Neil Fein's Blog

Toast and Other Rusted Futures
by Charlie Stross

The electronic wristwatch needs only a display to be feasible today.
Gordon Moore, 1965

Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.
Vernor Vinge, 1993

"Think", writes Mr. Stross in his introduction, "how many dramas used to rely on the hero's telephone wire being cut to stop them calling for help!" This collection of stories berates itself in its first few pages for being out-of-date or nearly so -- there is a Y2K story, a near-future technological society with no internet, and so on. But the author underestimates his own ability to entertain and distract; he is too hard on himself

"A Colder War" is a political thriller with shades of Robert Anton Wilson and H.P. Lovecraft. "Bear Trap", about a fleeing investor, takes wearable computing to an extreme of controlled insanity. (This story's world feels distinctly like that of Singularity Sky, Mr. Stross's 2003 novel.)

"A Boy and His God" tells us of a child and his pet, with a twist. "Dechlorinating the Moderator" is a convention report (there are two such in the book) that imposes Moore's Law onto physics hackers. And "Big Brother Iron" takes the world of George Orwell's 1984, perhaps a hundred years after the novel, adding one additional slogan of truth -- TRUST THE COMPUTER. Mr. Stross's open-source leanings show here the most prominently.

This collection is Charles Stross's R&D, his exploratory jabs into new territory. Sadly missing is "Lobsters" and its sequels, but according to the author's website this saga will be published in its own volume next year.

Some of the stories are rough around the edges, and some of the writing is clunky. But his talent in these mostly near-future stories is present throughout, and this is a good collection in particular for those looking, after cyberpunk burned itself out, for the next step.

After I wrote an exuberant post about how I had finished the song Hold Up the Wall, surprise surprise, it wasn't finished. Grazina pointed out a serious flaw in the final verse, which I then had to go and fix. I hate you Grazina. Especially when you're right.

It's all done now. I mean it.

Please believe me?

Pending Draft Legislation Targeted for Spring 2005
The Draft will Start in June 2005

excerpted:

...The pentagon has quietly begun a public campaign to fill all 10,350 draft board positions and 11,070 appeals board slots nationwide.. Though this is an unpopular election year topic, military experts and influential members of congress are suggesting that if Rumsfeld's prediction of a "long, hard slog" in Iraq and Afghanistan [and a permanent state of war on "terrorism"] proves accurate, the U.S. may have no choice but to draft...

seen on Congress.org on 25 May 2004

Many friends have asked me this question, mostly out of puzzlement. If I feel the need to push my opinion out there, wouldn't it make more sense for me to review, say, music? (Since I'm a musician and all.) Why books?

I can't remember a time in my life I wasn't reading. I read slowly, but thoroughly, and I enjoy each word. If a book is dull or obtuse, I drop it and read something else. This is why the books up on the list tend to be at least halfway decent.

So if it's true you learn to write by writing a lot (it is true), and all writing helps, I might as well write about something I enjoy. Writing about music would feel too much like work to me, even if pleasurable work. And my opinion about music changes so rapidly, a opinion thats's true one day feels foreign the next. My literary taste evolves more slowly and conservatively.

At the moment, I'm only putting books up as I read them or re-read them. If there's a book you want to hear about, let me know. I may have read it, or can be enticed to read it.

On Writing
by Stephen King

"Omit needless words."
William Strunk Jr, The Elements of Style

The cover of my copy of this short book shows a window, with the lights inside the house on and the shades down. Underneath it, a door leads down to the basement. This cover simultaneously invites the reader to the book while putting up a "caution" sign. ^[1]

This small book^[2] simply and effectively conveys a writer's opinions and prejudices on how to write well. The usual advice applies: There are no shortcuts; learn to write by writing an awful lot; don't wait for inspiration; and so on. But Mr. King has made this potentially yawnable material exciting and fun to read.^[3]

I approached this book asking, how can I apply this book to lyric writing? Some of the advice in here is pretty useless to me -- dialog construction, for example.

But writing is writing, no matter if you're producing lyric sheets or thousand-page novels or auto manuals. If your goal is clear, simple writing^[4], this book is a treasure trove. Recommended to any writer serious about writing well.

^[1] The cover of the paperback edition shows a pike of rejection slips impaled on a metal spike.

