the Physics of Star Trek

This book by Lawrence Krauss is, as the title suggests, a hard-thunk scrutinizement of the biggest & best elements in science fiction, through the particular lens of Gene Roddenberry's creations, to see how well, if at all, such things square up to the realities of actual existing scientific reality as we understand it. As someone who's generally found it somewhat of a mind-mangle to get the general laws of physics into my head anyway, but loves science fiction, I actually found myself learning a great deal about actual real science from the derived applications of this book - Krauss writes extremely clearly and is a brilliant educator on his subject - which shouldn't be a surprise, the man's an eminent professor, not just your average Trekkie who's done a wikipedia trawl degree. Oh, did I mention there's a foreword by Steven Hawking?

   In terms of content it's split into three broad chunks: the first dealing with wormholes, relativity, "warp"-speed and all that quantum spacetime jazz; the second dealing with matter - thus by extension the implications of teleportation, holograms, and whatnot; and the third a more deep-speculative dive into theories around alien life-forms' possible, and probable, existence.*

   I really enjoyed this book - as mentioned I learnt a lot about physics from it, and all in rather practical ways, as my motivations for reading it was primarily research for my own science-fiction story that I'm working on. But I'll not toot that horn here - this book I'd give a hearty recommendation to anyone with a healthy skeptical approach to pop-culture and enjoyment of scientific learning, though I wouldn't necessarily recommend it all to closely to most Trekkies unless they're also intellectually humble enough to have numerous what might be sacred cows diligently and systematically sacrificially dissected before their very eyes...

* Though, with apologies to Roddenberry's ghost, Krauss does conclude much alongside my own personal gist that should we ever discover or encounter extraterrestrial life - it seems thoroughly unlikely that they will look & live Pretty Much Exactly Like Homo Sapiens but with Different [ears/skintones/foreheads/etc] and [x/y/z] Cultural Quirks.