I’ve decided, after being asked by an editor at Abrams Image (publisher of lovely art books) what science fiction and fantasy he should be reading, and after many conversations too unremarkable to convey at length by people who dismiss sci-fi but would probably enjoy it, and after a re-read of Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (which is itself wondrous), I’ve decided to start a project on this blog.

Twice each week (usually on Tuesday and Saturday), I’ll post a sentence from a work of science fiction or fantasy that belongs to a book worth reading, and a little on why you ought to read it.

This is not a definitive list, nor an attempt to create a canon. What it is, is a quick demonstration of the quality of writing that’s out there. And despite my disavowing the whole canon thing, I’m also going to take the opportunity to include works that aren’t generally thought of as science fiction or fantasy, or works that are that come from authors who don’t think of themselves as writers of either. We don’t have a really good word yet for imaginative literature (people have tried labeling it fabulism, and speculative fiction, and sci-fi, and so on, here in the States, and none of it really works, and imaginative literature is on the mark but too much of a mouthful), but I’m including everything that belongs under the wider umbrella.

By the end, I hope this list will expose literary readers to sf/fantasy they should consider, sf/fantasy readers to literary fiction they should consider, to both groups, some classics they may have missed (or should re-read), and to people who don’t read as often, books that they might get something out of, which will ideally induce them to pick a couple up and have a go.  And I hope some of you will suggest things you think I should read.

Today’s sentence is from Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury, 2004):

A great magician has said of his profession that its practitioners “… must pound and rack their brains to make the least learning go in, but quarrelling always comes very naturally to them,” and the York magicians had proved the truth of this for a number of years.

First, the quote-within-a quote speaks to the reader.  It feels true.  It’s philosophical, but not in an intrusive way.  In my case, I was reminded of how I have trouble retaining little details, and also of how, when there’s a cyclist who wants to blow past people on a crowded street, I want to give him a flying tackle. But I shouldn’t, and don’t, tempted as I may be to dive into one of those Critical Mass twerps.

Next, the sentence hints at a wider conflict among the York magicians.  It turns out there’s a lot more going on in the story than their academic infighting.  Susanna Clarke creates a wonderful alternate history of England (the novel is set during the Napoleonic Wars), and skillfully uses magic as both a multi-level metaphor and an engrossing part of the world she creates with her novel.  I find her writing elegant, and the book’s a page-turner.  The first time I read it, I plowed through its thousand pages in eight hours of riding the bus to and from Boston.

So if you’ve not read Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, it’s well worth your time and energy.  When you’re done, feel free to discuss with other readers (or fire off a missive) in the comments section below.

You’ll find this in the fantasy section of your local bookstore.

One of these caught my attention: Transit-oriented residences, which would amount to high-density developments based near rail stations. Here’s an artist’s rendering of the Mashpee Commons from Mashpee, Massachusetts:

Rendering of Mashpee Commons

As we see here, high-density neighborhoods can look really nice.  The rendering reminds me a bit of Cambridge, MA, which I’ve visited, and also looks more than a little like a college campus (Notre Dame or the Univ. of Toronto, specifically).  To put a business district and a rail station in the neighborhood would make for a really nice place to live.

The rendering reminds me of something else, as well:  Sim City.  When I was a kid, I would try to build neighborhoods with railways and was always forced to retrofit them to roads, no matter how many stations I made.  I’ve always preferred trains to cars, and I still prefer the former — you have your hands free on the train, and can read a book or play Game Boy or fart around with your Blackberry without having to concern yourself with traffic or weather conditions.

That being said, I like walking best, which is why I live down the street from my office.  My commute consists of a five-minute walk to and from work — and lunch, some days.

What do you think?

Would you want to live in a railway suburb?  How do you think our transportation system will change as we wean ourselves off of petroleum?

Singularity University Campus

As Boing Boing reported earlier this morning, Singularity University is to be unveiled today.

The singularity, if you’re unfamiliar, is a term coined by Vernor Vinge that refers to the rapid acceleration of technological change*.  For an example, think of how quickly computers have evolved.  Here’s a graph of the exponential growth in mass use of inventions, courtesy of Ray Kurzweil:

As the singularity approaches, mass use of inventions increases exponentially

Funded by Google and NASA, the college will start out with 9-week programs on the following topics (and even shorter ‘executive seminars,’ presumably for the b-school kids who want to monetize the singularity rather than get into the nuts and bolts of it):

1. Future Studies & Forecasting
2. Networks & Computing Systems
3. Biotechnology & Bioinformatics
4. Nanotechnology
5. Medicine, Neuroscience & Human Enhancement
6. AI, Robotics, & Cognitive Computing
7. Energy & Ecological Systems
8. Space & Physical Sciences
9. Policy, Law & Ethics
10. Finance & Entrepreneurship

I checked my calendar before typing this all up, as this sounds like the sort of thing Google would try to pull as an April Fools’ Day joke. (Remember paper Gmail?)

