First Lines of Max Brooks "World War Z"

 "It goes by many names: 'The Crisis,' 'The Dark Years,' 'The Walking Plague,' as well as newer and more 'hip' titles such as 'World War Z' or 'Z War One.' I personally dislike this last moniker as it implies an inevitable 'Z War Two.' For me, it will always be 'The Zombie War,' and while many may protest the scientific accuracy of the word zombie, they will be hard-pressed to discover a more globally accepted term for the creatures that almost caused our extinction. Zombie remains a devastating word, unrivaled in its power to conjure up so many memories or emotions, and it is these memories, and emotions, that are the subject of this book." 

- Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

Nothing like the Brad Pitt movie, Brooks' excellent novel is essentially a collection of short stories detailing the contours of a zombie outbreak. Relentlessly inventive and covering all sorts of details, I particularly appreciated its global approach - while there is a huge focus on the US, large chunks of the book take place in all areas of the globe, each contributing to the narrative with their unique local color. My only quibble is that the nature of the book - each "short story" is told via an interview - sometimes can feel static: you experience the action at a remove, though a story, rather than by being immersed in it. Regardless I finished the book in a matter of days and would recommend it to anyone who appreciates a good adventure story.

It's the hardest thing to feel

"Love is the only thing that matters,
Love is the only thing that's real.
I know we hear this every day,
It's still the hardest thing to feel."

- Suzanne Vega, Ludlow Street off of her excellent Beauty & Crime album.

First Lines of Arthur Brooks "Strength to Strength"

 "Who are the five greatest scientists who have ever lived? This is the kind of question people like to debate in nerdy corners of the internet that you probably don't visit, and I don't intend to take you there. But no matter how much or little you know about science, your list is sure to include Charles Darwin. He is remembered today as a man who changed our understanding of biology completely and permanently. So profound was his influence that his celebrity has never wavered since his death in 1882.

And yet Darwin died considering his career to be a disappointment."

- Arthur Brooks, Strength to Strength  

As I get older, I have an obvious interest in what success looks like as as an aging person in a society obsessed with youth. Brooks examines middle-aged and elderly satisfaction though many different lenses, and perhaps the most interesting to me was the idea of Fluid vs. Crystalized Intelligence. Put simply, Fluid Intelligence is reasoning and problem solving while Crystallized Intelligence is the combined use of past knowledge. Or as Brooks puts it: "When you are young, you have raw smarts; when you are old, you have wisdom."

Strength to Strength is essentially a survey of ideas. While not all of them resonated with me, I enjoyed the journey. The book certainly helped me (as someone who just turned 50) reframe my tendencies towards synthesis and common sense as a benefit, not a bug. 

Quote of the day

 "The last clear definite function of man - muscles aching to work, mind aching to create beyond the single need - this is man... For man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments."

- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

First Lines of Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game"

 "I've watched though his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he's the one. Or at least as close as we're going to get."

"That's what you said about the brother."

- Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

First Lines of Richard Powers "The Overstory"

 "First there was nothing. Then there was everything.

Then, in a park above a western city after dusk, the air is raining messages. A woman sits on the ground, leaning against a pine. Its bark presses hard against her back, as hard as life. Its needles scent the air and a force hums in the heart of the wood. Her ears tune down to the lowest frequencies. The tree is saying things, in words before words."

- Richard Powers, "The Overstory"

New observations from Webb, new theories of the universe

 I recently read this article at LGM that summarized the implications of some of the findings from the new Webb telescope.  Long story short, some galaxies appear to have formed much earlier than the standard cosmology model predicts. Which leads to some uncomfortable questions about how accurate the standard model is, and points to how little we actually know about the universe. (Campos points out that our understanding has always been flawed; as I've always pondered, a system that essentially says "this equation explains everything except the odd fact that the majority of universe seems to be "dark matter" which we can't see, study, or explain" doesn't make sense.)

Of course, there's a lot of freaky shit that in the universe that doesn't make sense. Some of the models proposed to help explain these new observations are out there: the laws of physics evolving over time? Or John Wheeler, who thinks that observing the universe may cause it's behavior to change (i.e., his “participatory universe” in which every act of observation was in some sense a new act of creation.) 

