Short cuts: Keanu Reeves’ book due soon

Arriving later this month is a book that teams up two of the world’s most iconic figures of speculative fiction, “the internet’s boyfriend” Keanu Reeves and celebrated writer China Miéville. Inspired by Reeves’ BRZRKR comic
books, The Book of Elsewhere (Del Rey) is a “genre-bending epic of ancient powers, modern war and an outcast who cannot die”. If he helps a US black-ops group, they’ll help him gain the ability to die after 80,000 years. If that’s not up your street, Miéville is also working on a 1000-page novel.

Some of the roles taonga pūoro, or Māori musical instruments, traditionally play in Māori society, Jennifer Cattermole writes in Echoes from Hawaiki (Otago University Press), relate to fertility (human and crops), health, education, hunting, warfare, spiritual practices and death. They include wind instruments such as the flute-like kōauau, trumpets, gongs, whirled instruments and games. Taonga pūoro are traditionally regarded as the living descendants of deities and other beings. Ethnomusicologist Cattermole explores their origins, traditions, instrument names, regional variants and playing techniques, as well as the small amount that is known about Moriori instruments. It’s well illustrated, some of the instruments being of great beauty. If you go on YouTube, you can hear Cattermole playing a range of the instruments or you can read more about the book here.

We are at the beginning of a profound rethinking about how life works, says science writer Philip Ball. Nearly all the neat stories that researchers tell about how living cells work are incomplete, flawed or just totally mistaken. Ball’s How Life Works (Picador) argues that advances in biology have found that complex life is more “emergent” than “programmed”. The challenge is to find fresh ways of talking about how evolution has consistently invented new methods of creating living beings. Bold and intriguing, thought the Wall Street Journal. Concise and coherent, said the Spectator.