What I’ve Been Reading
The Hydrogen Sonata by Iain M. Banks
Another excellent romp in the Culture universe. I’m really sad this one will be the last, because they’re all so good. The Culture is one of the most sensible and realistic views of the distant future I’ve encountered in a lifetime of reading SF.
In regards to this story, I’ll just say the ending was not predictable at all, and the Mountains of the Sound is a place I’d love to visit or perhaps even create.
The Black Wheel by A. Merritt and Hannes Bok
I’ve long had the idea of reading all of Merritt’s books, based on the strength of The Metal Monster. This is the third of his books I’ve read, and I have to say it wasn’t terribly great. I didn’t realize until after reading it that more than 2/3 of the chapters were written by Bok, based on a rough outline left by Merritt. I didn’t notice the transition.
It’s a decent enough adventure story with lots of psychological drama, but I had trouble following some of that drama; there were a lot of intuitive leaps that I suspect made sense for the authors’ culture but not for mine. It was good enough to keep me reading until the end, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.
The Apocalypse Codex by Charles Stross
Fourth book in the highly entertaining Laundry series. I was expecting a letdown from reading the back cover copy, as it described the plot as centering around a televangelist type, but this book was very much not a letdown – every bit as engrossing as the previous ones in the series.
I like that Stross is not afraid to involve large pieces of the stage dressing in the action.
Calculating God by Robert J. Sawyer
Mixed feelings about this one. It did provide stuff to think about and had an involving story, but it also felt like the story was made just to be a framework for a guided tour of current thinking in science and cosmology combined with too much conciliation of religious ideas.
Books that are set in places that I’ve lived give me an odd vibe too, but in this case it was better than most – largely because he describes the same trick I always used for getting a seat on the Northbound subway in Toronto.
This one came up in a Facebook thread and the Amazon cover blurb convinced me to read it – it’s good to study your enemies as well as your friends, and their position as represented by Amazon definitely sounds enemy.
Here’s the review I posted in the Facebook thread:
—–
Just finished reading it – it’s short.
In the first two chapters they present a theory that neural firing generates small electromagnetic fields that influence other neurons at a distance, without a direct axon connection, and that in the aggregate these fields are what constitute the meaningful state information in the brain, and encode our mind state in a representation of a Riemann space in which experiences are formed by folding different conceptual and sensory regions together. All of this doesn’t really matter to the important bits though – basically what they’re saying is that brains contain multiple overlapping systems, only one of which (the actual electrical firing of neurons) can be considered digital – the rest are analog.
The rest of the book is a collection of distinct arguments that no digital computer can simulate a brain. For example:
1) Simulating analog phenomena on a digital computer is impossible to do perfectly. While strictly true, I disagree with their assumption that it needs to be done perfectly.
2) It’s impossible to keep all portions of a large-scale simulation synchronized. This is flat-out false; they seem ignorant of basic techniques for keeping simulations stable and synchronized.
3) Brains are special objects. Really, really special. Preciouuussss. Note this is me using a bit of a straw man of my own. They do mention ideas like quantum effects in the brain but don’t go so far as to outright state that brains violate the laws of physics or anything like that.
4) Computers explode in a shower of sparks when you feed them contradictions. No simulation will ever be able to handle contradictory data in a useful way. This is a ridiculous claim to me.
5) Computer simulations are usually created by finding a mathematical representation of a physical phenomenon, then writing an algorithm that solves the math. Even ignoring the analog precision problem from (1), the mathematical representation is often an imperfect representation of reality. This is true of complex systems, but down at the neural level of molecules and electromagnetic fields, I think we’ve got the math down well. Admittedly some of it is probabilistic (ie chance of two protiens bumping into each other) but I don’t see that as a problem.
6) No matter how accurate the computer simulation, it will diverge and fail to perfectly predict the behavior of the organism, because it cannot take into account all the stimuli the organism receives without simulating the entire universe. Well, duh. Also, that’s not a real problem because our senses are pretty limited anyway. And even a perfectly duplicated organism would immediately diverge from itself for the same reason – different sensory input from having a different physical location.
7) If we can’t perfectly predict the original organism, there’s no point in doing this. I completely disagree with this.
