BillSaysThis

Joe Haldeman is one of the most acclaimed members of the post-Vietnam generation of American science fiction authors, making his debut in 1976 with the all-around classic The Forever War. Not that he’s rested on his laurels, winning several more Hugos, Nebulas and even a World Fantasy Award for the 1993 short story Graves and a new book about every year, but he doesn’t get mentioned much in the current top lists.

Old Twentieth is probably indicative of why that is. An enjoyable read, well-drawn protagonist and a twist for the ending, the bottom line is this was essentially a novella stretched to minimally acceptable novel length; if not for economic requirements this should have been 80-100 rather than 257 pages. Haldeman is capable of compositions that engage and groove but cannot expect us to accept repetitive virtual excursions to our own recent past that serve little narrative purpose. I suppose this is the other side of trilogyitis, that anything other than book-length works are rarely viable publishing projects.

Interspersed with the brief virtual reality visits, the main plot framework concerns the interstellar flight of 800 (or 1,000, I’m still not sure) survivors of a war forty years from now between the wealthy who can afford a new drug treatment conferring immortality and everyone else. The conflict ends when the putative immortals release an agent which kills everyone who hasn’t undergone the Becker-Cendrek Process within hours. The novel itself begins 200 years later, the horrors and hardships of the war’s aftermath are breezed through in a few words in the first chapter, and the flight is neither a panicky response nor a solution to anything except boredom and economic doldrums.

Faster than light travel is not part of Haldeman’s imagined future, though, and so the few lightyears’ flight will take 1,000 years with no solid prospects of a viable home at the destination or secure plan for return. Jacob Brewer was seven at the war’s beginning; he joins the expedition as chief virtuality engineer, responsible for the systems that provide the trip’s most desirable form of entertainment. Not that people lose themselves in the made up worlds since only four can participate at the same time and then for no more than 20 hours at a stretch. Something goes wrong inside, Manhattan in the 1930s smells just a bit off to Brewer and his fellow techs.

Tracking down the reason leads us to the denoument. Even with just a dozen pages left I couldn’t figure out how Haldeman was going to wrap things up. I believe that the technique he used is called deus ex machina.

not recommended

According to Rolling Stone, Springsteen is recording a new CD to be released this May called The Seeger Sessions, a tribute to folk grand master Pete Seeger. Again laying aside his electric guitar and backing band, this album feature acoustic guitar, banjo, mandolin and violin and will be the first to consist of songs not written by Bruce. Instead he covers the now 86 year old Seeger’s classic compositions and other traditional American folk. While I support an artist’s right to make the music which makes him happy, and though I’ll surely buy a copy, I don’t think this will reach even the modest sales of Devils and Dust.

Not being one to miss out on an Adam Kalsey visit to the Valley, I went to last week’s Ning visit and was surprised to find KRON4’s blogger/journalist Brian Shields there with a video camera. He must be good at it because I completely forgot he was there until Adam posted the result of the work in Ning visit on TV. If you watch the clip closely I do appear two or three times but got no lines and once again missed my chance to earn a SAG card. Showing that I am not always the aware and observant geek you see here, I completely didn’t realize the tall guy talking with us was none other than Marc “I made the first useful web browser” Andreeson.

Are You Living in a Computer Simulation? is a much more detailed way of putting it but more or less is how I’m thinking about the nature of existence lately. Though the whole turtles all the way down aspect leaves something of a bad aftertaste.

A couple of friends of mine, Rashmi Sinha and Jon Boutelle, have created an interesting new way to do market research testing using gaming in place of the traditional survey questionaires. I wish the Feds, or at least one of the software companies like Intuit or H&R Block would do the same for taxes. Hey, there’s a Web 2.0 company idea I’m throwing out there for anyone to pick up on, free of charge. Well, you should give me a copy but other than that free.

I used H&R Block’s TaxCut this year, 1/10th the price of the CPA charged me each of the last few, and while the interview style process is a lot better than doing the work manually it still has no style or flare and doesn’t even do as much for the user as it could. For instance, there are places where information can be reused (company names, addresses) or easier access to forms provided (filling in previous year data). In the end I can only hope their software doesn’t have bugs affecting the calculations because it says I have a whopper of a federal refund coming. And I’d hate to have to give it back.

