Arts & Letters

A tale of two software projects

2 Comments / Computers & Internet, Military, Neal Stephenson, Security & Intelligence / /

A few weeks ago, David Foster wrote an excellent post about two software projects. One was a failure, and one was a success.

The first project was the FBI’s new Virtual Case File system; a tool that would allow agents to better organize, analyze and communicate data on criminal and terrorism cases. After 3 years and over 100 million dollars, it was announced that the system may be totally unusable. How could this happen?

When it became clear that the project was in trouble, Aerospace Corporation was contracted to perform an independent evaluation. It recommended that the software be abandoned, saying that “lack of effective engineering discipline has led to inadequate specification, design and development of VCF.” SAIC has said it believes the problem was caused largely by the FBI: specifically, too many specification changes during the development process…an SAIC executive asserted that there were an average of 1.3 changes per day during the development. SAIC also believes that the current system is useable and can serve as a base for future development.

I’d be interested to see what the actual distribution of changes were (as opposed to the “average changes per day”, which seems awfully vague and somewhat obtuse to me), but I don’t find it that hard to believe that this sort of thing happened (especially because the software development firm was a separate entity). I’ve had some experience with gathering requirements, and it certainly can be a challenge, especially when you don’t know the processes currently in place. This does not excuse anything, however, and the question remains: how could this happen?

The second project, the success, may be able to shed some light on that. DARPA was tapped by the US Army to help protect troops from enemy snipers. The requested application would spot incoming bullets and identify their point of origin, and it would have to be easy to use, mobile, and durable.

The system would identify bullets from their sound..the shock wave created as they travelled through the air. By using multiple microphones and precisely timing the arrival of the “crack” of the bullet, its position could, in theory, be calculated. In practice, though, there were many problems, particularly the high levels of background noise–other weapons, tank engines, people shouting. All these had to be filtered out. By Thanksgiving weekend, the BBN team was at Quantico Marine Base, collecting data from actual firing…in terrible weather, “snowy, freezing, and rainy” recalls DARPA Program Manager Karen Wood. Steve Milligan, BBN’s Chief Technologist, came up with the solution to the filtering problem: use genetic algorithms. These are a kind of “simulated evolution” in which equations can mutate, be tested for effectivess, and sometimes even “mate,” over thousands of simulated generations (more on genetic algorithms here.)

By early March, 2004, the system was operational and had a name–“Boomerang.” 40 of them were installed on vehicles in Iraq. Based on feedback from the troops, improvements were requested. The system has now been reduced in size, shielded from radio interference, and had its display improved. It now tells soldiers the direction, range, and elevation of a sniper.

Now what was the biggest difference between the remarkable success of the Boomerang system and the spectacular failure of the Virtual Case File system? Obviously, the two projects present very different challenges, so a direct comparison doesn’t necessarily tell the whole story. However, it seems to me that discipline (in the case of the Army) or the lack of discipline (in the case of the FBI) might have been a major contributor to the outcomes of these two projects.

It’s obviously no secret that discipline plays a major role in the Army, but there is more to it than just that. Independence and initiative also play an important role in a military culture. In Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, the way the character Bobby Shaftoe (a Marine Raider, which is “…like a Marine, only more so.”) interacts with his superiors provides some insight (page 113 in my version):

Having now experienced all the phases of military existence except for the terminal ones (violent death, court-martial, retirement), he has come to understand the culture for what it is: a system of etiquette within which it becomes possible for groups of men to live together for years, travel to the ends of the earth, and do all kinds of incredibly weird shit without killing each other or completely losing their minds in the process. The extreme formality with which he addresses these officers carries an important subtext: your problem, sir, is doing it. My gung-ho posture says that once you give the order I’m not going to bother you with any of the details – and your half of the bargain is you had better stay on your side of the line, sir, and not bother me with any of the chickenshit politics that you have to deal with for a living.

Good military officers are used to giving an order, then staying out of their subordinate’s way as they carry out that order. I didn’t see any explicit measurement, but I would assume that there weren’t too many specification changes during the development of the Boomerang system. Of course, the developers themselves made all sorts of changes to specifics and they also incorporated feedback from the Army in the field in their development process, but that is standard stuff.

