This was honestly the worst film-to-book adoption I've ever read, and I've read a lot of them. Star Wars Revenge of the Sith's novelization was perfect. It explained decisions and colored the world in ways that the movie simply couldn't. It used the strengths of the medium. Same with the X-Men novelizations. They make reading about their universes fun.
But not this book.
This book tries to interpret Star Wars- and fails.
~~spoilers~~spoilers~~spoilers~~spoilers~~spoilers~~spoilers~~spoilers~~
The transference from book-to-film is easy to get wrong. Two examples: (1) Dumbledore yelling /calmly/ in the books in Goblet of Fire did not make it into the movie. (2) Voldemort turning into dust in movie movie 7.5 instead of thudding to the ground.
These changes were made because the directors failed to understand the characters and nature of reality that JK Rowling was describing. Dumbledore is thoughtful and trustful. Voldemort is just a man. They lost these themes and the movies sucked a bit more.
Reverse this: the theme of The Force Awakens is good versus evil. It says that good is good and evil is evil and the difference is obvious. The entirely movie plays this out visually: The iconic shot of TIE fighters coming from an orange sky indicate they're coming from the dark, from evening. X-Wings come from the stars. Good things happen in the sun, bad things happen at night or underground, and Han Solo is killed literally when the light of the sun goes out.
The book ignores this. It destroys it. The Starkiller doesn't evil kill a fucking star. It "absorbs dark matter" which becomes "quientessist" which becomes "phantom energy" and goes into "sub-hyperspace." Han Solo is slayed literally as dark energy blocks out "light".
The author has so many opportunities to play with this symbolism, but instead he seems to be making fun of The Force Awakens. Finn- who is never described as black, like, you know, he is- constantly "thinks" about how the movie solution is problematic, but then makes up an answer to justify. Bro. Bro. I don't need to know why it's problematic. Just give me the answer to the plot hole before you say "hey look there is a plot hole."
Another example: Rey spends her life on a desert planet. How does she know how to fly? Answer: she flies a speeder and, apparently, steals away in the night to look at the ships in Niima outpost. Thats radical. It's a good answer. But why do we get that fucking answer after she already flew and Han asks the question? Why is Han bringing up the plothole? Han doesn't know her life, he doesn't give two shits.
The correct way to answer plot holes it to have the novel color the world so well that we feel like assholes for thinking they were plot holes at all.
God help me if the rest of the books I read this year are like this one.
▼
Friday, December 18, 2015
Sunday, September 6, 2015
Review: Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down
Structures is, in terms of classes at the University of Florida, Mechanics of Materials and its lab, as well as Mechanical Design 1 and 2. Anything that is covered in these classes is covered here with a bit less math. Yet, while the textbooks for these classes may be dry and direct, Gordon is willing to make jokes, go on tangents, and explore his opinions. This makes an engineering book- beyond all expectations- a page-turner.
More than one of my professors at UF used to be a consultant. When things blew up or went wrong, it was their job to go to court and point fingers after having studied the shit out of whatever blew up. And these stories were always the best stories. Tension? Compression? Fatigue failure? The best examples are non-examples. "Look on this wreckage, ye mighty, and despair-- please don't do this or our college gets a bad rap." Structures has tons of these examples, and as the book goes from the basic principles of factors of safety and critical crack lengths up to arches, we get more and more of them.
The last few chapters are calls to action: Failures in structures are almost always due to lazy designers or lazy manufacturing and these are critical moral failures of Biblical proportions. Parallel to this is failures in aesthetics: an engineer is mostly likely designing something that many people will use. Therefore, it is absolutely critical that what they're designing /is nice/. The Spartan ethic of functionalism is too narrow and close-minded.
Structures is a good book for the young engineer or the layman. It gives a -forgive me- structure to one's thoughts about structures. Because it deals with not just buildings, but vehicles, tools, and living things --like us-- it is important for the construction worker, the mechanic and the doctor.
