Zach Weinersmith is the cartoonist behind the popular geek
webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. His work has been
featured in The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, Forbes,
Science Friday, Boingboing, the Freakonomics Blog, the RadioLab
blog, Entertainment Weekly, Mother Jones, CNN, Discovery Magazine,
and more.
Dr. Kelly Weinersmith is Adjunct Faculty in the BioSciences
Department at Rice University, where she studies parasites that
manipulate the behavior of their hosts. In addition to being a
respected researcher, she cohosts Science...Sort Of, which is one
of the top 20 natural science podcasts. Kelly spoke at Smithsonian
Magazine's "The Future is Here 2015," and her work has been
featured in The Atlantic, Science, and Nature.
“Kelly and Zach Weinersmith's SOONISH is an exceptional science
book: it concerns itself with ten(ish) coming technologies that
hold enormous, potentially world-changing promise (and peril), and
it delves into each of those subjects with admirable depth,
including all the caveats and unknowns, and still keeps the
excitement intact.”—Cory Doctorow, Boing-Boing
“A great book. [SOONISH] is wonderful to read.”—Ira Flatow, Science
Friday
“Soonish addresses heady scientific concepts in an accessible,
readable way. . . . Part of the benefit of the book is that it
doesn't promise we'll all be sipping printed cocktails on the moon
in 2067. The Weinersmiths just lay out, clearly and with a wry
sense of humor, exactly what it might take to get us there.”—Tasha
Robinson, NPR.org
“[A] wild glimpse into a future that may or may not involve space
elevators and brain-computer interfaces and programmable matter. .
. . [Kelly and Zach Weinersmith] sift through mountains of
literature and pick the brains of the researchers at the forefront
of things like bioprinting (like 3-D printing, only more bio) and
augmented reality (like reality, only more augmented), turning a
skeptical yet exuberant eye toward the technologies of
tomorrow.”—Matt Simon, Wired
“Beautiful.” —Forbes
“Fans of science, math, or medicine; gamers; and those who love the
weird and wonderful will gravitate to [SOONISH].”—School Library
Journal
“An entertaining look at future tech wizardry, from space tourism
and asteroid mining to nuclear fusion power, matter replication,
synthetic biology and direct brain-computer interfaces. . . . The
text is very well-researched, with a casual, friendly style
(“Tinkering with the language of life. What could go wrong?”), and
color cartoons add a wry counterpoint to the narrative of a future
that, as always, might be utopia or disaster.”—Steven Poole, Wall
Street Journal
“Curiosity is a beautiful thing, and Kelly and Zach Weinersmith
have it in spades. Their coauthored SOONISH is an
unabashed nerd-out of a book, zinging from outer space to DNA,
hardly pausing for breath. . . . The gleeful geeking out makes for
a great read—I couldn’t help chuckling or outright cracking up a
number of times—while surreptitiously teaching some really
important science. It’s a winning combination. The sheer breadth of
topics covered is also amazing: Probably no other book in history
has seriously described the science behind both tentacle
construction robots and the human nasal cycle.” —Colin McCormick,
Science
"Space elevators, gold asteroids, and fusion-powered toasters - who
knew science could be so much fun? And who knew fun could be so
scientific? 'Soonish' is hilarious, provocative, and shamelessly
informative." – Tim Harford, author of Messy and The Undercover
Economist
"Basically, I think this book is a masterpiece, and something I
wish I'd written myself.” – Scott Aaronson, David J. Bruton
Centennial Professor of Computer Science at the University of Texas
at Austin and author of Quantum Computing Since Democritus
"Playful, yet deep." – Dr. George Church, Harvard University
"I love this book so much I 3D printed myself a second heart so I
could love it more." – Dr. Phil Plait, astronomer, author, writer
of the Bad Astronomy Blog
"Kelly and Zach promised me a crystal ball, but what I got is both
more insightful and far more entertaining than staring into a dumb
glass orb. Soonish will make you laugh and -- without you
even realizing it -- give you insight into the most ambitious
technological feats of our time. You should read this book, sooner
than soonish." - Alexis Ohanian, Cofounder of Reddit
“[An] enthusiastic exploration of ten areas of potentially
world-changing innovation. . . . Excellent.”—Library Journal
“Predicting the future of scientific endeavor isn’t easy, but this
fun title from this husband-and-wife team gives readers plenty of
amazing possibilities to think about. . . . The authors leaven even
the most serious topics. . . . The Weinersmiths deliver a
fascinating look at the most provocative and promising research
going on today and how it could alter the way we work and
live.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“The world of emerging technologies is a fascinating place, though
for the layperson, the specifics and implications of scientists’
most groundbreaking research can be mind-boggling. . . .
Thankfully, husband-and-wife team Kelly and Zach Weinersmith boil
down some particularly juicy advances and present them in a
compelling, accessible, and wryly funny way. . . . With infectious
enthusiasm, the Weinersmiths serve up the perfect combination for
curious, critical minds. Popular-science writing has rarely been so
whip-smart, captivating, or hilarious (albeit occasionally
terrifying).”—Booklist, starred review
“Astute. . . . [Kelly and Zach Weinersmith] deliver excellent
descriptions of the science behind each [technological] wonder and
the state of current research that may or may not bear
fruit.”—Kirkus
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