Remixing SCTTSLT
[14:12] nemorathwald: can I get a word of advice from you about literature?
[14:13] nemorathwald: you've been involved in Emerald City, and fanzines and such and so forth and the like and you might know what is expected of people in this situation.
[14:16] nemorathwald: The problem is this. I've been looking forward to writing a review of Someone Comes To Town, Someone Leaves Town for months now. But I just got done reading it and I don't like it, for many good reasons which I can articulate very clearly and at great length. But I now consider myself Cory's friend. Do friends not pan the books of friends who they are (on the whole) great fans of? Or should I just never say anything?
[15:03] annekgmurphy: What is your goal in saying something?
[15:03] nemorathwald: well I really wanted it to succeed. But I guess now that it's published there's nothing to be done.
[15:04] annekgmurphy: One of the policies we follow in Emerald city is that if we didn't like something we won't review it unless we can say something interesting about why we didn't like it.
[15:05] annekgmurphy: If you want the book to succeed, saying negative things about it may not further your goal.
[15:06] nemorathwald: no, I mean I want it to be good, that's what I mean by succeed
[15:06] annekgmurphy: If you have criticisms of it you think are valuable for future work, I would write them up and send them to Cory.
[15:06] annekgmurphy: you want the review to be good or you want the book to be good?
[15:06] nemorathwald: well that's just it, my comments are actually very interesting and instructive. I wonder how he'd react though.
[15:06] nemorathwald: I wanted the book to be good.
[15:06] nemorathwald: the review, I know it would be good.
[15:07] nemorathwald: if it were a stranger I'd post it in a heartbeat
[15:07] annekgmurphy: One of the primary purposes for a review is to connect people who like to read with specific works they will enjoy reading.
[15:07] nemorathwald: actually no... I realize now that if it were a stranger I probably wouldn't care at all
[15:07] annekgmurphy: so if you can say "people who liked these other things might like this story" that's valuable.
[15:08] nemorathwald: very good advice
[15:08] nemorathwald: I guess I'm just upset and I shouldn't do anything while I'm upset.
[15:08] annekgmurphy: If you can say "If you're a reader who can overlook these types of plotholes you might at least have fun with the wacky ideas and colorful characters" that might be valuable to say
[15:08] nemorathwald: well that's true
[15:10] nemorathwald: thanks
[15:10] annekgmurphy: no prob.
[15:12] nemorathwald: you know what's weird? Movie reviews in newspapers and magazines are so universally critical and negative I unconsciously think that's the whole duty of reviews, to warn people
[15:12] nemorathwald: but it's not!
[15:18] annekgmurphy: once you stop being upset, you really should sent your comments to Cory
[15:19] nemorathwald: GOOD GRAVY-- I just had an idea. What if the terms of the Creative Commons license allows me to fix it?
[15:19] annekgmurphy: but what you might also do is post your basic thoughts to just a few of us.
[15:20] annekgmurphy: um... I would guess the creative commons license might permit you to use the content in a creation of your own. politically I would think you would want to call it something vaguely different to make it clear it's a new version.
[15:20] nemorathwald: Oh yes, the title is wrong and must go.
[15:21] nemorathwald: But hey, come to think of it, Cory just got done doing the same thing to Isaac Asimov and turn around is fair play!
[15:21] annekgmurphy: (anyway to continue my earlier thoughtstream - a number of people might have feedback on your initial reaction that would help you couch it to Cory in a way he could process without beeing defensive, though honestly he doesn't see to me like a guy who *would* be defensive
[15:21] annekgmurphy: gotta go to a meeting. I'm even more curious to read the book now.
[15:21] nemorathwald: bye
[15:21] annekgmurphy: *hug*
[15:21] nemorathwald: *hug*
Douglas Adams didn't publish The Salmon of Doubt because he realized the way it was written didn't concern themes of the Dirk Gently series to which it belonged, but concerned themes from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series.
In the novel Mimi refers to a quote from Chekhov. "If a gun is on the mantle in the first act, it must go off in the third." So I took a half dozen guns from SCtTSLT that I considered unfired, and found out what the book would look like if I fired them.
TODO
last-- Think of a new title based on changes
first-- Connect the contemporary horror fantasy to free internet, thematically
second-- make the plot of the contemporary horror fantasy and the plot of the internet project interdependent
Orient the form of storytelling around "the development of an idea"
Add drama/conflict to the internet subplot and resolve it climactically
think of an explanation why:
- Alan wants to dedicate himself so much to the internet project
- Krishna hates metahumans
- Mimi won't tell her real name
********************
Kurt opened the sliding door to the warehouse slowly so it wouldn't make enough noise to attract attention. It was 11:00 in the morning but he still had expected to need his flashlight. He hadn't expected to find the place sunlit. The detritus of half a dozen heroin parties was no surprise though. It was just as he'd been told. He was going to have to consider how this might affect the project.
"Kurt?" came a voice from above. Kurt started and looked up; Sara the anarchist was climbing down a ladder from where she had pulled loose a flap of the roof. "Hi there. If you think this one's a mess you should check out the warehouse on Liberty Street."
