Our first smart pop book, for example, was the best-selling Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in The Matrix. Red Pill includes essays from computer scientist and entrepreneur Ray Kurzweil, Yale philosopher Nick Bostrom, science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer, Buddhist scholar Jay Ford, Sun Chief Scientist Bill Joy and other notables. Red Pill has gotten mentions in The New Yorker, Premiere, The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, and dozens of other publications.
I was invited to contribute to a so-called smart pop book yesterday, and although I missed out on the one on the Matrix, I can’t possibly pass up the chance to contribute to one on Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. There’s also one in the works for Harry Potter, which could be interesting. The question is, do I actually have anything interesting to say about Hitchhikers? I’m not entirely sure that I do.