The thing is, it’s not.  If you actually get into the program, you can go and study nanobots or cognitive computing for a couple months with some of the brightest folk around.

Just don’t be surprised if the place renames itself Robot State (or Tech Tech, as #1 quipped) after the machines take over the campus.

Here’s how much of a nerd I am: When I go to parties, NPR shows up (I’m the chap in the bottom left of the second photo in the NPR article).

Sunday marked the second annual Major League Dreidel championship, held at Fontana’s in the Lower East Side. NPR and the History Channel were present for the festivities; match footage will likely turn up in a Lewis Black documentary to come out next year.

The competition’s put on by the fine gentlemen who run Brewskee-Ball, a competitive skeeball league, and proceeds from the event go to The Survivor Project. Metal band Gods of Fire (see above photo) played a face-melting show prior to the dreidel competition.

Suffice to say that it was awesome, and I’ll be going back next year.

The Space Fellowship is reporting that Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, which will likely be the first privately owned and developed passenger spacecraft, had a successful maiden flight today.

While this piece of news isn’t that “big,” it’s still unspeakably awesome.  That ungainly-looking thing (well, it’s just the wing that’s ungainly-looking; the rest is pretty sleek and looks vaguely aquatic) is going to carry people into space.  And given the demand for tickets to ride in it, other companies will ramp up efforts to get in on the deal.  At which point Virgin, Scaled Composites &c. will have to make an orbital craft.

You can see where this is headed…

In the thousands and thousands of pieces of writing I’ve read over the last couple years, a pattern has started to emerge, and while I haven’t approached these in anything resembling a scientific manner, I do think, based on the improperly gathered evidence, that there is a hierarchy of needs related to narratives, and that the more of these needs are met, the more successful a narrative will be.

For simplicity’s sake, I’ve tentatively called it the CASE Hierarchy. You’ll see why after the jump.

Okay, you jumped! That’s so nice of you!

Before I begin, let me remind you that I’m looking for feedback. If this seems too off base, too ivory tower white male, or too much like the inspired lunacy in Rivka Galchen’s Atmospheric Disturbances, shoot me a reply:

For a story to function to the best of its ability, there are four primary areas of consideration to which its author must pay attention, beginning from the most fundamental and building from there. These stages are: Creativity, Articulation, Storytelling, and Engagement.

At the most basic level, in order for a narrative work to be truly successful, its author has to have creative ideas. A short story, novella, or novel that doesn’t demonstrate creativity on the part of the author cannot hold the interest of the reader and cannot be an artistic success on its own merits (though the connectedness of the author, nepotism, or severely lowered reader expectations through a programmatic approach to reading might make it a commercial success anyway, provided that there is in fact something resembling a linear story).

If the author of a narrative demonstrates creativity, this does not necessarily mean that this narrative will succeed — only that the author is capable of generating ideas that could be used effectively. The author must also be able to articulate those ideas through the skillful use of language. This requires developing an understanding of prose style, grammar, and a broad enough vocabulary to be able to choose words that accurately communicate what the author intends to say.

While the results of this level of understanding can potentially be interesting, they do not necessarily guarantee a successful narrative. A series of vignettes, for instance, can merit attention and inspire a reader to think, but if they remain unconnected, they don’t communicate the ideas as well as a work does that is capable of building these into a story.

The next step is the most important, structurally. In order for a narrative to be successful, it must function as a story. To do this, a narrative is required to have some central conflict, that is resolved. This does not mean that the conflict or its resolution are necessarily straightforward, merely that they exist. It is possible that in some narratives, the central question might appear to be whether or not the reader can identify the narrative itself.

While the prior example could theoretically work in the hands of a particularly skillful author, most narratives are more compelling when they have a central conflict with a greater degree of tangibility than a story in line with the above example would likely provide.

For many readers, it seems enough to have an engaging narrative that differentiates itself creatively from other narratives and communicates both the story and the ideas within it well. While narratives of this type are functional, there is a further level of development that is required to make a narrative function to its greatest potential: engagement with the philosophical concepts that underlie human civilization.

While sometimes ideas that occur at the basic creative level of development can flirt with these larger themes, or readers might, in their pondering on philosophical topics, attribute things to a narrative that weren’t deliberately put there, they do not necessarily do so.

At this highest level, there is a balancing act that the writer has to perform. If he or she presents too much of an agenda with philosophical or ideological ideas, the ideas run the risk of overwhelming a narrative, as in most of Ayn Rand’s fiction. But there also has to be enough there for the reader to be able to work with to feel he or she is engaged, and it has to be intrinsic enough to the work for readers from other cultures and time periods to get it (unlike Finnegan’s Wake, which virtually requires a knowledge of cryptography to make sense of its nonsense).

