Auxiliary Memory

Science Fiction in the Last 25 Years

Entertainment Weekly recently published their list of The New Classics: The 100 Best Reads from 1983-2008. Guess what? Only one science fiction genre book, Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson made their list, coming in at #26. There was some fantasy titles like Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2000) by J. K. Rowling at #2 and His Dark Materials (1995-2000) by Philip Pullman at #40, and even a graphic novel, Sandman (1988-1996) by Neil Gaiman at #46, to represent some other genres that are close to science fiction fan’s hearts, but only one real SF title.

Now squeezing in the best literary, non-fiction, YA, genre books and even graphic novels from the last twenty-five years down to a hundred titles doesn’t leave much room for many titles in each category, but to only have one science fiction title seems harsh at first glance. But I’m not being too critical, it’s a good list, but I think they should have included one other science fiction novel: Ender’s Game (1985) by Orson Scott Card. I say this because so many of my non-science fiction reading bookworm friends loved this story, and even consider it one of their all-time favorite books. In fact, if EW were to insist on including only one SF title, I’d pick Ender’s Game.

Entertainment Weekly isn’t alone in proclaiming Neuromancer as the only quality SF novel of the last twenty-five years, so did The Daily Telegraph. Both periodicals also picked Cloud Atlas (2004) by David Mitchell, a literary novel with some story settings in the future. And the Telegraph also picked The Time-Traveler’s Wife (2003) by Audrey Niffenegger, an excellent science fiction story told in a literary narrative. Personally, I liked both of these titles better than Neuromancer.

Of course The New York Times did their What Is the Best Work of American Fiction of the Last 25 Years? and they didn’t even throw in any token genre books at all. I’ve only read two of their titles, White Noise (1985) by Don DeLillo and A Confederacy of Dunces (1980) by John Kennedy Toole, and I prefer Ender’s Game, Cloud Atlas and The Time-Traveler’s Wife over both of them, and Neuromancer just a little less.

Does this mean that for the most part science fiction is ignored by the reading world at large, or is it sadly that science fiction books just don’t measure up? Many of the books listed do have fantastic elements, so I think science fiction and fantasy have made an impact on the modern literary world. The current Pulitzer Prize winner, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) by Junot Díaz is on the list and the title character is a Sci-Fi fan and extreme geek. I wonder if that’s how the literary world at large sees SF fans?

Junot Díaz weaves in so many Sci-Fi references, totally off-the-cuff and unexplained, that I assume he thinks they are universally part of our culture. But I have to wonder if most of them don’t just fly right over the average reader’s head. Just how many outside of our genre know who Dejah Thoris is, and if you are a younger science fiction reader, I’m not sure if even you know. The literary world often sneers at science fiction and claims science fiction fans are immature social misfits – and Junot only reinforces this idea, but I think he’s really with us and not against us.

I’ve read a lot of science fiction and a lot of books from these lists and in these book Olympics I’ve got to say that most genre books do not have the times to get on the team, but there’s a gimmick that’s not be addressed. These top culture best-of-lists aim to find the most memorable titles for the most people. Genre writers crank out gazillions of titles that are very entertaining in the moment but aren’t very memorable in the long scheme of things. Also, science fiction books aren’t widely read, so how can the be widely remembered?

I think The Time-Traveler’s Wife straddles both the genre and literary world even though it’s widely loved, few of it’s fans want to think it’s a science fiction novel. I think Gibson’s Neuromancer is on the list because it’s not about traditional science fiction themes, but about computers, and we know how important computers are in our society. The Time-Traveler’s Wife is about love, and we know how important romance is to our society. Science fiction books are often about weird things that most people don’t think about, so that’s why SF books get little attention. Ender’s Game is about children and childhood first, and most people can identify with that.

If science fiction writers want to get their books listed on these pop culture memory lists, they need to write more books with universal appeal that are memorable. Another exciting military action thriller can be a great reading experience, but they tend to all blend in together. The reason why Stranger in a Strange Land is so well remembered outside of the genre is because it’s so unique. It’s one of the few SF titles that the general public remembers from the last 50 years, and even then I doubt 1 person in 300 would list it if Jay Leno asked them to name a famous science fiction book from the last century in one of his Jaywalking segments.

