The Three Waves of William Gibson

I finished Spook Country, but I never did a follow up post. A friend of mine said she thinks that William Gibson only has two books to write. That kind of stuck in my head. It might be true. Yet there is something to be learned in the three waves of William Gibson.

First I confess that this wonderful theory is partially cribbed from a friend who excells in the creation of startling literary theories.

There are three waves of William Gibson. In the first wave, he wrote of a dystopian fantastical future where losers alienated from the world and themselves by technology find a way to fight back and come to terms with what they've become. It's set solidly in the 1960's sci-fi aesthetic where technology is potentially monstrous and certainly not to be trusted.

In the second wave, technology is fun and inspires something akin to awe. We call this the "Microsoft wave". It's where we forget that technology can't be trusted.

In the third wave, we return to the dystopian world, but we retain our sense of awe at technology. The world is our present day.

Now that I've written it out, I'm not as satisfied by this theory as I was.

So in conclusion, Spook Country is very good; quite possibly Gibson's best yet. It approaches not only technology, but our current social political situation with a mix of suspicion and awe at this amazing thing that apparently we've made, but do not fully understand.

Spooks, William Gibson

Today I am reading William Gibson's Spook Country. I'm on page 45. There's a powerful and frightening idea on this page.

Aljandro looked over his knees. "Carlito said there is war in America."
"A war?"
"A civil war."
"There is no war in America."
"When grandfather helped found the DGI, in Havana, were the Americans at war with the Russians?"
"That was the 'cold war'."
Alejandro nodded, his hands coming up to grip his knees. "A cold civil war."

I am full of anticipation and a little fear to see this idea develop on the page.

Federalist 51 to the Rescue

Yesterday I wondered where Al was going. The answer is, delightfully, Federalist paper 51. To quote Al:

The "auxiliary precautions" he [Madison] had in mind were the checks and balances that our Founders use in their design of the Constitution in order to prevent the unhealthy concentration of too much power in the hands of a few--and thereby to force those in authority to justify their views to one another by applying the rule of reason. When those in power are forced into a process of deliberation, then and only then will reason play its necessary central role. The separation of powers and the system of checks and balances are therefore essential to create the virtual space within which reason operates in American democracy.

I'm not one of those guys who can quote the Federalists chapter and verse, but I do remember this much from my College political science courses: it is not reason, faith, or even institutions which capture the unique character of the American founding, but deliberation. For me, this is where Gore wins the prize. The Assault on Reason is at time a polemic against President Bush, but contains, nonetheless, plenty of intelligent analysis and insight.

For this, I'll call Al a hero.

From the "I never saw that coming" file

As others have noted, Bush's view of his policies in the context of a fateful spiritual conflict between good and evil does not really represent Christian doctrine. It actually more closely resembles an ancient Christian heresy called Manichaeism (...) that sought to divide all of reality into two simple categories, absolute good and absolute evil.

--Al Gore The Assault on Reason

From my early education I absorbed a strong prejudice that a militant reverence for reason is a primarily conservative virtue. So it was with some bemusement that I picked up Al Gore's The Assault on Reason. Of all the criticisms of George Bush I might have anticipated Manichaeism is about the last.

I'm pleased to see that this book is so far a decent defense of the role of reason and faith in balance within American society. I look forward to seeing where Al is going with this.

Book Review: Jpod

Reading Douglas Coupland's new novel Jpod is like hearing a voice you know and trust, and slowly coming to realize that's it's describing terrifying horrors. Superficially, Jpod reads a lot like Microserfs. It describes a similar group of tightly-knit tech industry geeks struggling with life, family, work, and culture, discussing their obsessions and struggling to understand their place in the world. But where Microserfs describes a world full of change and growth where people become closer to one another and technology has the power to inspire and redeem, the characters in Jpod inhabit an amoral realm where technology is background noise and a software job invites comparison with being sold into heroin slavery making fake Nikes in China. Jpod is black comedy delivered with perfect deadpan. For many tech industry people of my generation,

Microserfsdefined the dream, a dream that we're still living or trying to live. Jpod depicts it as a nightmare. Jpod gave me nightmares. We're living in a time where we're growing more and more aware of the dark side of technology (I humbly submit). Jpod is an appropriate book for this time - Microserfs' evil twin.