More than one of my professors at UF used to be a consultant. When things blew up or went wrong, it was their job to go to court and point fingers after having studied the shit out of whatever blew up. And these stories were always the best stories. Tension? Compression? Fatigue failure? The best examples are non-examples. "Look on this wreckage, ye mighty, and despair-- please don't do this or our college gets a bad rap." Structures has tons of these examples, and as the book goes from the basic principles of factors of safety and critical crack lengths up to arches, we get more and more of them.
The last few chapters are calls to action: Failures in structures are almost always due to lazy designers or lazy manufacturing and these are critical moral failures of Biblical proportions. Parallel to this is failures in aesthetics: an engineer is mostly likely designing something that many people will use. Therefore, it is absolutely critical that what they're designing /is nice/. The Spartan ethic of functionalism is too narrow and close-minded.
Structures is a good book for the young engineer or the layman. It gives a -forgive me- structure to one's thoughts about structures. Because it deals with not just buildings, but vehicles, tools, and living things --like us-- it is important for the construction worker, the mechanic and the doctor.
Sunday, August 9, 2015
Review: Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
The danger of superintelligence boils down to "Control Problem." Most things that are dangerous do. We have to figure out how to control asteroids. We have to figure out how to control nations so that they don't bomb each other into a humanity-ending nuclear war. We have to control our cars so that we don't die. Control is important.
But, most of the time, when you try to control something the thing doesn't respond, "What the fuck are you talking about, dude?" And an AI asks that question anytime you set out trying to make it. Indeed, every philosophical question that can be posed (and is generally worth being posed) usually involves a huge amount of semantics and thats a problem. Humans mean different things. We miscommunicate. We aint talk so gerd. This is a problem when a superintelligence with the computing power of God is trying to figure out (a) what you want it to do and (b) what you want it to not do (see: kill you/torture you forever). The danger of Superintelligence then, is the danger of creating a Jackass Genie- that Monkey's Paw comes to life- and that we ask a smart computer to do things that it interprets incorrectly.
The theme is "Be Careful What You Wish For".
But, most of the time, when you try to control something the thing doesn't respond, "What the fuck are you talking about, dude?" And an AI asks that question anytime you set out trying to make it. Indeed, every philosophical question that can be posed (and is generally worth being posed) usually involves a huge amount of semantics and thats a problem. Humans mean different things. We miscommunicate. We aint talk so gerd. This is a problem when a superintelligence with the computing power of God is trying to figure out (a) what you want it to do and (b) what you want it to not do (see: kill you/torture you forever). The danger of Superintelligence then, is the danger of creating a Jackass Genie- that Monkey's Paw comes to life- and that we ask a smart computer to do things that it interprets incorrectly.
The theme is "Be Careful What You Wish For".
Thursday, July 30, 2015
Review: The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail - But Some Don't
"You can get better, so do better" is a weird message to take away from a book that is ostensibly about how bad humans are at statistics, but its actually the consquence of a simple tool: Bayesian reasoning. Bayes' formula is an agnostic equation. Imagined into words by a Scottish pastor and put into math by a French atheist, it tells us, "Given what you know, you can be more accurate in the future."
We can, as a society, embrace the Bayesian way of thinking and instead of polarizing ourselves, update our worldviews to take in new evidence and reach consensus quickly about how things are happening.... or maybe we can't. For every bit a pop statistics in Signal and the Noise, there is some psychology 101 and Econ 200 that has to be rehashed: humans are irrational creatures designed for an environment we're not actually living in, and, taken as a whole even individually rational behaviors can turn out to be irrational. Its a quagmire, but not one that Bayesian reasoning doesn't allow us to see our ways out of.
Another big thing that Silver insists on is that we can't be a slave to computers or big data. Eh. Silver seems to be bringing out the same luddite arguments of yesteryear, namely, "They can't do what we can!" which is surely true. Computers and Big Data do, currently, need many hands helping them. But the entire point is to make those helping hands computers, too.
Must read.
