Helge Moulding

I really wanted to like this book. The story concerns several people on a mission to Pluto to find out what the aliens left for us. It could be a great story. However, it reads like the kind of story I'd have written in high school, fifty years ago, but at least I would have got the science right. I would have understood how Neptune orbits, I would have remembered the speed of light (it takes four hours for light to reach Neptune from Earth), and if Charon had been discovered just a few years earlier I wouldn't have forgotten that Pluto has a moon. As it is, between info dumps, narrative speed bumps, terrible descriptions of interpersonal relationships, and the bad science, I had a really hard time finishing. I skipped a lot of text just to keep going, and how sad is that? Not recommended.

The book argues that our tendency to organize hierarchically is a very bad idea. People who are put in charge become less capable, simply by being in charge, and they make the things they are in charge of result in a mess. The book provides several examples of people doing things differently which worked well. It's possible the book is a bit overly pessimistic about traditional leadership structures, but it is an undeniable fact that we have had some terrible leaders. It's also possible that the books is a bit overly optimistic about non-hierarchical forms of organizing, but given the alternative, it seems we have little to lose. Definitely worth reading and thinking about.