I suspect that the FBI is not completely to blame, but as the report says, there was a “lack of effective engineering discipline.” The FBI and SAIC share that failure. I suspect, from the number of changes requested by the FBI and the number of government managers involved, that micromanagement played a significant role. As Foster notes, we should be leveraging our technological abilities in the war on terror, and he suggests a loosely based oversight committe (headed by “a Director of Industrial Mobilization”) to make sure things like this don’t happen very often. Sounds like a reasonable idea to me…

The Stability of Three

Best Entries, Culture, Neal Stephenson, Politics / /

One of the things I’ve always respected about Neal Stephenson is his attitude (or rather, the lack thereof) regarding politics:

Politics – These I avoid for the simple reason that artists often make fools of themselves, and begin to produce bad art, when they decide to get political. A novelist needs to be able to see the world through the eyes of just about anyone, including people who have this or that set of views on religion, politics, etc. By espousing one strong political view a novelist loses the power to do this. Anyone who has convinced himself, based on reading my work, that I hold this or that political view, is probably wrong. What is much more likely is that, for a while, I managed to get inside the head of a fictional character who held that view.

Having read and enjoyed several of his books, I think this attitude has served him well. In a recent interview in Reason magazine, Stephenson makes several interesting observations. The whole thing is great, and many people are interested in his comments regarding an American technology and science, but I found one other tidbit very interesting. Strictly speaking, it doesn’t break with his attitude about politics, but it is somewhat political:

Speaking as an observer who has many friends with libertarian instincts, I would point out that terrorism is a much more formidable opponent of political liberty than government. Government acts almost as a recruiting station for libertarians. Anyone who pays taxes or has to fill out government paperwork develops libertarian impulses almost as a knee-jerk reaction. But terrorism acts as a recruiting station for statists. So it looks to me as though we are headed for a triangular system in which libertarians and statists and terrorists interact with each other in a way that I’m afraid might turn out to be quite stable.

I took particular note of what he describes as a “triangular system” because it’s something I’ve seen before…

One of the primary goals of the American Constitutional Convention was to devise a system that would be resistant to tyranny. The founders were clearly aware of the damage that an unrestrained government could do, so they tried to design the new system in such a way that it wouldn’t become tyrannical. Democratic institions like mandatory periodic voting and direct accountability to the people played a large part in this, but the founders also did some interesting structural work as well.

Taking their cue from the English Parliament’s relationship with the King of England, the founders decided to create a legislative branch separate from the executive. This, in turn, placed the two governing bodies in competition. However, this isn’t a very robust system. If one of the governing bodies becomes more powerful than the other, they can leverage their advantage to accrue more power, thus increasing the imbalance.

A two-way balance of power is unstable, but a three-way balance turns out to be very stable. If any one body becomes more powerful than the other two, the two usually can and will temporarily unite, and their combined power will still exceed the third. So the founders added a third governing body, an independent judiciary.

The result was a bizarre sort of stable oscillation of power between the three major branches of the federal government. Major shifts in power (such as wars) disturbed the system, but it always fell back to a preferred state of flux. This stable oscillation turns out to be one of the key elements of Chaos theory, and is referred to as a strange attractor. These “triangular systems” are particularly good at this, and there are many other examples…

Some argue that the Cold War stabilized considerably when China split from the Soviet Union. Once it became a three-way conflict, there was much less of a chance of unbalance (and as unbalance would have lead to nuclear war, this was obviously a good thing).

Steven Den Beste once noted this stabilizing power of three in the interim Iraqi constitution, where the Iraqis instituted a Presidency Council of 3 Presidents representing each of the 3 major factions in Iraq:

…those writing the Iraqi constitution also had to create a system acceptable to the three primary factions inside of Iraq. If they did not, the system would shake itself to pieces and there was a risk of Iraqi civil war.

The divisions within Iraq are very real. But this constitution takes advantage of the fact that there are three competing factions none of which really trusts the other. This constitution leverages that weakness, and makes it into a strength.

It should be interesting to see if that structure will be maintained in the new Iraqi constitution.

As for Stephenson’s speculation that a triangular system consisting of libertarians, statists, and terrorists may develop, I’m not sure. They certainly seem to feed off one another in a way that would facilitate such a system, but I’m not positive it would work out that way, nor do I think it is particularly a desirable state to be in, all the more because it could be a very stable system due to its triangular structure. In any case, I thought it was an interesting observation and well worth considering…

The Final Baghdad Journal

Arts & Letters, Politics / /

The final entry in an exceptional series of articles written by a New York artist, Steve Mumford, on his experiences in Iraq has been posted. As always, it is compelling reading and depicts an Iraq not normally seen from the usual sources.

Apparently Mumford’s work has been gathering more and more attention; those who have been following his work will be interested in this NY Times article (registration required) which provides a little background into Mumford’s motivations and inspiration.