Lots of bloggers and other folks have picked up on the Getting Things Done strategy (philosophy?) but not me; my mind just doesn’t work that way. But I did start doing one thing that lowers the number of interruptions: I stopped running SharpReader all the time. Trimming the feed subscriptions wasn’t enough, the tray icon was still turning yellow far too often and the OCD in me couldn’t resist alt-tabbing over to see what had come in. So now I’m trying to limit myself to twice a day, reading the new and then exiting. Will it last? Not sure yet.

Just finished watching this afternoon’s big match at Anfield on the Tivo–had to take TS1 for a nice Valentine’s dinner– and though the final score was a positive Liverpool 1-0 Arsenal I have to wonder where the hell Arsenal was. Thierry Henry had one shot, in the 53rd minute, and that was really the only serious save Jerzy Dudek had to make in the 90. This is a team that went the whole season undefeated two years ago, finished second in the league last year and began the night just seven points behind Liverpool in fifth place.

The Reds completely dominated the Gunners though were unable to put the finish until three minutes from time when Luis Garcia, a late substitute in his first appearance back from injury, cracked the rebound of a Didi Hamann shot off Jens Lehmann’s fingers. For my money Lehmann was about the only player who was worthy of the team jersey, with maybe Freddie Ljungberg just behind. The rest of the team played like the teenagers they mostly are and Arsene Wenger is going to have to kick some butt to get back into a top four/Champions League slot. Right now it doesn’t seem that likely.

Saturday is another big game for LFC as they host Manchester United in the FA Cup round of 16, followed by a trip to Portugal to meet Benfica in the first leg of the Champions League round of 16. Even though Chelsea are running away with the EPL, there is very definitely still the possibility of silverware for our boys this year!

Charles Stross takes a break from post-Singularity tales with this first book in his Merchant Princes sequence, The Family Trade. Though since the main character, at least in this volume, is a woman one wonders why the set isn’t called The Merchant Princess. Oh well. The book is good enough but seems to be dangerously close to trilogyitis, doing nothing after 300 pages but setting the table. We know who Miriam Beckstein really is, that she’s smart and capable (though what SF protagonist isn’t?) and her real family is vicious but perhaps not as smart as they consider themselves. Book Two is already out and I’ll withhold judgment until it comes back to the library.

The second of his science fiction novels and the second I’ve read, The Player Of Games (1989) shows that Iain M. Banks started out with a full-blown creative masterwork in his future multi-species Galactic society known as the Culture. Reading Look to Windward didn’t make this obvious since it was written much later after he’d had several more novels in which to develop the concepts, though TPOG doesn’t detract from that one bit. No, this novel simply reinforces my belief that there was something strange and wonderful in the air on British campuses in the ’70s and ’80s to turn out writers like Banks, Charles Stross, Peter F. Hamilton and Ken Macleod; would that I’d gone over for a semester or year abroad during my university years.

This book covers a few years in the life of one of the greatest game players in the Culture, Jernau Morat Gurgeh, and you should understand that in this time no person has to work unless he, she or it (AI machines are citizens as well) wants to and can find an interesting position. Essentially, though, the machinery and some of the Minds are so advanced that there is little work to do except things like teaching and the occasional gathering of intelligence. Everyone else is free to be creative, contemplative or lazy. Gurgeh has honed his talents on games that are as far advanced beyond, say, chess as chess is beyond tic-tac-toe and has become famous for it throughout the worlds and Orbitals of the Culture and beyond.

Then one day he’s visited by a machine which works for Contact, the organization that manages external relations. Even though the Culture spans many thousands of star systems and even reaches into nearby galaxies it is not the only starfaring society. One other is called the Empire of Azad, controlling several systems but not nearly as technologically advanced. Its a harsh, feudal polity where advancement at nearly all levels–including the Emperor itself–is determined by one’s skill at the game of Azad. There are three genders of Azari and the one which humans lack dominates life in the way that white males did the Old South. The Contact machine asks Gurgeh to travel to Azad to take part in the big tournament held every six years to decide the highest levels of government; the winner becomes Emperor.

