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Wednesday, May 27, 2009

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cover of 'Neuromancer'

Watching Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse" this spring made me think of Neuromancer and want to read it again, because what happens in the Dollhouse made me think of Molly and what little we are told of her history: how she worked at what the characters call a "meat palace" (like a doll but with a "cut out chip" and "software for whatever a customer wants to pay for"), to make money for all her enhancement surgery (blades under her nails, inset lenses over her eyes, enhanced reflexes, etc)-- but she starts remembering. Of course, that is just one small bit (half of a page) of what is a fascinating ride full of strange, fascinating, dark characters. Reading this book the second time, it was nice to have some idea where the narrative is heading; when you read it the first time, you're just as disoriented as Case, Molly, and the other characters are-- you don't know who has hired them or what job they are supposed to pull or why, and as the hints start coming it still takes a long time to find out who or what Wintermute might be.

This book creates a fascinating, dark world where human bodies are what everyone is upgrading, modifying, and accessorizing. Case is a "cowboy" who jacks into the matrix to hack in and pull jobs or heists; Molly is a razor-girl, a fighter. They're both hired by Armitage, who in turn has been hired and manipulated by an AI named Wintermute. In this high-tech world run by multinational corporations, there are strict limits on what AI software is allowed, and there are Turing police to enforce them. After gathering other recruits and the tools for the run (including a ROM construct of a dead cowboy Case used to know, the Dixie Flatline), Case and Molly head up to Freeside, the space satellite owned by the ancient and inbred Tessier-Ashpool clan-- who also happen to own Wintermute.

The end result of all the plotting and maneuvering is strangely beautiful and a little bit mysterious. The mother of the Tessier-Ashpool clan was a visionary, and saw that all the surgeries that could extend your life and going in and out of cryogenic suspension wasn't real immortality, and even though she was murdered by her brutal husband (he disagreed with her philosophy), she still managed to set up two very different AIs: Wintermute, adaptable and decision-making, manipulating events and people; and Neuromancer, who we only meet briefly near the end, who understands people and personality in a way that Wintermute cannot. And in the process, this dead woman plant the seeds for a new phase of evolution, or maybe something even grander.

There's lots of interesting things here (also plenty of violence and sexuality, dark, broken people doing disturbing things). It is strange to read it now and wonder how many words Gibson coined, and to notice the analogies that might not make sense to someone now because of how technology has changed-- like the sky "the color of television, tuned to a dead channel", which we know is static and grey, not the bright blue of "no signal" that is more common now. It's also pretty obvious what a huge debt "The Matrix" owes to this book-- not just the flipping and jacking in to the matrix, or the "simstim" that lets Case virtually ride along with Molly and feel everything she feels (including excruciating pain when she gets injured), but even the Rastafarian Zionite Maelcum and his tugboat spacecraft that ferries Case and the rest, and helps in the end-- to save "Steppin Razor", as he calls Molly, but not to get in the way of Babylon destroying itself.

Great, fascinating book, well-written-- much here to think about, but the language is also well-crafted (the imagery when Case is hacking through some particularly bad ICE is pretty cool). I'm glad I read it again, I think I understand it a little better now; makes me want to read more Gibson, which I'm not sure was the case the last time I read it.

Title:Neuromancer
Author:William Gibson
Date published:1984
Genre:Cyberpunk, Science Fiction
Number of pages:271
Notes:second reading

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Thursday, May 21, 2009

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cover of 'The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm'

The things you can learn from fairy tales! For instance, in reading these stories I discovered:

  • Poor but beautiful peasant maidens who wish to marry well should get themselves cursed by an evil witch, and then they are bound to end up married to a king or a prince (although there may be some discomfort along the way)
  • Young kings shouldn't go hunting or wandering in forests, as they are bound to run across a witch and bad things will happen to them as a result
  • If a gnome, an animal, or a saint talks to you in the woods, it is best to be kind and generous to them
  • Naive, fearless simpletons will either end up rich, married to princesses and heirs to kingdoms; or they will trade away their wealth for something worthless
  • Saints and miracles intermix freely with magic
  • Things are more likely to end well for you if you are the youngest sibling of three

It was a lot of fun to read these stories. Some were mostly-familiar versions of well-known tales, others were unfamiliar stories with echoes of the more familiar fairy tales, and others were just strange. In some cases, reading the stories again gave me a new perspective on them. For instance, there is the story of the old fisherman who catches a fish, and when the fish tells him that he is an ensorceled prince, the old fisherman releases him and goes on his way. But his wife wants something, and there begins a succession of ever greater houses and palaces and positions of power until the wife finally wants to be like God, and the old fisherman and his wife end up in their hovel again. I had always thought this meant they had met the limits of the powerful prince-fish's patience, but re-reading it this time I saw an alternate interpretation-- perhaps the fish actually gave them what they had asked for; it's just that they-- and we-- understand so little of what it means to live like God.

