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Saturday, February 17, 2007
The Big Time
The Big Time, by Fritz Lieber
The Change War has been going on for along time now, an eternal conflict of altering history on many planets between two groups called the Spiders and the Snakes. Greta is an "entertainer" for the Spiders, a hostess of sorts at an R&D station for change war soldiers. When the entire station is threatened with destruction... well, you'd think a lot of character would be revealed, but actually, you'd be wrong.
Perhaps this style of writing was revolutionary in the 60s (or the 50s), but Mr. Lieber's characters are cliches and not particularly sympathetic, if that's what they're meant to be. And attitudes towards women are very difficult to overlook.
It's never made clear what, exactly it is that Great does for the Spiders. Is she a warm fuzzy therapist/ friendly figure? A prostitute? One might argue that this ambiguity allows the character not to distract from the plot, but the plot isn't interesting enough to warrant this. The temporal war -- a radical concept in its day -- is kept distant, the plot revolving around the mystery of who planted a bomb in the station, and cut the station loose into the void outside of the universe. Making this dull is quite the accomplishment.
Fritz Lieber has a lot of fans, but based on this book, I'm not one of them. I finished The Big time because it was short and I did want to find out what happened -- parts of it are gripping, but the ending disappoints.
books
The Change War has been going on for along time now, an eternal conflict of altering history on many planets between two groups called the Spiders and the Snakes. Greta is an "entertainer" for the Spiders, a hostess of sorts at an R&D station for change war soldiers. When the entire station is threatened with destruction... well, you'd think a lot of character would be revealed, but actually, you'd be wrong.
Perhaps this style of writing was revolutionary in the 60s (or the 50s), but Mr. Lieber's characters are cliches and not particularly sympathetic, if that's what they're meant to be. And attitudes towards women are very difficult to overlook.
It's never made clear what, exactly it is that Great does for the Spiders. Is she a warm fuzzy therapist/ friendly figure? A prostitute? One might argue that this ambiguity allows the character not to distract from the plot, but the plot isn't interesting enough to warrant this. The temporal war -- a radical concept in its day -- is kept distant, the plot revolving around the mystery of who planted a bomb in the station, and cut the station loose into the void outside of the universe. Making this dull is quite the accomplishment.
Fritz Lieber has a lot of fans, but based on this book, I'm not one of them. I finished The Big time because it was short and I did want to find out what happened -- parts of it are gripping, but the ending disappoints.
books
Sunday, February 11, 2007
5
R&D
Tracks completed: 5/10
Completed (time) 34.95% (of 35 minutes)
I wrote and recorded Tacks, 1:48. Percussion-based industrial with flutes and clarinet. I started with a free-tempo kettle drum beat and layered on top of it.
At this rate, if I keep up with tracks of this length, it'll take a little over 14 tracks to get me to 35 minutes. I'm aiming for maybe 15 tracks if the average length stays more or less the same. I'll try to do some longer pieces as well.
Technorati tags: music, R+D, recording
Labels: music, notbike, R+D, recording
Thursday, February 8, 2007
3 and 4
R&D
Tracks completed: 4/10
Completed (time) 29.81% (of 35 minutes)
Did Old Post, 1:48, an old piano piece I wrote years ago in the old MIDIGraphy program. Slowed it down some, used some stuff from an older mix, added a few instruments and removed others. Also did Mitch & Emerson, which is essentially a piano riff with a jazz band backing it up, mostly.
Technorati tags: music, R+D, recording
Labels: music, notbike, R+D, recording
Sunday, February 4, 2007
2
R&D
Tracks completed: 2/10
Completed (time) 5.63%
Did Sunday, 2:30, piano, trance bass, bassoon, tuba, timpani, hip-hop fake percussion. It sounds kinda soundtracky and atmospheric, mellow but ominous.
Technorati tags: music, R+D, recording
Labels: music, notbike, R+D, recording
1
R&D
Tracks completed: 1/10
Completed (time) 9.42%
The RPM 2007 challenge is a web thingy where you register to write and record an album in a month. Similar to National Novel Writing Month, but with music. I registered on the site in a fit of idealism.
Later, I thought that rather than do a finished album, (at least 10 songs and 35 minutes long), since I already have half of my album recorded it would be cool if I did an album of "sketchbook" music bits. A few songs of mine have later grown out of the snippets I leave on my hard drive. The trick is, they have to be brand-new extrusions of sound. So I cancelled the contest, and I'm doing this on my own, since it won't be a finidhes album by any stretch of logic. I want to concentrate on getting the basic tracks down, even if they are rough. It's easy for me to spend time editing, not so easy to spend the time laying the music down in the first place.
A couple of years ago, I hadn't come up with a new song in some time. So I called up a friend, and asked her what I should wrote a song about. She suggested cheese, and I wrote a song immortalizing swiss cheese. It was pretty abysmal, but it got me thinking creatively again. Similarly, I'm thinking that working fast on R&D might rub off on the "real" recordings. In other words, R&D is my swiss cheese album.
I wrote and roughed out the first song in the R&D project tonight, in a little over an hour. (I came up with the title and went from there.) I Don't Get It clocks in at 3:43, piano, guitar, flute and string trio. I managed to do tempo changes in GarageBand. Oddly enough, the tempo is 4/4 throughout.
It's pretty exhilarating to write a song and specifically not follow "the rules". I'll have to do a running tally of the R&D songs at some point, and post MP3s, but it's more important to finish the songs first. Speed, then polish, then post.
At some later point, I suppose I can mine these ideas for songs or scoring or whatever. Or nothing at all. But hopefully I'll look at the work I have left the "Neil Fein" album and say to myself, "That doesn't look as tough as I thought."