Somewhat reluctantly, as the trip to the Lesser Magellanic Cloud will takes more than two years even at the awesome speeds of the larget ships, the human agrees. The idea of an empire built around a game, escaping the boorish tenor of recent times and to avoid an embarassing secret being made public add up to assent. Almost all the travel time is required for him to become proficient in Azad and when he arrives has to deal with being treated like the Jamaican bobsled team a few Olympics ago. But Gurgeh is, after all, the Player of Games and the Culture is far more advanced than the Azadians so he is much more capable than his hosts expect.

Banks really puts the words on the page. He creates interesting characters, places and interactions which are not merely present day humans transposed to a technologically different era and includes small touches which polish the edges so well. I was at the library tonight but, though I couldn’t find another Culture novel, did pick up and Iain “no M” Banks business thriller called, well, The Business.

recommended

David Brin (blog) has written plenty of award-winning, and even good, science fiction so it was no surprise that he was selected as the honoree at New England Science Fiction Association’s 2003 Boskone convention. Each year, NESFA produces a limited edition book of short stories and essays by the Guest of Honor and so gave us Brin’s Tomorrow Happens (this month they’ll ship Giant Lizards from Another Star from Ken Macleod).

This slim volume is an eclectic mix of material, alternating short stories and essays, some of which you can read online if you like since it’s now out of print.

• Stones of Significance is probably my favorite tale, about a future where humanity and artificially intelligent computers have melded and descendents of groups like the NAACP and PETA are arguing for the rights to personhood of the day’s incredibly sophisticated fictional characters;
• my favorite essay is The Self-Preventing Prophecy, in which Brin considers why many (all?) the bad futures we have considered likely over the years didn’t come true;
• Aficionado is an extended play on words;
• the essay Probing the Near Future considers the trend of what many in the blogosphere now call citizen media or participatory journalism as it rolls into other areas of endeavor as well;
• We Hobbits are a Merry Folk is a very contrarian, immediately post-9/11 look at Lord of the Rings.

recommended

Soccernet is looking for a few good bloggers to follow their favorite team at World Cup 2006 this June. While the selected are not being sent to cover the Finals in person I still would love to be chosen as the USA correspondent. The application form asked for a writing sample, a fantasy scoop on my preferred team.

What could I write about? The biggest fantasy IMHO will be a win in the game we’ll play if we finish second in the group round and the defending champion Brasileiros play to form and win their own group. Here’s what I submitted and, remember, this is supposed to be a fantasy:

USA 2-1 Brazil! I just cannot believe it, an unimaginable historic victory for Team USA, and neither can my neighbors as the screaming will not stop after we knocked out the holders in the round of 16. Samba-schmamba, Uncle Sam’s army is doing the dancing tonight as Rio and Sao Paulo do the funeral waltz instead.

How did Claudio Reyna master Ronaldinho and the back four silence Ronaldo and Robino? I will be watching this over and over on TiVo, no matter what happens tomorrow, and just show me where to pre-order the DVD.

Baby! Roberto Carlos could not keep up with Damarcus and Landon made his opportunities to feed the offense but all props to McBride for the first half lead and Brian Ching making the winner minutes after coming on for the last 20. Ching! There will be babies named after his aerial exploit tonight.

Oh my! Oh My!

Today is my parents’ 55th wedding anniversary, which is amazing since I’ll be 97 six days before Vivian and I reach that number. The love, education and generosity they’ve gifted me simply cannot be measured, only passed along.

TS1 and I watched the Grammys last night because this is one of the few awards shows which actually entertains–these days finding out the winners is easier to do on the web without suffering the faux-funny presenter quips. Of course we were anxious to see Bruce’s performance and he didn’t disappoint with tense version of Diamonds and Dust, though I wouldn’t have preferred that he get the early slot that Sir Paul McCartney wasted with his psychotropic piano. And what the heck was up with his hair? Bruce is usually in tight control over every aspect of a performance and I can’t imagine that he just took a pass on a pre-show haircut; maybe it was a very inside baseball tribute to the old folkies who inspired his last record.

U2 beat out Bruce for Song of the Year, which I thought was the right decision as Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own is just awesome, and John Prine took the Best Contemporary Folk Album. Bruce didn’t leave without some gold of his own, winning Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance over Clapton, Robert Plant, Neil Young and Rob Thomas–tell me which one of those does not fit.