I can't say I understand all of what this means but I do enjoy pondering what it could mean. It stretches the mind in good and interesting ways. I can't wait to see where this line of inquiry goes!

First Lines of Merlin Sheldrake's "Entangled Life"

 "Fungi are everywhere but they are easy to miss. They are inside you and around you. They sustain you and all that you depend on. As you read these words, fungi are changing the way that life happens, s they have done for more than a billion years. They are eating rock, making soil, digesting pollutants, nourishing and killing plants, surviving in space, inducing visions, producing food, making medicines, manipulating animal behavior, and influencing the composition of the Earth's atmosphere."

- Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life, How fungi make our worlds, change our minds & shape our futures

Sheldrake shares some absolutely fascinating details about fungi - not just mushrooms (which are the fungi's fruit) but also their mycorrhizal networks - in this amazing book. Take two details: The details what (little) we know about how fungi facilitate communication and information sharing between trees (the infamous "wood wide web") or how the symbiotic properties of lichens leads to a breakdown of component parts: "The biological identity of most organisms can't be pried apart from the life of their microbial symbionts." (p 91) I knew mushrooms were having a moment, but learning just how strange their behaviors are, and how little we actually know about how they function, it's hard not to dream about the amazing capabilities this new knowledge unlocks. Highly recommend!

First Lines of David Browne's "Goodbye 20th Century"

 "On the night they met, the summer evening when it all began, the first thing he noticed about her was her height. Since she was a good foot shorter than he was, he had to bend down to say hello. Even when he did, it was hard to see here petite, lean face. She was wearing a cap and sunglasses, the latter with the shades flipped up, and only her long, slender nose poked through."

David Browne, Goodbye 20th Century: A biography of Sonic Youth

First lines of Zadie Smith's "Fences: A Brexit Diary"

 "Back in the old neighborhood in northwest London after a long absence, I went past the local primary school and noticed a change."

- Zadie Smith, from "Fences: A Brexit Diary" from her Feel Free: Essays collection.

Smith's analysis of Brexit, combined with astute and relevant antidotes from her life and those around her, all combined with her usual powerful writing, is one of the best things that I've read in some time. I highly recommend it. One thought-provoking sentence:

"While we loudly and rightly condemn the misguided racial attitudes that led to millions asking "them" to leave "us," to get out of our jobs and public housing and hospitals and schools and country, we might also take a look at the last thirty years and ask ourselves what kind of attitudes have allowed a different class of people to discreetly maneuver, behind the scenes, to ensure that "them" and "us" never actually meet anywhere but in symbol. ... In this atmosphere of hypocrisy and deceit, should the working-class poor have shown themselves to be the "better man" when all around them is corruption and venality? When everyone's building a fence, isn't it a true fool who lives out in the open?" 

Powerful stuff, and relevant not only to her native England but what's occurring in the US as well.

First Lines of Wallace Stegner's "Angle of Repose"

 "Now I believe they will leave me alone. Obviously Rodman came up hoping to find evidence of my incompetence--though how an incompetent could have got this place renovated, moved his library up, and got himself transported to it without arousing the suspicion of his watchful children, ought to be a hard one for Rodman to answer. I take some pride in the way I managed all that. And he went away this afternoon without a scrap of what he would call data."

- Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose

My second attempt at this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, thanks to Sam buying me a copy. This time, the beauty of Stegner's message of the struggle to grow and survive sunk in; I don't think I was mature enough to hear it the first time.  In addition, his prose is just beautiful. The chapters are all well structured, the dialogue is on point, and I enjoyed reading the whole thing. The themes were moving as well; hard work does not always pay off in happiness or prosperity, and it's this dramatization in the light of the myths of American exceptionalism and moving West to build yourself up that provides a lot of the novel's power.

Bonus Link: a bio of Stegner from LGM. I'm not as harsh on the final chapter of this novel as Loomis, but it certainly was discordant from the rest of the novel - and the reactionary politics are jarring. It's an odd decision but the entire novel is still worth reading.