We can, as a society, embrace the Bayesian way of thinking and instead of polarizing ourselves, update our worldviews to take in new evidence and reach consensus quickly about how things are happening.... or maybe we can't. For every bit a pop statistics in Signal and the Noise, there is some psychology 101 and Econ 200 that has to be rehashed: humans are irrational creatures designed for an environment we're not actually living in, and, taken as a whole even individually rational behaviors can turn out to be irrational. Its a quagmire, but not one that Bayesian reasoning doesn't allow us to see our ways out of.
Another big thing that Silver insists on is that we can't be a slave to computers or big data. Eh. Silver seems to be bringing out the same luddite arguments of yesteryear, namely, "They can't do what we can!" which is surely true. Computers and Big Data do, currently, need many hands helping them. But the entire point is to make those helping hands computers, too.
Must read.
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
Review: Catch-22
The 22nd book in the Catch series is the most hilarious. This book is comparable to the fifth and final part of the Slaughterhouse pentalogy or the four-hundred and fifty first novel in the Fahrenheit series. They are about the evils and insanities of World War 2. They are incredible.
This is the first war novel I can remember reading about the middle-management of war. I'm used to enlistees. The honors programs of my youth are built around All Quiet on the Western Front or the Red Badge of Courage. They're built around a scream at my 14 year old self, "WAR IS BAD STAY IN SCHOOL STUDY AND LEARN OR YOU WILL BE POOR AND JOIN THE MILITARY AND DIE." At least, thats the curriculum. But Catch-22 is not about a teenager, or just-post-teenager. Its about a mid-20s veteran who has "fought and killed", or maybe, "fucked and survived." Its about the captain of a bomber who has to lead men to war, but is being led and controlled by others.
And the statement about these controllers is, "They're either stupid as fuck or sociopathic." This, to me, is mirrored later in the television show, The Office, where the central conflict is mid-tier white color workers (Jim, Pam, etc) fighting against the forces of retardation (Michael) and sociopathy (Jan, Ryan) at higher company levels. Of course, the Office is not asking our heroes to sacrifice themselves for sociopaths. Yossarians superiors are, and the entire crux of the novel is him trying to escape their desire to throw him at the death machine that is war.
Catch-22 is 41 chapters. The first 30 is a sitcom. They're classical comedy. They define comedy. They're the reason I draw comparisons to the Office. And around the last ten chapters, All Quiet On The Western Front appears. The last 10 chapters are brutal, romantic, and perfectly written. Yossarians feelings towards his friends, his lovers, and the world are anguishing. They're poetic. I didn't cry, but if I had someone other than my roommates to annoy, I would have quoted most of these chapters.
It is a good thing this book was not required reading. I do not think I could have been forced to read it because it is, in fact, very big. To get all that humor and all that passion, you must read it slowly and carefully and that's what I ended up doing.
This is the first war novel I can remember reading about the middle-management of war. I'm used to enlistees. The honors programs of my youth are built around All Quiet on the Western Front or the Red Badge of Courage. They're built around a scream at my 14 year old self, "WAR IS BAD STAY IN SCHOOL STUDY AND LEARN OR YOU WILL BE POOR AND JOIN THE MILITARY AND DIE." At least, thats the curriculum. But Catch-22 is not about a teenager, or just-post-teenager. Its about a mid-20s veteran who has "fought and killed", or maybe, "fucked and survived." Its about the captain of a bomber who has to lead men to war, but is being led and controlled by others.
And the statement about these controllers is, "They're either stupid as fuck or sociopathic." This, to me, is mirrored later in the television show, The Office, where the central conflict is mid-tier white color workers (Jim, Pam, etc) fighting against the forces of retardation (Michael) and sociopathy (Jan, Ryan) at higher company levels. Of course, the Office is not asking our heroes to sacrifice themselves for sociopaths. Yossarians superiors are, and the entire crux of the novel is him trying to escape their desire to throw him at the death machine that is war.