On the other hand, if Jay Leno was asking a long line of people to name a single title from Entertainment Weekly’s list and give them ten chances, how many on average could succeed? I have no idea, but I’d guess damn few. If you gave people ten chances to guess one of the movies off their EW’s 100 Best Films from 1983 to 2008, I’d say 95% would succeed. Books just aren’t mass media like movies and television, or even music. I’d say it was damn nice of EW to remember Neuromancer at all, and to make that Top 100 list is a very excellent distinction. William Gibson and his family should be very proud. And we science fiction fans should be very pleased too.

Jim

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton’s 1920 Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Age of Innocence, is a story about how people never communicate their real feelings. Wharton suggests at the end of her book, set twenty-five years after the start, that the next generation is more open, but I’m not sure even a hundred years later, in our own times, if this is true. The love triangle of Newland Archer, his fiancée May Welland, and her older cousin, Ellen Olenska is shown through the viewpoint of Newland’s mind. Edith Wharton does an excellent job of taking on a male point-of-view, considering the cultural restrictions of her time, and her consideration for the minds of people from the 1870s.

The Age of Innocence is a story of culture and manners and their impact on people. Newland Archer knows what he’s suppose to do, and how other people are suppose to act, but within his own mind he wants to be different, and imagines that maybe other people do too, but his life is frustrated by the few clues he gets to verify his theories. He thinks he has the perfect young woman lined up to be his wife and then he meets a woman who has run away from her husband, a Count no less, abandoning wealth and position, to flaunt traditional behavior.

Countess Ellen Olenska is described as looking old at thirty, and no where near as beautiful as her younger cousin May, at twenty-two. Yet, Newland Archer finds himself more attracted to Ellen. Plenty of other men do too, and readers are never sure how many men are chasing Ellen, or how many are catching her. Many men want to make her their mistress, but we’re never told the details of the relationships because we only get to know what Archer knows. He gets conflicting information from Ellen and the people who know her. Archer is never sure what May is thinking, or Ellen. He often plays games, telling himself if this happens, he’ll do this, and it means that, but they never work out like he plans.

Archer wants to tell May, sorry old sport, but you’re as dull as your society, and then run away with Ellen. We know that even in Wharton’s time, 1920, men were doing that, and readers today probably have a very hard time understanding why Newland didn’t just chuck it all for love, but then I guess that’s why Edith called her novel the age of innocence about the 1870s. In our times, we act on our impulses but do we communicate why?

People today still don’t say what they’re thinking but instead communicate with a strategy like the old Battleship game, where players try to guess the location of hidden ships on a grid. Readers following along behind Newland Archer and watch his strategic plans and waits with him to see if his remarks hit anything in the minds of May and Ellen, and then ponders along with Archer about May and Ellen’s commands back and if they offer any clues to what they are thinking. Even to the end, what May knows about Archer’s feelings for Ellen is ambiguous to the reader, but Wharton lets us know that May is no dummy and is playing her own game with as much passion as Newland’s.

We know even less about what Countess Olenska is thinking. Is Archer someone special to her, or is he just one of many men that she plays along. And does Archer really want to know? Edith Wharton has written a beautiful masterpiece about the battle between the sexes. The ending is perfect. Reading this novel makes me, and I assume other readers, wonder why people don’t just say what they are thinking. My guess is we’re afraid of shattering our fantasies. Our expectations of other people are all built on fantasy, speculation and desires. If men knew what women were thinking it would be crushing blows to our egos and sexual fantasies. If women knew what men were thinking it would be the end of romance.

I think Wharton knew this. I’m guessing Countess Olenska knew this, and from the last scene I think Newland Archer knew this, and we’re given hints that even May eventually learned this truth. But we never know anything for sure, because Wharton knew that, too.

Jim

The Joys of Technology

Today, the title of my post is in all seriousness. I’m having a very good technology day. Other days, the title would be sarcastic. For years now I haven’t quite figured out how to live with MP3 music. I don’t like listening to music on my iPod – instead I want to play MP3 music on my living room stereo. To that end I bought a Roku Soundbridge M1001 last year. This nifty gadget plugs into my receiver and listens to my WiFi network and watches my computers for iTunes, Windows Media Connect, Rhapsody and other UPnP AV MediaServers where I store MP3 files.

What the Roku does is display a list of songs stored on my computers in other rooms that can be played on the connected stereo system. It displays lists by artists, albums and songs via a small LCD readout and lets me select and play them with the aid of a palm-size remote. The trouble is I have over a thousand CDs, and flipping through their titles one LCD line at a time is a pain. I thought at the time I first set up the SoundBridge it needed a TV output which would let me select songs through a TV interface. There are media servers that also fetch video and photos from your computer, as well as songs, which are controlled through your TV screen. The SoundBridge is just for songs. By the way, the newest Roku is for Netflix online films and does work with your TV. It’s too bad they didn’t combine the functions for a single product.

