Product Description: The truth about superpowers . . . science fact or science fiction?
"An entertaining and informative guide to comic book wonders bound to come." —Julius Schwartz, Editor Emeritus, DC Comics
Superman, Batman, The X-Men, Flash, Spider Man . . . they protect us from evildoers, defend truth and justice, and, occasionally, save our planet from certain doom. Yet, how much do we understand about their powers?
In this engaging yet serious work, Lois Gresh and Robert Weinberg attempt to answer that question once and for all. From X-ray vision to psychokinesis, invisibility to lightspeed locomotion, they take a hard, scientific look at the powers possessed by all of our most revered superheroes, and a few of the lesser ones, in an attempt to sort fact from fantasy. In the process, they unearth some shocking truths that will unsettle, alarm, and even terrify all but the most fiendish of supervillains.
Lois Gresh (Rochester, NY) has written eight novels and nonfiction books as well as dozens of short stories and has been nominated for national fiction awards six times. Robert Weinberg (Oak Forest, IL) is a multiple award-winning author of novels, nonfiction books, short stories and comics.
It should be titled `dispelling the myth of superheroes' I wasn't very impressed with this book. The writer is full of himself. Gresh and Weinberg use the opportunity to demolish the science in fiction behind superheroes rather than offer alternative theories for superhero origins that are palatable. It seems as if the main purpose of the book is to affirm the authors are a scientific authority. To make matters worst on pages 133 through 142 the writers go on a tirade against Creationism and not just in the pages of comic books but in general, offering no justification as to why the topic is included let alone covered in a book that by title leads one to think of a work highly objective and honest in investigation. Fortunately the writers do not include in their study superhero powers normally considered `outside' the realm of science such as the `Power Cosmic' (Marvel Comics/Galactus, Silver Surfer, etc.,) and the Supernatural (Thor, Dr. Strange, Shazam/Captain Marvel, The Spectre). It's just as well for both are clearly beyond the limited scope of this book, philosophically to say the least.
The only good thing that I can say about The Science of Superheroes is that it's an excellent resource for writers contemplating new superheroes who want to avoid highly publicized mistakes made by writers before them.
Skip the X-Men chapter, and you have a good read If you read Dean Koontz' introduction and the blurbs on the back, you'd be expecting a hilarious romp through real-world science as compoared to the world of mainstream superheroes. While the book does treat the matter with some humor, most of it is actually a quite serious, well-research, and well-thought examination of the subject, comparing what the comic books say about such iconic characters as Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, and the Hulk with what's actually possible in the real world. The authors are even gracious enough to allow for science that just isn't known yet, only addressing something as "false" if it clearly contradicts what's known.
The best moment in the book is near the end of the chapter on the Hulk, where the authors give the character a re-imagining based on real science -- and the result is not only brilliant, but could work for storytelling just as well the original.
The worst moment, unfortunately, comes in most of Chapter 9, which discusses the X-Men. If the authors had followed the brilliance of the first eight chapters, they would have discussed genetic mutations and speciation as they've been observed in the real world -- and there have been many examples, as proven most clearly by the existence of domestic sheep, cattle, cats, and dogs that affect our lives daily. Instead, they wander off into a discussion on Evolution versus Creation, which has little to do with the X-Men story (and while they make some valid points, they also make some specious ones and make several remarks that specifically belittle faithful Christians).
Rather than let one poorly-done chapter ruin the entire book, however, I recommend the reader simply skip that one chapter and enjoy the rest. The idea that superhero stories and real-world science can coexist is one whose time is well overdue.
Didn't finish it It's incredibly rare for me to not finish a book once I start reading; I feel that I at least owe it to the author to get to the end.
Couldn't do it on this one. Way to boring.
I was excited about reading this as I had read "Science of Star Trek" (no idea if it's the same author or not) and found that book to be very good. The author states on the page for the Superhero book that he is on a mission to write one book for every year alive. He is turning into a book writing machine and it shows.
Too much detail about things that don't need to be explained, e.g. I do not care about the history of comic books.
Boring writing style.
I really wanted to give this book five stars because these type of books make science entertaining and fun to learn about.
Misleading title, and only gets worse from there.... I have never felt as compelled to write an online review of a product as I do right now...
First of all, the very title of this book is blatantly misleading. And I believe this was intentional. This isn't the science OF superheroes, this is the science AGAINST superheroes. (Well, it is against all of them except the X-Men, but we'll get into that one in a bit.) What the authors have done here is taken what could have potentially been a fun little ride through the land of superheroes, and turned it into a mean spirited trek through your most boring physics class.
