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 Books The Robot's Rebellion: Finding Meaning in The Age of DarwinismDecember 2005
In this absorbing work, the author's principal theme - that human beings are merely the temporary vessels for DNA bent only on its own survival - isn't entirely new. Several texts have advanced this proposition and the concept is slowly taking hold.  Weighing the SoulNovember 2005
Len Fisher's second book (his first, How to Dunk a Doughnut, was published in 2002) looks at the business of finding, developing and (sometimes) establishing scientific ideas, be they good, bad or downright dotty. He does this by looking at some of the less examined ramifications of great scientific questions, giving rise to much thought and amusement during the process.  The Wayward Mind: An Intimate History of the UnconsciousNovember 2005
Author Guy Claxton uses the most up-to-date neuroscience and psychology, as well as sources from Homer to Shakespeare, in this masterly survey of the workings of the mind.  Einstein, A Hundred Years of RelativityNovember 2005
Like several other volumes published this year invoking the great man's name, Andrew Robinson's large format hardback celebrates the centenary of Albert Einstein's annus mirabilis, 1905, in which he published important papers on Brownian motion, the photoelectric effect and molecular dimensions … and relativity.  A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual AgeNovember 2005
We are complex beings whose abilities go far beyond logic, language-use and analytical thinking, important as these are. We are imaginative, responsive to others and enraptured by beauty.  The Elements of MurderNovember 2005
While Australia has been served well by Ben Selinger over the years with titles such as Chemistry in the Marketplace and Why the Watermelon Won't Ripen Under Your Armpit, good popular chemistry books are generally something of a rarity, which makes John Emsley's latest offering very welcome.  Geodesica AscentNovember 2005
Adelaide's Sean Williams and Shane Dix impressed the hardcore science fiction world with their Orphans Of The Earth trilogy and the Evergence series. True to form, Geodesica Ascent is the first in a new series - although of perhaps just two novels this time.  Breaking the Time Barrier: The Race to Build the First Time MachineOctober 2005
The best thing about this book is that it takes readers for a brisk trot down a long list of scientists and their extraordinary discoveries, including Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Heisenberg, Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose. Apart from these giants of discovery, whose names resonate even in the popular imagination, the author visits others who are less well known.  The Labyrinth of Time: Introducing the UniverseOctober 2005
Time, space, consciousness. You can't get three larger, more mysterious concepts than these. Michael Lockwood is a philosopher at Oxford. In The Labyrinth of Time, he takes on these ideas and tries to work his way to a coherent view. He doesn't totally succeed, but it's a valiant attempt.  The greatest story never read?October 2005
Much like the universe, cosmology books are ever-expanding, writes Margaret Wertheim.  RomanitasOctober 2005
Romanitas is the first book of a projected trilogy set in a world where the Roman Empire was not destroyed in the 5th century by barbarians, but grew and thrived to the present day.  RingworldOctober 2005
A science fiction book needs to be the first of its kind if it is to be regarded as a classic. Ringworld is the very first science fiction novel about a 'big dumb object'. Big dumb objects are now so rife in science fiction that they have their own entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.  DNA and Your BodyOctober 2005
Our understanding of human biology is racing ahead in leaps and bounds: since identifying the structure of DNA in the 1950s human beings have mapped their own genome, learned a lot about chromosomes and begun working their way through the 30,000 human genes.  The Fly in the CathedralSeptember 2005
The discovery of the neutron and the concurrent work on the structure of the atomic nucleus are among the high-water marks of British physics in the 20th century and, in Brian Cathcart's book at least, a classic triumph of clearsighted determination, ingenuity and skill over the limitations of cold, cramped and bleak Cambridge laboratories, ramshackle equipment and eternally inadequate funding.  The Genius Factory: The Secret History of the Nobel Prize Sperm BankSeptember 2005
In February 1980, an article in the Los Angeles Times announced the existence of The Repository for Germinal Choice - a name that seemed straight out of an Isaac Asimov novel. But this was not science fiction. This was real. 
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