Jonas David's Blog, page 66

It’s time

For daily blogging!

I have at least one thought a day, don’t I? We all must, or what would life be but a series of autonomous responses to our environment?

I am going to write down thoughts! What a concept. And what better place than here for the world to see! Or more likely ignore, and possibly unsubscribe after daily thought-spam.

Oh well. My fingers need the exercise. Let’s see how many days in a row I can make it, and why wait till the new year for this resolution? Every day is the beginning of a new year, so lets go!

First thoughts:

Why does everyone write the same first-person pov character? They are all snarky ‘quirky’ arrogant pricks. Is it just a vehicle for the author’s ego? What is it?? Whatever it is, it’s annoying. Stop it. Just write a normal person. Or better yet write in third person so I don’t have to hang around in the head of an asshole and can just observe them being their quirky, unique, witty selves from a distance.

Till tomorrow!

Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks: A hell of a story

This is the 8th Culture novel, and the third that I’ve read, and so far I think it’s the most memorable.

The story focuses on virtual reality, and mainly the virtual realities different civilizations create for their afterlives. Some of them being hells.

With the ability to record, copy and / or upload consciousness, comes the possibility of completely immersive  virtual reality, without even the need for a body. And in certain civilizations, after you die you may be subjected to a continued existence in hell–a virtual world created for the sole purpose of torturing those within it.

Many people (the Culture included) feel that hells are barbaric and uncivilized and should not be allowed, and war breaks out over the debate, the other side insisting they need the threat of the hells to keep their people in line.

This book really made me wonder about reality, and how we can even know it is real. There have been articles here and there, quoting scientists and other popular figures stating that they believe there is a good chance we are living in a virtual reality. But what would make it ‘virtual’? If it’s all we know, then it is all there is as far as we are concerned–isn’t that the definition of ‘real’?

It is a scary thought, though, to consider that we might be nothing but lines of code, able to be manipulated at a whim by whoever is in control of whatever program we are living in. And if whoever is controlling our world in this hypothetical is anything like us humans, then that could be a very terrifying situation indeed…

Fantastic beasts without story are a fantastic bore

I saw the new Harry Potter universe movie over the weekend, and although I’m not a big Harry Potter fan, my wife is, and she was literally asleep next to me in the theater.

The problem with this movie is a lack of consequence. The characters, though likable, are not in any danger for over than half the movie. We have crazy creatures running wild in the city, and we gotta catch ’em all, but there is no reason for the viewer to care if the characters succeed or not when the only consequence for failure is us getting to see the creatures smash things and cause havoc.

And that isn’t even a real consequence, because with the wave of a wand all the damage is reversed, leaving us with pointless chase scenes that might as well never have existed after they are over.

What this movie fails to realize is that showing us cute, weird or scary creatures with no purpose, is boring. This is evidenced by an excruciatingly long scene in which we tour the protagonists personal zoo of rare beasts he’s trying to protect. One after the other after the other we are shown creative (though obviously, and almost cartoon-like CG) animals that serve no purpose in the story and have no effect on anything. This entire probably 20 minute scene could have been cut with no loss of continuity and no impact on the story at all.

Later, the characters are unfairly threatened with death and have to escape, and the movie is interesting for a while, but it takes way to long to get to that point, and by then I was just waiting for it to be over.

And when it is over, much like most of the action scenes in the movie, it is all fixed with the wave of a wand and no consequences of anything that happened in the movie remain, leaving me to wonder what the point of making this movie was in the first place.

Flashes of light and color, sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Not recommended, except for the biggest Potter fans.

A Canticle for Leibowitz: the forgetfulness of humanity

I just finished this post apocalyptic sci fi classic, which takes the form of a few stories over the course of nearly two thousand years.

Centuries after nuclear war, society rebuilds itself, regrowing from barbarism, and finding scraps of its ancient past. The story starts with a monk of the order of Leibowitz finding a fallout shelter, and all that transpires based on what they find within.

The story illustrates how religious ideas can spring up from seemingly innocuous things, and how people can interpret meaning and how stories can morph over time.

As we follow the story forward in time, the only continuing thread seems to be forgetfulness, and the buzzards.

Humanity constantly forgets the cost of war, or doesn’t care to consider it. And no matter all the books and technology that was saved and carried forward through time by the Leibowitz monks, humans make the same old mistakes again and again, helping the buzzards to keep full bellies.

It seems topical, with the recent news. Humanity needs to check its hubris, its arrogance, and start taking our situation seriously before we destroy ourselves (again?).