Microserfs is a book that has been mentioned on this blog before. Yes, that's my first post in February 2001. That was a time of many beginnings for me. Microserfs was an appropriate book to be reading then. It's also the book I read on the plane the day I left graduate school behind and flew out to Seattle to start my first real tech job. I read Microserfs last year around the time I got laid off from my job and my Dad died. It's a book I read to remind myself why I came out to Seattle and why I decided to stay. I'm kind of glad it has an evil twin. It kind of gives the whole thing a little focus. I'm not sure I'll read it again, the way I have Microserfs. On the other hand, I'm not sure I'll read Microserfs again either. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do next, but maybe that's a good thing.

Recent Reading

Following up on The Penguin Atlas of Ancient History, I've recently completed The Penguin Atlas of Medieval History and am now well into The Penguin Atlas of North American History to 1870. All are quite good overviews and well worth reading. The latter is actually specifically dedicated to the history of the United Statesf and the major local factors that contributed to its formation, with Mexico and Canada playing ancillary roles, but it's quite good nonetheless.

But the really interesting read I've come across lately is Loser: The Real Seattle Music Story. Loser is an irreverant labor of love with a zine aesthetic (i.e. unvarnished opinions and graphic design), but it's full of history you won't find elsewhere.

Find of the Day: pictorial Maps by Nigel Holmes

A few days ago I ran across pictorial Maps by Nigel Holmes here in New York at The Strand. It's not necessarily a must have, but it does cover some neglected ground. Holmes is unabashedly in favor of maps that have picture on them. As Jonathan Swift famously said,

So geographers, in Africa maps,
With savage pictures fill their gaps,
And o'er uninhabitable downs
Place elephants for want of towns.

Holmes points out that one can in fact find elephants in Africa, so the pictorial elements aren't entirely in appropriate. He also gives a nice readable overview of ancient and medieval cartography, something lacking in many map books.

And while we're on the subject... In the middle ages, there were basically three types of maps. Ptolemaic charts were copies of Ptolemy's ancient Atlas, sometimes with additions, but just as often with uncorrected errors handed down from the originals. "T and O" maps were world maps that represented the cosmological order of the world at the expense of cartographic exactitude. They were called T and O because the represented the Mediterranean as a "T" shape and the known world as enclosed in an "O" shaped ocean. Portolan charts were fairly accurate sea charts showing coastlines and coastal towns so that mariners could find their way to port. Interestingly, no one really knows where the Portolans came from. They appeared on the scene in a fairly complete form with no evidence of their sources.

Of course those in the know are aware that they are copies of ancient Atlantean sea charts buried in the Middle East by the Sea Peoples, then dug up by Coptic monks, but that's another story...

Current Reading: The New Penguin Atlas of Ancient History

I picked up a copy of The New Penguin Atlas of Ancient History used while on vacation, and I must say I'm thrilled. It's enabled me to pull together a lot of piecemeal information into a coherent whole. I was expecting a dry scholarly dissertation, but I was surprised at the sometimes bizarrely quirky commentary, for example, concerning the mesolithic emergence:

... large quarry had become relatively scarce, and mesolithic man, to make ends meet, spent much of his time hunting the inglorious snail and the frankly sessile nut...

He also includes a translation key for "archaeologist-speak":

Major new civilization	a particularly disappointing dig
History will have to be rewritten	confirms an existing footnote in the standard work on the subject
A great city	a few hovels, maybe a village
The Venice of its day	any site that has produced a few articles from somewhere else
Earliest known	undated

You should know before reading this that anthropologists can be divided into two camps, those who believe ancient cultures were largely isolated, and those who believe they had significant and even regular contact. Colin McEvedy, the author of this atlas, falls very firmly into the first camp. He even reduces the entire work of action-hero-anthropologist Thor Hyerdahl to a snarky comment about sailing around on "damp papyrus". Hyerdahl, you may remember, was famous for demonstrating that ancient cultures could have crossed the oceans by doing exactly that in various types of primitive boats.

