Monsters

June 29, 2015
The 1937 burning of the Hindenberg was a worldwide sensation and the first filmed disaster, and science writer Regis (What Is Life?) adds that the development of the zeppelin itself represented a new, ominous technological phenomenon. The work is primarily a history of the rigid airship and biography of its eponymous champion, German count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. Beginning in 1890, Count Zeppelin built a series of huge, hydrogen-fueled airships of Rube Goldberg complexity that regularly crashed and burned. Yet Germans were fascinated, and he had little trouble raising money. By 1906, zeppelins were carrying passengers; international flights began after WWI. Despite frequent mishaps, culminating in the Hindenburg debacle, years passed before Germany gave up on zeppelins. Regis calls this an example of pathological technology: irrationally popular projects whose costs vastly exceed benefits. Concluding chapters address America’s Operation Plowshare, the plan to use nuclear bombs for major construction projects; the Superconducting Supercollider, a massive particle accelerator canceled in 1993; and the 100-Year Starship, the brainchild of an enthusiastic group whose goals include establishing “Earth 2.0 in another solar system” by 2112. Regis’s material is all fascinating, but it fails to properly cohere; the book’s premise feels like an ingenious afterthought tacked onto a fine history of Zeppelin and his disastrous airships. Agent: Katinka Matson, Brockman Inc.

June 15, 2015
Captured on film, the burning of the zeppelin Hindenburg on May 6, 1937, shocked the world. Veteran science writer Regis (What Is Life?: Investigating the Nature of Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology, 2008, etc.) writes a gripping description preceded by a history of lighter-than-air flight and its greatest proponent, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin (1838-1917). Retiring from the German army in 1890, Zeppelin resumed a lifelong obsession with airships. He built a series of them that were as large as ocean liners but carried only a few dozen passengers. They were too large to control in bad weather and were lifted by highly flammable hydrogen. Unlike the Wright brothers, ignored for years after their 1903 flight, zeppelins were a media sensation in Germany. Despite a dismal safety record, investments poured in, and Zeppelin established the world's first commercial airline in 1909. By 1930, 26 zeppelins had burned, but Germany's devotion persisted until 1940, when the Hindenburg's successors were junked. Regis explains that zeppelins were examples of pathological technology. "It is in the nature of pathological technologies," he writes, "that they are characterized by grandiose ambitions driven by emotional, romantic, starry-eyed mind-sets or utopian spells." The author also describes Operation Plowshare, the wacky American program for earth-moving through nuclear explosions. Few readers would disagree with the foolishness of the nuclear-powered aircraft or the expensive and so far futile attempt to control hydrogen fusion, but Regis chooses less-convincing illustrations. Plenty of scientists deplore the 1993 cancellation of the huge American superconducting supercollider, and the author's contempt for an obscure movement to build a starship seems like overkill. A fine account of the rigid airship and, despite a dearth of good examples, a thoughtful meditation on out-of-control technology.

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September 15, 2015

Regis (Regenesis) here takes readers straight into the inferno of the Hindenburg disaster and the intoxicating but misguided experiments and theories it spawned. Expertly tempering hard facts with keen insight, the author provides a deeper understanding of the foolish desire that led many to financial ruin and death in the name of a machine destined to fail from the time of its inception. The more recent ideas and contraptions too large, too expensive, and too impractical for anything but the movies would be funny if they didn't sound so frightening. From underground atomic bomb detonations that probably won't hurt anyone to a physics experiment big enough to depopulate a town to one man's dream of a real "warp drive," no matter how zany an idea, someone's tried to make it a reality. VERDICT A must for any aeronautical history buff, this book is as readable and entertaining as a high octane spy thriller and as informative as a semesters worth of graduate level seminars. Regis is a gifted writer with empathy for his subjects, even if they do sound bonkers.--Sara Fiore, Westhampton Free Lib., NY

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