Hogan, James P. Kicking the sacred cow; questioning the unquestionable and thinking the impermissible.

HOGAN, James P. Kicking the sacred cow; questioning the unquestionable and thinking the impermissible. Baen. 515p. bibliog. index. c2004. 1-4165-2073-2. $7.99. A

Whether you loathe it or adore it, the genre of science fiction has one superlative quality that redeems decades of sometimes-awful writing: it stretches the reader's mind. Not only the reader's mind, as it turns out, but the minds of its writers as well.

Hogan has authored a nice oeuvre of futuristic and outer-space novels over the years that this reviewer thinks range from the "not at all bad" to the "pretty darn good" category. Befitting his background as an aeronautical and computational engineer, Horgan specializes in "hard-science" fiction as opposed to sheer fantasy, which means that the situations his stories explore actually could happen within the scientific construct he creates for them. Now, late in his career, he has switched to scientific nonfiction with a book that has arrived like, well, a dazzling supernova blazing forth from its cocoon of smoldering stardust. In Kicking the Sacred Cow, he explores some of the major scientific "truths" of our time--e.g., the theory of relativity, the big bang theory, evolution, even the HIV-AIDS paradigm--and rigorously re-examines the basic assumptions and conclusions of each with a kind of schoolboy ruthlessness. This all climaxes with what he calls the seminal question of all: was the universe we live in created "accidentally, by random forces acting blindly," or was it the result of some form of created design? Hogan's chain of reasoning will win the grudging respect of Darwinist and creationist alike.

A book like this one is like a triathlon workout for the mind--grueling and exhausting, but with a nice endorphin high afterwards. No one can claim that this is an easy read, for it is not. But advanced YAs will hold their ground, people interested in the world we live in will be fascinated, and teachers of science will want to think about adding it to their curricula. Raymond Puffer, Ph.D., Historian, Edwards AFB, Lancaster, CA

A--Recommended for advanced students and adults. This code will help librarians and teachers working in high schools where there are honors and advanced placement students. This also will help extend KLIATT's usefulness in public libraries.