8) It is difficult to imagine a simulated brain running in real time, even with more Moore’s Law. If the simulation can’t interact with the world at normal human speed, there’s no point in doing it. Again, this makes absolutely no sense to me.
9) It is difficult to digitally model neuroplasticity – ie the hardware continuously changing while the software still runs. Yes, it is difficult, but not impossible.
Also, the authors seem to conflate simulation with emulation. They’re attacking something that might exist but to my point of view is a straw man: The idea that “digital mind” (my term) researchers are trying to develop algorithms that simulate human minds – that is, actually write code that behaves like a mind. They ignore the approach that seems more reasonable to me, which is that the code is just a dumb physics simulation and the mind exists in the data it manipulates – ie a true uploaded mind, no code involved.
Inferno and Escape from Hell by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
I’ve never read Dante’s Inferno, but I gather it was a poem rather than a story so I probably would have found it frustrating anyway.
These two stories I quite enjoyed, but I tend to enjoy everything involving Niven, and his collaborations with Pournelle are always good.
What I take to be the main theme here is that the common image of Hell as a place of internal punishment just doesn’t make sense when you approach it rationally, but if you make the assumption that it’s not supposed to be eternal punishment but only sufficient punishment, then it becomes possible to make some sense of it and of some other Catholic doctrines.
The Transhumanist Wager by Zoltan Istvan
I picked up a signed copy of this from Zoltan himself when I went to hear him speak about his US Presidential platform a few months ago. Zoltan for President, by the way!
It’s a tour of transhumanist thought couched in an adventure story. It was a fun enough read, but there were some spots that could have used some editing and other forms of polish, and as stories go it was a bit lacking in suspense – the threats facing the protagonist just didn’t seem sufficiently credible to create drama.
I did like the philosophical stuff though – there are a few wonderful rants about what’s wrong with the world today. Basically the only part of the mindset presented by the book that I don’t agree with is the assertion that enemies of progress should be killed if they don’t get out of the way. I think people who don’t want to be a part of the future can be allowed to practice the old ways apart from mainstream society, like the Amish.
The Lurker at the Threshold by H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth
A delightful full-length story that I wasn’t aware of until I spotted it in a used book store recently. Thoroughly enjoyed this one – it fits nicely into the neighborhood formed by The Dunwich Horror, The Shadow Over Innsmouth and The Whisperer in Darkness, while mostly avoiding those noxious fish-men and involving some of the more interesting horrors of Lovecraft’s mythos.
The Fox Woman & Other Stories by a. Merritt
Reading that last Lovecraft book left me with a desire for more old-style adventure writing, and lacking another HPL to read I turned to Merritt, who combines a slightly later style with imaginative semi-science-fiction.
The titular short story was good but had an unsatisfying ending – overall it read like the introduction to a novel-length tale and felt unfinished.
Several of the other shorts in this collection were quite good. I quite liked The People of the Pit as it evoked some of the same atmosphere as The Metal Monster but with a touch of Lovecraft thrown in, and I really wish Merritt had been able to finish The White Road as it was an intriguing concept.
What I’ve Been Reading
From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games edited by Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins (1998)
For almost as long as video games existed there has been debate about how video games should be made with female players in mind. This book is a collection of essays on the subject. It has been on my to-read list for a while since I’ve always wondered what the answers might be, but the recent furor over the furor over Anita Sarkeesian‘s Tropes vs. Women in Video Games essay series prompted me to finally get around to reading it.
The short answer is: There doesn’t seem to be much consensus on how to make games for girls, or whether that is even a valid question. The phrase “for girls” raises the ugly specter of pink toys, which many people (myself included) unfairly channels girls into culturally predefined roles.
One theme that kept coming up in the essays is that games that let the player create their own narrative (ie be a storyteller) were popular with girls.
I think the book has been outdated by changing demographics, as despite the continuation of the games market containing mainly “generic” and “for boys” games, roughly half of gamers these days are women. There certainly still is plenty of room for games targeted at women, and if anyone ever finds the right formula for that it’ll be interesting to see what it does to the demographics.
S. Andrew Swann’s Apotheosis trilogy: Prophets, Heretics and Messiah
A sequel trilogy to his earlier Hostile Takeover trilogy, I enjoyed this one just as much. The characters and settings all feel familiar, though only a few characters are in common with the previous books.
