Obsolete_Your_Idols_Archive

You Don't Have to Go Home

This is the end, my only friend.

Of this manifestion of a blog, at least. I've migrated the blosxom entries from the server they used to be on, into a new server space, but having gone through all that, I'm freezing this one in time, disabling comments, removing old comments. As a curious side effect, any updates I made will appear to have been made on this date. Que sera fuckit. If you'd like to continue following my screeds, head on over to http://blog.manjusri.org/

Thanks for reading.

Book of My Year

The book I just read turned out to be a couple of firsts for me

first Ken MacLeod book I've read
first post-Singularity book I've read (possibly)*
first book I've read this year which I'm ready to pronounce my favorite of the year

This book follows one old and dedicated woman in her quest to resolve a deep and abiding threat. We get flashbacks of her youth, we get political and philosophical arguments, we get ironic social commentary, we get sf alien tech.

The book is called The Cassini Division and when I first saw it on a friend's shelf I was compelled to pick it up and look at the back cover and flyleaf text. Once I'd read that much of it, I was driven to borrow it and bump it to the top of my reading queue. If anything, it was even better than I was hoping.

So what's it about? This book is about anticipating what life after the Singularity might be like if only people selfish enough to sacrifice everything to attain it pass through that event. It's full of references to other sf, most overtly in the chapter titles. It's a nice character study and often the dialog had me chuckling aloud.

I like it. I think it's the best book I read this year.

Who else might like it

people who think about the Singularity
people who like Heinlein's narratives but not his politics

I would like especially to thank Brad who, on every occasion I have spoken to him for the past year said nothing but "KenMacLeodKenMacLeodKenMacLeodKenMacLeod" and Brent, who loaned me his copy to read.

*Depending upon whether you consider Wil McCarthy's post-Scarcity analogous to post-Singularity

UPDATE 2007/12/30: No it's not new
I may have given the impression simply by being so late to the party on this book that it's a new book. It's not, it's been out for years, but I am a slow reader and have a long to-read queue which prevents me noticing many good books. This book does meet my new reading criteria: it's good enough that if I had died without reading it, I would have been sad about that (in theory, in an alternate reality where sentiment persisted beyond incarnation or where one could know of things beyond one's exposure).

No Room for Gray

Imagine someone sapped you, popped open your skull like a Pez dispenser and shoved a radio into your head which enabled someone to transmit instructions into your head with the same plausibility as your own thoughts. If that sounds familiar, you've read some of the same books I have.

So I read another book on the same theme and it was The Squares of the City. It's from 1965 and it's One of the Ten Best Science Fiction Novels of the Year. I know that because the publisher helpfully printed that on the cover. What is this book?

It's a novelization of a chess game. Specifically, this chess game. In this aspect, it's a little like The Man in the High Castle, where the narrative is shaped by an external pattern. Chess is less random than the I Ching, or so I seem to believe.

That's not a spoiler, about the chess game. I say this because

the back cover tells you this
the foreword tells you this
the introduction tells you this
the afterword tells you this

You're supposed to read this story, knowing that it is an anthropomorphic rendition of the chess game. Name characters are pieces and they move, interact, threaten and capture, according to the schedule set by the chess games.

Does it work? Yes and no. It's easy, reading the story, to forget the structure imposed upon it by the chess game. The story is reasonably interesting as a man vs. society struggle. But in the end, it felt overly constrained by that framework. Sometimes the protagonist seems struck inert and unmotivated by the dictates of the game.

Things I liked about it

prescient awareness of the threat that subliminal messaging presents
prescient warning that someday the government would manage populace using gimmicks dreamed up by advertisers
Maria Posador, a strong female character
romanticizing civil engineering
an experimental framework which added a layer to understanding the work
an exploration of prejudice

Things I didn't

the presentation of the story which laid out over and over the chess game underlying
the endgame compromise where Brunner abandons the game as played

Who might like this story

chess fans
fans of John Brunner, the godfather of cyberpunk
fans of experimental fiction

Beatnik Turtlol

Offered almost without comment.

NaLeWriMo

This is National Novel Writing Month. You may or may not remember that I 'won' that in 2003 by writing a time travel porn novel. Hey, I hit 50k words, even though they're utterly unpublishable. It counts.

I've tried to compete in NaNoWriMo a couple times since then but something has always gotten in the way. So I'm not doing it this year, either. But I do like the sensations receiving in my brain from the act of writing so I am going to try some writing this month.

Specifically, I'm celebrating National Letter Writing Month, a contest I just made up.

I'm going to try to write a letter for each day of this month and send it off. For this year's NaLeWriMo, I'm focusing on political issues. Because, like Arthur Silber, I'm concerned about how things are going. So, referring to The Consumerist Guide, here's the text of my first hand-written letter. It's to one of my Senators, Barbara Boxer, on the topic of Iran.

The Honorable Barbara Boxer                     November 1, 2007
112 Hart Senate Office Building
United States Senate
Washington DC 20510

Dear Senator Boxer,

I've been a Californian for two years, volunteering my time and skills to
various local user groups and non-profit organizations, as well as working
as a Unix system administrator.

I'm writing to you about Iran.  I'm afraid that our country will soon
be thrown headlong into a needless and devastating war upon Iran.  
I think that Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, who was so perceptive on the matter
of Iraq's nuclear program, is again correct in his assessment of Iran's
capabilities.  Iran is years away from being any kind of nuclear threat.
I saw news stories indicating you'd co-signed a letter to the President
expressing concern about the heated language he's been using in reference to
Iran.  Thank you for doing so.

Please put that sentiment into law by advancing S.759, prohibiting the
use of funds for military operations in Iran.  As a member of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, you are in an excellent position to do a great
deal of good.  Please have a meeting scheduled to discuss it or co-sponsor
it before matters deteriorate further.

Sincerely,
Shannon Prickett

Oh, and good luck to the NaNoWriMo participants this year, especially the returning ones who might have not quite made it before. It's hard to get back on a horse which has thrown you once. Keep at it!

(If you're a Californian who wants to write a letter on a similar topic, the pertinant staffer seems to be Sean Moore.)