"Fancy meeting you here," said Kurt. "Is that yours?" gesturing at an amalgamation of yard sale items on a wooden pallette.
"Yes. It's a triply periodic minimal surface that divides all of space into two congruent regions," Sara said as she came down off the ladder.
"That's really clever," Kurt said. He thought it more resembled a magnetically pressurized implosion of the decor of a TGI Tuesday Applechili's. He hated those restaurants. "You do your art in here?"
"Sometimes. I like working in rays of sunlight where there's a lot of dust. Hey, I've got something I've been wanting to show you. Remember those broken USB rubber duckies you couldn't sell?" She took him by the hand and led him to a large shelf. The USB thumb drives in the shape of duckies were all interconnected ass to beak, like a giant rubber duck clusterfuck.
"What did you do to them?"
"Did you know the beaks are removable covers? There's a USB socket in there."
"What? It doubles as a hub?" Kurt was shocked. "I need to put that on the description in eBay. How much more money could I have raised?"
"Since it's perpendicular to the plug in its butt, and the neck is hinged, you can make the chain into more than just a line or a plane, you can make 3D shapes. I made a level-2 Menger sponge." It was a cube-shaped fractal.
"You're obviously having a lot of fun."
Sara was quiet for a moment. "It's art," she told him. "Not money, not a toy."
He shrugged and half-smiled.
"It means something." Her hands were on her hips.
"OK," he said helpfully, "what does it mean?"
"True art prods you into reacting to it. You're the viewer. You're supposed to work it out for yourself."
"This is why I've never--" Kurt blurted in aggravation, and stopped.
"What? Say it."
"Look Sara, I've always really liked you."
She knew this-- everybody knew this. "So you're going to fake liking my work? How is that worth anything?"
"No, it's not that! It's just-- if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."
"You sure as hell don't act that way with Lyman!"
"Ha!" he laughed. "I don't... uh... care about Lyman." Kurt ran a hand awkwardly through his mohawk, as if assuring himself that he was still a punk. They regarded each other for a moment while Sara thought about the care with which he had chosen his words.
"If you care, say what you were going to say about art. I want the feedback," Sara said.
"What you said-- the viewer creates what they get out of it, right? This is why I've never liked modern art, especially found art. It's lazy. There's nothing really in it." He was compensating with brutal honesty now. "The whole art world is the Emperor's New Clothes. Everybody makes up ad-hoc hypotheses, claims to see a meaning that isn't there, to look wise."
"I understand why you think that way," Sara said carefully, since she had asked for it and was determined to deal with whatever came. "And that definitely happens a lot. But screw galleries. You don't have to do it that way; that's a cage in your head. You're thinking from an obsolete mindset based on centralized broadcasting and rights-ownership. In the twentieth century once a book or film or piece of music or art was published, there was nothing left to do about it. All that an audience member could do was recommend it to their friends if they liked it, or complain if they didn't.
"Now we can perform our very own remixes. We can tune a piece of content into our very own flavors of preference. Participate in the creative process instead of complain helplessly. Remix it."
She plugged the sculpture into a music playing device. "Check this out, the first thumb drives works, kind of. It's broken so it only holds a measly 400-500k, and not very reliably, but it's enough for some text." The LCD screen started scrolling: "THE WORK (AS DEFINED BELOW) IS PROVIDED UNDER THE TERMS OF THIS CREATIVE COMMONS PUBLIC LICENSE..."
Kurt felt his mood shifting. A crazed excitement started to flush through him. "But why put that on there? Your art isn't digitally reproducable."
"You tell me. Consider it an excercise in art appreciation," she said.
"It's a statement?" he asked hesitantly.
She waited. Kurt grinned. "You need my help with the sculpture."
"The lights are broken but one color will still blink," Sara said. "I'd like to turn this fractal into a blinking cellular automata, but I don't know how to program that." She unplugged the sculpture and looked at him through it playfully, her face framed in the big hole in the middle of the Menger cube. "Unless you-- you know-- have another idea for what to do with it?"
Kurt suddenly decoded everything she had been trying to say. She had made this sculpture for him. In order for him to react to it, to participate in it. The meaning of the sculpture was Kurt and Sara spending time together.
Or he was making up explanations after the fact, seeing hidden meanings that weren't there.
Or he was making it true. If Sara was to be believed, what was the difference? Kurt took the sculpture gently. "I think I can find the time," he said.
*********************
*********************
Was it his brother? It couldn't be. How would his brother obtain a computer without arousing notice? And it just didn't seem like the sort of thing Davey would do.
The instant message conversation was not just disturbing information. Something about it seemed wrong, out of place. Alan had finished his coffee by the time he realized what it was. Neither participant had ever sent a new message before receiving a response to the last one. Ordinarily in an impatient IM conversation possessing the full attention of both typists in real time, one participant would finish answering a message and hit the return key just barely too late to put it in proper sequence after the question it was meant to address. But this time there had no point at which, in order to understand a statement, he had to read back two or three messages to see which of his own messages it was a reply to.