The main thread of this trilogy is an insane AI accumulating tremendous power and launching an assault on all of human space.
What I kept thinking about this was, what a waste. The way this AI builds its power base and interacts with the technology at its disposal is very much like what I would like to do one day, but it wastes all that potential by proclaiming itself a god and trying to exact revenge. With that kind of tech, I’d be leaving human space behind and exploring the universe in all directions at once.
America’s Painted Ladies by Elizabeth Pomada and Michael Larsen
Well, I haven’t exactly read this one – mostly just looked at the pictures. It’s a tour of lavishly restored and painted Victorian houses. I really love this style of house and pored over the pictures in a way I rarely do. I think it’s mainly the exteriors I like – although I like many of the interior decoration features, I’d rather have a much more modern appearance on the inside.
Lovecraft: Tales and Waking Up Screaming by H.P. Lovecraft
I’ve always been attracted to Lovecraft’s mythos but recently realized that I’m getting most of it secondhand, by others who are building on top of it. I decided to rectify that by reading all the original stories I could find, but I wasn’t able to locate a complete collection. These two compilations have proved a good start, with the second only duplicating about half of the first.
So far my favorites by far are “At the Mountains of Madness”, which really needs a movie adaptation, and “The Dunwich Horror”, which has a couple of movie adaptations that I’m not really satisfied with.
Though I can see why “The Shadow over Innsmouth” is one of Lovecraft’s most popular tales, it just isn’t for me; fish-men aren’t my thing. Also, “The Call of Cthulhu” wasn’t what I expected and was a mild letdown.
There are a lot more aliens in his stories than I expected; supernatural and extrauniversal monstrosities are less than half of his bestiary.
Lovecraft doesn’t seem to have had a very high opinion of human mental stability. All of his stories are full of people becoming mentally unhinged by things they’ve witnessed, many of which seem laughably minor (though still scary) by modern standards. I have to wonder if people really were that easily broken back in his day and if we’ve desensitized ourselves to creature and body horror at a cultural level.
I wish HPL had lived longer and cranked out more of these wonderful tales.
BTW, if you like Lovecraft I’d also suggest picking up the excellent Laundry series from Charles Stross, which builds on Lovecraft better than anything else I’ve seen.
What I’ve Been Reading
It has been a long time since I’ve posted one of these, and I’ve probably forgotten some things, but here goes.
I bought a Kindle last year. It’s something I’ve been interested in since they came out, but couldn’t get around to coughing up the dough until I saw a used one for sale in the classifieds at work. Discount price = quick action!
I’ve been re-reading some old favorites plus a few new things to try out the Kindle, but also still reading some real books. Overall I like the Kindle, though with the jacket on it’s a little too heavy for reading on my back. I will continue using it, but it’s not going to replace paper books any time soon.
Iain Banks: Surface Detail
A pretty straight-up Culture novel. As enjoyable as any other, and thus recommended reading. One of the two main conflicts driving the plot was the use of virtual reality hells to torment uploaded “sinners”, where sin is defined by those who design the hell and pay for the server capacity to run it.
This is something that had never occurred to me before. I always considered the obvious implementation of uploaded environments to be one of complete freedom – every individual should be free to orchestrate their private VR environment however they want, and design their perceptions of others and of the outside world however they want. I hadn’t thought of how horrible it could be if we allowed others to dictate the experience inside. We must prevent this from happening.
Kathleen Ann Goonan: Queen City Jazz
Did Not Like. It sounded interesting because it was a journey story set in a post-apocalyptic world that had been transformed by a combination of a celestial event and a flawed transformation of cities and lifeforms via nanotechnology and genetic engineering.
It ended up feeling kind of muddy in my mind. There are some stories where the descriptions of things are kind of murky, and the author (intentionally or not) does a good job of conveying the confusion and uncertainty of the protagonist, and this is one of them. I generally don’t like that.
Larry Niven: The Ringworld Engineers, The Ringworld Throne, and Ringworld’s Children
I’ve read them all before, but a very long time ago and the opportunity arose. I didn’t bother re-reading Ringworld itself because I’ve read that one often enough to remember it well. The later three, though, I had mostly forgotten and quite enjoyed refreshing my memory of.
Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner: Betrayer of Worlds, Juggler of Worlds, Destroyer of Worlds, and Fate of Worlds
This five-book series (I read the first volume a while back) is probably the best of the many good cases of Niven letting other authors play in his sandbox. Together they’ve done an amzing job of knitting together many of the disparate threads from earlier Known Space novels and short stories, into one contiguous and consistent tale of what happens, when humans, Puppeteers, Pak and a young but super-intelligent species butt heads.
There’s a lot going on here. The Puppeteers, by virtue of their fundamental cowardice combined with a major technological advantage, are extremely dangerous to just about everyone. They’ve been manipulating other species, including humans, to try to head off future dangers to themselves. When they discovered that the core of the galaxy was exploding and a major radiation wavefront would be coming along in ten thousand years or so, they started fleeing the galaxy, taking their planets with them.
But now the highly intelligent and very warlike Pak are also fleeing the core explosion and catching up with the Puppeteers from behind. While ahead, a young species with an amazing capacity for learning is emerging at a rate that could prove a threat, and human interference has prevented the Puppeteers from mitigating that threat as they normally would, through sabotage or extermination.
What’s a civilization of cowards to do? Why, turn for help once again to the humans they’ve been been tweaking for luck and paranoia all this time…
I thoroughly enjoyed this series, and it’s must reading for anyone who likes the Known Space universe!
A. Merritt: The Metal Monster
A childhood favorite that I had mostly forgotten. Upon re-reading, I’m amazed at the ideas it contains. This story was first serialized in 1920, but it describes (using Vernian language) what today we would call minds in a computer substrate or natural machine intelligences, possibly including nanotechnology.
The antiquated and excessively flowery and voluminous descriptions combined with concepts that have relatively recently become common in science fiction create a delightfully clashing combination – old and new at once.
Solaris: Book vs. Films
The 1972 film Solaris has long been one of my favorite science fiction movies. Mainly because of the concept of Solaris itself, but also because of the oddities of Russian filmmaking and its extreme length, both of which made the set of people who have watched it something of an elite club.
This last week, I finally set out to read the original book by Stanislaw Lem, and re-watch both of the films based on it. I had somehow never got around to reading the book before, and when I last saw the 1972 film I was too young to fully understand it. By the time of the 2002 film, I certainly understood it but was left with the feeling that it really diverged from the original vision, which is what prompted me to eventually do this comparison of the three.
There is a big difference. Lem was upset with the first film and I can see why. Both film adaptations use the trappings of the book to tell a different story, and largely miss what the book was about. The films are two different versions of the same love story, set in space, with Solaris simply being a setting that enables the strange situation of a man being confronted with what seems to be his dead wife, and all the mystery and angst that comes out of this apparent second chance.
I’m not saying the movies are bad. They’re both excellent films that tell engrossing and touching stories, but they’re not the original story. These are stories about people, which is fine since those tend to make for good movies, but they ignore the seven hundred billion ton elephant just outside the room.
Solaris, the book, was about questioning what humans as a race want from the universe. Science fiction is full of humans zipping around space, fighting and colonizing and meeting aliens and having a good time or getting eaten by monsters. Those are all pretty familiar and easy to understand things because they’ve happened on Earth in the past – we’ve gone zipping around the oceans, fighting and colonizing, meeting other flavors of humans and having a good time or getting eaten by tigers.
In Solaris we meet something truly alien – and what I love about Solaris is that it’s by far the most credible alien I’ve encountered in my life of reading the watching science fiction. Here’s a life form the size of a planet, larger than Earth. Apparently intelligent. Not an organism as we understand it – it’s not made of cells, but instead is a planetwide ocean of chemicals. Have you ever flown over the ocean and looked down at the endless deep water with its tiny waves? Imagine all that water was part of a giant brain. What commonality do we have with a being like that? How could we possibly communicate with it, and should we even bother trying?
Part of the setting in the book is about this – humans have been studying Solaris for decades already and making exactly zero progress. Solaris is certainly active – it reacts to their presence. It also manifests structures out of its soup, some of which appear to be models of things it knows about, including humans and mathematics, but these appear to be part of its thought process rather than communications. Human attempts at communication go nowhere – it may not know what communication is or may not have any motivation to communicate, or it may be trying to communicate and we just can’t recognize it.
