A Little Book of Coincidence: In the Solar System (Wooden Books)

This is a really great little book, a work of art. I like the way John Martineau leaves it to you, the reader, to make up your own mind over what these amazing coincidences mean. The pictures are beautiful. What an incredible place our solar system is. Why dont teachers teach us these things in school??

I don't know what the previous reviewer was going on about - personally I found the planet-centred pictures fascinating (in particular those involving the small planetoid Chiron which turns out to be highly harmonic/resonant with its neighbours). If I had one criticism of this book it would be that the author does not in fact go into resonance as the likely explanation for many of the coincidences he describes, but hey, since most scientists don't seem to talk about it either (they haven't quite cracked it yet), I can see why he goes for the Harry Potter style instead. This is a great book, leave it by the toilet, read a little every day, and have your brain fundamentally rewired. Why has nobody noticed all this stuff before? Astophysicists, this is your wake-up call!

Quite why there isn't more of a storm breaking over this elegant little book I can't work out. Brief, beautiful and to-the-point, it's been my top gift-book of 2004. Good original science wrapped up as magic, I'm still not sure where Martineau is exactly coming from, but there's no arguing with his data (which I have checked). A pity there is no statistical background to the findings he presents, but then this is not the kind of book for that anyway. For what it's worth I think he's probably right (although we won't know for another 100 years) - these kind of patterns may well be a signature of conscious life. I would kind of expect other solar systems with conscious life to also display phi and fibonacci-based relations around their primary 'conscious' planets. We know that liquid water takes an icosahedral structure. Martineau's ideas seem the next logical step. Ahead of its time. Recommended.

This book is very clever. John Martineau is a genius and my biggest hero. I hope to meet him some day. He understands the universe. I would like him to show me how to become a world famous geometer too!

I have been collecting this Walkers series and I have to say was not expecting anything like this little diamond. At face value it is a small guide to the solar system. But in fact my guess is that nothing even remotely like this book has ever appeared in print before. I predict people will look back on A Little Book of Coincidence as a defining moment in the story of man's understanding of what he is, what conscious life is, and where it appears in the universe.The images are done in the style of old engravings, and indeed, as you enter the world as John Martineau presents it you feel as if you are reading some long lost magical text - each page is rich, precious, extraordinary and challenging. It becomes clear that Earth is much more special than simply being the right distance from the Sun. Martineau shows the Moon, Venus, Mars and Mercury as all manifesting simple relationships in time and space. These have all stayed with me and won't go away.This is really a book about the ancient vision of the Harmony of the Spheres, and yet it is terrifyingly modern, bold, original and impossible to dismiss (as I keep trying to). It haunts one, initiates the reader and I still can't quite believe it actually exists!An all time planet earth classic. How Plato or Kepler would have enjoyed this read.