A good read, but I found the endless religious references tiring. I would have expected the religion would have changed more over the centuries, instead of being the same old bible and Jesus stuff. Other than that, very thought provoking and interesting.

Kindred: disturbing, embarrassing, eye opening

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler follows Dana, a black novelist who lives in California, 1978, and is unwillingly transported back to a pre-Civil War Maryland Plantation.

This brief synopsis is already probably enough to make you squirm. I was unsure what I was in for going into this, but I’m glad I read it. The brutality isn’t the focus, so don’t let a dislike of violent writing turn you away from this one. Although there is violence, it is not drawn out or overdone. The true horror of this story is the casual acceptance by everyone–including the victims–of what went on in this time.

On Dana’s first trip into the past, she saves a small white boy from drowning, and over several trips spanning many years, she becomes friends with the man as he grows up. But even as friends, he still treats her as his property, as something beneath him. The book does a great job of showing the humanity of the slave-owners, how they can convince themselves they feel compassion and even love for their slaves, but still treat them in disgusting, dehumanizing ways. And how a slave could tell themselves ‘he’s not so bad’ even as their master beats them and sells their children away.

Because people will accept anything, eventually, if everyone around them is accepting it too.

It is an amazing human power to be able to believe two contradicting realities at once. To believe you love someone, while believing they are your property. To believe someone is an inhuman monster, while at the same time feeling the need to forgive them.

Slavery is a subject that I, being white, have the luxury to rarely think about. Reading this book made me feel embarrassed for my country, that such a clearly wrong and disgusting thing could go on for so long in a so called ‘civilized’ and ‘advanced’ world. And it made me feel worried for what could come in our future. If we were willing to accept such a thing for so long, what else might we accept?

 

 

Stranger Things: Not just 80’s nostalgia

Remember when the big movies coming out that everyone was excited about weren’t remakes, or reboots, or based on a comic book or video game or brand name or fairy tale or popular book series? Well, maybe this is 80’s nostalgia after all…

Stranger Things not only has the refreshing attribute of being something new, despite its nostalgic feel, but also of being something good. The acting is great and heartfelt, the story is interesting and surprising, and the look and feel of the world is memorable and fun. And all this without the producers having to buy a recognizable name and force the story to fit around it in order to get more views.

Watching it, I was reminded of when kids movies used to be actually scary, creepy, smart–fun for adults to watch too. Now everything is dumbed down with rounded edges and neutered monsters.

In the opening episode, the  monster almost gave me a tingle up my spine, and I’ve seen it all. I lost it though, when they gave it the same monster sounds (deep growl/screech and clicking sounds) that every monster for the past 10 or 15 years has had. Silence is much more creepy than that trope. But, I think they were aiming for the over-done in some cases (Kids know the truth and parents are clueless, teenage sex leads to the villain appearing, etc) to give it that throw-back feel.

This show was so good, that there is only one scene in the entire series that bothered me, and pulled me out of the story for a moment.

In episode 6, Joyce and Jim are talking to a woman with a missing child, that they suspect may be related to Will’s disappearance somehow. The woman’s caretaker starts describing how the woman believes her daughter had special powers, such as telekinesis and telepathy. At this point, six episodes in, there is no way anyone could have come so far without knowing what character that sounds like. Yet, we are still treated to several ‘flashback’ looks at El using her powers to wreak havoc, just to make sure we know what character with special powers (the only one on the show!) they are talking about. This is already insulting as a flashback (no, I am not so stupid I can’t figure out who they are talking about) but these aren’t events that anyone in the scene witnessed, so it’s not even a flashback! It is literally just past scenes inserted into the conversation the characters are having for sole purpose of making absolutely sure that I, the dimwitted viewer, know what is going on. This stood out so much (and badly) from the rest of the show that I can only imagine some producer or executive must have gotten confused while half paying attention and assumed it was the story’s fault.

Anyway, even if you aren’t into the 80’s, this was a really entertaining, well-thought-out, and fun show that the whole family can watch together. Highly recommended.

Death’s End, by Cixin Liu: Mindblowing scope

The final book in the Three Body Trilogy does not disappoint. Once again my mind is reeling from the barrage of amazing ideas and concepts that blasted me one after the other after the other as I listened to this book.

I don’t even know where to begin. If you’ve read the first two,  you might wonder how much bigger the ideas could get. Well, they get bigger. The end of the book left me stunned, sitting and thinking about it for quite some time. Yes I’m being vague, because you just have to read it to see.

