Let’s get down to it. The substrata. The core bits, the tiny tech, the miniscule building blocks that make up everything and everyone. The data that informs us, “you will be a green plastic bucket,” and “you will be a dandelion seed,” and “you will be a winged buzzy thing that lives 12 hours and dies an ecstatic, incandescent death.”
The Dervish House finds British speculative fictionist Ian McDonald breaking things down to their tiniest parts and reshaping them into objects of beauty. This describes not only his writing—luminous, incredibly accurate, devilishly clever, as always—but his knack for building worlds bright and brassy enough to smell and touch. It also connotes the way in which he constructs his plots: he begins with scattered characters and slowly draws connections between them, weaving their destinies together. But, above all it describes the central, pulsating idea of Dervish: nanotechnology.
Read More
http://aidanmoher.com/blog/2010/05/asides/an-aside-2009-nebula-award-winners/
Sweet. I was right. The win goes to the man with the best name in sci-fi, and condolences to the people who must pronounce it during the awarding. Also, thank god Boneshaker didn’t win. :shudder:
“Yeah, so he was telling me about this movie called “Snow Crash,” and, well, it’s not actually a movie yet, but it totally should be. It’s, like, a book right now, but he was telling me about it, and it’s so totally perfect for like a big blockbuster action movie. I don’t remember who wrote it, and I haven’t read it, but he was describing all these scenes that are like perfect for a movie, and we were casting it in our heads. It’s like there are all these people, and they’re all online— like the Matrix—but not. And all of these people are also addicted to this drug. That’s the ‘snow’ reference. And it’s a really good story.
So, we decided that Mark Ruffalo would be perfect for the lead guy. I don’t remember his name. Did you see 13 Going on 30? Mark Ruffalo is the lead in that. He’s so dopey and cute, he’s perfect. Megan Fox would be the main girl. She’s like this really sexy programmer chick, and it would be so awesome. I want Jerry Bruckheimer to make this movie. It’s gonna be so legit.
”
—
The girl who is excitedly talking about making Neal Stephenson’s beloved cyberfreakout Snow Crash into a movie is the most normal of college girls. Think the Gap plus a smidge of Columbia sportswear. None of her very normal friends have heard of it. They are Not geeks, Not nerds. They are terrifying.
This unholy union of terrible terrible terrible ideas is simultaneously horrifying and gut-bustingly funny. Mark Ruffalo + Megan Fox + Jerry Bruckheimer + a hilariously awful plot synopsis = me holding my GUFFAWING laughter in, not even able to sip my coffee for fear of snorting through my nose. Oh, so awful.
And yet, it is exactly what would happen should Hollywood ever make Snow Crash into a blockbuster, which, mercifully, has not happened yet. Thank Hiro Protagonist for small miracles.
Ian McDonald (River of Gods, Cyberabad Days, Brasyl) has made writing speculative fiction set in second and third world countries a house specialty. Coming down the pipe in June/July of this year will be “The Dervish House,” a new techno thriller that takes place in a country woven through with complex dichotomies and warring traditions: Turkey.
According to A Dribble of Ink,
“In the sleepy Istanbul district of Eskiköy stands the former whirling dervish house of Adem Dede. Over the space of five days of an Istanbul heatwave, six lives weave a story of corporate wheeling and dealing, Islamic mysticism, political and economic intrigue, ancient Ottoman mysteries, a terrifying new terrorist threat, and a nanotechnology with the potential to transform every human on the planet.”
Sounds like classic McDonald to me: seemingly disconnected character plots that eventually cinch close and tight, some sort of techy/bioware crisis that only they can prevent, and a fascinating, richly textured country in which to set his characters racing.
Load up your playlist with some Mercan Dede and get out your Turkish-to-English slang dictionary, because this will be a frolic through some amazing territory. Can’t wait.
Gosh, and what’s this little number below, which drops around the same time as “Dervish?”
Why, yes, yes it is.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/15/books/15book.html?ref=arts
“Online culture, he goes on, “is a culture of reaction without action” and rationalizations that “we were entering a transitional lull before a creative storm” are just that — rationalizations. “The sad truth,” he concludes, “is that we were not passing through a momentary lull before a storm. We had instead entered a persistent somnolence, and I have come to believe that we will only escape it when we kill the hive.”
Jaron Lanier, “You Are Not A Gadget”
The NY Times has a review of Jaron Lanier’s controversial book, which discusses the dark side of anonymity on the net, how groupthink and ‘digital Maoism’ are shaping our culture and how web aggregators may kill off original thought once and for all. Check it out.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/16/arts/16pavic.html?_r=1&hpw
The author of my very favorite book has passed away. I was so fervently hoping for something new before he passed, but I’ll be content to re-read his masterpiece “The Dictionary of the Khazars” again and again. And it’s easy to re-read his work, considering how he built his novels:
“An academic whose field, perhaps unsurprisingly, was philosophy, Mr. Pavic taught for many years at the University of Belgrade. Dreamlike, playful and formally unorthodox, his novels were like hardbound hypertext in their insistence on offering readers alternate, nonlinear ways of navigating a story.
