The Peripheral by William Gibson

I am so happy that I have finished reading the new (Oct 2014) William Gibson book, “The Peripheral”. 

Science-Fiction was a genre that I grew up with, and now authors like Heinlein (Mars) and Azimov (Robots) have grown and gone.  The past decade or two, I have looked to Gibson to stretch my mind 20 years out:

Pattern Recognition (2005) was about the coming massive impact of computers’ ability to predict future events; he delved into flash mobs controlling public opinion.  Zero History (2011) recognized that retail sales would become dominated by computer companies: Yahoo, Amazon, and Google.  It was a subtle prediction, but real.

Mankind has sought ways to avoid death probably since we recognized we were sentient: theology was an easy way; mummification a little harder; the fountain of youth in more scientific times; Sci-Fi offers tantalizing possibilities as in Pohl’s “HeeChee Saga”.

In “The Peripheral”, Gibson is doing his normal examination of where technology is headed, extending three areas ahead for a few decades: drones, nanotechnology, and 3D-printers.  But he’s also tempted to flirt with immortality of sorts with a glimpse into communications technology that can span time, or to be more exact alternate universes. 

Instant communication is speculative but considered a possibility if we aren’t hindered by our perceived 4-dimensional space-time constraints.

I’m a decent techie reader, but I was totally lost for the first 50 pages; then I had only a glimmer over the next 50 of what was happening.  I love this challenge.  Now at page 120 (of 482), I got it.

“We’ll need to buy specialized printers in the stub,” Lev said.  “This will be beyond what they usually work with.”

“Printers?”

“We’re sending files for printing an autonomic cutout,” said Lev.

“Flynne? When?”

“As soon as possible.  This one will do?”

“I suppose,” said Netherton.

“She’s coming with us then. They’ll deliver the support equipment.”

“Equipment?”

“She doesn’t have a digestive tract. Neither eats nor excretes.  Has to be infused with nutrient every twelve hours.  And Dominika wouldn’t like her at all, so she’ll be staying with you, in grandfather’s yacht.”

“Infused?”

“Ash can deal with that.  She likes outmoded technology.”

Netherton took a drink of gin, regretting the addition of tonic and ice.

The peripheral was looking at him.

 

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

I was impressed with “Night” last month.  I read the poignant story.  I devoured the history and meaning; even read more books on the subject.  It brought back visiting Yad Vashem.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG2QaN_LUao

 

This book captured my imagination, brought me back to the realities of today.  This is the new life in SillyConisco.  This was a fun venture into the craziness of Bay Area life, which reinforces the idea that we think we’re weird up here in Sonoma County. 

 

This book brought back so many memories of “City Lights” bookstore with its shelves to the ceiling and several floors, and the night-life people of North Beach.  All that stuff is mixed together with the High-Tech invasion of Googlers, Webinistas, and venture capitalists.  If I still lived on Upper Grant Avenue, I’d probably be Mr. Penumbra now, trying to learn Ruby[1].

 

I loved all the hi-tech gadgets and gizmos; nothing too Star-Trekkie, all believable.  I loved the character, Clay, with his make-a-list approach to all problems and with his almost autistic penchant for prime numbers, e.g. $2,357 in his bank account.  We had a monstrous book reader at IBM in the 80’s; it similarly took a team and a big room to operate.  IBM also had a private Internet in the early 80’s, just for developers.

 

The author is clever at weaving in some real things with total fiction.  I liked his Anatomix company of Neel’s, which is actually a basketball shoe manufacturer [Stephen Curry specials].  The main creative fiction was about the type font, Gerritszoon[2].  The footnote on Gerritszoon is a quote from a blog I found about this book[3].

This book is definitely an escapist, Mexican beach, summer read.  This is especially true if you work in SillyCon Valley.

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[1] Ruby is a dynamic, reflective, object-oriented, general-purpose programming language. It was designed and developed in the mid-1990s by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto in Japan. According to its authors, Ruby was influenced by Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp.

 

[2] “Griffo Gerrtiszoon is almost certainly a merger of Francesco Griffo (the designer of typefaces at the Aldine Press) and Gerrit Gerritszoon (aka Erasmus, who worked for the Aldine Press as a Greek scholar).  There is one typeface inspired by Francesco Griffo that has long been included on the Mac: Hermann Zapf's Palatino.  Interestingly Zapf considered Palatino a display typeface and designed a book weight complement called...wait for it...Aldus :-)  So I guess one could argue Zapf's Aldus is really Gerritszoon and Palatino is Gerritszoon Display.  But I think Palatino is most likely the typeface Sloan intended Gerritszoon to represent.”

 

[3] Thought Streams: a micro-blog for every idea

James Tauber

1429 thoughts; 125 streams
last posted April 11, 2015, 11:54 p.m.

 

Spark by John Twelve Hawks

An interesting action thriller – 300 pages –well written – suspenseful, as far as things like this can be with an Asperger’s Syndrome protagonist.

 

This is a new book at our Guerneville Library, but a 2014 publication date.  It’s a bit too weird to make it to any prize lists or even best sellers. 