This morning I jumped on the web because I just knew there had to be an answer to my desires, and I found an excellent solution, Visual Media Remote. Installed on my laptop, which normally sits in the living room, this program lets me to control the SoundBridge. I know this sounds weird. My music is stored on a machine in my library/office. The SoundBridge is in the living room. The laptop could be in any room but it controls the SoundBridge. If I had SoundBridges in other rooms, it would control them too. This screen shot taken from the VisualMR site best illustrates why the software is so useful:

This display shows a listing of artists on the left, their albums in the middle, and the songs from the highlighted album on the right. And I can filter too, by genres. This very quickly lets me drill down into my collection and find songs and add them to the player queue. I can sit in my La-Z-Boy with my laptop on my lap and just lean back and play songs about as conveniently as I could ever imagine, other than using telepathic mind control over my computer. VisualMR has been around a long time, but I didn’t have a laptop for the task before. VisualMR will also work with PDAs.

Searching through Google shows a lot of people use this same setup, but I don’t think it’s a massive crowd. My guess is most people give up on stereo systems when they get an iPod, or they buy a cradle that attaches to their receiver that lets them use their iPods as CD players. And I thought about reducing my music world down to one handheld device, like the iPod. I could reduce my equipment footprint if my laptop had a large enough hard drive to store all my music. Or I could just buy some high quality headphones and listen to the music directly from the iPod. Hell, no one seems to like to listen to music together anymore, although I got my wife singing and dancing last night while we made dinner when I was showing off my SoundBridge setup. But I had to play the songs she liked.

I’m happy with this present setup. I wished iTunes and Windows Media Player used the same three-pane approach to selecting songs like VisualMR. I can pack up my CDs and store them away. Now that music is sold as DRM-free MP3 songs, this kind of equipment might become more popular, because it’s very easy to just shuffle these tunes from machine to machine and room to room. Microsoft has sold Windows Media Center for years hoping the idea would catch on, but it hasn’t – not big time. Linksys, Dlink and Netgear all have media servers that work with their wireless equipment. The tech is there, I just don’t know if they are popular solutions.

Like I said, the iPod has changed everything and I think people have just adapted to it. It makes me wonder if sales of CD players and receivers have fallen since the success of the iPod? Well, duh, if people aren’t buying CDs, sales of CD players must be tanking.

All of this reminds me of the fat people in the movie Wall-E – they don’t notice the world around them because everything comes through their video screen, inches in front of their faces. Now that iPods have added cell phones, movies and television shows to the music lineup, as well as photos and audio books, there’s all the more reason to stay plugged in to your iPod 24×7. Who knew that electronic gadgets would bring so much fun and joy to people.

Jim

Number One on the Runway

I am reminded of that great song title from Timbuk 3, “The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades.” With economic chaos and skyrocketing oil prices, the future is looking a bit overcast – no need for shades now, huh, but what if that’s an illusion? In China, the future is so bright that a billion people are putting on sunglasses. I’ve read that there is more peace and prosperity now than anytime in the history of the world. Global warming may only be the foot that kicks us in the ass and forces humanity to get its shit together. A new President could clear those dark clouds on our horizon and brighten up U.S. prospects for decades to come.

We’re all on a jet that’s about to take off for the future, but who is in the cockpit, and what’s our destination? My generation are all thinking about retirement and I’m wondering if we’re all flying down to Florida to play shuffleboard or dominos all day. I can remember summer of 1968 like it was tomorrow. We wanted the Vietnam war to end so we could start building a bright future. We wanted a lot of change. We lived on great expectations. Many of the young felt like they were part of a movement, a movement for change. Barack and all Democrats worked to sell the same sentiments forty years later. Is this election the last chance for the Baby Boomers to get it right and achieve their dream?

Protestors used to chant “The Whole World is Watching” and I think our generation felt it was true, even though most of the world lived off the radar of mass communication when we were growing up. During those mythical years of the 1960s our generation always felt we were number one on the runway taking off for the future, but now, we’re seen as being the generation number one on the runway to retire. Is it now time for us to be quiet? Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were both Baby Boomer Presidents. We may get another boomer, with Barack Obama, or the Silent Generation may have its last chance to have their only President, with John McCain.