Mr. Pavic’s narratives do away with the forced-march, page-after-page strategy to which most readers are accustomed. They are profuse with self-reference, unreliable narration, authorial asides and “Rashomon”-like shifts in point of view. Stories nest within stories like the pieces of a Russian doll.
Mr. Pavic’s next novel, “Landscape Painted With Tea” (Knopf, 1990; translated by Ms. Pribicevic-Zoric), is partly organized as a crossword puzzle, with alternating sections titled “Across” and “Down.” Readers may approach the book chronologically by reading only the “Across” sections, or less chronologically and with more digressions by reading the “Down” sections. Either strategy gradually reveals the story of a soul-searching architect who roams a labyrinth of meditation and memory.”
Yes, books built like lexicons with interlocking entries, books to be “solved” like crossword puzzles, even books based on tarot cards to be interpreted in different patterns. Even though he has passed on, he has left a mysterious, beautiful literary legacy for us to untangle and solve as many times as we wish.
Fantastically creative video by the New Zealand Book Council. I find it a little strange that this is a video whose goal is to goad people to read, considering how it focuses on the crazy things that can be done when pages are used for things other than reading. In any case, extremely cool!
Oh, baby. Tim Burton is taking a whack at Alice in Wonderland, and his two most reliable stand-bys—Johnny Depp (the Mad Hatter) and Helena Bonham-Carter (the Queen of Hearts)—are inch-deep in makeup and dooded up for the show. Also in the fray are Alan Rickman as the Caterpillar and Anne Hathaway as the White Queen.
From just these character photos I’m already on board and excited as all get out for this movie. The wonderful thing about Alice is that it hinges on the fantastical and the madcap, rather than on character development or a meticulous plot. The few weak Tim Burton movies are usually doomed by relying too heavily on spectacle, barely masking a weak or maudlin plot (I’m looking at you, Big Fish), but Alice is all about the spectacular.
Early stills are coming out, and they all look incredible. The film won’t be released til 2010ish, but expect lots of buzz around it as more shots are leaked. The story has apparently been updated a bit, and Burton’s Alice will be somewhat older than Carroll’s. I deem that a good decision, since there remains that creepy vibe lingering around the history of the real-life young Alice/old Carroll relationship. I can’t wait to see if there will be more heads rolling in this movie than there were in Burton’s Sweeney Todd!
Images copyright of Entertainment Weekly.
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/secret-titles-existential-borders-and-lets-not-go/Content?oid=1639058
Above is a brief interview with my favorite author, China Mieville.
He is so dreamy.
He’s not only a brilliant author who also ran for Parliament, but he’s a giant geek. Excerpt from the Stranger below:
I’ve heard that you were a Buffy fan, and I wanted to ask you how you felt about the announcement that they would be remaking the original Buffy movie.
Good lord! I hadn’t heard about this.
It’s not related to the TV show and Joss Whedon [the creator of Buffy] is not involved.
He isn’t involved? What I suppose I would say is my alarm bells are ringing. Never underestimate the sheer crassness of Hollywood. It’ll probably suck. But you know, how about we don’t go to see it?
I don’t think that will work in geek culture.
I know, but I’m trying to propagate this as a meme in geek culture. How about we don’t go and see it and don’t talk about it incessantly? Because it’s just shit. How about we don’t go see Transformers: Rise of the Fuckin’ Whatevers and then complain about how Michael Bay fucked up our favorite franchise? Because you know what? He’s Michael Bay! Of course he did! Let’s not go there.
I think that’s a great idea, but I don’t know how it’s gonna take off.
You gotta help me viral it. Let’s Not Go. LNG.
You should make a website.
Letsnotgo.com. That’s a brilliant idea. You could have reviews by people who haven’t seen it explaining why you shouldn’t go, and the review could be simply based on the publicity machine.
http://theater2.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/theater/reviews/02cora.html?hpw
So, Neil Gaiman’s “Coraline” was made into a movie. And it was great!
Then, Neil Gaiman’s “Coraline” was made into a musical. And, according to all the reviews, it was…not so great.
After some deep thinking and research, I think I’ve come up with the reason. Be warned, it’s not easy to follow, but do your best:
A 50 YEAR OLD WOMAN PLAYS CORALINE.
Mystery solved.
Thank you.
Posted by various vapor, assembled. on Wed Sep 1st at 9:08PM