Catch-22 is 41 chapters. The first 30 is a sitcom. They're classical comedy. They define comedy. They're the reason I draw comparisons to the Office. And around the last ten chapters, All Quiet On The Western Front appears. The last 10 chapters are brutal, romantic, and perfectly written. Yossarians feelings towards his friends, his lovers, and the world are anguishing. They're poetic. I didn't cry, but if I had someone other than my roommates to annoy, I would have quoted most of these chapters.
It is a good thing this book was not required reading. I do not think I could have been forced to read it because it is, in fact, very big. To get all that humor and all that passion, you must read it slowly and carefully and that's what I ended up doing.
Sunday, June 21, 2015
Review: A Lover's Discourse: Fragments
Love is not mysterious. We see it in others from the time we are born. We can watch it play out time and time again in the same pattern, like a Marvel summer blockbuster. Indeed, we see it in summer blockbusters. We see it in indie films. We read about it in classic books and modern books. Hell, even Star Wars correctly, if awkwardly, gets love right. (twice!) Everybody gets it right, from the ancient Sumerians to fanfic writers.
We can reduce love to a science. We know what personality types fit together like puzzle pieces with a few dozen questions. We know what proportions of muscle and fat ought to be obtained for universal attraction. We have a very good idea of what the brain is doing in love. We know there is a circuit of dopamine that sprinkles the frontal cortex. We know that it is linked to cortisol and testosterone, stress and sex.
But when we're in love we forget all this. The rules that stop us from being Romeo and Juliet suddenly don't mean shit. The friends that I sneered at for doing ridiculous things, like sending "I love you"s from the other side of the planet, become partners in the bittersweet paradise. The banks of wisdom, collected by intense examination of the natural world, become empty chasms. I cannot possibly call on them for help.
At best, I can go to a friend or two who parrot the same exact advice I have given them literally word for word. I don't need to put a string around my finger to remember, for I already put a string on everybody else's finger and they remember for me while I'm lost in the madness.
But they're outside of the madness. They don't understand, the same way when I'm outside the madness I cannot understand: the philosopher's ask, "what is it like to see the color red?" But they could surely ask, "what is it like to be in love?" Because while both surely have libraries of literature and verse describing them externally, nothing quite cuts it.
But Barthes comes close. In a little bit more then 200 pages, he held up the mirror to the Lover's condition and made the internal mindscape visible and legible. There is little narrative. There is a scene- the fragment- and how to approach it. But the scene is not local. It is global. which telephone does the Lover wait by? All of them. Who is the rival lover? Anybody.
Barthes does require some knowledge of things. You ought to be familiar with "The Sorrow of Young Werther", Nietzsche, and that Buddhism is a thing. You ought to be well guarded against the Werther effect. But I don't think you have to be in love to gain what you need to from this book. (now, at the moment of this review my opinion on this doesn't truly count as I am not not in love). For the sane, this book is a looking glass that telescopes in on the mountains and valleys of the Lover's condition. For the rest of us, it is a white mirror.
We can reduce love to a science. We know what personality types fit together like puzzle pieces with a few dozen questions. We know what proportions of muscle and fat ought to be obtained for universal attraction. We have a very good idea of what the brain is doing in love. We know there is a circuit of dopamine that sprinkles the frontal cortex. We know that it is linked to cortisol and testosterone, stress and sex.
But when we're in love we forget all this. The rules that stop us from being Romeo and Juliet suddenly don't mean shit. The friends that I sneered at for doing ridiculous things, like sending "I love you"s from the other side of the planet, become partners in the bittersweet paradise. The banks of wisdom, collected by intense examination of the natural world, become empty chasms. I cannot possibly call on them for help.
At best, I can go to a friend or two who parrot the same exact advice I have given them literally word for word. I don't need to put a string around my finger to remember, for I already put a string on everybody else's finger and they remember for me while I'm lost in the madness.
But they're outside of the madness. They don't understand, the same way when I'm outside the madness I cannot understand: the philosopher's ask, "what is it like to see the color red?" But they could surely ask, "what is it like to be in love?" Because while both surely have libraries of literature and verse describing them externally, nothing quite cuts it.
