It's difficult to quantify this pdd book, which basically is about physicist Freeman Dyson and his son George, who at the time of the book, was living in a treehouse in British Columbia, designing a huge canoe based on Aleut kayaks.
The father-son dichotomy between the man who promoted the idea of space colonization via nuclear-powered starships, and the twenty-something hippy mystic drives the narrative. It's an interesting read, and Brower has some cogent observations, but it doesn't really satisfy. It just wanders up and down the gulf between the two men the way George's super-kayak wanders up and down the Inland Passage.
Having googled the pair, after reading this book, I suspect that the better story is how George evolved from a rather feckless back-to-nature semi-hermit into a respected author specializing in the history of science.
The father-son dichotomy between the man who promoted the idea of space colonization via nuclear-powered starships, and the twenty-something hippy mystic drives the narrative. It's an interesting read, and Brower has some cogent observations, but it doesn't really satisfy. It just wanders up and down the gulf between the two men the way George's super-kayak wanders up and down the Inland Passage.
Having googled the pair, after reading this book, I suspect that the better story is how George evolved from a rather feckless back-to-nature semi-hermit into a respected author specializing in the history of science.