I also like that this atlas is fairly open about many archaeological anomalies and gaps. For example, he's open about the general wackiness of the chronology of Egyptian kingdoms or the mystery of the Elamite Indus Valley script (the mystery part being that we haven't the faintest idea what it says).

If, like me, you like your anthropology mixed in equal doses with pulp sci-fi, I recommend reading this alongside David Hatcher Childress. Childress is always willing to take an anomaly and turn it into an ancient advanced race of space-faring tesla gun Atlanteans with psychic powers. It's nice to have a more mainstream view to place alongside him. Please note that I advocate using Childress for entertainment purposes only.

I should add that the book includes some excellent maps drawn by David Woodruffe. Historical Atlases have a way of turning into a sort of technicolor arrow spaghetti, and Woodruffe avoids this for the most part.

By the way, the more I learn about anthropology, the more impressed I am with Thomas Harlan's PBEM game, Lords of the Earth. LOTE is a game of wonderfuly simulated alternate ancient history.

Recent Reading

Some recent reading from my festival of old school sci-fi:

• The Skylark of Space by E.E. "doc" Smith -- This is some vintage sci-fi with manyly men, womanly women, and space krakenly space krakens.


• Islands in the Sky by Arthur C. Clarke -- Islands in the Sky is a classic in the "all American boy goes to space" vein. After the Skylark, you'd think Clarke's meticulously thought-out hard science style would be jarring, but it isn't. Maybe it's because both books are about the wonder of space. Clarke even has a little homage to the Skylark in this book, which is a cool coincidence, since I bought them both at the same yard sale.

Do I Like the da Vince Code?

I'm a timid SOB. I talk a lot, but I rarely tell you what I really think. That's because what I really think tends to elicit shock or blank stares. This is especially true about religion. Yes, I talk about it all the time, but I'm typically extremely careful about what I say. Which is why I take stuff like Doug's recent post on The da Vinci code as a bit of reprimand. Kudos on writing an honest and thoughtful post, Doug.

The Code is actually right up my alley: wild intellectual speculation, crazy high-speed adventures, improbable cliff hangers, conspiracy, double-crosses; I love all that stuff. Dan Brown's writing is only so-so (but much better in DVC than his previous work), but I don't hold that against him. Many of my favorite authors have strong whiff of the hack about them: Tom Robbins, Harlan Ellison, Philip K. Dick, Hunter Thompson, and Andre Dumas to name a few.

The notion that Jesus settled down with Mary Magdalene and had some kids doesn't seem all that bad.

I couldn't agree more, Doug, and bless your for saying it first [NOTE 1]. In fact it makes a rather nice story. So why don't I believe it?

Know, so that you may believe

This comes from the same guy who suggested test all things and hold to what is true [NOTE 2]. This means that it's OK and even encouraged to apply your skills and intellectual abilities to trying to figure out the truth.

Beleive so that you may know

This comes from a guy who had more than a few personal problems to sort out [NOTE 3]. It means that when you believe, things start to make sense.

Most of the people I've talked to fall on one side of this debate or the other, but I personally fall right in between. The relationship between belief and knowledge is a mystery, and not a mystery in the sense of "you can't understand this", but rather in the sense that the more you try to plumb its depths, the more you learn and understand.

So what's this got to do with the DVC?

First off, DVC is just a story, and is inherently BS, just as Edgar Rice Boroughs' Mars is a heap of BS. Nevertheless, DVC brings up a couple of virulent ideas, namely: 1) that Jesus settled down with Mary Magdalene and had kids, etc. 2) that the Catholic Church is an institution founded on falsehood.

Knowledge (and a little research) is sufficient to deal with statement 1.

Statement 2 is much thornier, and calls both faith and knowledge into the mix. Faith tells me that the Catholic Church is not founded on falsehood, but it tells me something else. It tells me that the Church is up to the intellectual challenge. It says that I should seek the answer to questions that vex me, including questions about the Church, and that the Church, which includes in its body Jesus, my friends and family, and a rich intellectual tradition, will be a bountiful resource in that quest. So I guess I'm saying that statement 2 has proven itself untrue in my life because if it were true, any quest for truth through the Church would eventually be doomed to failure.

