Reader! Reader!

I did like this book—and I very well might read the next one—but the physics and astronomy stuff was a bit much for me. How much is real theory? How much is made up theory? How much is proven and not theory? I have no idea! But there are some very clever ideas in here—dehydration, stable and chaotic periods, 11-dimensional protons (is this theory?). I did not really get the repeating societies starting over, but whatever.

It was also very interesting to have this story placed into the framework of China's Cultural Revolution (something I know a bit more about than physics, and at least can understand)—it makes you wonder how many good books are out there, untranslated, that are really just so good/interesting.