I borrowed this book from Abiel a few years ago (actually swapped it for one of mine), and she moved away before we managed to trade books back! I enjoyed reading the stories over several months, just a few stories at a time so I could take them in slowly.

Title:The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimmm, Volume I
Author:Jack Zipes (translator)
Date published:1987
Genre:Fairy Tale
Number of pages:416
Notes:loan from Abiel; read over many months

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Friday, May 01, 2009

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cover of Tom Stoppard's 'Arcadia'

This is the first time in a long time that I've picked up a play to read just for fun, but I saw this book on the shelf and it just called to me. Stoppard's writing is witty and brilliant and entertaining and moving. This play juxtaposes people in two different time period but in the same location-- in an English estate in the early 1800s, where renovations are being done to update the place to the latest fashions, and in the present day, where scholars are doing research on the historical materials from the earlier time periods. Hannah is studying the renovation of the gardens as a microcosm of the shift from Enlightenment to Romanticism; Bernard is convinced there is a connection to Byron; and Valentine Coverley is hoping to use the centuries of grouse hunting logs as a dataset for his mathematical research. One of the most fascinating characters is Thomasina Coverley, a young girl who is a mathematical genius and intuits the second law of thermodnyamics long before anyone else (she sees that Newton's equations run the same forwards and backwards, but that a heat engine does not), and who sees that mathematical formulas can describe nature, like an apple leaf-- but she wants to learn to dance, to know what love is.

The layering of time and place here is brilliant; the landscape is being crafted by man, and then redesigned into the latest ideal of what is stylish or "picturesque." The contemporary and historic scenes are layered on top of each other, sharing the same room and even the same, overlapping props. As the play progresses, the papers and books and various objects get piled on top of each other, the layers of all the historical details and records that are left behind, the "trivia" that scholars dig into to try to find something of significance, to make a story of. Reading the play, it's a little hard to keep track of who all is in the room at the same time, when the two timelines start to overlap more (with even conversations overlapping), but the one time I saw the play performed this worked just brilliantly.

It's also fun to watch the scholars trying to make sense of the pieces they have left, the way they interpret things and try to make sense of it-- this is particulary entertaining because the audience has seen the history they are researching. Bernard says at one point, "There is a platonic letter which confirms everything-- lost but ineradicable, like radio voices rippling through the universe for all eternity." In this case, we find out later in the play that there actually was a letter, exactly like he described.

I love the way that Stoppard's stage notes and descriptions of scenes and characters are suggestive, but not exact or demanding-- it may be done this way or that. There is an overlapping character, Augustus/Gus Coverly in both time periods, who is apparently meant to be played by the same actor, and at one point he appears (in period costume, for a party), but the audience isn't supposed to know which Augustus it is until we see who responds to him.

Some favorite lines...

Thomasina: If you could stop every atom in its position and direction, and if your mind could comprehend all the actions thus suspended, then if you were really, really good at algebra you could write the formula for all the future; and although nobody can be so clever as to do it, the formula must exist just as if one could.
Hannah: A century of intellectual rigour turned in on itself. A mind in chaos suspected of genius. In a setting of cheap thrills and false emotion. The history if the garden says it all, beautifully. There's an engraving of Sidley Park in 1730 that makes you want to weep. Paradise in the age of reason. By 1760 everything had gone ... the whole sublime geometry was ploughed under by Capability Brown. ... And then Richard Noakes came in to bring God up to date.
Valentine: There was someone, forget his name, 1820s, who pointed out that from Newton's laws you could predict everything to come - I mean, you'd need a computer as big as the universe but the formula would exist.
Chloe: But it doesn't work, does it?
Valentine: No. It turns out the maths is different.
Chloe: No, it's all because of sex. ... That's what I think. The universe is deterministic all right, just like Newton said, I mean, it's trying to be, but the only wrong thing is people fancying people who aren't supposed to be in that part of the plan.
Valentine: Ah. The attraction that Newton left out.
Thomasina: Well! Just as I said! Newton's machine which would knock our atoms from cradle to grave by the laws of motion is incomplete! Determinism leaves the road at every corner, as I knew all along, and the cause is very likely hidden in this gentleman's observation. ... The action of bodies in heat.
Valentine: She didn't have the maths, not remotely. She saw what things meant, way ahead, like seeing a picture. ... That you can't run the film backwards. Heat was the first thing which didn't work that way. Not like Newton. A film of a pendulum, or a ball falling through the air-- backwards, it looks the same. ... But with heat-- friction-- a ball breaking a window-- ... It won't work backwards. ... She saw why. You can put back the bits of glass but you can't collect up the heat of the smash. It's gone.
Title:Arcadia
Author:Tom Stoppard
Date published:1993
Genre:Drama
Number of pages:97
Notes:repeat reading

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