Month: January 2012

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

If you were a teen in the 1980s, loving Sesame Street, the Muppets, Atari 2600 games, John Hughes movies, D&D, MTV music, Zork, and nerdy Commodore 64s, then I have a book for you:  Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.  I lived through the 80s too old to play D&D but I dug the music, films and computers.  Cline made me terribly envious I hadn’t grown up in his decade.

Ready_Player_One

I wish I could understand why this book was so much fun to read!  I’d use the formula to write bestsellers.  This story reminds me of a hip new version of Citizen Kane that doesn’t take itself so seriously.  Set in mid 21st century, aging billionaire James Halliday dies leaving a rather unique Last Will and Testament.  Halliday made his fortune developing a virtual reality universe called OASIS that most people use to attend school, work and play in because the real reality is rather bleak.  Halliday’s avatar tells the world he’s worth over $200 billion and that the first person to find his Easter Egg in the OASIS will win his fortune and company.

Now this gets the attention of the world’s foremost video gamers, as well as corporations hot to own the OASIS.  Our story begins with Wade Watts, a poor kid living in the trailer park from hell, whose only access to OASIS comes from his public school gear, but in his own 21st century Horatio Alger, Jr. way climbs out of poverty to compete with legendary gamers.

The contest designed by Halliday is hard, so hard that no one gets anywhere for five years.  It becomes obvious that the clues are hidden in Halliday’s childhood, just like Charles Foster Kane’s secrets, and only the most obsessed fans of 1980s trivia have any chance of solving the puzzles.  Ready Player One is perfect for people who grew up in the 1980s, but the story is so well told bookworms from any decade will love it.

I wonder how many people born forty years after the the 1980s will ever find our times so fascinating?  It would be like me devoting my whole life to the 1910s – but wait, I am madly in love with Downton Abbey.  And just look at the success of Steampunk!

This might be the clue to Cline’s success – creating great characters set in an fantastically detailed milieu, because if we had an OASIS system to visit, I think we all would find virtual worlds based on the past quite seductive.  Nostalgia is a powerful emotion.  At work the favorite topic of guys my age is music from the 1960s and 1970s.  I’m in a classic science fiction book club where we read and reread books from the 1940s-1970s.  Start paying attention to movies (Hugo, Sherlock Holmes, TinTin, War Horse) as more are set in the past.  Maybe it’s the bad economic times and we just need escapism.  Ready Player One sure made me forget about now.

Other Reviews and Sites – probably to read after reading the book

JWH – 1/12/12

Google+ versus Facebook

Having two competing social networks is a problem.  Logically, you’d like everyone to be at one location for convenience.  Until recently, it looked liked Facebook was going to be the universal social network.  I’m not much of a Facebook user, but I can’t quit it either.  Too many friends, old acquaintances and relatives are on Facebook, so it’s easy to keep an eye on everybody.  Facebook is actually much better than snail-mail letters, postcards and Christmas cards at keeping track of people.  In fact I often wish all my relatives would use Facebook.  Facebook actually makes me feel closer to people.  Then came Google+.

google-plus-logo

Google+ has a few nifty new features, some a touch better than Facebook, but to make Google+ practical I’d need all my Facebook friends to move over to Google+ and that would be rude to ask.  Many people I know on Facebook are computer phobic, and it took them a long time to learn Facebook.  Getting them to switch would be cruel.

What to do?  What if Google+ is a superior tool?  What if we all move over to Google+ and Apple or Microsoft came out with an even better product?  Do hundreds of millions of people then move again to another new system?  Given time wouldn’t Facebook add the features we all want anyway?

Mike Elgan is fanatically campaigning for Google+  and currently 374,958 people have him in one of their circles.  Google+ definitely has more geek cred than Facebook, which makes me think I should use Facebook for people I know in real life and use Google+ as a geeky hangout for people I met over the Ethernet.

There are many things to consider.  Is social networking a fad?  Many pundits and friends have already abandon Facebook.  On the other hand, I can only imagine Facebook becoming better and more valuable over time.  Does that mean we should all stick with Facebook because of its initial momentum?  Are we already stuck with Facebook forever?

