(with sufficient modification to dodge any pesky legal issues) is worth my attention.

Dr. (his Ph.D. is clearly exposed in the byline on the cover and probably should not have been left hanging out where it might be used in evidence) Daniel Wilson (homepage) has written something of a follow-on to his well-received (Wired Magazine Book of the Year 2006) How to Survive a Robot Uprising. that addresses many of the same subjects we turn to regularly in our posts, from AIBO to Zeppelins and, on the whole, his brief analyses of the backgrounds and current situations of the thirty staples of a century-and-a-quarter of science fiction and popular science writing are much like those presented in these pages. That is, with a few notable exceptions, like the "National Lampoon"-style editorial voice, a virtually total absence of external references (save only the author's and illustrator's websites and a site for the book itself, which, at least for now, is just an alias for Dr. Wilson's page), and some attention to subjects that we haven't (yet) gotten around to.

Speaking of the illustrator, Richard Horne's clean duotone silhouettes and iconic monochromes manage to capture both the hopeful futurism that is traditional in this genre and the winking, more-than-a-little-over-hip ironic humor established by the text.

Daniel Wilson is, as might be expected, at the top of his form when addressing topics related to robots and home automation and gets a bit fuzzier the further from his familiar territory he wanders. (Don't we all?)

On the whole, the package is a quick and amusing orientation to the sorts of issues, technological and socio-economic, that the Speculist treats daily. You might think of Where's My Jetpack? as our starters guide.

Review: ***1/2* (Three and a half stars out of five).

Half a star off for not giving us some places to go to look for more info on particular subjects of interest. Perhaps these will appear on a future version the book's website?

Full star off for a few really egregious editorial errors, for instance...

"The mid-nineteenth-century era of space exploration and moon landings [!?!] is the closest that humans have ever come to a true space age, as well as to space-age clothing." -- (p. 137 in the chapter addressing the Unisex Jumpsuit)