Another theory

At the outstanding expanded online edition of Harper's, an intriguing bit of pop cultural intelligence courtesy of Mr. Fish.

The good old days

Six years in, and it just keeps getting weirder and scarier.

The reggae that exploded

Speaking of Ken Vandermark, dig this great video of his (((POWERHOUSE SOUND))) combo (the Chicago crew, with Nate McBride, Tortoise drummer John Herndon and guitar player Jeff Parker) performing the amazing "Coxsonne" at Alchemia in Krakow in May. Mainline it.



If you want the Oslo version, with The Thing's Ingebrigt Haaker Flaten on bass and Lasse Marhaug on electronics, you need to get it here.

Lost Books (well, almost), Part III: Mockingbird, by Walter Tevis

I meant to write this several weeks ago, and because I delayed, this is no longer a lost book. Gollancz have reprinted it as the latest in their SF Masterworks series, so you can now buy new copies from amazon.co.uk rather than hunting for it on bookfinder.com. Trust a publisher to ruin a perfectly good title just for the sake of bringing back a brilliant novel. Where are their priorities?

Anyway, since Mockingbird was last printed in the US in 1999, those of you who believe that the US is the whole world can still think of it as a lost book. But it was a Nebula nominee in 1980, and my personal favourite out of the shortlist, because it's a thoroughly human story (even though one of the three central characters is a robot) set in an all-too-believable future.

Bob Spofforth is the sole surviving Make Nine robot, a superhuman intelligence charged with serving humanity. All of his predecessors managed to commit suicide before their makers thought to re-program them to make this impossible. Periodically, he climbs to the top of the Empire State Building in the hope of slipping, but can't.

Professor Paul Bentley has rediscovered reading, after finding some long-forgotten books and an educational film amid the university's collection of old porn.

Mary Lou lives in the zoo, and has learned to survive by outwitting service robots. Paul falls in love with her, and teaches her to read. Together, they come to the realization that all of the children they see are actually robots, as are the zoo animals. Mary Lou is allergic to the drugs that most people take habitually, which include a contraceptive: the automated systems that run the world have done this to reduce overpopulation, unaware that the population has fallen well below their original target. When Spofforth realizes that Mary Lou has become pregnant, he arrests Paul for reading and sends him to a prison farm.

The nightmarish society that Tevis has created in this novel is an extrapolation of the 'me generation', where any sort of meaningful human bond is considered a crime against the new gods of Individuality and Privacy. The only places where Paul encounters rebels against this - okay, make that living rebels, as self-immolation suicides are almost part of the landscape - are in the all-male prison environment, and in a huge fallout shelter where an inbred strain of fundamentalist Christianity does an equally good job of suppressing individuality, especially for women.

This may sound gloomy, and I don't want to give away any more of the plot, but the pessimistic vision of a world dying of apathy and ignorance is softened by Tevis's compassion for his characters. If you haven't read it, do so while you still can.

I owe two debts of thanks to Gollancz (no, I didn't mean that to rhyme). The first is for their publication of hardback sf novels during my high school days: those yellow covers were visible from clear across the library. Understandably, when they started reprinting sf classics a few years ago, they did so in similar yellow covers. When these sold poorly, they began the SF Masterworks series with more conventional sf cover art (but cover art that actually reflected the content of the books - wow, what a concept). They have recently expanded this into a Fantasy Masterworks and a Crime Masterworks series, all of which are well worth supporting, and which have made my part-time job as an sf bookseller much easier and more rewarding. And for that, many thanks, and I was only kidding about you ruining my title.

In praise of commercial suicide

If you are in NYC, be sure to check out this week's premier of Daniel Kraus's new documentary, Musician, about the amazing avant-jazz saxophonist and composer Ken Vandermark. The man himself will apparently be playing at each night's screening at the Pioneer Theater on East 3rd. The rest of us probably have to wait for the DVD. The filmmaker's synopsis:

"Common sense says you can't make a living in America playing avant-garde improvisational jazz. But Ken Vandermark does it anyway.

"Among musicians, Vandermark's work ethic is almost mythic. The Chicago reed player has released over 100 albums with nearly 40 ensembles, spends over eight months per year on the road, and lives every other waking moment composing, arranging, performing — and trying to discipline his two hyperactive canines. Though Vandermark was the recipient of a 1999 MacArthur genius grant, he still spends most of his life in smoky clubs and low-budget recording studios, hoping people will plunk down hard-earned cash to hear his wholly non-commercial music."