Mike Elgan claims Google+ can replace our email systems too and that Google+ can become a central hub for all kinds of communications Facebook doesn’t do and the average user doesn’t understand yet.  At least I don’t.

Which is more secure?  Which is more natural at organizing levels of relationships?  Which offers the most features I’d actually use?  Which is easier to use?  Which can be customized more?  And most important, which has fewer ads?  I hate ads.  I don’t have the answers, but I’m trying to find out.

And one last interesting tidbit.  Facebook isn’t indexed on search engines, whereas Google+ is indexed on Google, Bing and others.  Facebook is a closed system, and that’s appealing, I think.  Then again, should you ever put anything private and personal on any computer system?

JWH – 1/10/12

If I Had a Super PAC

There’s an old Bruce Cockburn song called “If I Had a Rocket Launcher” that if I was musically inclined I’d adapt to modern times and write new words and sing, “If I Had A Super PAC.”  To understand a little bit of what a Super PAC is read “Newt’s Shop of Horrors.”  Basically, if you’re wealthy you can make political war for or against political candidates so long as you don’t align yourself with any candidate.  In essence it allows individuals and corporations, folks with lots of dough, to weigh in political and do the dirty fighting for the candidate of their choice.

In the old days a six-shooter was considered an equalizer.  It didn’t matter if you were big and strong or little and weak, the implication was guns made everyone equal.  The Bruce Cockburn song ups the ante to imply you need a rocket launcher to be equal in our modern world.  Well, now it seems to be equal in politics you need a Super PAC.

The inherent problem of Super PACs is only the rich can afford them and thus the rich have more political influence.  What Timothy Egan’s article says about Republicans fighting each other with Super PACs is it ironically illustrates why they are unfair.  Mr. Gingrich helped promote the creation of a Super PAC and now he’s suffering from the results of an escalating war.

I’m poor and liberal, but I got to thinking, what if I had a Super PAC, what would I do?  Not that I’d really use one – I mean, I don’t own an assault rifle (hey, I’m liberal) but it’s fun to think about what one would do with a Super PAC.  If a big gun makes you feel like you have a big you know what, what must welding a Super PAC make you feel?

Our polarized political society is creating all kinds of escalating political weapons.  Take the hacker group Anonymous – they attack corporations they deem unethical with hacker tools.  Arab Spring showed us how little people can overthrow powerful tyrants by using Twitter, Facebook and other social media.  Conservatives and NRA members probably never picture liberals armed to the teeth, so I don’t imagine Republicans pictured Democrats with Super PACs, but after the conventions I expect both parties to bring out whole legions of Super PACs on both sides.  What we have to ask are Super PACs weapons of mass destruction that should be outlawed?

Expect shock and awe attacks on President Obama of all kinds.  But also imagine what liberals can do with Super PACs.  Republicans are going to claim The Comedy Channel started the escalation.  Then countered with Fox News.  Researcher should graph the growth negative ads in politics and the evolution of rhetoric to unbelievable levels.

I find it painful.  If I had a Super PAC I’d attack the legality of Super PACs, but instead I’ll just turn off my TV.

JWH – 1/7/12

For more fun on Super PACs, read my friend’s Bill blog, That’s Interesting…

The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels

The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels is both fascinating and tedious.  Who Jesus was has been argued by billions for thousands of years, so why should anyone assume we can solve an unsolvable puzzle?  Before the Catholic Church became the monolithic institution that defined Christianity for centuries, there were a few centuries after Christ’s death where many different Christian beliefs flourished, and among those were the Gnostics.  Gnosticism wasn’t limited to Christian thinking, but Christian Gnosticism in various forms were large enough movement that early orthodox leaders wrote books teaching against Gnostic thinking.  Gnostics were heretics early orthodox Christians hated even more than the Romans.  The orthodox did everything it could to wipe out the heretics and burn all their books.  In 1945 we found 52 texts at Nag Hammadi, Egypt.

gnostic-gospels

The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels is a short overview of alternate Christian beliefs before the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD.  Now here’s the rub.  You have many Christian philosophies before 325 AD, then hundreds of years of the Catholic Church, and many Christian philosophies after the Protestant Reformation in 1517.  The Catholic Church spent centuries hammering out who Christ was and what his teachings meant, but there are always other people believing he taught something different.  Gnostics had very radical ideas about Christ that sound just as good or better.  Who is the real Jesus?