Review of "The Best American SciFi and Fantasy 2022"

The "Best Science Fiction and Fantasy" anthologies are always a good source of interesting tales. All of the stories in the 2022 version (edited by Rebecca Roanhorse) are high-quality - there wasn't one story that didn't seem like it was best in class. But like any collection of stories from multiple authors, some worked for me, and some didn't. Here are the ones that I can't stop thinking about:

1. Meg Elison, The Pizza Boy. Pizza delivery... in space! A blue-collar captain struggles to make and deliver pizzas in a future of bureaucracy and scarcity. When will he find enough mushrooms? Unexpected twist at the end.

2. Aimee Ogden. The Cold Calculations. A response to Tom Godwin's famous The Cold Equations, but 100% angrier and with an ingenious - but seriously ugly - solution to the problem.

3. Nalo Hopkinson, Broad Dutty Water: a Sunken Story. Wonderfully inventive story of a woman whose collection of impromptu bio-implants take her to a place she never expected. An unpredictable tale that's also memorable for its post-glacier melt setting.

4. Sam J. Miller. Let All the Children Boogie. Two misfit teens explore alternative music and gender identity while trying to decipher the messages from a mysterious voice that interrupts their favorite radio station. Sympathetic and moving.

5. Kelly Link. Skindler's Veil. A long story about a college kid who ends up house sitting for Death. Or some form of demi-god. Doesn't matter: I classic dose of that wonderful Link magic. Looking forward to digging into her latest collection White Cat, Black Dog.

6. Peng Shepherd. The Future Library. An imaging of what would happen if the real Future Library fell prey to climate change politics. A sad, moving fantasy.

7. Catherynne M. Valente. L'Esprit de L'Escalier. What if Orpheus had succeeded in bringing Eurydice back from the underworld? Valente's irreverent take imagines the scene as a failed marriage between an egomanic and a zombie. Extremely entertaining.

8. Rich Larson. Tripping Though Time. A waiter serves drinks to time-traveling tourists who gawk at famous historical natural disasters. The class consciousness in this one reminded me of Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's Friday Black collection.

9. Maria Dong. The Frankly Impossible Weight of Han. Stick with this one through the overtly meta comments as the structure of the tale reveals itself. Wonderfully moving mix of scifi, folklore, and religion.

The 8-hour Workday

 "The 8-hour workday is too profitable for big business, not because of the amount fo work people get done in eight hours (the average office worker gets less than three hours of actually work done in eight hours) but because it makes for such a purchase-happy public. Keeping free time scarce means people pay a lot more for convenience, gratification, and any other relief they can buy. It keeps them watching television, and its commercials. It keeps them unambitious outside of work. 

We've been led into a culture that has been engineered to leave us tired, hungry for indulgence, willing to pay a lot for convienience and entertainment, and most importantly, vaguely dissatisfied with our lifes so that we continue wanting things we don't have. We buy so much because it always seems like something is still missing."

- David Cain, from "Your Lifestyle Has Already been Designed"

First Lines of Richard Butner's "The Adventurists"

 "On the ferry to the island, I saw a man dressed as a jester. His image flased into view in my side mirror as I sat there half-dozing behind the steering wheel. It was midday as we chugged along across the sound, and the sun glared off of the smattering of pickups and SUVs and vans on the deck. For a second, I thought I had dreamed him."

Richard Butner, The Adventurists

 

First Lines of Chris Voss "Never Spilt the Difference"

 "I was intimidated.

I'd spent more than two decades in the FBI, including 15 years negotiating hostage situations from New York to the Philippines and the Middle East, and I was on top of my game. At any given time, there are ten thousand FBI agents in the Bureau, but only one lead international kidnapping negotiator. That was me.

But I'd never experienced a hostage situation so tense, so personal."

- Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference

Essential reading for anyone who needs to negotiate anything. I think about this book all of the time.

The first lines of Becky Chambers "A Psalm for the Wild Built"

"If you ask six different monks the question of which godly domain robot consciousness belongs to, you'll get seven different answers."

- Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild Built

A quirky tale by the author of The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. Entertaining but felt lightweight, despite the interesting world building (the details about the different gods, history and evolution of robotics and their withdrawal from humanity). I wasn't sure why it left me cold, but after reading Clark Seanor's essay about Chambers at Strange Horizons ("Recycled Air: Wayfarers and the Tyranny of the Everyday") I think that there's very little danger in the book. I never really felt like the characters were in any real danger - either physical or psychological. Perhaps this is because I knew this was the first book in a series, but without that edge it was hard for me to really invest in the plot.

 

First Lines of Alex Hutchinson's "Endure"

 "The broadcast booth at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza, a historic Formula One racetrack nestled in the woodlands of a former royal park northeast of Milan, Italy, is a small concrete island suspended in the air over the roadway. from this rarefied vantage point, I'm trying to offer thoughtful guest commentary to a live-streaming audience of an estimated 13 million people around the world, many of whom have rousted themselves out of bed in the middle of the night to watch. But I'm getting antsy."

- Alex Hutchinson, Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance

Hutchinson book examines what goes into the physical and mental limits of human performance. And there's a lot to cover! At times the book feels likes a collection of articles rather than a cohesive narrative. Regardless, learning more about what drives fatigue and what science is discovering  about overcoming it is fascinating. Much of what he presents is on the cutting edge, with many techniques (e.g., electro-jolts to the brain!) out of the reach of an average athlete. I had some good takeaways, including that simply "swishing and spitting a carbohydrate drink" without consuming it provides endurance benefits: 

"...the mouth appears to contain previously unknown (and as of yet unidentified) sensors that relay the presence of carbohydrates directly to the brain. In Tim Noake's central governor framework, it's as if the brain relaxes its safety margin when it knows (or is tricked into believing_) that more fuel is on the way." (p. 190)

First Lines of Becky Chambers' "The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet"

 "As she woke up in the pod, she remembered three things. First, she was traveling through open space. Second, she was about to start a new job, one she could not screw up. Third, she had bribed a government official into giving her a new identity file. None of this information was new, but it wasn't pleasant to wake up to."

- Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

Fun SciFi novel about the close-knit inter-species crew of the Wayfinder who has signed up for a dangerous but lucrative shipping gig. Succeed, and they'll have sufficient funds to live comfortably. Fail and they'll find themselves in a politically fraught situation with no clear way out.

Chambers is playing a long game here - the main plot plays out over a series of multiple novels, which makes this a relaxed entry into her world. I appreciated the time she took to introduce the characters, providing all of them with varied backstories and motivations. It was a fun read, mainly because the characters are (with one notable brooding exception) refreshingly pleasant and get along with each other.  There's an easy optimism and refined species relations that reminded me of the original Star Trek. However, the crew's easy comradery prevented me from taking their struggles too seriously - there was a lack of edge to the character dynamics. It didn't help that the book reads less like a novel and a collection of interconnected short stories - like the first series of a long Netflix series. 

Regardless, I felt like The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is an excellent beach read: entertaining and interesting but not too challenging. I enjoyed it and am curious to see if this impression changes as the series progresses.

The Libertarian Exit

In a recent Harpers essay, Hari Kunzru writes an insightful essay about the libertarian desire for freedom. Kunzru shows us how freedom-lovers feel that the systems and cultures in which they reside are limiting their liberty to choose and thus sparking a desire for exiting those cultures. (He also points out the irony that the culture they desire to leave is often what enabled their success in the first place). The root of this desire stems from valuing the "freedom to choose" above all else (Kunzru points us to Milton Friedman as the source here) which inexorably leads libertarians to want to remove themselves from everything that might constrain their choice. 