Now 44, Mr. Mumford had been comfortably embedded in the London and New York gallery worlds. He was known for paintings that seemed to pit two disparate Americas – wilderness and society – against each other by depicting, for example, a car seen against a sublime landscape or a wild animal about to pounce at a house. … Mr. Mumford says his inspiration for the project stemmed directly from his admiration for the painter Winslow Homer, who was sent to the front during the Civil War to sketch for Harper’s Weekly.

… Like Winslow Homer before him, Mr. Mumford spent most of his time at military bases, chronicling the routine, monotony and constant togetherness of soldiers’ daily lives. Often they are seen dozing on cots, doing paperwork, watching television or playing cards. But he also shows them standing guard, attending neighborhood council meetings, searching homes and hunched inside tanks, tensely watching the road.

The article mentions that this latest installment is unfortunately also the final one (though one wonder whether his newfound friendships with Iraqi artists will lead to further “journal” entries in the future). As always, it is an excellent read. Artnet has collected all of the Baghdad Journals here, if you’re interested.

Arranging Interests in Parallel

Best Entries, Culture, Neal Stephenson, Weblogs / /

I have noticed a tendency on my part to, on occasion, quote a piece of fiction, and then comment on some wisdom or truth contained therein. This sort of thing is typically frowned upon in rigorous debate as fiction is, by definition, contrived and thus referencing it in a serious argument is rightly seen as undesirable. Fortunately for me, this blog, though often taking a serious tone, is ultimately an exercise in thinking for myself. The point is to have fun. This is why I will sometimes quote fiction to make a point, and it’s also why I enjoy questionable exercises like speculating about historical figures. As I mentioned in a post on Benjamin Franklin, such exercises usually end up saying more about me and my assumptions than anything else. But it’s my blog, so that is more or less appropriate.

Astute readers must at this point be expecting to recieve a citation from a piece of fiction, followed by an application of the relevant concepts to some ends. And they would be correct.

Early on in Neal Stephenson’s novel The System of the World, Daniel Waterhouse reflects on what is required of someone in his position:

He was at an age where it was never possible ot pursue one errand at a time. He must do many at once. He guessed that people who had lived right and arranged things properly must have it all rigged so that all of their quests ran in parallel, and reinforced and supported one another just so. They gained reputations as conjurors. Others found their errands running at cross purposes and were never able to do anything; they ended up seeming mad, or else percieived the futility of what they were doing and gave up, or turned to drink.

Naturally, I believe there is some truth to this. In fact, the life of Benjamin Franklin, a historical figure from approximately the same time period as Dr. Waterhouse, provides us with a more tangible reference point.

Franklin was known to mix private interests with public ones, and to leverage both to further his business interests. The consummate example of Franklin’s proclivities was the Junto, a club of young workingmen formed by Franklin in the fall of 1727. The Junto was a small club composed of enterprising tradesman and artisans who discussed issues of the day and also endeavored to form a vehicle for the furtherance of their own careers. The enterprise was typical of Franklin, who was always eager to form associations for mutual benefit, and who aligned his interests so they ran in parallel, reinforcing and supporting one another.

A more specific example of Franklin’s knack for aligning interests is when he produced the first recorded abortion debate in America. At the time, Franklin was running a print shop in Philadelphia. His main competitor, Andrew Bradford, published the town’s only newspaper. The paper was meager, but very profitable in both moneys and prestige (which led him to be more respected by merchants and politicians, and thus more likely to get printing jobs), and Franklin decided to launch a competing newspaper. Unfortunately, another rival printer, Samuel Keimer, caught wind of Franklin’s plan and immediately launched a hastily assembled newspaper of his own. Franklin, realizing that it would be difficult to launch a third paper right away, vowed to crush Keimer:

In a comptetitive bank shot, Franklin decided to write a series of anonymous letters and essays, along the lines of the Silence Dogood pieces of his youth, for Bradford’s [American Weekly Mercury] to draw attention away from Keimer’s new paper. The goal was to enliven, at least until Keimer was beaten, Bradford’s dull paper, which in its ten years had never puplished any such features.

The first two pieces were attacks on poor Keimer, who was serializing entries from an encyclopedia. His intial installment included, innocently enough, an entry on abortion. Franklin pounced. Using the pen names “Martha Careful” and “Celia Shortface,” he wrote letters to Bradford’s paper feigning shock and indignation at Keimer’s offense. As Miss Careful threatened, “If he proceeds farther to expose the secrets of our sex in that audacious manner [women would] run the hazard of taking him by the beard in the next place we meet him.” Thus Franklin manufactured the first recorded abortion debate in America, not because he had any strong feelings on the issue, but because he knew it would sell newspapers. [This is an exerpt from the recent biography Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson]

Franklin’s many actions of the time certainly weren’t running at cross purposes, and he did manage to align his interests in parallel. He truly was a master, and we’ll be hearing more about him on this blog soon.