Technorati tags: music, R+D, recording
Labels: music, notbike, R+D, recording
Utopia and Grey Goo
The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, by Ray Kurzweil
This is a difficult book to review. It's a futurist treatise on how ever-accelerating changes will change society. And it's a love letter to technology, Mr. Kurzweil is obviously enamored of computers. It's also very well written, particularly for such a dense topic. The Singularity is Near reads like a cross between an academic paper and an Isaac Asimov science popularization.
The basic premise is that technology is progressing at an ever-increasing rate, and at a certain point, change will continue so rapidly that it's difficult to predict anything beyond that point, the singularity. It's a fascinating concept, and one I've been introduced to in the fiction of Charles Stross. The future will not look like the present with better tech, it's going to be pretty unrecognizable. Possible technologies such as genetic engineering, nanotech manufacturing, and robotics and artificial intelligence (the author's "GNR" triumvirate), will transform not only how we live but what we think of as a human being. Artificial intelligences, critical to the theory of the singularity, are by definition capable of expanding their own capabilities, and will drive much change.
It's an ambitious work, and not the first book the author has written on this topic. It does have weak spots, namely the tendency to assume that technology will progress according to plan, not accounting for technological setbacks very well. All we've seen in the last few centuries is progress, so of course that's all we ever will see.
To the book's credit, it does include a chapter on the dangers of these technologies. The "grey goo" scenario, where out of control self-replicating nanobots consume our biosphere for raw materials, is particularly chilling, but there are other equally deadly ways for hostile "strong" AI or perhaps genetically engineered plague vectors to wipe out the human race. Responses to the critics of the arguments presented in the book tends to be dismissive, however.
The Singularity is Near is hardly a book to be read during a lazy afternoon on the beach, but it's very rewarding and thought-provoking if you stick with it.
books
[The singularity] is not a certainty but in my opinion is a plausibility in the working lifetimes of most people here, that there will be perhaps something superhuman come along. We will either create or become something superhuman, in various ways.
Vernor Vinge
Change is the process by which the future invades our lives.
Alvin Toffler
You can't write this story. Neither can anyone else.
John W. Campbell
This is a difficult book to review. It's a futurist treatise on how ever-accelerating changes will change society. And it's a love letter to technology, Mr. Kurzweil is obviously enamored of computers. It's also very well written, particularly for such a dense topic. The Singularity is Near reads like a cross between an academic paper and an Isaac Asimov science popularization.
The basic premise is that technology is progressing at an ever-increasing rate, and at a certain point, change will continue so rapidly that it's difficult to predict anything beyond that point, the singularity. It's a fascinating concept, and one I've been introduced to in the fiction of Charles Stross. The future will not look like the present with better tech, it's going to be pretty unrecognizable. Possible technologies such as genetic engineering, nanotech manufacturing, and robotics and artificial intelligence (the author's "GNR" triumvirate), will transform not only how we live but what we think of as a human being. Artificial intelligences, critical to the theory of the singularity, are by definition capable of expanding their own capabilities, and will drive much change.
It's an ambitious work, and not the first book the author has written on this topic. It does have weak spots, namely the tendency to assume that technology will progress according to plan, not accounting for technological setbacks very well. All we've seen in the last few centuries is progress, so of course that's all we ever will see.
To the book's credit, it does include a chapter on the dangers of these technologies. The "grey goo" scenario, where out of control self-replicating nanobots consume our biosphere for raw materials, is particularly chilling, but there are other equally deadly ways for hostile "strong" AI or perhaps genetically engineered plague vectors to wipe out the human race. Responses to the critics of the arguments presented in the book tends to be dismissive, however.
The Singularity is Near is hardly a book to be read during a lazy afternoon on the beach, but it's very rewarding and thought-provoking if you stick with it.
books
Thursday, February 1, 2007
But That's Another Story
Numbers Don't Lie, by Terry Bisson
Math is apparently makes outlandish goings-on believable. Numbers Don't Lie, a collection of linked stories, Wilson Wu walks his friend Irv through a trip to a dumping ground on the moon, the universe rewinding, and the horror of not having to wait for New York City public transportation.
Irv is pretty much a foil character, but a strong one. A longtime Volvo driver, Irv loves city life but likes to slow down. He's certainly difficult to rattle, but the real fun in these stories is his best friend.
A veritable Buckaroo Banzai, Wu is a multi-talented man: A mathematician, entomological meteorologist, an engineer (on the side, mind you), and a phone phreaker who ends most conversations with an open-ended question. He also has a penchant for explaining things to Irv whether Irv's following along or not.
Mr. Bisson (is that Biss-on or Bye-son?) has crafter three wonderful, readable, stories in this volume. Recommended.
books
Math is apparently makes outlandish goings-on believable. Numbers Don't Lie, a collection of linked stories, Wilson Wu walks his friend Irv through a trip to a dumping ground on the moon, the universe rewinding, and the horror of not having to wait for New York City public transportation.
Irv is pretty much a foil character, but a strong one. A longtime Volvo driver, Irv loves city life but likes to slow down. He's certainly difficult to rattle, but the real fun in these stories is his best friend.
A veritable Buckaroo Banzai, Wu is a multi-talented man: A mathematician, entomological meteorologist, an engineer (on the side, mind you), and a phone phreaker who ends most conversations with an open-ended question. He also has a penchant for explaining things to Irv whether Irv's following along or not.
Mr. Bisson (is that Biss-on or Bye-son?) has crafter three wonderful, readable, stories in this volume. Recommended.
books
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