The World's Fair

My favourite pieces in The Believer are their non-book reviews. For a while, they had a certain order about them, whereby the subjects broached were of a consistent nature. For instance, "light" was a theme, "tool" was a theme, and even "child" was a theme. There's a good collection at this link if you're interest is piqued.

Anyhow, my first submission to The Believer was a "light" review, sciency as usual. It got rejected in the end (I think, anyway, since patience is a big part of submitting to this journal), but here it is as maybe a companion piece to Ben' earlier post.

REVIEW: LIGHT (SPEED OF) By David Ng

Fifty years ago, Albert Einstein was cremated and his ashes scattered back to the Earth. And as it happened in an undisclosed place, we can take stock that this was one of those quiet secrets, open only to the few privileged, and the daylight that bathed the event. Einstein, amongst other things, gave the world a celebrity formula - an annotation fitting for the tabloid press. Of course, this is the E=mc² that I'm speaking of. A curious almost beautiful finding that unifies matter and energy via the speed of light, a poem with significant figures and scientific notation if you will. And it's worth emphasizing that this relationship (between matter and light and energy) is not brutish like the photosynthetic processes seen in plants, where collaboration is mired by the complexity of countless numbers of chemical participants. Instead, it is quietly elegant. It truly is.

However, it is also difficult to review. So holistic is the relationship described by the equation, that to review one part, necessitates reviews of the others. In effect, one ends up reviewing everything - literally.

Which is somewhat of a cruel task, since how does one speak of such totality? How does one deal with the pressure of providing the mother of all reviews? Does one focus on a myriad of different trivial sound bites ("The speed of light is the fastest there ever was!" "When you get there, you have infinite mass and energy!" "It's got something to do with atomic weapons!" "It's what they are sort of referring to when they say 'Punch it Chewie!"")? Or does one settle into the assurances that jargon and calculation can give?

The answer, of course, is neither. You speak of the speed of light as both good and bad. As heaven and hell. You speak of the speed of the light in vague, personal tones - as if its review is largely dependant on the reader's own perspective. Which is safe in that you have escaped the unavoidable backlash of writing wrong about everything. And fitting in that perspective and points of relativity are actually a part of what E=mc² is all about.

My own perspective is this: I like to think that the speed of light is special. Maybe more so, because things are good for me right now - family, kids, work, etc. It gives me hope that nothing can be forgotten. Where, should the technology exist one day, I can go the fastest there ever was, and despite contrary to the physicist's opinion, I can catch up to the events in life I treasure. Perhaps even dare to see and feel clearly once again all of those pixelated memories that sit in my aging brain.

Maybe I can even go back fifty years and see that certain quiet secret for myself. Sit on that piece of Earth where Einstein's ashes actually reside. And, most likely, think: I bet Einstein would have written a better review than this.