As for DVC, the book itself doesn't bother me very much, and from Doug's post, I'm guessing he feels the same way. What does bother me, and what I fear, is a growing cultural and intellectual change in which I sense the possibility of violence directed at me and my children. To be Catholic is to know that the quest for Truth bears fruit, but it is also to know that the threat of systematic violence aimed at the body of Christ is a continual possibility in human history, and that I do fear.



NOTE 1: though it remains rather dubious scholarship at best and blasphemy at worst
NOTE 2: St. Thomas Aquinas
NOTE 3: I say continued because I was born Catholic. The reason I'm Catholic is that I was born so. The reason I continue to be Catholic is that my continued quest of faith and reason confirms my Catholicism rather than rejecting it. I've often joked that had I been born Zoroastrian, I might still be Zoroastrian. I mean that in full honesty. Then again, had I been born Zoroastrian, I might be Catholic by now anyway. Lately, I'm beginning to suspect this might be the case.

"What unimaginable dangers, what terrifying creatures, what unexplored worlds

.. exist in the vast stretches of the universe not yet penetrated by man?

The expeditionary ship Space Beagle had been sent to find out. Its crew, eminent scientists from every field of human knowledge, had been specially trained and equipped to overcome any danger they might encounter.

But their greatest peril was aboard ship--where advanced technical knowledge, in the hands of ruthless men, could become an irresistible force for destruction."

Today I ran across a huge cache of vintage sci-fi paperbacks at the Madrona community yard sale. I have reading for my train trip now.

Harry Turtledove

I've been reading some Harry Turtledove lately. I have to admit, I love his beginnings - straight up, no nonsense or faffing around.

I'm two pages into In the Balance. It starts like this: Aliens are getting ready to invade Earth. They will crush us with their superior technology. But all is not as well as the aliens think. We learn their Empire includes 3 worlds. Their weaponry is not all that dissimilar from ours. And as the aliens view images of medeval warriors we learn that these are pictures from a "recent" (to the aliens) probe: only 1600 years ago. The aliens aren't expecting industry or serious resistance of any sort.

Thus the stage is set...

The Interesting Stuff

Thought for the day: when you're paging through your Amazon recommendations, go deep. The stuff you already own, know you don't want, and have put off to "some day" shows up in the first 7 pages. The really interesting stuff you didn't even know existed starts on page 8.
Update
Interesting things I found in my Amazon recommendations that I didn't know existed:

• The Road to Reality : A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe by Roger Penrose (page 6)


• Viva la Woman, Cibo Matto (page 8)


• Knuckle Down, Ani DiFranco (page 8)


• A History of Islamic Societies by Ira M. Lapidus (page 9)


• Letters: 1924-1975 by Hannah Arendt, et al (page 9)


• Arab Seafaring: In the Indian Ocean in Ancient and Early Medieval Times by George F. Hourani, John Carswell (page 12)


• In Quest of Lost Worlds: Five Archeological Expeditions, 1925-1934 by Byron Khun De Prorok (page 12)


• A History of the Muslim World to 1405 : The Making of a Civilization by Vernon O. Egger (page 13)


• The Language of New Media by Lev Manovich (page 17)


• Embassy to Constantinople: The travels of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu by Mary Montagu (page 18)

I'm not sure why there's so much Arab and Muslim history in my recommendations. I did do some searching for a book about the city of Medina a while back, but it seems strange that it would have such an impact on my recommendations.

Faithful should listen to science

Pet peeve of the day - being asked why Catholics don't believe in evolution. It's a fact that the Catholic Church has maintained that there's no contradiction between evolution and faith from the beginning. This article from the Seattle PI underlines that fact.

A Vatican cardinal said Thursday the faithful should listen to what secular modern science has to offer, warning that religion risks turning into 'fundamentalism' if it ignores scientific reason.

You know, i was going to try to review one book a week, but given this link, I'm going to jump ahead and review Brother Astronomer by Brother Guy Consolmagno, the Vatican Astronomer. Brother Astronomer is one astronomer's account of the challenges of life, science, and tromping around frozen Antarctic lake beds looking for pieces of Mars. By the by he talks about faith, science, Galileo, the Vatican, and rocks from space. It's a good read for Catholics interested in science and for science fans who want to get a glimpse into a religious perspective on science.