I’m not even going to go over the plot, or the characters because they don’t matter. That might sound strange, but they really don’t that much. The focus is on all the mind-boggling stuff that happens. There were times when I thought ‘but what is the character feeling about all this? How does it affect them?’ but you know what? If he spent time to describe all that in detail, that would be one less eye-widening idea that would fit into the book.

The only disappointment for me was not ever getting to see what the Tri-Solarans looked like. We learned a lot about them, but no human character ever saw one face to face. It seemed that after dealing with them for the past two books, we should have got at least a glimpse.

Other than that, this was a very satisfying end to a very enjoyable series, and I look forward to the next book of Mr. Liu’s to be translated to English.

 

Inside Out: unsettling, sad, and damn good

It’s been a long while since I watched a kids movie, and it seems they’ve improved quite a bit during that time. Not only was the animation amazing and lovely to look at, but the ideas were thought provoking, interesting, and somewhat unsettling, even for me seeing it as an adult.

The story follows Riley, an 11 year old girl who recently moved from Minnesota to San Francisco, but the story focuses on the points of view of various characters representing emotions in her head. Joy, Anger, Fear, Disgust and Sadness (strange that only one of them is a positive emotion) all work together in order to try to get Riley through each day.

The story focuses a lot on memories, and the creation of memories and how important they are, especially during childhood. Memories at that time of life really shape you and stick with you for the rest of your days. In the movie, certain ‘core memories’ create ‘islands’ in Riley’s mind, that are her personality traits. Later in the movie, as Riley becomes depressed about the move, we watch those islands crumble and crash into the ‘Memory Dump’, an abyss of forgetfulness. It’s really sad, and poignant, and true, how at such a young age, events that seem inconsequential to an adult can have huge effects on who  a young person is.

Eventually some of the characters fall into the Memory Dump, and down there are endless dunes of memories (usually characterized as glowing orbs, the ones in the memory dump are dim and grey). The characters pick up some of the memories to look at them–happy, childhood memories that decay to dust in their hands. Another sad moment of the film, and one that gave me an unsettling feeling, wondering what memories I’ve lost over time. Mountains and heaps of them to be sure.

Throughout the movie, Joy is constantly trying to keep Sadness from touching any of the memories, because when she does, she turns them sad. But at the end of the movie, not everything is happy. Riley’s core memories are tinted with sadness, because, that’s how life is. Things change and good memories become flavored with melancholy, and the movie seems to say that it’s okay to be sad, it’s okay to cry and miss home and be unhappy sometimes. No one can be happy all the time. It’s part of growing up, it seems, to have your life upturned and messed up, and things you love tainted or taken away from you.

Anyway, I found this movie very insightful, interesting, and touching–for any movie, not just a kids movie. And I recommend it to anyone with feelings.

Imagine no possessions…

Ursula K. Le Guin did, in The Dispossessed, which I just finished listening to.

This book was described to me as the anti Atlas Shrugged, which made me instantly buy it without hearing anything else. It holds up to this description by being of reasonable length, by having realistic, likable characters, and by describing ideas from opposing viewpoints in a way that is not a ridiculously transparent straw-man.

Also the protagonists are anarchist/socialist/communists(? )

The Dispossessed does not look at the world with the child-like, black and white simplicity of Atlas Shrugged. Each society described in the story has its own problems and downsides, because people have problems, no matter what type of society they live in.

This novel gives you an outsider’s look at the capitalist world you take for granted. Even things as basic as the idea of ownership itself are called into question. It was quite a thoughtful experience, listening to this book, and made me wish there was a way to try out an Anarresti society here on Earth.

Though not much exciting happened, the book was terribly interesting for the worlds it described and the alternate view of society and other ways of life.

Recommended!

 

Pre-ordering a book?

I just pre-ordered Death’s End by Cixin Liu on audible. I can’t remember the last time I was so excited for a book, and I have never pre-ordered a book before!

It seems I’m always finding a series years after it’s been completed. But this one has made me wait painfully long for the conclusion, and I am chewing my nails waiting for it to finally get here on the 20th!

What I love so much about this series is the endless flow of ideas. Maybe the characters are thin, but damn does it make you think. Every chapter has some amazing new concept I’ve never even considered, and I love that feeling of having a new thought, of making a discovery. It’s quite an addicting feeling, and it’s been a long time since any book has given me the fix that these books have.

Just thinking about it is making me jones for that feeling… soon, soon!