^[2] It's hardly as slim as The Elements of Style, which weighs in at eighty-something pages of text. On Writing is just under 300 pages in hardback.

^[3] The original Strunk & White volume is nearly as fun to read, and any writer of fiction or non-fiction should read it every year or so. But the end chapter of On Writing--sort of a confessional and writing demo--details Mr. King's recent road accident, and it scared the crap out of me.

^[4] This isn't always the case, despite Mr. King's insistences.

Will the Last Person to Leave the Planet Please Shut off the Sun?
by Mike Resnick

I saw this collection of Mike Resnick's stories in a chain bookstore when it first came out in 1992. Nothing grabs me like a catchy title and, although I flipped through it, I didn't buy it until I found it used last year.

Will the Last Person to Leave the Planet... is uneven, with some very good individual stories, a few that are excellent. And the book as a whole reads well.

"Kirinyaga" and its sequels are jewels, but it's also available in a book of the same name, where Mr. Resnick completed this story of tradition squaring off with technology. I highly recommend the entire book--Kirinyaga: A Fable of Utopia.

"Over There" is another of his excellent Teddy Roosevelt/alternate history stories, this one more reflective than most. There are some disturbing stories, such as "Watching Marcia", showing Resnick at his most serious; others such as the hilarious, recursive "His Award-Winning Science-Fiction Story" keep the collection balanced. And the wonderful "Winter Solstice" ends the collection on a high note.

Overall, this is a good collection. The stories tend to be more personal and concerned with individual problems; characters are a touch more vivid than in larger-than-life novels such as Ivory, Santiago or the Kirinyaga stories. Even the Teddy Roosevelt stories, while concerned with societal problems, strike an excellent balance between environment and human concerns. An additional collection from Mr. Resnick, containing fiction since this 1992 volume, would be welcome.<sup>[1]

[1]</sup> Over the last few years, Mr. Resnick has placed highly in SF awards, with stories such as "The Elephants of Neptune", "Robots Don't Cry", and the creepy, cautionary tale "Old MacDonald Had a Farm".

The Meaning of Everything
by Simon Winchester

"The circle of the English language has a well-defined centre, but no discernible cicumference."
James Murray, Introduction to the Oxford English Dictionary

In 1998, Simon Winchester wrote a book on one of the Oxford English Dictionary's most prolific contributors, Dr. W.C. Minor: The Professor and the Madman. Afterwards, an editor at the Oxford University Press suggested that, "...since in that story, I had written what was essentially a footnote to history, would I now care to try writing the history itself?"

The Oxford English Dictionary started as a 71-year project that a well-heeled society of etymologists set in motion at Oxford University, encompassing what was at the time the entire known English language. Headwords^[1] were to be accompanied by their derivations; an exhaustive set of definitions of all possible shades of meaning; and, the heart of the dictionary, illustrative quotations.

Mr. Winchester has taken to the not unaudacious task of writing this surprisingly brief history with a combined enthusiasm and breadth of vision that has become his trademark. While this is perhaps the most focused of his books, it benefits greatly from a distinct lack of focus. The dictionary would likely not have been undertaken in an earlier or later British society, and the "dictionary craze" that was overtaking much of Europe and the US is a case in point. The lexicographical efforts of Johnson and Webster, well-read tomes in of the 19th century, are less relevant, in this age of TiVo and iPods, than they were in a day of literate sensationalism.

The book's chief flaw lies in the author's obvious love for his subject, the very impulse that also has allowed Mr. Winchester to produce some of his best prose to date. In the later chapters, detailing the end of the project and its progress to the present day, the respectful, almost awed tone becomes a series of evangelical paragraphs. But this is a small thing, as all of the book--including this slight excursion of trumpeting the unsung heroes of etymology--is the delightful, concise tale of a very human endeavor, and will appeal to those with any interest whatever in language or communication.

^[1] Headword: The word, in a dictionary entry, that is being defined or illustrated.

After Under the Bridge, one audiencee kept asking me if I knew this cover or that; I would've liked to have known them or something like them ("anything but Steely Dan" ?) but, well, I need to learn even more covers.

Good gig, Graz and Martha told me that, with a few weak areas, I sounded great. Since I couldn't hear myself (the PA speaker was inexplicably 10 feet into the audience), I'll take their word for it. And I've finally, after sitting all day and memorizing the words, played Welcome Home live.