He's also got an upcoming book (I am told) about the search for intelligent life and what that might mean for faith and organized religion in general.

Best of all, The Seattle Public Library has a copy available.

A Review of Jarhead

I was a callow youth with more vinegar than brains, but I've never had the guts to write about it. If I pointed a gun at my team-mate and threatened to shoot him, I wouldn't have the guts to write about it. If I'd even been forced to clean latrines, I definitely wouldn't write about it.

Anthony Swofford writes about it, and about being a soldier on the ground, drinking, getting into fights, standing at attention, being a jarhead and trying to relate to non-jarheads. Failing, sometimes.

I couldn't put Jarhead down. I read it in one sitting, which I never do, not even for Harry Potter (OK, Harry Potter's long, admittedly). Jarhead is brutal and honest. It's not about how to think about the war or why the war happened, it's just about a guy who was in the war. I like books like that.

I've always had a bit of a fascination with soldiers. I remember my father bringing out his Air Force uniform one year on Remembrance Day. He signed up to fight in World War II. I never even knew until that day. A few of my friends over the years have been ex Special Forces of one sort or another. I don't know why. You have a few drinks with a guy, and he turns out to be a trained sniper. What I've learned from them tallies with Jarhead, so it has the ring of truth for me.

Here's an Amazon affiliate link if you want to check out Jarhead or any other book, although personally I recommend trying your local library first. The movie adaptation of Jarhead staring Jake Gyllenhall also opens this weekend. Powells.com also has a great interview with Anthony Swofford.

Amazon.com: Books: Critical Theory Since Plato

Thanks to my loving wife for getting me the incredibly geeky early Christmas present: Hazard Adams' Critical Theory Since Plato.

The Hollow Kingdom Discussion Forum

If you haven't already read The Hollow Kingdom by Clare B. Dunkle, by all means, do so soon! It is the first in a trilogy of the same name. The sequel, Close Kin, is coming out in October, and I am reviewing it. Yesterday, I started a forum to discuss the present and future publications of Clare Dunkle. Believe me, there is much to talk about: goblins who abduct humans and elves to help perpetuate the goblin species (most goblin women are infertile), xenophobic attitudes among the different species, propriety and decorum versus truth and candor, and the justification for violence and "goblin revenge."

You may read the reviews on the Hollow Kingdom front page if you like, but I advise you to wait to read the deleted scenes and items for further discussion until you have actually read the book, so you don't spoil the fun for yourself. If you are disinclined to spend money on a book simply because I recommend it, you may easily find a copy through the Seattle Public Library or King County Library systems. You may find the Yahoo discussion forum in the first link I have provided.

Now, aren't you glad there's a librarian in the house?!

April 28 addendum: My Amazon.com review is here, under the name of Orkgrrrl, of course.

About a month ago I started looking for a book called Father Elijah: An Apocalypse by Catholic novelist Michael O'Brien. About six years ago, I had read a review of it in Crisis Magazine, whose Web page I was designing. I was double curious, since my family in Canada have since become friends of O'Brien and the book had always interested me. I'd assumed I'd find it in the library or a used books store one day. The book proved elusive. Fortunately, an Amazon search finally turned it up, and I proceeded to order it.

I logged on to Amazon today to find that my home page had undergone a sea change: this rather sobering book about the decline in the sacrament of penance, a bestseller about the Passion (generally speaking) written by an author whose other books include one called Did Adam and Eve have Belly Buttons? and an interesting book on eschatology and fundamentalism with the provocative title Will Catholics be Left Behind?

Oh, and yes, Father Elijah was worth the wait.

BookFilter Site

Book reviews and discussion in blog form. This could be very good.

Yahoo! News - Fifth 'Potter' Book Set for June Release

"Within hours of Wednesday's announcement that "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" would be in bookstores on June 21, the book hit No. 1 on Amazon.com's best-seller list. "

Amazon.com Listmania Results: A Game Master's Guide to the Weird

Amazon.com Listmania Results: GURPS Time Travel Resource

Amazon.com Listmania Results: Kenneth Hite's Top Ten Books of Weirdness