I was reminded of my Baby Boomer status when Piers Fawkes at PSFK tagged this site as 1 of 14 blogs he monitors for information about Baby Boomers. Maybe the whole world is no longer watching us, but at least the marketing people are still keeping an eye on us. For those who need a generational timeline, see below:

1901-1924 – Greatest Generation/GI Generation
1925-1945 – Silent Generation
1946-1964 – Baby Boom
1965-1982 – Generation X
1983-1994 – Generation Y/Millennials

I find it tremendously hard to imagine the mindset of the generations that have come behind us. First of all, they never demanded to be heard, and as a result of that, they never got the press the Baby Boomers did. The Greatest Generation are famous for living in historically epic times and their generation was defined by the events they faced. The Silent Generation made the world for the Baby Boomers and influenced them. The Baby Boomers embraced rock and roll, but Elvis and the Beatles were from the Silent Generation – an odd nickname, huh? And as resources such as oil become problematic, will we have a new Greatest Generation that solves those problems?

Signs are everywhere that the young are ready for the boomers to retire, for instance, read “TV Viewers’ Average Age Hits 50” over at Variety, where they whine that the damn people watching TV are too old for their precious 18-49 demographics. What’s the matter, are the young TV execs afraid their whole industry is a Baby Boomer fad? The whole world probably didn’t have their eyes on us, but we certainly had our eyes on TV. Are the newer generations less mass-media oriented? I’ve read males of certain ages have stopped watching TV altogether.

Is the Baby Boomer’s hour in the spotlight about over. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were both born in 1946, making them the two Baby Boomer Presidents. Strangely, John McCain, born in 1936, a year after Elvis, is from the earlier Silent Generation, so that generation is still hanging in there, and suggests there’s time for the Baby Boomers to cling to the spotlight for another decade or two. Barrack Obama was born in 1961, making him part of the rear end of the Baby Boomers. We’ve now had a hippie President and jock President, so it would be great to have a minority President, and hopefully there will even be time for a female Boomer or even a gay Boomer in the White House. Evidently, our time is not up until the overweight boomer sings.

I’m reading The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria, a tail end boomer himself, born in 1964. Zakaria’s wise assessment of current world affairs suggests our generation can still have influence for years to come as political pundits. The Baby Boomers might be moving into their retirement years, but we dominant politics, journalism and opinions, and probably will for awhile. I can not recommend The Post-American World enough, because Zakaria puts us Baby Boomer Americans in our place by letting us know what the rest of the world was seeing when we thought they were watching. Our self-centered perspective has blinded us to what was happening with the 95% of the Baby Boomers in the rest of the world.

When you read Variety’s listing of the average age for various TV shows, and see “How I Met Your Mother,” a show about people in their twenties, has an average viewer age of 45, then you start to wonder, where the hell are the young people? You do see them. The news is reported by a vast array of beautiful young people. Movies and television shows are all about the young. You see them standing behind Obama and McCain, they fight our wars, and they direct movies, write novels, create music, and they fill jobs all around us. But what do they want? Where are their spokespeople?

When Generation X taxis out on the runaway where are they going to take us? When Generation X campaigns for the Presidency, what will be their issues? You’d think they’d make Global Warming their issue. Maybe their generation speaks loud and clear and I don’t hear them because I’m insulated by the thickness of my generation.

If Fareed Zakaria and Thomas Friedman are right, not only do we need to hear from Generation X and the Millennials, but we need to hear from their ranks from all over the world. That old saying, “Think globally, act locally” is more important than ever.

I hate to say this, but maybe the numbers at Variety are more damning than they are suggesting. If the average age of TV watchers is 50, then television is a has-been media. What mass media has an average age of 25? Video games? Text-messaging? FaceBook? I’m sorry, but tuning into Playstation 3 or Xbox 360 seems like checking out of this world in the same way that Timothy Leary advocated dropping out. Virtual worlds don’t count, only reality.

China and Dubai are growing at speeds and magnitudes that outpace any boom in U.S. history. The whole world should be watching them instead of “How I Met Your Mother” or whatever equivalent show or video game you’re using to escape from reality at the moment. Where is this generation’s Bob Dylan that’s writing “Because something is happening here, But you don’t know what it is, Do you, Mr. Jones?” or Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth?”