Set list:

Eyes Up Front
Welcome Home
There's That Song
Under the Bridge (cover)
Never Had a Brother

At Martha's urging, I finally finished the words to Hold Up the Wall on Tuesday. Last night, I played it and Welcome Home in front of the Princeton songwriters' workshop, playing them both as revised songs.^[1] It's all arranging and writing fills now. I'll have to cut second demos for both of these songs, and buckle down and learn the words. And come up with a way to play Hold Up the Wall on guitar.

Since these songs are so different, it was interesting to play them in the same workshop.

Welcome Home is a song that started out in 1998 as a 7-verse, 6-minute monster, with a very specific story in mind. The song is a story. It has developed characters (even if neither of them have names)^[2], and a beginning, middle and end.

On the other hand, Hold Up the Wall is a song about a mood. Bob calls it an "encounter", and thinks it has a sensual feel, to which I say, thank you. The song is meant to be about the specific type of sensual vagueness of self inherent in casual encounters. ^[3] It's not meant to be a song about a specific place or even a specific event. And I think this gives me the idea on how to finish another song I've had rattling around for a while. Giving myself permission to work with raw emotions as opposed to emotional stories is a very powerful tool.

^[1] I had played both of these in front of the group before, but only Bob and Ingrid had heard them; three new people were there, giving brand-new reactions.

^[2] I think of them as "Jim and Susan", because I was calling them that in a much, much earlier version of the song. But the final lyric is in the first person, and refers to "we" and makes it clear that there's a relationship going on.

^[3] Sorry if this is vague; there's a demo of the song up on the music page, and hearing the words will make it much unclearer.

Childless couple told to try sex

A German couple who went to a fertility clinic after eight years of marriage have found out why they are still childless - they weren't having sex.

From Ananova

Cold Turkey
by Kurt Vonnegut

...But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America’s becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas...

(Thanks to Bruce for the link)

Birthright: The Book of Man
by Mike Resnick

Charting the history of the future has a grand tradition within science fiction. The most popular "future histories" include the future history stories of Robert A. Heinlein, the "Foundation" stories by the good Dr. Asimov, Larry Niven's "Known Space" series, and many, many others. Mike Resnick's attempt is all at once a tribute to those works that preceded him, an attempt to outline a larger stretch of time than most others, and a message about the nature of humanity as the pragmatic expansionist and bittersweet idealist.

Birthright: The Book of Man is the story of many fascinating characters. Bowman and Nelson of the Pioneer Corps, just trying to make a profit by terraforming new worlds for the newly expanding race of Man; Ivor Khalinov, representing the interests of Man in alien courts of law, is as aware of his own considerable legal expertise as his place in the history books; Vestolian I, monarch of the Commonwealth, trying to return initiative to his people even as he scrambles to clean up diplomatic and military disasters left by his predecessors; and many, many other characters. As in a minimalist Hirschfeld drawing, Resnick fleshes them out only as much as is required by the story. He then moves on to the next vignette, often jumping hundreds or thousands of years in between these illustrations of history, keeping the reader far too distracted to be concerned with the unillustrated gaps.

The reader will, on first opening the book, encounter a table of contents, as one might see in a textbook. The volume is organized into sections that follow the spread of Man throughout the galaxy. "First Millennium: Republic", "Third Millennium, Democracy", and so on; encompassing 17,000 years of future history. (For those interested, there is a table in the back that places Resnick's other novels and stories into historical context, kept up to date on Resnick's website.)

This is the most unconventional of Mike Resinck's books I've yet read, in that it doesn't have much of a narrative thread throughout the chapters and there are no continuing characters. Nevertheless, I found after each story that I was eager to find out what happened next.

And many of these stories left me hungering for more. The Republic's Department of Cartography, with its auditorium-sized holographic real-time display of the entire galaxy is captivating, and leaves the reader hungering to hear more about this unseen power behind human expansionism. Warlord Grath, who stood against the Oligarchy's Navy and got farther than any other pirate or warlord of his time--his story could have easily filled a novel. And the stifling stagnation of the academics on the university planet of Aristotle is representative of the galaxy at large, leaving the reader wanting to hear just what happened to these PhDs in denial of their field.

