Marginalia

[coalescent]

I'm behind on my link-posting, so most of these are old. Never mind, though ...

Jon Courtenay Grimwood reviews Singularity
Sky, Time's Eye and Code Noir in The Guardian. Also, The Backroom Boys, which all of you should read, is out in paperback.

The new single from REM, Around The Sun, sounds pretty much like the least interesting bits of the last album, Reveal. It leaves me a bit cold.

I still think this is the best personal ad ever, no matter what anyone says.

Bringing the standard space-opera setting up to date. The comments thread is interesting and includes contributions from Ted Chiang, David Levine, Benjamin Rosenbaum. It also inspired matociquala to post about singularity fiction here.

Damien Broderick's x,y,z,t: Dimensions of Science Fiction is reviewed by Adam Roberts for The Alien Online.

Oh, and the Interaction co-chairs respond (second page) to that Herald article.

The weekend was great, and I may write about it later. Or, just as likely, I may not.

Comments

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

Hijacking this thread....

Are you still after "The Well of Lost Plots"? (I should be finishing my copy in a few days.)
That was the Fforde for review wasn't it?

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

No, it was the first one (The Eyre Affair), and I nabbed fba's copy this weekend. Thanks for the thought, though. :)

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

There's also Chris Priest's review of The Snow.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Huh. Not sure how I managed to miss that ...

This book shows every sign of being a hasty first draft; it does its author no credit at all and is a significant disappointment.

And now I'm resisting the temptation to say that the review shows every sign of being a hasty first draft that does Priest no credit at all ... I don't really think that's the case, mind, but why pass up a snipe that cheap and easy?

Seriously, I'm baffled. I suppose I can see some of his points, but others engender that we-read-completely-different-books feeling. Particularly the mention of 'long passages of heavily padded rhetoric about side issues', which makes me wonder what on earth Priest thinks the central issues of the book are. I should write something longer about this to argue my case, I suppose.

I'd also advise anyone actually planning to read the book to not read that review first; it gives away one particular plot point that I think works much better when it comes as a surprise.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

No, wait, reading it again this is the bit that most baffles me:

The first is to go the John Wyndham route, in which survival and the re-establishment of civilised values are the main motives in a realistic-seeming set of circumstances. [The second is metaphor] Sensing a change of direction, we wonder which way the story will go from here: Wyndham or Kavan? The answer is neither. Roberts closes off the realistic-seeming route by the sheer unlikeliness of his own claims. Snow three miles deep everywhere? Everywhere? That's an awful lot of snow, never mind where it came from.

I have a hard time seeing the snow as fundamentally less likely than Triffids or Krakens, so I have a hard time seeing why it precludes realism of the sort Priest is referring to, which I take to be realism in how the characters react to their new circumstances (and which is surely the most important type of realism). I thought Roberts did that bit typically well, if in broad strokes, though if Priest disagrees, fair enough.

(Oh, and the unlikeliness of the snow is a nontrivial plot point by the end of the book, but never mind ...)

[snowking.livejournal.com]

The new single from REM, Around The Sun, sounds pretty much like the least interesting bits of the last album, Reveal. It leaves me a bit cold.

REM in "sounds the same as always" shocker! Music press stunned!

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Please explain to me how Reveal sounds like Up or New Adventures in Hi-Fi or, well, most any other REM album. No: please explain to me how it sounds like any of those albums more than, say, Californication sounds like any other RHCP album, or more than Songs for the Deaf sounds like Rated R. On the scale of changing their sound each album REM are hardly up there with Radiohead, but neither are they The Beautiful South.

[snowking.livejournal.com]

All REM songs sound pretty much the same to me. Alright, that's not true. There's the upbeat one and the downbeat one. They keep on keeping on. Of course for latter albums, I'm only juding them by the single releases as I stopped living with my brother and pinching his CDs.

Thinking Blood Sugar Sex Magik sounds anything like Californication shows you up as either not having heard enough of the band in question to know what you're talking about or being clinically deaf.

Can't comment on QotSA as I only have the one album.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Thinking Blood Sugar Sex Magik sounds anything like Californication shows you up as either not having heard enough of the band in question to know what you're talking about or being clinically deaf.

I have, and have listened, to both albums. They sound as much alike as, say, Out of Time and Up sound alike. Which was my point. Both are clearly by the same band, but you wouldn't mistake a track from one for a track from the other.

Reveal is to REM as All That You Can't Leave Behind is to U2; almost a pastiche of themselves, and about equal parts damn fine and clunkers. What bothers me about Around The Sun is partly that it sounds like more of the same, whereas previously REM have changed somewhat between albums (Automatic to Monster to New Adventures to Up), but mostly that it sounds like more of the bits I didn't like.

[snowking.livejournal.com]

I disagree entirely as I think Daysleeper (only single I properly remember from Up) sounds like it could have come off Automatic For The People as it's Nightswimming 2: Nightswimminger.

