Bookmark Six

Having made a sort of peace with the state of the world (or, at the very least, having developed better coping mechanisms for dealing with the Ongoing Shitshow), I was able to read something that approached a decent number of books this year.

The Prey of Gods

Nicky Drayden, 2017
(July 2017)

Reviewed over at Strange Horizons. Fun, in a kind of slapdash, puppyish way.

Central Station

Lavie Tidhar, 2016

(June 2017)

  

Central Station is a mid-future cyberpunkesque novel comprised of a dozen or so chapters, many of which were originally published as stand-alone short stories. They’ve obviously been reworked fairly carefully (or, more generously, were originally written with a very clear eye on the big picture), and for all that there is something of a central plot running through the book, its focus is very much on these interlinked vignettes exploring migration and belonging, faith and memory.

Izanami's Choice

Adam Heine, 2016
(November 2016)

Reviewed over at Strange Horizons. Robots and ronin. Solid action, but not much else.

United States of Japan

& The Man in the High Castle
Peter Tieryas, 2016

Philip K. Dick, 1962

(August 2016)

The first time I read The Man in the High Castle was way back, before I ever imagined I might end up living in Japan. Reading it a second time, it became apparent that there was a hell of a lot I missed, in terms of both the Japan-related stuff and just as a side-effect of being younger and dumber. The plan, however, was merely to refresh my memory before moving on to United States of Japan, which is something of a tribute/homage/reimagining of Dick’s seminal work. I wasn’t really going to talk much about the latter, except to the degree it informs USJ.

10 Billion Days and 100 Billion Nights

Ryu Mitsuse, 1973 [Alexander O. Smith and Elye J. Alexander, 2011]

(August 2015)

  

I invite you to marvel dumbfounded at the depth of my ignorance and the height of my hubris, as I attempt to mix it with people far, far smarter than me over at the Strange Horizons Book Club.

Neuromancer

William Gibson, 1984

(August 2014)

  

The best laid plans, eh? I’ve been doing a fair bit of domestic travel this summer for seminars and the like, and figured that getting a stack of reading lined up would be a good way to eat up all those hours on the shinkansen. I’d finally got hold of a Harper Voyager edition of Count Zero, and what with it being Neuromancer’s 30^th anniversary it seemed like a good idea to read straight through the entire Sprawl Trilogy and stick up one huge megapost at the end of the month.

The Age Atomic

Adam Christopher, 2013

(October 2013)

The sequel to Empire State which, you may remember, did a lot of stuff well but never quite recaptured the same WHIZZBANGWOW scale of imagination that marked its opening few pages. This is quite a different beast (and you should probably be aware there’ll be spoilers ahead).

vN

Madeline Ashby, 2012

(November 2012)

The more I think about this, the worse it gets. That kind of mirrors the reading experience, in that the first half of this book is very good but the second, not so much. We’ll obviously be discussing that second half in some detail, so don’t come whining to me if you didn’t want to hear it. I’m also going lay into an enjoyable book I liked in many respects, so you can be sure that I’ll be showing my working.

One Thousand Years of Rice

I was in the sixth-form when we got our first computer. Prior to that I’d had an NES, which I brilliantly got for christmas a few months before the SNES came out, making it almost instantly obsolete. Nothing’s changed, I still have a lousy sense of timing when it comes to technology. My old laptop died and I had to replace it just a couple of months before Windows 7 came out. The new one had a free upgrade, but the amount of form-filling and verification required was insane. They required everything up to and including a mouth swab for a DNA sample.

But can it play the fiddle?

"A Japanese electronics company unveils its £900,000 robot which weighs four tonnes and is 13ft tall. The robot can be controlled by an iPhone and is fitted with a futuristic weapons system, including a gun capable of shooting 6,000 BB bullets a minute, set to fire when the pilot smiles."


Priorities, people. Priorities.

Privates on Parade

My new base school has relatively modern buildings. Because of this, the men’s toilets don’t have manual flushes, but are all on motion sensors. Nothing so great there, you might think; this is Japan. In many Japanese homes and hotels it’s not uncommon to find toilets with controls so complex they would make even Data or Sulu give up hope and just use their shirt-tails instead.

Epistemologically Unsound Conclusions Concerning Japan and the Japanese, Based on Japanese Television

Number six in a series of some

“Japan is a technological backwater”

I know, it’s got all those disturbing (sex) robots which otherwise serious engineers and academics seem to think will better help us/them understand (sex) emotions and (sex) feelings. “Captain Kirk, what is this ‘Love’ you humans speak of?” Never mind that these (sex) robots all dwell so deep down the uncanny valley they’re practically underground. Troglodyte (sex) mannequins are not the bleeding edge of technological sophistication.

And neither’s this. Or this. Or this. Never mind the (sexual) robotics, Japan clearly still hasn’t got to grips with PowerPoint yet. I know the first is pretty decent as far as model making goes, but the other two are cardboard signs and pointy sticks. That's primary school science project level. And that’s doing a disservice to primary school science projects.

These are prime time current affairs programmes, so clearly it can’t be a question of cost. All that cardboard and sticky-backed plastic adds up, and some of those things must have taken ages to construct. Clearly the only explanation is that no-one involved has the faintest idea about computer graphics.

Memes

Not funny pictures of cats, but the original coinage’s meaning. Ideas which propagate themselves across time, almost independently of their media of propagation (language, art, thought). It’s one of those comforting ‘we’re not so different after all’ realizations that certain stories, certain characters are universal to all societies, regardless of time, space, culture or race.

There are all the obvious, big, important myths, such as Creation (Kamiyonanayo, Gaia) and Destruction (Revelation, Ragnarok). Character archetypes are also universal, from the Trickster (Anansi, Coyote) to the Sage (Merlin, Mr Miyagi).

Wax on, Wax off

This Ain't No Technological Breakdown

"Making use of an electronic blackboard, the teacher made expansive gestures to encourage the children to imitate the authentic pronunciation produced by the board."

The authentic pronunciation produced by the board.

Frankly it's too beautiful to sully with any further thoughts. I'll just leave it here for your edification and enlightenment.

Except to say this: I strongly suspect the only parts of the Japanese manufacturing sector which aren't being affected by the ridiculously strong yen are paving slab manufacturers.