Wonderful book.
Oh, Elric. Do thou not knoweth? One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
Since it is 'the thing' nowadays to put lots of sparkly gifs and pics in a review, who am I to differ? 
I really like Seth Lloyd. There are many extremely smart people today, but only few of them are able to explain and present certain theories so they are comprehensible to other people (especially in QM). So, in a way, Lloyd is like a modern Richard Feynman, also because he is witty, funny and easy to follow. Even though he deals with subjects that are way beyond our everyday experience, and even in that category, are very hard to conceptualize and understand, cause at a time they can be very counterintuitive, he still manages to connect them with things slightly closer to 'our world', so they become more presentable to people who are not so familiar with QM and information theory, and at the same time, offer a new perspective to people who are (and you can never have enough different perspectives of entropy, trust me). So this book is never boring even if you have previously encountered theory of universe as ultimate quantum computer, entropy explained through known and unknown qubits, connection of all of that with ToE...
Although it was a good book, I really do not understand the point of writing books like this. Too complicated for someone without basic knowledge of quantum theory and computer science, and probably too basic for someone familiar with those two fields. Having mentioned and explained things like GHZ state, Bell state, Hilbert space, EPR paradox, Turing-Church principle, Feynman diagram... and at the same time explaining how do you convert decimal numbers to binary and add them, in the same book, is rather silly and pointless. And also in one chapter he used certain terms like they were interchangeable, while they're not.
Regardless of how one feels about the Bible, Christianity and religion, one can't deny that they (especially the Bible) had a huge impact on today's culture, art and literature. While reading this book, I felt almost ashamed of my ignorance and lack of knowledge and understanding of certain historical events and the Bible, even though I've read it before.
'The ice is near, the loneliness is terrible—but how serenely everything lies in the sunshine! How freely one can breathe! How much one feels lies beneath one!'
The only thing I regret about this book, is that I haven't read it when I was younger. Would have loved this one as a kid.
Not among Clarke's best work, still, a very fine collection of short stories. 
Not exactly what I expected. Like Freud already mentioned at the end of the book, he kept his private life for himself because he thought it was not relevant (at least for this book). So this 'autobiographical study' is actually a brief summary of his work, development of his ideas and (some) thought processes behind it. Not detailed enough to provide reader a deeper understanding of psychosis, neurosis, dreams etc.. and lacking almost all informations needed to understand Freud and his state of mind during formation of all this concepts. Still an interesting read.
"My butter, garcon, is writ large in!"
Kažu da kad Žižek ide u kino kupuje 3 ulaznice: jednu za sebe, drugu za Freuda a treću za Lacana. Znajući to može se otprilike pretpostavit što se može očekivati od ove knjige. Iako fali sustavnosti i organiziranosti, budući da je Vodič više-manje zbirka članaka o filmu, koji nisu tematski ni ikako povezani, a i Žižekov tok misli je sam po sebi poprilično eratičan, ova knjiga daje nevjerojatan uvid u svijet filma iz perspektive jednog od najvećih mislioca i poznavatelja filma današnjice. I to samo zahvaljujući njegovoj, danas rijetkoj i poprilično zakržljaloj, sposobnosti jednostavnog - razmišljanja. Time film više ne služi kao jeftin ego trip kvazi intelektualaca i snobovskih kritičara, već način gledanja i reflektiranja svijeta gdje i filmovi koje je 'in' mrziti imaju jednako mnogo toga za reći kao i filmovi koje je 'in' voljeti. Često više i o samom gledatelju kroz način njegovog doživljaja filma, nego čisto o samim likovima i radnji.
i'm disappointed with amount of time this book had taken away from me (and i've read it in one afternoon). It could easily be written in 30 pages instead of about 300 without loosing its point.
It started off great. The concept is amazing and amusing, characters are intriguing and are starting to develop well, the whole idea of satirizing religion and how people take it seriously in such intelligent and 'elegant' way, by imagining what could possibly go wrong if the religious predictions were to come true, is refreshing, and from the moment I started reading the book, I couldn't put it down because I so wanted to see what will happen next, and still, despite that, there were many parts where I just stopped and paused, cause the whole story is full of ideas and things that just make you wonder and think about them, or explore them further if they have already crossed your mind. And when you laugh, you in a way laugh at yourself in the same way Adams makes you do in The Guide. But what disappointed me most, is the ending. It's like one third of the book is missing or something. Hills were shaking, a mouse was born. You expect something really special, and you get....hmm. Everything unfolded to quickly. Like they got bored with writing it, and the just wanted it to end. It was way to naïve and simple. The characters that were introduced in such a big way, so you expected them to do something big, and important simply vanished in a way that you start wondering why were they even there?! (I'm speaking of course about the 4 horsemen of the Apocalypse, and I have to add that the concept of Pollution really amazed me since in the Bible the fourth rider besides Death, War and Famine is not so clearly defined as the other 3, so thumbs up for Gaiman's and Pratchett's interpretation, warning in a way). Like I said, generally, very amusing and intelligent, too bad about the sloppy ending. Otherwise, it would be whole 5 stars. (P.s. It would be really great if somehow they would change their minds and decided to write a sequel, so I'm hoping for that.)
I've read this book few years ago, and since it was so good, informative, and intriguing, I remember almost nothing related to it except the feeling that the hours spent reading it, are the hours I'll never get back.