While I find some libertarian principles alluring in theory, the libertarian groups that I see display their beliefs in selfish words and actions that prevent me from subscribing to them. I believe societal and political constraints are there for a reason; we've seen how unadulterated capitalism (or unconstrained freedom of any kind for that matter) leads to huge inequities of power. Those without power need systemic protections or they will get trampled. An easy example of this are overtime laws that protect hourly workers from businesses overworking them without fair compensation. Libertarians say that these hourly workers can choose to work at these jobs or not, a disingenuous argument that ignores the reality that many of these workers (for a variety of reasons) often don't have the power or ability to move between jobs (i.e., to choose). The argument often continues that laws like this constrain businesses from choosing the best way to operate their business, or from employing people who want to work longer hours. This seems to be easily countered with one of the innumerable examples of businesses that, absent any effective implementation of constraints, end up in unethical or inequitable positions.

Look - many of these laws and constraints libertarians complain about may be poorly implemented, or have unintended side effects. But it seems to me that we should strive is to adapt these rules to work better for everyone, not to throw them out entirely. Until the power in this country is more fairly distributed, rules and laws that constrain employers will remain essential. As Kunzru closes: "Exit is not a benign withdrawal. It imposes costs on those left behind, and the freedom of Exiters substantially depends on the unfree labor of others."

First Lines of John Richardson's "A Life of Picasso Vol 4"

"Of all of the problems besetting Picasso in late 1932, foremost was the misery of married life with his Russian wife, Olga. As recounted in volume III, the former ballerina, who had prided herself, to Picasso's ever-increasing dismay, on being an impeccably ladylike consort and hostess, had become a termagant at home."

- John Richardson, from A Life of Picasso: The Minotaur Years, 1933-1943

Another excellent volume in Richardson's Picasso multi-volume biography. I appreciate how he blends facts, antidotes, and observations about Picasso's artwork in a brisk narrative. He doesn't get too bogged down in details while giving important events the space they need to thrive. My only objection about this book is that it felt too brief: It ended in 1943 as WWII was still raging and affecting everything about Picasso's life. I understand the choice - Picasso's art was about to change as he changed mistresses from Dora Marr to Francoise Gilot (as Richardson puts it, "Picasso's love for [Gilot], and hers for him, would be that of master and pupil rather than master and slave.") Still, I longed for the narrative to continue until the end of the war. With Richardson recently dying, I'm bummed that this will be the last volume and won't continue to cover the latter years of this fascinating artist's life.

First Lines of Maria Popova's "Figuring"

 "This is how I picture it:

A spindly, middle-aged mathematician with a soaring mind, a sunken heart, and bad skin is being thrown about the back of a carriage in the bone-hollowing cold of a German January. Since his youth, he has been inscribing into family books and friendship albums his personal motto, borrowed from a verse by the ancient poet Perseus: "O the cares of man, how much of everything is futile." He has weathered personal tragedies that would level most. He is now racing through the icy alabaster expanse of the countryside in the precarious hope of averting another: Four days after Christmas and two days after his forty-fourth birthday, a letter from his sister has informed him that their widowed mother is on trial for witchcraft--a fact for which he holds himself responsible."

- Maria Popova, from Figuring.

Maria Popova, the author of The Marginalian blog (nee Brain Pickings), is one of the best authors I have ever read. She summarizes the thoughts of top-notch artists and scientists, and links their works to other artists and scientists in a beautiful, thoughtful analysis that also includes artistic imagery (as seen above). The first essay in Figuring is about Johannes Kepler followed by Maria Mitchell, and along the way touches on Emerson, Douglass, Caroline Herschel (the worlds first professional women astronomer) among others. Figuring looks to be a brilliant if unclassifiable examination of the thoughts of our best thinkers on the nature of reality and beauty. I'm relishing this one.

First Lines of Liberrman and Long's "The Molecule of More"

 "Dopamine was discovered in the brain in 1957 by Kathleen Montagu, a researcher working in a laboratory at the Runwell Hospital near London. Initially, dopamine was seen simply as a way for the body to produce a chemical called norepinephrine, which is what adrenaline is called when it is found in the brain. But then then scientists began to observe strange things. Only 0.0005 percent of brain cells produce dopamine--one in two million--yet those cells appeared to exert an outsized influence on behavior."

