coming up for air
When I went to Powell's, I spent about $50 or $60 on books as "research," a couple from my list and a couple that just looked potentially interesting. I went on Amazon and bought another $30 worth. Of the Powell's ones (Amazon's haven't shown up yet, of course), the only two that so far haven't let me down were the ones from my list. The rest, I'm not sure but they might all have been wasted money. Note to self: take your shopping list more seriously next time, and think twice before straying from the plan.
Freud's "The Uncanny" was interesting. I would say it was amazing if it wasn't for all the psychoanalytic crap about how it's all because of a fear of castration... just seems a little too pat and taken-for-granted for me. I didn't buy it. But in addition to being an interesting primer to the concept of "uncanniness" it also introduced me to some German lit I'm going to have to track down now, primarily E.T.A. Hoffmann (of Tales of Hoffmann fame) and his short story, Der Sandmann.
And Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near is proving thick but engrossing, not to mention terrifying, thrilling, apropos, and far too much like every fantasy I've ever had about immortality and cyber-enhanced, transhuman bodies that never get old, get sick, or die. Every dream of the future is going to be realized within my lifetime, according to that book. We will stop dying, stop hurting, solve world hunger, and have nearly limitless control of our own physicality and intelligence. The book is laid out in a way where you almost believe it. Almost.
Anyway it resonates really, really, suspiciously perfectly with the themes I'm trying to lay out in Uncanny Valley. More and more I realize the story I'm telling builds up to and resolves with That Moment when things change, what Kurzweil (and before him, Vernor Vinge) call the Singularity. My story basically builds up to and climaxes with the 21st Century version of the 2001 Monolith. How's that for lofty comparisons?
I'm on the verge of starting this thing. I'm working out my characters, the events leading up to the first scene. Who is Walter, and Mark, what is the deal with the Toy and how do these two actually meet? It's all starting to fall into a kind of order, but ever so fuckin slowly.
Watching movies, reading, eating out and trying hard to focus. The way I once put it to Jon was, some ideas like this one, they've lived so long inside my head that they're almost literally too big to fit out any portal onto the page. Finding the way to get this idea down on paper, outside of me, is not easy. Worse yet is the terror that it's just not a very good idea in the first place.
And so it goes. The vaguely insecure ramblings of a would-be writer.
Freud's "The Uncanny" was interesting. I would say it was amazing if it wasn't for all the psychoanalytic crap about how it's all because of a fear of castration... just seems a little too pat and taken-for-granted for me. I didn't buy it. But in addition to being an interesting primer to the concept of "uncanniness" it also introduced me to some German lit I'm going to have to track down now, primarily E.T.A. Hoffmann (of Tales of Hoffmann fame) and his short story, Der Sandmann.
And Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near is proving thick but engrossing, not to mention terrifying, thrilling, apropos, and far too much like every fantasy I've ever had about immortality and cyber-enhanced, transhuman bodies that never get old, get sick, or die. Every dream of the future is going to be realized within my lifetime, according to that book. We will stop dying, stop hurting, solve world hunger, and have nearly limitless control of our own physicality and intelligence. The book is laid out in a way where you almost believe it. Almost.
Anyway it resonates really, really, suspiciously perfectly with the themes I'm trying to lay out in Uncanny Valley. More and more I realize the story I'm telling builds up to and resolves with That Moment when things change, what Kurzweil (and before him, Vernor Vinge) call the Singularity. My story basically builds up to and climaxes with the 21st Century version of the 2001 Monolith. How's that for lofty comparisons?
I'm on the verge of starting this thing. I'm working out my characters, the events leading up to the first scene. Who is Walter, and Mark, what is the deal with the Toy and how do these two actually meet? It's all starting to fall into a kind of order, but ever so fuckin slowly.
Watching movies, reading, eating out and trying hard to focus. The way I once put it to Jon was, some ideas like this one, they've lived so long inside my head that they're almost literally too big to fit out any portal onto the page. Finding the way to get this idea down on paper, outside of me, is not easy. Worse yet is the terror that it's just not a very good idea in the first place.
And so it goes. The vaguely insecure ramblings of a would-be writer.