***********************
Barefoot, he ended up in the alleyway behind Kurt’s again, with nowhere else to go. There was a dumpster. What the hell, he thought, and opened a door in the side.
The dumpster was empty except for an LCD, a keyboard and a modular computer made of USB rubber duckies and PC104. The LCD read, ""
**********************
D. wasn't fast enough to follow them if they traveled by car. But B. didn't need to. He knew which hotel room to leave George in.
Golem, gnome, goblin, they all start with G.
Kurt and Lyman --K, L
Oliver and Patricia-- O, P
He was driven to write stories, because by doing so, he could actually change what was true.
That was his power. That was the weirdness everyone was noticing.
He could change what he doesn't know by writing stories about it; as long as he hadn't already observed that it's not true.
**************
His parents had secret regrets in their past. They did not want him to know how they came to be-- in hopes that he could change it. It involved a feminist from the early twentieth century who wanted to free women to work outside the home through labor-saving devices; her dream was to put an inexpensive laundromat within reach of every home in her city. Someone else invented it. But she came up with a story in her head about the people of the city really doing it, and spread that story, and they started to believe in it. And that made it happen.
That was magic. People had been doing this ever since the first medicine man spun the first group myth to his tribe about their origins, and their destiny. In this case, the myth surrounding the washing machine grew to something bigger than it the machine itself. Love magic is an unpredictable power. When you make people fall in love with something on large scales, you never know who or what you might get to fall in love with it. You can move mountains.
***************
"And besides, can you really be sure that it happened like you think it did? Or is it just your interpretation?"
****************
He looked at the modular computer blinking silently on a rock in a corner of the cave. Alan brought it because it was inexplicable in a cave on a deserted island. He wanted to know the explanation for something inexplicable. If one could walk into a cave and find a fractal cube made mostly of rubber duckies, and know how it got there, his family must have an explanation, even if he knew precious little of it. The world was a reasonable place, and he could live with that.
****************
EPILOGUE
PARASITENET WORLDWIDE
USER: GNOMON HAS JOINED CHANNEL: METAHUMANS
[14:12] PROTECTRIX: no. it's full of porn. dont post them on the messageboard or I will ban you for a week
[14:12] WEILROTTER: r u kidding? That's what da intarweb is FOR
[14:13] GNOMON: That's not what the internet is for. It's for bringing together people like us.
[14:13] FLUGELHORN: Although I have to admit, when you're exiled as a hermit for being different, you get pretty thankful for internet porn after a while.
[14:15] PROTECTRIX: By the way Flugelhorn, what's your meta?
[14:19] FLUGELHORN: Have you ever seen Rind? a picture by MC Escher?
[14:19] PROTECTRIX: yes I have.
[14:19] GNOMON: No
[14:19] PROTECTRIX: wow flug, do you mean what I think you mean?
[14:21] FLUGELHORN: http://home.comcast.net/~eschermc/Rind.jpg
[14:21] CZAREVITCH: ya I know it. u r saying there is porn like that?
[14:21] VERKRAMPTE: no stupid! he looks like that
[14:21] FLUGELHORN: I look kind of like that
[14:22] WEILROTTER: every part of him? or just the head?
[14:22] FLUGELHORN: um every part
[14:22] WEILROTTER: no wonder you need internet porn, no one will have sex with a corkscrew, that would hurt
[14:22] FLUGELHORN: what makes you so sure I am male
[14:23] PROTECTRIX KICKS WEILROTTER
[14:23] PROTECTRIX: flug, I am so sorry, this group is here to give you validation, you will not receive that kind of abuse
[14:23] CZAREVITCH: thats cool flugelhorn u r accepted here
[14:23] VERKRAMPTE: Yeah, ditto, welcome
[14:24] GNOMON: On the internet, nobody knows you're an island.
[14:25] FLUGELHORN: Thanks everybody. sometimes I feel like an island, gnomon.
[14:25] VERKRAMPTE: "Gnomon is an island."
[14:25] CZAREVITCH: cute did u think of that yurself
[14:26] PROTECTRIX: Verkrampte, if you are going to out people without their consent, I'll have to kick you from the channel.
[14:26] VERKRAMPTE: sorry
[14:26] PROTECTRIX: In this group we let them tell us their meta when they're ready.
[14:27] GNOMON: That's OK I've been telling people I'm an island for a long time
[14:29] FLUGELHORN: thank you for being proud of yourself gnomon. you are an inspiration
[14:29] GNOMON: I love the internet.
[14:29] CZAREVITCH: then y don't u marry it :)
[14:34] CZAREVITCH: gnomon? u still there?
[14:34] GNOMON: Czar, are you a precognitive?
Every nine months, somewhere in the Kensington Market District, a tiny mythological creature fluttered out of one of the access boxes, as if on erotic fleshy wings of internet porn. The Greek thought the boxes were infested with moths, but Kurt convinced him to ignore it.
END
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