“I wanted to understand things and then be free of them. I needed to learn how to telescope things, ideas. Things were too big to see all at once, like all the books in the library—everything laying around on all the tables. You might be able to put it all into one paragraph or into one verse of a song if you could get it right.”
— Bob Dylan, CHRONICLES: VOLUME ONE
Finding much resonance in Camus' BETWEEN HELL AND REASON, essays written for the “resistance newspaper” Combat between 1944-1947. This bit however had the exact opposite effect:
Things have clearly changed in that regard. My sense is that the greatest issue of today, very broadly speaking, isn't so much one of clear-thinking in as much as it relates to a widely adopted practice of insincerity.
“We make love by telephone, we no longer work with material but with machines, and we kill and are killed by proxy.”
— Albert Camus, 1946
It is for the most part a problem-solving novel, and I like that. Robinson is able to make the uphill battle involved in all the bureaucracy and policy-making and head-butting that would ostensibly constitute the seemingly impossible task of reversing climate change read like a rollicking adventure without ever once diverging from keeping it grounded in realism.
Full review at Ganzeer.Reviews (apologies for long hiatus, you can chalk it up to 2023 being my divorce year).
“There are interesting correlations between myths across different traditions, links forged between Wales and Ireland in particular, but also persistent tropes shared by numerous cultures, including “tripleism”, which plays a key role not only in Welsh myth, but also in Macbeth’s trio of witches and old nursery rhymes. Threeness is 'an endemic part of British and European Iron Age and Roman provincial symbolism'.” — Otherworld Wales at TLS, discovered via Warren Ellis.
Relatedly: “During the Old Kingdom, the Sun god used to appear in three forms: at dawn called khepri (Ḫpr), at mid-day called Re (R‹) and at the sun setting called Atum ™...”
Let me just interject here by saying that this is clearly the basis for what we now know to be the three-act structure in storytelling.
“By the Middle Kingdom, trinity developed by merging three divinities together such as god Ptah-Soker-Osiris (Ptḥ-Sḳr-Wsir), who was regarded as single divinity in some texts by stating a single pronoun (di.f) or by stating plural pronoun (di.sn). The ancient Egyptians merged these three gods because they represented three stages; creation, death and afterlife, as god Ptah formed the creation, god Soker represented the necropolis and god Osiris represented the afterlife. Furthermore, during the New Kingdom in the Book of the Dead in chapter seventeen, the idea of the trinity was expressed by mentioning “Osiris (Wsir) was yesterday, current day is Hours (Ḥr) and tomorrow is Re (Ra)”.” — The Significance of the Number Three in the Ancient Egyptian Religion by May Ahmed Housny and Kholoud Ahmed Emara. Not the best written paper tbh (chalk it up to ESL), but some great information there. Like this bit of madness:
“The ancient Egyptians believed that the human identity was divided into two main elements: materialistic and spiritual. Our main concern will be directed to the spiritual elements as it comprises three main elements which were: Ka (k3): It is the sole companion which is born with the creation of the human being, Ba (b3): It is the spiritual entity that can move between worlds of living and death, Akh (Aḫ): it is the illuminated spirit in which the deceased wished to be resurrected in.”
Ordered by accident and almost tempted to keep it just for the terrible mis-registration on this copy's print job. Snooping around online and I'm not seeing any publicly available evidence of anyone else having come across such a terribly misprinted copy.
Almost want to send a picture directly to Dan Clowes just to ruin his day/week/life. But no, what good would that do without getting to see the look on his face?
“Siphonophores are colonial marine organisms made up of specialised but genetically identical units, zooids, that undertake different functions, such as feeding or reproduction. The best-known species is the Portuguese man o'war, which resembles a large jellyfish but is actually seven different kinds of zooid that cooperate so that the colony acts like a single organism.”
From Paul McAuley's THE SECRET OF LIFE.
I note that he does the thing that I love when its done in fiction: including actual non-fiction knowledge. Chuck Palahniuk will almost always slide a little nugget of knowledge in his novels (i.e. how soap is made in FIGHT CLUB or how long it takes to choke in CHOKE, and I think there was something about airplanes or bodybuilding or both in SURVIVAL). This strikes me as an essential function of storytelling: using story to ever so slyly act as a vector for knowledge. It isn't the only function, but it seems to be one of several essential functions. It is after all a tradition as old as time itself. The oldest story known to humankind, THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH, lets it be known that wood obtained from Cedar trees is ideal for shipbuilding (and indeed, the oldest known surviving boat, excavated in Egypt, is built out of Cedar). The myth of Osiris contains mumification instructions. Story is carrier wave for philosophical pondering, parable, moral compass tuning, and factual knowledge. Drama is, for the most part, a really great delivery system.
At least that's how I like it.
Spent the entire goddamn day speed re-reading this entire book just to locate one single passage I needed for a bit in THE SOLAR GRID.
Frustrating, but necessary. I am however reminded by what a fantastic and well-researched read it is. I doubt this is going to be the last time I utilize Luddite history in a story. It's such a fascinating episode in history. Remember this is just a few years before Mary Shelley started writing FRANKENSTEIN and young Percy was frequenting pothouses. Lord Byron was already a famed poet, having written verse in favor of the Luddites actually, and the Napoleonic Wars were still ongoing.