After reading the title, you might expect to see a book describing the scientific aspects of how superheroes exist and function. But you would be wrong. Instead, the authors go well out of their way to disprove any notion that superheroes could exist. I believe this was intentionally given a misleading title because they knew someone interested in superheroes would not be buying a book saying they are impossible. I mean, come on... we all know they are impossible, be we would like to see science that shows what might be possible. But this book does none of that. This book is only about ripping the superhero genre to shreds.
Not only is the book 99% negative, but it is written in a way that is very degrading to fans of superhero based comic books. Like other reviewers have said, it is as though the authors are just trying to bash comic books and fans of them. Reading this book gives you the feeling that they would just love to tell us "Are you stupid? Don't you realise this is impossible?!?"
The science isn't entirely accurate either. For all of the looking down their noses at us that they do, these two enlightened people don't exactly have all their facts straight. For example, in the chapter about Henry Pym, they describe how a person that is getting larger would actually become weaker with size, so that eventually he would not even be able to support his own weight. So that means that my 36 year old body is impossible because I am alot bigger than I was when I was 5. But yet, here I am. Heck, maybe I'm a superhero... I guess dinosaurs were impossible too, because they were pretty doggone big. The authors also say that Pym shrinking down to ant size would increase his relative strength tremendously. If this would be the case, at 5'-11" I can lift my own weight so that would mean that a person significantly smaller than me, such as a midget, should be able to lift many time his/her own weight. I don't think so....
Now, the famous X-Men chapter... As a believer in the Bible, I am deeply offended by this chapter. Not one single scientific fact was made about the X-Men. NOT A SINGLE ONE. Instead, the authors used this chapter as a soapbox to deliver a long tirade about how they think Creationists are trying to deceive the world about our origins. They go on to say that everyone who believes in Creationism thinks that the world was created on October 22, 4004 BCE!!! Let me tell you, I believe that God created the Universe, but I have never heard this mess about October 22, 4004 BCE. Through this entire chapter, they do nothing but ridicule and insult people who believe in God and Creation. Then to top it all off, they end the chapter by saying the X-Men are not only possible, but probable in our future!!!! So, we get to look forward to guys shooting lasers our of their eyes, people controlling the weather with their minds, people who can morph into perfect copies of other people, not to mention others who can walk through walls, freeze moisture in the air, shoot fire from their hands, etc... Hey, the authors said all this is probably going to happen in our future!! (sigh) This chapter alone was enough to make me stop reading this book. It was not a very enjoyable read to begin with, but once I got to the end of the X-Men chapter I had enough. And from other reviews, I see that the authors think Donald Duck is the shining example of a good scientific comic book. As one other reviewer said... Talking Ducks....
To sum it all up, I don't see that there is any market for this book. People wanting to know the science behind their favorite superhero are not going to enjoy this book because they will find out that nothing supports their favorite character, unless that character just happens to be blue and can teleport with a BAMF sound, which in that case the authors say that is entirely probable. People who are not interested in superheroes are not going to buy this book for obvious reasons. So who does that leave as the target audience of this book??
No one.
And that is exactly who I would recommend this book to.
BREAKING NEWS!! SUPERPOWERS ARE NOT REAL!!! I haven't done this in awhile, but I don't think I could review this piece any better than the other reviews I've read about it. It's pretty average, however filled with nice bits of knowledge. They didn't seem well-researched in some areas. Here are the interesting parts of reviews from the other "critics" that I agree with...
"they go into lengthy history lessons about the origins of the characters when two sentences...would be enough." - John Gallant
"Biased against superheros(sic)" - Christopher Ritter
"I found this book to be tedious, lacking in charm, badly researched and wildy inaccurate in some areas." - C.P. Halliday
"I picked up this book." - Lawrance M. Bernabo
"Their belief seems to be that Donald Duck was the best comic book ever..." - M.G. Bloedorn
"Pretty boring." - BernardZ
"...a black hole is hypothesized, lending a faint respectability to the premise behind Green Lantern's abilities." - Peter Vinton Jr.
"...this book will not satisfy full on fans..." - James N. Simpson <---gave it five stars.
"a chance to laugh about the heroes I still love and that mean so much to me." - Reviewer
"Man, there's a whole 200 pages of this pooh-poohing, cranky-old-maid kind of stuff!" - Mark Alfred
"They were even putting words into C. Darwin's mouth." - Aaron Spriggs
"Mildly entertaining but not great" - Reviewer
"When the man (Dean Koontz in this case) writing the introduction says he doesn't read comics, I began to get worried." - Ivan A. Wolfe
"I agree with an earlier poster." - Reviewer
"Almost every chapter tells you why the superhero is impossible." Plastic Larry
"the authors give us a more plausible (given what we know now) origin for the Hulk, involving steroids and fluorescent gene modification." - J. Draper Carlson
"this book is not mean spirited or nasty." Reviewer
"Superman's powers break the laws of science. Ooh. Stop the presses." - [...]
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