I'd actually forgotten about all the REM albums from before they hit it big. Now those sound different. But also mostly crap.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

(1) Any band has some songs that could come from more than one album; I wasn't disputing that, I was arguing that the mean REM sound has changed over time, but that this single indicates a lack of change.

(2) I picked Out of Time and Up as my comparison because they're an extreme case, and have zero overlap - with Up and Automatic, yes, there's a bit of overlap. So what? It's exactly the same as saying that there's more overlap between Californication and By The Way than there is between Californication and BSSM.

(3) Daysleeper/Nightswimming is a really poor choice of comparison. They're not even in the same time signature (I'd have gone for Daysleeper/Find The River, personally; still not in quite the same time signature, but closer, and closer in overall sound as well). But, yes, you have at least proved that REM have written more than one ballad. Well done.

(4) The early albums do not suck. Well, except for maybe Life's Rich Pageant. But even that has its moments.

[sharp-blue.livejournal.com]

Regarding point (2), I think the most extreme comparison would be Monster with Automatic for the People, or maybe Monster and Up.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's probably true. It must have slipped my mind because most of the time I try to pretend Monster doesn't exist at all. :)

(OK, that's harsh. There are a couple of good tracks on there. But I think it's clearly their weakest album.)

[sharp-blue.livejournal.com]

It's one of my favourites (even if it much too long). But then I manifestly have no taste.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I've just never been able to get into it, to be honest. On the other hand, for a long time I felt the same way about New Adventures, and recently I've been listening to that one a lot (so much so that I half-think it might be their best album), so my judgements are not fixed in stone. Or, well, reliable. :)

[snowking.livejournal.com]

In a fit of contrariness, I shall not number my responses. Yes, Out of Time and Up are slightly disimilar but Out of Time and Monster are not. Clearly REM have two songs as mentioned before. Up has Song Type 1 and Monster and Out of Time have Song Type 2.

WARNING: Do no confused Song Type 2 with Song 2. One is an upbeat mindless thrill ideal for selling everything from action scenes to arctic rolls. The other is REM's slightly upbeat but still a bit schmindie song.

Having identifeid both types, we need to take a weekend and Tom, and do SCIENTIFIC TESTS to establish which one has greater soporifity.

And I'm wondering if you even pay attention to what Michael Stipe does in REM.

And yeah, By The Way sounds far too much like the mellow bits of Californication. The Chillis are in danger of forever losing the ROCK.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Out of Time and Up are slightly disimilar but Out of Time and Monster are not

You what?

[snowking.livejournal.com]

Well, I've forgotten most of them but they never struck me as disimilar.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Apart from the fact that one is gently acoustic and the other is fuzzed-up electric guitar rock, you mean? Or apart from the fact that one has eleven different songs and the other has the same song repeated twelve times? Or do you really think 'Shiny Happy People' and 'What's The Frequency, Kenneth?' sound similar? Or are you actually deaf?

[snowking.livejournal.com]

Well, Shiny Happy People is the one song that definitely doesn't sound like the ret of REM. Although any time they want to sing The One I Love on Sesame Street, I'd watch it.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I see. So you've never heard 'Near Wild Heaven' or 'The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite', then?

[snowking.livejournal.com]

Yes, they sound NOTHING like SHP. Unless they've changed into faux-ironic plastic pop songs when I wasn't looking.

[danmilburn.livejournal.com]

Or apart from the fact that one has eleven different songs and the other has the same song repeated twelve times?

Ah yes, because clearly Tongue, Strange Currencies and Let Me In are identical. And you were doing so well up to this point, too.. :P

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Yeah, ok, I was exaggerating for effect. Sue me. The basic point still stands. :-p

(As I said elsethread, I find Monster very hard to get into - it just blurs into one noise when I try to listen to it.)

[danmilburn.livejournal.com]

Certainly you could accuse them of overusing that tremolo guitar effect, but there are actually some great songs on Monster.

Personally I find New Adventures.. far more monotonous...

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I used to find New Adventures boring, but recently it just ... clicked. I don't know why. Maybe I should give Monster another go ...

[(Anonymous)]

I fall asleep within three seconds of any REM song starting, so they all seem pretty similar to me. YMMV.

-- tom

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I think there's a selection effect, though: REM singles, particularly later REM singles, tend to all sound the same because they release singles that sound like the songs that brought them mass-market success. So from New Adventures you hear Electrolite, not Leave; from Up you hear Daysleeper, not Sad Professor; from Reveal you hear Imitation of Life and not She Just Wants To Be. They're still all REM songs, so they may still all put you to sleep, but the band's range is definitely greater than the singles alone suggest.

[snowking.livejournal.com]

DING DING DING

A WINNAH IS YOU!

[(Anonymous)]

The weekend was great, and I may write about it later. Or, just as likely, I may not.

WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH NIALL HARRISON?

-- tom

Where i read about auto parts for mercedes E200?

[(Anonymous)]

please answer if you know.
its very important for me. Im sell car quickly :)

Where i read about auto parts for mercedes E200?

[(Anonymous)]

please answer if you know.
its very important for me. Im sell car quickly :)