How Christianity evolved is a fascinating historical mystery.  I’ve been watching Lost Christianities: Christian Scriptures and the Battles over Authentication, A Great Course lecture by Bart D. Ehrman.  I got The Gnostic Gospels as a supplement.  The Gnostics are intriguing because they claim to have secret knowledge of Jesus based on his mystical teachings, like Eastern religions.  Some Gnostics thought the virgin birth and bodily resurrection were silly stories the orthodox Christians believed in and claim to know the real truth.  They said Jesus taught that the Kingdom of Heaven was within and had already arrived and with the right practices and secret knowledge it would be revealed here on Earth.  It wasn’t faith, but direct experience.

While studying these early Christians I got a strange idea.  History is full of religious charlatans and con men.  What if Jesus had been a con man gathering his flock with a promise of secret knowledge.  Then he gets killed, and after that all his followers taught something different about his “secret knowledge” creating endless religions never knowing they had been conned.  Most people like to assume that one view of Christ is the right one.  But what if they are all wrong?

The more I study the history of Christianity the more its obvious that every Christian see a different Jesus and it’s impossible to know the real Jesus.  Reading The Gnostic Gospels only made me feel more conclusively that Jesus and his teachings are unknowable – and all we can know is an endless series of imaginary Christs created by people who have their on unique beliefs.

JWH 1/4/12

Doc by Mary Doria Russell

Doc is John Henry Holliday, legendary figure from the old west and most famously remembered for standing with Wyatt, Morgan and Virgil Earp at the gunfight at the O.K. Corral in 1881 as Doc Holliday.  All too often fictional accounts of famous people of history tend to be heavy on the fiction and light on the history, but this ain’t so with Doc, the new novel by Mary Doria Russell.

doc

To see how serious Russell treats the history start reading her blog at Starting the Next Novel.  Blogs are annoying for reading older posts, but if you start here and read forward with the link at the bottom of the article, you’ll be able to track her comments about writing Doc and the next novel dealing with Wyatt.  Russell even took a five day horseback ride that recreates Wyatt Earp’s Vendetta Ride.  But keep reading her blog and you’ll be charmed by Russell and understand how she put so much biographical research into her fictional character.

Even covering this material in a nonfiction books like The Last Gunfight by Jeff Guinn it’s very tricky painting a portrait of a real person.  History leaves a limited set of facts that’s never enough to be definitive.  Like I said in Nonfiction, Fiction, History, Myth and States of Consciousness it’s extremely hard to discern nonfiction from fiction, and history from myth but Mary Doria Russell makes a climbing Mt. Everest effort to portray John Henry Holliday as fully and accurate as possible in the context of a novel.

I enjoyed this story immensely.  I’ve read many books and seen many movies about Doc Holliday and the Earps and Russell’s picture of them in 1878 Dodge City is nothing less than brilliant – not in the Einstein way of thinking, but in the way the Harry Potter kids use the term.  I have no idea how true this story is, but it feels right.  At worst I’d say she worked too hard to make Doc likable, and even elegant and tragic.  She elevates Morgan over Wyatt, but history has favored Wyatt because he survived.  I do believe Russell is right in suggesting that Doc was mainly Morgan’s friend, and after Morgan was killed and his murdered avenged, Doc didn’t have much reason to stick with Wyatt.

Now if you’re not caught up in the mania for Tombstone and the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral you might not give a fig about this book.  It is a well written western that stands on its own even if you aren’t caught up in the history, but I think you’ll at least need to love western movies to enjoy this book.  And I love westerns.  And this was one of my favorite books of 2011.

JWH – 1/2/12