And if a writer manages to pull everything in the hierarchy off, the result is a masterpiece.

(Most of this was written on my phone, so apologies if the language is especially choppy.)

So, thoughts?

So, now that you’re all here, I have a movie recommendation for you:

See Mongol. It’s out on DVD now, so I’d imagine there are any number of ways you can procure a copy.

If you know nothing about Mongol, it’s a two-hour martial epic about the lost years of Genghis Khan, and is (hopefully) the first film of a trilogy. The director, Sergei Bodrov, displays an unexpected ability to portray a medieval culture without it feeling terribly anachronistic. It also feels very non-Western, though the fact that Bodrov is Russian makes this no surprise.

If you can’t deal with subtitles, go back to watching what’s-his-face smolder in Twilight. If you can, you might like this one. It’s got an old-school sensibility, which means it depends on storytelling and manpower (and womanpower — wait until you meet Temudgin’s foil) to do its thing. If you let it, it can lead to thinking on the nature of nationalism, and also of the ancient struggle between civilization and the sort of anarchy that comes when one is near to a state of nature.

Go rent it, or buy it, or download it (legally, of course), before I get into any sonorous pondering.

I’ve never watched the show, and I don’t think it’s the sort of thing that’d really interest me, but I love Gossip Girl.  

Why?

They used a quote from the Parents Television Council¹ in an ad promoting their latest season.  

I predict that the PTC is most likely ‘incensed’ about this.  No doubt they’re hard at work on another petition² right now!

1. The Parents Television Council PTC) is a group of social conservatives bent on censoring media in the United States, which frequently floods networks and the FCC with phone calls in hopes of accomplishing this goal.

2. *sigh* If only they were this ineffectual…

Roger Cohen wrote a pretty good op-ed today on his return to the US from abroad. He talks about the ridiculousness that airports have descended into in recent years (you’re not supposed to make light conversation with TSA officials, you should always have your papers ready &c.). The following sentence cuts to the heart of the changes in the last seven years:

“Even if it’s a homeland, at least it’s not a fatherland.”

Why?  It happened on September 12, 2001, the day the newspapers all changed, and not for the better.  

I remember reading the Chicago Tribune that day, and one of the sports columnists devoted a good portion of his space to grimacing about how the games being cancelled didn’t really matter.  Throughout the paper, there were calls to arms in the articles, everyone was urged to band together, et cetera.  

In the next couple years to follow, we saw countless images of furrowed brows (Tom Ridge, L. Paul Bremer, and others), and were addressed with cowboy rhetoric.  It was okay that our boys weren’t too bright; their hearts were in the right place, after all.

With the airports, however, we can see how far we’ve fallen.

It also shows in this election cycle.  The Democratic candidates tried for some months to race to the bottom to see who could appeal the most to ‘folks,’ loosely defined as regular Americans with very basic concerns like their jobs, and other less tangible things like protecting our borders, preserving our way of life, and so forth.

The thing is, ‘folks’ is really a nice way of saying ‘rubes,’ and is more patronizing than populist.  The word used to refer to the common rabble in more derogatory terms (check the second and third most common usages of the word in the OED) hasn’t had enough time to completely change in meaning from the prior uses.

Why does this matter?  The use of ‘folkspeak,’ of trying to communicate a worldview in the simplest, broadest terms possible, is detrimental to the health of the country.  It’s a symptom of a larger problem, the decline of American educational standards, and it also feeds that problem itself, insofar as our leaders are expected to be no more intelligent than the rest of us.

What has surprised me personally is the degree to which Barack Obama is different in thought and presentation from most people in politics.  He does of course pander, and has made heavy use of ‘folkspeak,’ especially as the Clinton and McCain campaigns have managed to make this election about working-class voters as a bloc to be marketed to, even if they’re not sincere about addressing working-class concerns.  Despite this, there’s actual intelligence and substance to the Obama worldview (he, after all, is competent enough to have written an excellent memoir in LESSONS FROM MY FATHER, and a pretty good second book, this one more purely political, in THE AUDACITY OF HOPE — all without a ghostwriter), and to vote him into office would perhaps be a catalyst for an ever-so-slightly more thoughtful culture.

Sarah Palin’s speech last night made it abundantly clear:  We can continue the race to the bottom, gorging absentmindedly on the popcorn platitudes of ‘folkspeak,’ or we can take the 2008 election as an opportunity to elevate ourselves toward what basketball player Emeka Okafor calls “a higher homeostasis.”

(If the out-of-left-field quote from an NBA player has you confused, wonder no further.)