After smacking their heads into this wall of alienness for so long, the characters in the story articulate how the communication effort reflects back on humanity: We don’t really know what to do with other planets and other beings, except convert them into more of the same – more Earths, more varieties of humans. The first time we run into something that can’t be hammered into any of the familiar pigeonholes, we don’t know what to do. The characters end up speculating to try and satisfy themselves, but it gains them no additional truth or understanding.
Best of all, there is no conclusion. Both of the movies have an ending that says what happens to the protagonist from then on, but the book is open-ended, and I prefer it that way. The story is meant to cause contemplation, and putting a bow tie on it removes the trigger for contemplation, which is the act of wondering what happens next.
I’m also disappointed that neither of the films attempt to render the visual richness of Solaris – making the films character stories certainly cut the effects budget by a lot. Solaris as described in the book is full of visual richness, with a wide variety of forms appearing on its surface ranging from barely comprehensible to completely incomprehensible. The hard science fiction nerd in me wants to see those things – I wanted a film about the what rather than the who. A future-documentary about Solaris would be just the thing.
To sum up, all three versions are great, but only the book is the true Solaris – the films are relatively pedestrian people stories in which the one truly special thing about the book is ignored and could be replaced with some other plot device, like a capricious wizard or standard little green men from Mars.
What I’ve Been Reading: Christopher Alexander
This post is a bit delayed. Over the course of two years, ending last year, I read Alexander’s three-volume set:
Volume 2 is somewhat famous in computer science as presenting an alternative way of thinking about design patterms, and there are people who wish for a way to apply similar thinking to software patterns.
I decided to read the book to see what the fuss was about, and I have some interest in architecture myself anyway. I decided to read all three volumes to get the complete picture. It was a lot of work – interesting as they are, these are voluminous and dense books.
Volume 1 makes the case for the need for a design language in architecture, with which to discuss the design of all types of buildings and human environments. Volume 2 builds the vocabulary of the language by proposing hundreds of design patterns, which are sort of the words and phrases of this language, and volume 3 discusses an attempt to put this all into practice.
I can’t really say anything meaningful about how this all applies to computer science. In a way I’m still digesting the philosophy presented in this work and it may be that I’ll never “get” how it might best be applied to my own profession, but I totally get how it applies to architecture because it’s presented largely in opposition to the architectural mistakes of the previous century. It’s all about making work and living spaces that are functional, versatile, and above all, comfortable and not dehumanizing. Putting the people who use a space ahead of flashy design or cheap construction.
I do recommend reading volumes 1 and 2; just realize doing so is a big project that requires contemplation. Volume 2 could actually be toilet reading for a year – most of the patterns are about 3 pages.
Now I’d like to share some quotes, summaries and excerpts from volume 2 that resonated with me. Some of these are practical and some are more philosophical.
On the subject of learning environments for children: “In a society which emphasizes teaching, children and students – and adults – become passive and unable to think or act for themselves. Creative, active individuals can only grow up in a society which emphasizes learning instead of teaching.” (Page 100) This feeds my feelings about public education and the difference between force-fed learning and natural, curiosity-driven learning.
On room placement in a house: “[In the Northern hemisphere] place the most important rooms along the south edge of the building, and spread the building out along the east-west axis.” (Page 617) This, combined with another pattern that requires sunlight access from two walls of each room, increases the amount of sunlight in the most lived-in rooms, which is good for improving the mood of the home.
Rule 129 (page 618): “Common Areas at the Heart” (with pathways tangent). This rule says that the common areas of a home or workplace, such as the living room or break room, should be near a central point of convergence of the walkways, but should not actually overlap a walkway – it should be possible for people to walk by and see what’s going on without becoming involved or interrupting anyone.
Rule 130 (page 622) describes the importance of having an entrance room – a room that you pass through when entering and leaving the house, where you put on or take off outdoor clothes and do your greetings and farewells. I think this is really important because I’m often frustrated by home designs that don’t have this – I need space to sit down to take off my boots or tie up my shoes, and there should always be room to place an empty coat rack, shoe rack and umbrella stand so your guests don’t have to root around in your overstuffed hall closet.