But Barthes comes close. In a little bit more then 200 pages, he held up the mirror to the Lover's condition and made the internal mindscape visible and legible. There is little narrative. There is a scene- the fragment- and how to approach it. But the scene is not local. It is global. which telephone does the Lover wait by? All of them. Who is the rival lover? Anybody.
Barthes does require some knowledge of things. You ought to be familiar with "The Sorrow of Young Werther", Nietzsche, and that Buddhism is a thing. You ought to be well guarded against the Werther effect. But I don't think you have to be in love to gain what you need to from this book. (now, at the moment of this review my opinion on this doesn't truly count as I am not not in love). For the sane, this book is a looking glass that telescopes in on the mountains and valleys of the Lover's condition. For the rest of us, it is a white mirror.
Friday, May 1, 2015
Review: The Peripheral
| The Peripheral was nauseating. I didn't read the book jacket. I just read it and my mind was gone from the beginning. Gibson, apparently, has that effect on people. He doesn't hold your hand through the world. He doesn't create settings. Its already been set. History has already happened. Its your job as the reader to get used to it. But once you get through the looking glass? Once you arm yourself with an remote controlled android from the ghost of future past (or past future)? You're in a real, defined powerful world where the Singularity doesn't happen all at once, The Day After Tomorrow is an entire generation, and the references are made to things that haven't been made yet. I cared about the characters Gibson creates even though some of them are flat as fuck. The two protagonists aren't, and really thats all that matters because this is science fiction: the world is the thing we crave. The Peripheral has two. Both equally terrifying. One in its bleakness, and the other in its surreal, tranquil idealism. Heads will be spun. |
Tuesday, April 7, 2015
Review: What Technology Wants
Kevin Kelly outlines a view of technology that is simultaneously mystic and grounded. Technology, or as he refers to it as "the technium" is a natural progression of the universe. It is the next step above atoms, molecules, organisms, and minds. It is the next step in evolution. It is the result of extropic processes. It is the result of information density rising. It is the result of mating minds.
It is the result of profit-seeking agents.
Kelly is careful about these things which can seem mystic. He makes good points about how technological growth show the same patterns of evolution- convergence, divergence, diversity and explosive growth being key themes he explores. But i wish he would have talked more about the mechanisms. When he refers to Moore's Law as the result of corporate cycles he surely hit the mark. Why every 2 years? Because thats what companies in the 50s planned for, and after the law was made thats what they insisted upon. Its the sums of mechanisms like this that make up the growth and expansion of technology and I wish Kelly would talk more about them.
His book was good. I think I might be too invested in his worldview already to get anything more out of it, but to somebody who doesnt understand
It is the result of profit-seeking agents.
Kelly is careful about these things which can seem mystic. He makes good points about how technological growth show the same patterns of evolution- convergence, divergence, diversity and explosive growth being key themes he explores. But i wish he would have talked more about the mechanisms. When he refers to Moore's Law as the result of corporate cycles he surely hit the mark. Why every 2 years? Because thats what companies in the 50s planned for, and after the law was made thats what they insisted upon. Its the sums of mechanisms like this that make up the growth and expansion of technology and I wish Kelly would talk more about them.
His book was good. I think I might be too invested in his worldview already to get anything more out of it, but to somebody who doesnt understand
Saturday, February 7, 2015
Review: The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism
I couldn't finish this book. But I'm going to put it on my "finished" shelf because I don't want to read it again on accident: Rifkin starts out with a super reasonable premise: capitalism is based off a contradiction that will eventually snuff itself out or fundamentally change how it works. In his words, the marginal cost of making lots of things will go to zero. Ok, dude. I got you.
Then he starts getting hippie. Then he starts getting dippie. I call it hippie-dippie nonsense. The world, according to Rifkin, is going to go from capitalism to a collaborative commons, which is apparently where localism Gandhism, and open-source software meet. This "commons" is the same commons that existed pre-enclosure movement, and apparently existed an infinite time before that. Capitalism was an aberrant stage of human development.
