Category: Longform
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The Book of Dust vol 1: La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman (Books 2018, 12)
The first volume in Pullman’s “equel” trilogy: part prequel, part sequel, to His Dark Materials. This one is pure prequel, about trying to protect baby Lyra from the forces of the Magisterium.
If you’re already a fan, you’ll want to read this. It’s a real page-turner. If you’re not already a fan, don’t start here, obviously. You’re looking for Northern Lights.
Which I might be just about to start rereading, because that’s what finishing this one makes me want to do.
Office Foliage
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At my desk these are attacking from either side.
(Error loading gallery)The view above, and the room as a whole.
Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman (Books 2018, 11)
Gaiman takes on Thor, Loki, Odin, and the rest. Most of my knowledge of the Norse gods comes from Marvel Comics, with a bit of general cultural osmosis (for example, everyone has heard of Yggdrasil the World Tree, right?)1
I enjoyed it, but it feels like a slight work. That’s a shame, because these are mighty tales, or should be. I guess it’s a book meant at least partly for children, but it’s not marketed that way. And even if It’s meant for kids, the telling should be strong.
I suspect that if you already know the tales, this won’t offer much new to you. And that’s where the problem lies, I think. Instead of turning them into real narratives with proper characters, each story is not much more than a summary of the events. So he’s telling us the story of the story, rather than really telling (showing) the story. It’s a shame, because I know Gaiman could have done something much more interesting with these.
I’m probably being too harsh, though. It’s not like it’s bad. I enjoyed reading it.
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In searching for the link to put in there, I discovered the existence of Explain XKCD (or just possibly, rediscovered it, as it does seem a little familiar). Which is cool. Some people put a lot of time into contributing to things online, to the benefit of us all, and I salute them. ↩︎
Duplex Duplicity?
In A Little Duplex Skepticism, John Gruber says what I’ve been thinking about the Google Duplex demo:
It’s totally credible that Google would be the first to achieve something like Duplex, but the fact that all they did — as far as I’ve seen — was play a recording just seems off. It feels like a con.
I’ve only heard a bit of the “booking a haircut“ recording on a podcast. I thought it sounded a) impressive if real, but b) very possibly fake.
That kind of technology will come, eventually; but are we that close to it today?
(If we are, then whether or not we want it to be used in the kind of way demonstrated, is a whole other question.)
Google, of course, gave no timelines, no suggestion of when such a feature might be available. Given that, it makes you wonder why they even bothered to demo it.
Looped
It’s six years old, but I finally got round to watching Looper. Interesting. Not sure about it. Some of the time-travel stuff didn’t make sense — or was confusing, at least. The loopers do their killing and body-disposal in the past, but by the time Bruce Willis comes into it, everyone involved is in the same time, 2044, the past of the movie.
Also I thought I had heard that it wasn’t well thought of, but Rotten Tomatoes has it at 82% from audiences and 93% from critics. That’s pretty good, isn’t it?
This review at The Mary Sue is good on the weak points. Some interesting discussion in the comments, too.
The future was unconvincing — people still driving petrol-burning cars in 2044 and 2074? And the status of women was terrible. You can be a sex worker or a farming mom in future America. I mean, OK, we didn’t see the rest of society, but it’s not great. And a major Bechdel fail. Oh yes, and: the currency is silver? Actual, metallic silver? Time travel has really messed things up.
I enjoyed it on the whole, though, and the ending is great. We could have done without the voiceover, but maybe Rian Johnson, the director, has plans to release a cut without it in one possible future. Now where have I come across that idea before?
Top-Ten Album Lists
Two album-related memes have been doing the rounds on Facebook lately. Both involve posting cover images of ten favourite albums across ten days. One involves doing so without any comment, but the more interesting one to me involves the poster writing about their thoughts on each album. I was nominated by my friend Peter to join in with the long-form version.
I’m all about owning my own content, as you know, and not having it locked away in Facebook’s walled garden. So my plan is to write about ten albums, but to do so here, on my blog. Links to the posts will automatically be crossposted to Facebook anyway.
I started compiling a list of possibles, and thinking about starting to write posts. First I decided to restrict it one per artist. Otherwise I could just pick five by The Beatles and five by The Clash.
But then I played some albums, and thought some more.
See, I knew right up front that it was going to be almost entirely a white-guy fest. I wanted to approach it honestly, and not try to appear to be anything I’m not, so that’s how it would have to be. It would be reflecting my life as a music fan. As it stands the long list has one woman and no non-white people.
But as I played those albums — albums I love — and as I thought about them, I realised two things:
- I know these albums too well. I’m not bored of them, but they can drift past without me really being aware of them, through overfamiliarity.
- This won’t be very interesting, and certainly won’t have any surprises for anyone who knows me.
So I’ve come to a decision, I think: I’m going to do it slightly differently. I’m going to write about ten albums that I like now. Ones that I’ve discovered in the last few years, maybe, or that I’ve known for a while but have listened to a lot more in recent years.
I’m not entirely sure what that list is going to look like. I only have two, maybe three definites on it at the moment, and it’s going to take a while to construct it. But I think it could be a much more interesting list — certainly for me — when it’s done.
And I’ll do a post with a rundown of what the original list would have been, just for completeness.
So watch out for those in the next few days.
Injection Vols 1-3 by Warren Ellis, Declan Shalvey, and Jordie Bellaire (Books 2018, 10)
This is a great story about how some people have to fix things in the aftermath of something they did that may change the world fundamentally, if not destroy it. With that description it sounds very similar to Ellis’s earlier webcomic (with Paul Duffield), Freak Angels.
Which is a fair enough assessment, though the triggering event in this case is a combination of AI, the internet, and old magic; as opposed to the psychic powers in the older work. Ellis has deeply embedded the “start late” advice often given to aspiring authors. Both of the works under discussion, and some of his others, start long after the events that set their plots in motion.
It can be a very effective device. We get to know characters who already know each other, and the past events are revealed gradually, through conversation and flashbacks. And the fact that the protagonists don’t at first fully understand what they did means that we learn along with them.
This is great, but the only frustrating thing is that these three volumes — comprising fifteen issues of the comic — are to date all that there is. I don’t know if they plan to continue it, but the last issue came out in November, and the story is far from over. Googling has not so far revealed the answer to this.
Recommended, though.
Bizarre Romance by Audrey Niffenegger and Eddie Campbell (Books 2018, 9)
The book that I got at the British Library event last week. It’s short stories by Niffenegger, illustrated and/or converted into comics by Campbell. Some of them very good, and the collection as a whole is well worth a look.
Themes include cats, angels, fairies, and more. Worth a look.