 

Besides arcane subject matter – slightly futuristic trained psychotic assassins in an evil world, the plotline takes forever to develop.

 

From another angle, the pace picks up to frenzy pitch in the last third of the book, almost manic in the last fifty pages.

 

The predictions of half a dozen medical experts, including a few psychiatrists do become completely true by the end of the book.  Maybe it was written by a shrink.

 

No skimming in this book.  The writing is riveting and important to the events of the plotline.  It makes more and more sense as the story unfolds.

 

In the end, it’s a tale of love and morality: truth and justice prevail.

 

I picked it up from the New Arrivals shelves,

and it goes back there tomorrow.

The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami

I don’t want to say too much about this book.

 

Sorry, spoiler alert for anything I might say beyond page 1.

 

This book is continuously surprising.

 

Is it for 9-year-olds? 

     Maybe --  Maybe not ---  Maybe sort of. 

 

Is it for an 18-year-old boy? 

     Maybe --  Maybe not ---  Maybe sort of. 

 

It worked for me, and I am well beyond any category.

 

I picked it up [from the New Arrivals shelves],

  because I thought it might be another of those graphic novels.

 

    “Was it,” I thought to myself?

 

         Maybe --  Maybe not ---  Maybe sort of. 

 

 

After a dozen pages,

  I thought to myself,

      “Was it written for kids or with deeper meaning?”

 

         Maybe --  Maybe not ---  Maybe sort of. 

 

 

 

When I had finished, I thought to myself,

      “Was this a good book?”

 

         Maybe --  Maybe not ---  Maybe sort of. 

Night by Elie Wiesel

A spell-binding, riveting book that has a commanding story line as well as being, now, well written.  It’s a good thing it barely stretches 100 pages, as it’s almost impossible to put down once one starts reading. 

The unrelenting insistence of Wiesel’s narrative, to demand the reader’s complete attention without letup is matched by one of Imre Kertész’s books.  “Kaddish For A Child Unborn”, first published in 1990 and translated into English in 1997.  It is 95 pages of straight stream of consciousness: no chapters, no paragraphs, all monologue.  He mentally puts forward all the arguments, to his wife and his friend, why he can’t consider bringing a child into a post-holocaust world.

This current edition of "Night"
   is translated from French by Marion Wiesel, 2006[see 2 below]

It is a more powerful rendering.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

It might be interesting to go back to the earlier translation to see what he was complaining about, and the reason he was so happy with his wife’s translation.  I’ve become interested in translators because of another book, apropos to this month’s subject: to wit, “An Unnecessary Woman” written by Rabih Alameddine.  The protagonist is a Beiruti woman who devotes her entire adult life to translating books, certain books, 37 of them as her story ends.

The holocaust features heavily in a few of these 37 books.  One of specific interest when reading Wiesel’s “Night”, is the Hungarian Imre Kertész’s “Fateless”, published in 1975.  This is a fictional memoir about a 14 year old boy who is sent to Auschwitz, also spending time in Buchenwald.  Rather than a Yiddisher, Torah-touting, Jew, this kid is a denier: he’s not that Jewish, isn’t religious; and actually thinks the work camps are a pretty good idea given the world-wide depression, and anyway everyone knows the bad guys are the Gypsies.  The environment is the same as for Wiesel, but their experiences are polar opposites.  Both wind up in an infirmary as the war ends: Wiesel flees the camp with the SS out of fear of being shot; Kertész finds the softer beds and better food [he fools the guards by talking to his dead bed-mate to obtain double rations] too hard to give up and is liberated.

I’ve obtained the earlier translation of “Night” and the difference is night and day.  Below is the first paragraph of the book: original translation on the left, latest one on the right.

The changes are from writing 101: active instead of passive or conditional verbs; no “very”s; clear sentences rather than reading like a computer translation from the German.  Rodway’s translation phrasing was clumsy.

Translated from French by Stella Rodway, 1960[see 1 below]

 

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[1] They called him Moishe the Beadle, as though he had never had a surname in his life. 

He was a man of all work at a Hasidic synagogue.

The Jews of Sighet—that little town in Transylvania where I spent my childhood—were very fond of him. 

He was very poor and lived humbly.

Generally my fellow townspeople, though they would help the poor, were not particularly fond of them.

Moishe the Beadle was the exception.

Nobody ever felt embarrassed by him.

Nobody ever felt encumbered by his presence.

He was a past master in the art of making himself insignificant, invisible.

 

[2]

They called him Moishe the Beadle, as if his entire life he had never had a surname. 

He was the jack-of-all-trades in a Hasidic house of prayer, a shibl.

The Jews of Sighet—the little town in Transylvania where I spent my childhood—were fond of him. 

He was poor and lived in utter penury.

As a rule, our townspeople, while they did help the needy, did not particularly like them.

Moishe the Beadle was the exception.

He stayed out of people’s way.

His presence bothered no one.

He had mastered the art of rendering himself insignificant, invisible.