This isn’t the first time I’ve written about this subject before either. In a previous post, On the Overloading of Information, I noted one of the main reasons why blogging continues to be an enjoyable activity for me, despite changing interests and desires:

I am often overwhelmed by a desire to consume various things – books, movies, music, etc… The subject of such things is also varied and, as such, often don’t mix very well. That said, the only thing I have really found that works is to align those subjects that do mix in such a way that they overlap. This is perhaps the only reason blogging has stayed on my plate for so long: since the medium is so free-form and since I have absolute control over what I write here and when I write it, it is easy to align my interests in such a way that they overlap with my blog (i.e. I write about what interests me at the time).

One way you can tell that my interests have shifted over the years is that the format and content of my writing here has also changed. I am once again reminded of Neal Stephenson’s original minimalist homepage in which he speaks of his ongoing struggle against what Linda Stone termed as “continuous partial attention,” as that curious feature of modern life only makes the necessity of aligning interests in parallel that much more important.

Aligning blogging with my other core interests, such as reading fiction, is one of the reasons I frequently quote fiction, even in reference to a serious topic. Yes, such a practice is frowned upon, but blogging is a hobby, the idea of which is to have fun. Indeed, Glenn Reynolds, progenitor of one of the most popular blogging sites around, also claims to blog for fun, and interestingly enough, he has quoted fiction in support of his own serious interests as well (more than once). One other interesting observation is that all references to fiction in this post, including even Reynolds’ references, are from Neal Stephenson’s novels. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out what significance, if any, that holds.

/.Stephenson

2 Comments / Arts & Letters, Neal Stephenson / /

The new Slashdot interview with Neal Stephenson is an unexpected treat. Not only are the questions great, but Stephenson’s responses are witty and somewhat more profound (and much longer, as he had time to compose answers to some of the more difficult questions). As Nate points out, one of the more enlightening answers deals with the much rumored feud between Stephenson and William Gibson:

I was doing a reading/signing at White Dwarf Books in Vancouver. Gibson stopped by to say hello and extended his hand as if to shake. But I remembered something Bruce Sterling had told me. For, at the time, Sterling and I had formed a pact to fight Gibson. Gibson had been regrown in a vat from scraps of DNA after Sterling had crashed an LNG tanker into Gibson’s Stealth pleasure barge in the Straits of Juan de Fuca. During the regeneration process, telescoping Carbonite stilettos had been incorporated into Gibson’s arms. Remembering this in the nick of time, I grabbed the signing table and flipped it up between us. Of course the Carbonite stilettos pierced it as if it were cork board, but this spoiled his aim long enough for me to whip my wakizashi out from between my shoulder blades and swing at his head. He deflected the blow with a force blast that sprained my wrist. The falling table knocked over a space heater and set fire to the store. Everyone else fled. Gibson and I dueled among blazing stacks of books for a while. Slowly I gained the upper hand, for, on defense, his Praying Mantis style was no match for my Flying Cloud technique. But I lost him behind a cloud of smoke. Then I had to get out of the place. The streets were crowded with his black-suited minions and I had to turn into a swarm of locusts and fly back to Seattle.

Heh. Stephenson apparently fought Gibson two times after that, and the interview is worth reading just because of that answer… but the whole thing is worth reading, especially his answer regarding why genre and popular writers don’t get the literary respect they deserve (or don’t, depending on your point of view). [Thanks again to Nate for pointing this out to me, who, in my work induced haze, had missed it entirely]

Update: Just for fun, I checked out Stephenson’s homepage and found this picture of the entire Baroque Cycle manuscript:

Damn.

Again Update: Holy Crap! Stephenson t-shirts? And they look cool too! Why was I not informed? Damn you monkey research squad!

Dark Tower & Adaptation

1 Comment / The Dark Tower / /

This is yet another entry in a series of somewhat repetitive posts about Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, particularly how it is going to end. Previous installments are here: [part 1 | part 2 | part 3] Spoilers Ahead:

I’ve often felt that King doesn’t know how to end his novels – it seems like he is just making it up as he goes along. It’s a shame because he does come up with some pretty intriguing concepts, and he knows how to get you to turn the page, but as compelling as some of his ideas are, he often ends up backing himself into a corner. He sometimes manages to weasel his way out of it, but other times the ending is just unsatisfying.