There’s heavy stuff going down, but where are the young protestors? 2008 is going to be an important election. It is time for change, just like we thought back in 1968, but this time the biggest issues are more pressing than ever, and if we want a future where we need shades, we all need to be watching. Whether our plane is taking off for retirement city, or the big city to start a new career, we’re all sailing on the same Spaceship Earth. Whether you’re 15, 35, 55, 75 or 95 there are some shows on TV we should all be watching, but they ain’t escapist shows, but documentaries about what’s going on around the real world.

Jim

What Does the Demise of the CD and DRM Mean?

Yesterday I went to my favorite Borders bookstore and was shocked to see that they had removed their entire music shopping area. Life is getting mighty hard for record stores and High Fidelity type dudes. Now, it’s been awhile since I bought any CDs at Borders, so I won’t miss it, but seeing that big gapping space in the back of the store made me realize that the era of the CD is over.

If you go to Google News and search on DRM, you’ll see all the announcements about how Rhapsody Music will now sell DRM-free songs and albums. I’m in the process of ripping my old CD collection, which is very time consuming. From now on, whenever I buy a new song or album I’ll just get the digital edition. The last CDs my wife and I bought were a few Beatles titles we didn’t already have. Beatles For Sale might have been our last CD purchase.

It’s a whole new world for music fans, that’s been evolving since the advent of the MP3 player, and especially since the iPod. But what does this paradigm shift mean?

Cover Art

When music albums shifted from LPs to CDs, cover art moved from major galleries to refrigerator art. Going from CD to MP3 we lose the art altogether. I think a marketing angle record companies should pursue is adding cover art to sales of digital albums. I’d recommend setting up a free standard for desktop art gallery software, like I envisioned in Inventions Wanted #4 – The Desktop Art Gallery. Or at least back existing desktop software like Webshots. Then if buyers select a whole album to buy, reward them with several desktop scenes of music related pop art.

Liner Notes

Another feature to be missed is liner notes. I loved the liner notes on the old huge 12″ record jackets, but hated the microscopic booklets that came with CDs. It’s time to bring back good liner notes with lyrics and band/fan info in elegantly designed Acrobat Reader files that size to the computer screen. Maybe music lovers don’t buy albums because they aren’t the art form they used to be. I know aficionados that still buy vinyl records because they miss the whole experience that was once part of buying an album.

Shopping and Listening

Hanging out in records stores used to a great way to waste time and even a prime activity for dates. No wonder sales are down. Without the word-of-mouth recommendations gained from social record buying there’s not a lot of incentive to shop for music like there used to be. See my post, “Why Has Listening to Music Become as Solitary as Masturbation?” Record companies need to invent software for FaceBook that puts people together for song listening parties.

Also, online record stores like iTunes, Rhapsody and Amazon need to create a virtual store experience that enhances the shopping experience beyond searching a database for new music. One feature I would like to see is accurate discographies that list which songs are in print and are for sale and which are out of print. There’s no reason in our digital universe that all an artist’s work should not stay in print.

Peach Crates

In the old days people stored their albums in wooden crates that made it easy to flip through the LPs one by one and easily see the covers. When you met a new friend you’d go through their LPs to see what kind of person they were. An album collection, with their beautiful artistic covers, were as revealing as a deck of Tarot cards laid out. Kids today can give each other their whole collections, but what good is that? Stolen music is indiscriminate. And long iTunes Library lists are just rows and rows of black and white words. No personality. Record companies should allow music fans to decorate their blogs with songs, cover art and lyrics.

Ownership

The downside of digital music is ownership. Protecting your digital collection is going to be a hassle. Sharing is iffy. Selling used albums on eBay will be weird. Handing down your fabulous collection to your children probably won’t happen.

Personally, I think MP3s are not the ultimate format for music, and even wrote my opinions in “Are MP3s at the End of Their Lifecycle?” My prediction, people are going to discover that owning invisible intangible objects will be a pain, lacking in style and glamour.

Unless music is freely traded, it’s going to be hard for songs to become hits. If songs are freely traded, nobody will want to buy them. Thus, the value of subscription music.

Playlists

Playlists will be the sharing medium of the future. Everyone will be their own DJ – creating musical mood experiences, showing off talents for discovery, and defining identity. Send your favorite playlist creations out to your friends, and if they have a subscription to the songs, they will play. Or build blog pages and web sites around playlists, so when surfers drop by that are subscribers, they will have instant background music.

Next

I expect music to start disappearing from Targets and Walmarts. Not everyone has a MP3 player yet, but the tsunami is bearing down on us. It will be interesting to see what an all digital music world will be like. Won’t it be strange to live in a world and never to see a LP or CD?

Jim