- Daniel Z. Lieberman & Michael E. Long, The Molecule of More

First Lines of Michael Gerber's "The E-Myth Revisited"

 "The E-Myth is the myth of the entrepreneur. It runs deep in this country and rings of the heroic. 

Picture the typical entrepreneur and Herculean pictures come to mind...

The legend reeks of nobility, of lofty, extra-human efforts, of a prodigious commitment to larger-than-life ideals. 

Well, while there are such people, my experience tells me they are rare."

- Michael Gerber, "The E-Myth Revisited"

Recommended as an excellent summary of what it means to work ON a business (as opposed to working IN a business), Gerber's book is extremely enlightening for someone who is trying to start his own business. Amongst a ton of insights, the most valuable one for me (so far) are the three integral business personas needed to be successful:

1. Entrepreneur. The one with the vision, that dreams of what the business could be.
   
2. Manager. The one that takes care of the tactical nuts-and-bolts of making the business run.
   
3. Technician. The one that does the work, that creates the product or deliver the service.

Many small businesses are started by technicians who dream of being their own bosses. But without cultivating the other mindsets, such people may be doomed to ever-increasing workloads without achieving the goals they set out for the business.

First Lines of David Graeber and David Wengrow's "The Dawn of Everything"

 "Most of human history is irreparably lost to us. Our species, Homo sapiens, has existed for at least 200,000 years, but for most of that time we have next to no idea what was happening." 

- The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow

Graeber and Wengrow's ambitious goal: To answer the question "what are the origins of social inequity?" As they introduce their themes, the overall argument is in re-examining historical assumptions (or history's "grand narrative") in the face of a new evidence, including:

• Native American criticisms of European culture and the European reaction to it, which the authors claim resulted in the dehumanization of native thought
• Biases in earlier evidence that led to faulty assumptions about basic facts about human diversity and culture

It's a fascinating read, one I'm working through slowly for there are many insights. One interesting thought: even asking the question about inequality assumes an original state of equality that quite simply didn't exist. (Life was too diverse to make such a grand statement; poor Rousseau comes in for some criticism.)

Perhaps the most useful result of this analysis is uncovering the absurdity behind so many of our historical "grand narratives." By add the voices and evidence of our early ancestors, those native and "primitive" societies who the authors convincingly describe as "...not just our cognitive equals, but our intellectual peers too." I'm very curious to see where the book will end up.

First Lines of Paul Trynka's "Starman"

 "It was a cold, wet November in 1991, like the cold, wet Novembers of his childhood, when David Bowie asked his driver to take the scenic route to the Brixton Academy. The smoke-filled coach pulled slowly down Stansfield Road, just a few hundred yards from the venue, and paused outside a large, anonymous three-storey Victorian house, before moving on."

- Paul Trynka, Starman: David Bowie - the Definitive Biography

 An excellent summary of David Bowie's life and career. Like most music bios I got lost a bit in the voluminous wash of names and locations, but I appreciated Trynka's unflinching picture of the different aspects of Bowie's career. In particular, I liked the quotes that he included from people who were left behind in Bowie's wake - many rock bios can wallow in celebratory histrionics, but Trynka's felt well balanced and informative. And it inspired me to do a deep dive into some of the more obscure albums in his discography - Earthling was a decent album of which I had only heard "I'm Afraid of Americans" - so that alone is a success. 

Reality as a Network of Processes

 "Reality is not a collection of things, it’s a network of processes.

If this is correct...we understand reality better if we think of it in terms of interactions, not individuals. We, as individuals, exist thanks to the interactions we are involved in. This is why, in classic game theory, the winners in the long run are those who collaborate.

Too often we foolishly measure success in terms of a single actor’s fortunes. This is both short-sighted and irrational."

- Carlo Rovelli

I read this as "pay attention to your relationships." Between people. Between institutions. Between systems. And between people, institutions, and systems. This environment of relationships defines what actions you take or your "success" more than anything else. As W. Edwards Deming put it: "A bad system will beat a good person every time."

A Stillness and a Sanctuary

 “Within you is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself.”

- Hermann Hesse