Nice review of the pic in today's NYT, with this cogent morsel:

"In one early scene the director splits the screen to show Mr. Vandermark working the phone in his home office, effusively thanking a patron for a gig, and then sheepishly informing a creditor that he won’t be able to settle up until next month. Those seeking a nutshell definition of what it means to be a committed artist need look no further."

Setting Creationism and Science Straight!

I bring this on myself. I know I do. I see controversial issues pitting science against creationism, and related headline-grabbers, and I have to vent. It's an issue that's near and dear to my heart. So it shouldn't surprise me that after posting on such topics, lunatic messages such as this find their way into my inbox.

A new brand of creationism, which creationists and secular science
are not familiar with is "Biblical Reality", which is better known as
the "Observations of Moses".

This "Old Earth" brand of creationism puts forth the view that
combines a seven 24-hr day week of original creation (Exodus 20:11),
with a separate "six 12-hr days of revelation" given to Moses
(Genesis 1:2 – 2:3). The pseudo discrepancy between the "sixth day"
in Genesis chapter one and in chapter two is explained as chapter two
being the beginning of modern mankind (Adam & Eve), and chapter
one as being an earlier species of prehistoric mankind in an earlier
restoration period, more than 60 million years ago.

Biblical Reality is defined as the "ordained marriage" of Biblical
Truth, and Scientific Reality. Think of Biblical Truth as historical,
present, or future data (information) that has been given to us by
the words written in the Bible, or what we shall call "The Printed
Word of God". It is events which took place in the past, that we may
not presently be able to confirm outside of the Bible.

Scientific Reality is defined as "That which has been discovered and
analyzed to be of true historical existence. That which has been
observed to be a real occurrence or phenomena, whether or not it
can be explained." For example, the discoveries of the extinctions
of life on Earth in what has been determined to be 245 Million BC
(dimetrodons) and 65 Million BC (dinosaurs) is accepted as Scientific
Reality.

Biblical Reality teaches that there are no "creation accounts" in
Genesis, and that "Moses Didn't Write About Creation!". What
is actually being said is "Moses wrote about multiple restorations".
Before the advent of "Biblical Reality", no faction of creationism
could explain both the "first day" of Moses and the "Fourth Day",
all being 24-hr days, without either denying literal interpretation or
"redefining" the scriptures.

The "six days of Moses" in Genesis chapter one are actually six
consecutive (12 hour) days in 1598 BC that God revealed to Moses
(on Mt. Sinai) from the ancient past. Each day was from the first
week of each of seven different geological eras in "biblical order".
The only day of Creation Week which Moses saw was the
"Fourth Day". Creation Week was 168 hours, in 4.6 Billion BC,
according to the geologist.

My head hurts just trying to parse that gibberish. I suppose the fact that this nonsense finds its way to me isn't what I find so surprising--it's the fact that in this day and age there exist a sect of people still intent on sniffing model glue after all that well-documented evidence such acts destroy brain cells by the bazillions. And then, having undergone said chemically-induced lobotomies, these geniuses are compelled to write about their insights.

And if the sender of the above missive is reading this, yes, I am mocking you.

Still-Life

Digging through piles of old magazines over the long holiday weekend, I found this very nice Don DeLillo 9/11 story from the April 9 issue of The New Yorker, conveniently available free online (as is all of the magazine's fiction and poetry). Still-Life:

Someone took the glass out of his face. The man talked throughout, using an instrument he called a pickup to extract the small fragments of glass that were not deeply embedded. He said that most of the worst cases were in hospitals downtown or at the trauma center on a pier. He said that survivors were not appearing in the numbers expected. He was propelled by events and could not stop talking. Doctors and volunteers were standing idle, he said, because the people they were waiting for were mostly back there, in the ruins. He said he would use a clamp for the deeper fragments.

“Where there are suicide bombings. Maybe you don’t want to hear this.”

“I don’t know.”

“In those places where it happens, the survivors, the people nearby who are injured, sometimes, months later, they develop bumps, for lack of a better term, and it turns out this is caused by small fragments, tiny fragments of the suicide bomber’s body. The bomber is blown to bits, literally bits and pieces, and fragments of flesh and bone come flying outward with such force and velocity that they get wedged, they get fixed in the body of anyone who’s in striking range. Do you believe it? A student is sitting in a café. She survives the attack. Then, months later, they find these little, like, pellets of flesh, human flesh that got driven into her skin. They call this organic shrapnel.”

He tweezered another splinter of glass out of Keith’s face.

“This is something I don’t think you have,” he said.