Fortunately, the author has indeed written more in this universe; much of his output over the years has been set in the Birthright cosmos. I've already enjoyed Ivory and Santiago; I look forward to reading more.

I performed at Cleo's last night; it was a fun performance. The set list:

I'll Wait For You
Eyes Up Front
Baby Driver

...during which I broke a guitar string. Although it broke right at the end of the second chorus, so I figure that makes it a "short version". Borrowed a guitar and finished up with:

Never Had a Brother
There's That Song

Gotta remember: When I joke about breaking a string, the audience won't get it if they can't see that there's a broken string on my guitar.

The Return of Santiago
by Mike Resnick

Mike Resnick's brand of bubblegum space opera has served him well through many books: The Oracle trilogy, Ivory, and the original Santiago, to name a few, often hitting with profound observations or important points when the reader has been lulled into a false state of brain shut-off. This style has allowed Mr. Resnick to bring such concepts as the exploitation of so-called primitive cultures to a popular science-fiction audience. Books such as Paradise, Birthright, and Ivory explore these themes very successfully.

The Return of Santiago is very much a standalone book; I'd not read the original novel in many years, but didn't feel I was missing anything. The story is that of Dante, who takes on the role of the new Orpheus of the Inner Frontier, a revered poet who documented the exploits of larger-than-life bandits and heroes of his world. In this old-west-style future that has been explored and expanded in many of Mike Resnick's books and short stories, Dante has realized that the original Orpheus was great because he had excellent material when writing of the original Santiago, an outlaw and revolutionary against the oppressive Democracy. So Dante, along with a cast of mostly well-drawn characters, set about creating a new Santiago, a new legend to keep the Democracy off their backs. (Oh yeah, it'll also give Dante a big, big story to get his career as the new Orpheus going. Don't say that last bit too loudly...)

Waltzing Matilda, The One-Armed Bandit, and Moby Dick are well-written characters. However, Virgil, Dante's companion, and Silvermane, are an ill-written and vague personalities. This is particularly irksome considering that they're major characters. There are many other supporting players -- Bounty hunters, criminals, lawmen, and "just plain folks" -- who are vaguely drawn but add just enough color to the environment to evoke the "old west" feeling The Return of Santiago is set in. One minor character, Deuteronomy Priest, is a wonderful figure, an amoral-moral shoot-em-up evangelist. "When I convert 'em, they stay converted." I wish we'd seen more of him; this wonderful character just fades away and we're left wondering if the author forgot to tell us something.

I was, to put it mildly, disappointed in this book. Perhaps I'm holding it up to his other works too harshly, but I know that Mike Resnick is capable of so much better than this. Dante's worry that he's just creating Santiago so he'll have something to write about seems to mirror a greater conflict about why this novel was written in the first place. While the settings and characters are gorgeously drawn, and the vista of future history is stunning, the motivations of the characters were suspect throughout the novel. It seems that Dante is able to convince his cohorts a mite too easily to risk their lives and chase after phantoms. The book's ending is also very hard to swallow.

Mike Resnick is an excellent writer, and I found that The Return of Santiago was a great read, and I finished quickly. But it feels a draft or two away from being the finished, polished work Mr. Resnick usually releases.

No Cicadas on Ice
Biologists Theorize That 13- and 17-Year Broods Evolved to Survive Climatic Changes

THE WASHINGTON POST

...the ancestors of periodical cicadas didn't somehow choose to stay underground for longer periods. However, in those ancient cicada populations were individuals that because of existing genes or new mutations were destined to develop more slowly and emerge a year or two later than their brethren. In an era of sporadically cold summers, those insects were more likely to survive -- and pass on their slow-development genes to their offspring...

Update to my post about the Hugo award-nominated story Paying it Forward: The story is now available for download at Analog's site.

Craig and I wrote a new song this weekend, working title of Hello My Dear. Craig and I generally don't write together, the only two songs we've written previously are Minorly Disconcerted and a thing we call The Cat Song that never got off the ground. This is the first new Ten to Nine song in 4 or 5 years.

Also in Ten to Nine news, we now have stuff available for sale, courtesy of CafePress.com. There's a link up on the band's website, and here's a direct link. Is that service or what?