After last year’s terrific Earth, Wind and Fire tribute, the announcement of a tribute to Sly and the Family Stone was no surprise and we were really looking forward to it. But when the time came, I was disappointed. Sly looked totally cool with the huge silver Mohawk and gold suit but his performance was somewhere south of actually being there. I understand the man has not performed in public in 19 years, and there’s surely a good reason for that because he’s passing on huge money, but if he wasn’t willing or able then the producers should have picked a classic act that was. I could care less to hear John Legend, Maroon 5, Ciera, Steven Tyler or Fantasia though Joss Stone, Joe Perry (Aerosmith guitarist) and Will.i.am (leader of the Black Eyed Peas) were not bad. Still, this should have been Sly’s stage and, after getting over the shock of his hair, he just left us sad.

Just a few shots from Saturday night’s Fenwick & West 2006 Holiday Party at the St. Regis up in San Francisco. We had a great time, good food, music, free booze and friends!

And by special request, my nephew Jacob!

RawSugar Debuts Search and Navigation Technology for Web Publishers at DEMO 2006 Conference

At least after the initial installation. I saw mention of coComment over at Scoble’s blog but had too tough a time getting one of the posted invite codes to work. This morning, though, one was waiting in my inbox. These Swiss guys are using the same idea as we do with the Topic Navigator, using a bit of JavaScript styled with a CSS block directly after the script call though it’s not clear to me that coComment has all the necessary styles exposed in just the right way as you can see on my new web comments page.

No big deal, because I do like the functionality and it seems to work the way I want more or less. What I would like to see is, even if I show only my comments (the default is to show all comments by registered coComment users on any thread where I comment), a link at the start of my comment to the place on the page where my comment orginates if available. This does happen in the default view. I used to replicate this sort of functionality with the tag ‘comments’ on delicious but of course I don’t really use Yahoo’s service any more and I’m happy to have it again.

Elsewhere: Ben Metcalfe points out a couple of weaknesses in coComment though neither’s really applicable to my reason for using it.

35 years from now America is fractured and a shadow of the nation we live in. The old Confederate states are once again a separate country but the reason for the civil war isn’t some return to white power. Instead author Robert Ferrigno has posited a terrible terrorist event on May 19, 2015: New York City and Washington, DC, are destroyed by nuclear bombs while Mecca barely survives a third device and radical Israelis are quickly implicated in the Zionist Betrayal. In the aftermath the other states convert en masse to Islam and the most of the people who don’t flee to the Bible Belt or remain as a persecuted minority.

Prayers for the Assassin is a taut thriller where the players behind that black day and the current powers meet up to decide whether the world–outside of China, for now at least–will become completely Islamic, a true Caliphate as one of the principles puts it. The Jews? Well, Israel went down the tubes as soon as America and the EU withdrew support and, other than stragglers hiding where they can, there don’t seem to be too many left outside a colony in Russia and an enclave on Tasmania. The Islamic States of America even has its own religious police, the Black Robes, who walk around whipping insufficiently pius folks.

The suspense surrounds the whereabouts of a young scholar, the niece and ward of the man who runs State Security. More scandalous than her first book, Sarah’s current research is dangerous enough to put all the major players on her tail when she disappears after class one day. Redbeard asks his adopted but disowned son, the girl’s lover, to find her before the others. Turns out that’s not quite enough but, in the end, Rakkim’s Fedayeen (special forces) training and innate intelligence can save the day.

Ferrigno has taken a pretty big bite with Prayers. Although perhaps not quite in the class of Fatherland, a book the publisher ranks it with, I think this took a mighty big pair of cojones in the post-9/11 world to write and publish. LAX, for instance, has been renamed Bin Laden International. He pulls it off and delivers a satisfying read.

recommended

Notes:

1. Simon & Schuster, the publisher, set up an interesting companion site called Republic World News to give readers a taste of what the news might be like in the novel’s mileau with a game called President for Life with prizes that include your name being used as a character in the author’s next novel.
2. Ferrigno is blogging, not just about the book, but about current events related to it like the blowup in Denmark over newspaper cartoons of Mohammed.
3. S&S sent me an advance copy of the book after I responded to a call for readers I saw posted somewhere on the web a couple of months ago. So full disclosure, but given that I try to get my reading for free these days anyway not much of an influence on my opinion.

Why was BillSaysThis down today? “The problem arose from someone not properly understanding cron and, instead of executing awstats once a day, they had it firing off once per minute, every minute, for an hour.” Great.