irritated by the whole thing.
If you have the patience to type them in, the listed BASIC programs work. The Julia set is very pretty. However, this threw little light for me on the intended target audience and I can't imagine any reader empathising with the main character. There is an amusing typo on page 129, where 'prison' is substituted for prism. I did not like the use of the word 'proved' when discussing mathematical investigations of the possibility of travelling in time through rotating black holes. The mere fact that he requires a material with a tensile strength 1017 times its mass to build the hole suggests an element of fantasy. The best feature is that Pickover confidently expects his audience to have a go at using some moderately complicated formulae (e.g. that for the Schwarzschild radius) and I hope some will.
Couper and Henbest's book also failed to please me. The illustrations are good, but so numerous that the text is reduced to a series of extended captions. I presume the book aims at brighter late-primary/early-secondary school pupils. My recollection is of a bewildering kaleidoscope of eye-catching images, but no clear impression at all. I think the medium has overwhelmed the message. On the good side, anyone wanting to get ideas for a specific image to point up a talk or lesson, would probably find something here. All the important ideas about black holes are at least included. I can see this book succeeding as an appetiser, sending the reader off to investigate a longer, more detailed account.
Books about black holes often get lost in speculations about white holes, worm holes and travelling through them, the beginning and the end of the universe and time travel. This is a pity, but true in both these cases.
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