But actually, no. Rifkin notes that he has been obsessed with the idea of the commons and its annoyed his wife and it sure annoyed me as well. He doesn't spend enough time discussing what the changes in technology will actually do or mean. The dangers of 3d printing and each individual having access to different technologies isn't discussed. Virtual reality is essentially ignored. "Communications-energy matrix" is a word that he repeats a billion times and never actually defines it. Does he mean Matrix as in "The Matrix" or as in "Rows and columns of numbers useful for describing a system of equations"? Along with that are the words "thermodynamic efficiencies." Like. I know what he is talking about.... but why add "thermodynamic" to "efficiency" which works just fine unless you're going to go into a little bit of detail? Why add that? Why does he keep saying "Internet of Things" without actually describing what it will do?
This book should be called, "Zero Marginal Buzzword: Thank god i didn't buy this book."
Then he starts getting hippie. Then he starts getting dippie. I call it hippie-dippie nonsense. The world, according to Rifkin, is going to go from capitalism to a collaborative commons, which is apparently where localism Gandhism, and open-source software meet. This "commons" is the same commons that existed pre-enclosure movement, and apparently existed an infinite time before that. Capitalism was an aberrant stage of human development.
But actually, no. Rifkin notes that he has been obsessed with the idea of the commons and its annoyed his wife and it sure annoyed me as well. He doesn't spend enough time discussing what the changes in technology will actually do or mean. The dangers of 3d printing and each individual having access to different technologies isn't discussed. Virtual reality is essentially ignored. "Communications-energy matrix" is a word that he repeats a billion times and never actually defines it. Does he mean Matrix as in "The Matrix" or as in "Rows and columns of numbers useful for describing a system of equations"? Along with that are the words "thermodynamic efficiencies." Like. I know what he is talking about.... but why add "thermodynamic" to "efficiency" which works just fine unless you're going to go into a little bit of detail? Why add that? Why does he keep saying "Internet of Things" without actually describing what it will do?
This book should be called, "Zero Marginal Buzzword: Thank god i didn't buy this book."
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
Review: The Martian
This book is pretty much the hardest science fiction you will get your hands on. People compare it to Apollo 13 and Cast Away, but it is more apt to consider it Gravity without Sandra Bullock's characters whining... or if Clooney had lived.
All the criticism you hear is true: Mark, the main character, is the only character with depth. Everybody on earth is flat. He never breaks down (explained as he never describes how he breaks down to us). But dang is this book smart.
This is classic sci-fi. This is sci-fi where the writing doesn't get loosey goosey with prose. It doesn't try to wax poetic about humanity's place in the Cosmos. We don't need Carl Sagan or Richard Dawkins trying to free us from our boring livings with their wonders. We just need the facts in order to survive. Weir gives us the facts. Hydrazine is made of nitrogen and hydrogen. Potatoes are good for you. Freeze the air to get CO2 out of it. Factors of safety are important. Backs ups for your backs ups are important. Also, always have books and music stored digitally nearby. You never know when you're going to be waiting for the sun to recharge your car.
All the criticism you hear is true: Mark, the main character, is the only character with depth. Everybody on earth is flat. He never breaks down (explained as he never describes how he breaks down to us). But dang is this book smart.
This is classic sci-fi. This is sci-fi where the writing doesn't get loosey goosey with prose. It doesn't try to wax poetic about humanity's place in the Cosmos. We don't need Carl Sagan or Richard Dawkins trying to free us from our boring livings with their wonders. We just need the facts in order to survive. Weir gives us the facts. Hydrazine is made of nitrogen and hydrogen. Potatoes are good for you. Freeze the air to get CO2 out of it. Factors of safety are important. Backs ups for your backs ups are important. Also, always have books and music stored digitally nearby. You never know when you're going to be waiting for the sun to recharge your car.