“The movement between rooms is as important as the rooms themselves; and its arrangement has as much effect on social interaction in the rooms, as the interior of the rooms.” (Page 628); “As far as possible, avoid the use of corridors and passages. Instead, use public rooms and common rooms as rooms for movement and for gathering. To do this, place the common rooms to form a chain, or loop, so that it becomes possible to walk from room to room – and so that private rooms open directly off these public rooms. In every case, give this indoor circulation from room to room a feeling of great generosity, passing in a wide and ample loop around the house, with views of fires and great windows.” (Page 631). I agree with this – corridors are sometimes necessary but they’re also often a waste of space.
Page 639: “Place the main stair in a key position, central and visible. Treat the whole staircase as a room (or if it is outside, as a courtyard). Arrange it so that the stair and the room are one, with the stair coming down around one or two walls of the room. Flare out the bottom of the stair with open windows or balustrades and with wide steps so that the people coming down the stair become part of the action in the room while they are on the stair, and so that people below will naturally use the stair for seats.” Ever watched a movie where people in a posh house are having a conversation while some of them are sitting or standing on a nice staircase, and secretly wished for such a nice room? Yeah, they don’t make staircases like that anymore – in most modern houses I’ve seen, the main stairs are only as wide as they need to be and are only intended for climbing, and tend to be part of hallways rather than rooms. The stairways we want are in a room, are not blocked off halfway up by part of the second floor, and have a flared bottom that invites sitting and also is convenient for heading to and from the stairs in a variety of directions.
Page 646: “Create alternating areas of light and dark throughout the building, in such a way that people naturally walk toward the light, whenever they are going to important places: seats, entrances, stairs, passages, places of special beauty, and make other areas darker, to increase the contrast.” Hell yeah. I can’t say I often see cases where lighting is done horribly wrong, but this makes so much sense that it should be kept firmly in mind when designing your lighting.
Page 657: “Sleeping to the East: This is one of the patterns people most often disagree with. However, we believe they are mistaken.” It goes on to make the case that being awakened by sunlight and having the sleeping place dark in the evening is probably good for our health, and it makes a lot of sense to me. I can’t put it into practice because of the timing requirements of the lifestyle I’m currently in, but I would like to give it a try some day, like when I’m retired or self-employed.
Pattern 140, “Private Terrace on the Street”, on page 667 presents a surprisingly simple bit of landscaping that can increase your privacy in your yard and your front room: Raise the the base ground level of your yard a foot or two above street level, and then add a low fence to that. The net effect is that your eye level will be above the fence and above street level so you can see what’s going on, but the fence will be at or above eye level for pedestrians and drivers, so they won’t have as good a view of you.
Page 734: “The experience of settled work is a prerequisite for peace of mind in old age. Yet our society undermines this experience by making a rift between working life and retirement, and between workplace and home.” Yes. To me, a joyful retirement means getting to work on what I want, when I want – not just sitting around or traveling to kill time. A home for a happy old person is one that has space to be creative, not a box where you wait to die.
Page 834: “Everybody loves window seats, bay windows, and big windows with low sills and comfortable chairs drawn up to them.” Very important. In almost all the homes I’ve seen that have big bay windows off the living room, they’re ignored and unused, and the windows are kept closed. They tend to be set up such that opening the big windows reduces your privacy too much, and most people organize their living rooms around the TV so there’s no room left for a comfy reading chair by the window.
Rule 196: Corner Doors (page 904): “The success of a room depends to a great extent on the position of the doors. If the doors create a pattern of movement which destroys the places in the room, the room will never allow people to be comfortable. […] Except in very large rooms, a door only rarely makes sense in the middle of a wall. It does in an entrance room, for instance, because this room gets its character essentially from the door. But in most rooms, especially small ones, put the doors as near the corners of the room as possible. If the room has two doors, and people move through it, keep both doors at one end of the room.” I think this makes a lot of sense – you can’t really get settled in a room if other people are always walking through your space, regardless of what you’re doing.
Another problem that I’ve noticed with current Western house design, which touches on several of these patterns, is that the main entrance is often unused. This is especially true on the prairies – people use the kitchen door, garage door or back door for entering and exiting and almost never use the main front entrance because it doesn’t serve their practical needs. Any home design where a major feature is unused is a major failure because it fails to consider the needs of its occupants.