The Dark Tower series was different than his other work, though. It had a broader scope than his other books. It is an ambitious effort, telling the epic story of Roland, the last gunslinger, and his quest for the Dark Tower, and King has often described it as his opus. All along, though, I was bothered by the nagging suspicion that he didn’t know how to end the series. It seemed like he was making it up as he went along, and that he was backing himself into a corner. He already did as much within the series, in the third volume called The Waste Lands, which he describes in the Author’s Note thusly:

I am well aware that some readers of The Waste Lands will be displeased that it has ended as it has, with so much unresolved. I am not terribly pleased to be leaving Roland and his companions in the not-so-tender care of Blaine the Mono myself, and although you are not obligated to believe me, I must nevertheless insist that I was as surprised by the conclusion to this third volume as some of my readers may be. Yet books which write themselves (as this one did, for the most part) must also be allowed to end themselves, and I can only assure you, Reader, that Roland and his band have come to one of the crucial border crossings in their story, and we must leave them here for a while at the customs station, answering questions and filling out forms.

He had ended The Waste Lands with a cliffhanger, but didn’t continue the story for a few years! But the new volume came, and resolve the cliffhanger it did. But in a sense, I could always tell that the story was leading somewhere, and there was always a nagging thought in the back of my mind about how he was going to end it (or even if he was going to end it). So when the new novels started coming out last year, I began noticing bits and pieces of the books which lead me to believe that I wasn’t going to be happy with the ending. At times, it is difficult to shake the notion that King is overtly attempting to warn the reader that the ending isn’t going to be satisfying. It is almost as if King realizes that he’s written himself into a hole, and doesn’t really know the way out, and is trying to subtly inform his audience that they may not like where it’s going.

I’m about 550 pages (out of 830, not including the Appendix) into the final volume of the series, aptly titled The Dark Tower. Steady as it goes, but I did want to mention something about one of King’s questionable additions to the Dark Tower mythos: the inclusion of Stephen King himself. You see, Stephen King has written himself into the story. Personally, I found this to be a questionable move, but I must admit that I found those chapters that have Stephen King (the character) to be rather well done. I’m still not sure it was the wisest move, but it could certainly have been much worse and I’ve actually enjoyed some of the nuances that have come about because of that addition. The way in which he references himself, and the part his “character” plays in the story, reminded me of something…

The movie Adaptation is based on an odd recursive concept: The screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman, was hired to write an adaptation of Susan Orlean’s novel The Orchid Thief, but he found the task to be quite difficult and could not seem to make any progress. So instead of actually writing the adaptation, he writes a script about how he is having trouble writing the adaptation. The result is a strangely compelling and moving film.

And it struck me that King, himself anxious that he would not be able to complete his beloved Dark Tower series, has instead written a story about how he is having trouble ending the series. Oh, it’s not all about him. In fact, his “character” is actually quite a peripheral one, but every mention of his character seems to fit. And to be fair, as King has said, this stuff writes itself. For example, on page 144 of The Dark Tower, Roland’s ka-tet discusses the writer:

“If he wrote those things into the story,” Eddie said, “it was long after we saw him in 1977.”

“Aye,” Roland agreed.

“And I don’t think he thought them up,” Eddie said. “Not really. He’s just… I dunno, just a…”

“A bumhug?” Susannah asked, smiling.

“No!” Jake said, sounding a little shocked. “Not that. He’s a sender. A telecaster.” …

It must be a little cathartic for King, to be able to use his difficulties in writing the series in such a way, just as Charlie Kaufman was able to channel his frustration into something meaningful. Another quote, from pages 446-447, portrays the author thinking about writing the series:

Going back to the tale of the Tower means swimming in deep water. Maybe drowning there. Yet he suddenly realizes standing here at this crossroads, that if he goes back early he will begin. He won’t be able to help himself. … He’ll junk the current story, turn his back on the safety of land, and swim out into that dark water once again. He’s done it four times before, but this time he’ll have to swim all the way to the other side.

To be honest, I’m not being very fair to King at all. I’m certainly reading a lot into them, but these last few books aren’t bad, and I’ve really enjoyed reading them. I have a feeling that once the series is over, I’ll look back on it with a grin on my face. I might even read the whole thing again. But I can’t get over the feeling that there was something else, something better, that laid in store for Roland and his quest. It feels like King has lost something with these newer books. They lack the sweeping grandeur of the first four books. It no longer seems to be such an epic quest, but then, I’m not sure such greatness could be sustained. I wonder how I would feel if King never finished the series, just leaving it at book four? In closing, another quote, from page 447:

“Resolution demands sacrifice,” King says, and although no one hears but the birds and he has no idea what this means, he is not disturbed.

Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came

2 Comments / Arts & Letters / /

So the seventh and final book in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, aptly titled The Dark Tower, is finally out. The series was a good 25 years in the making, and to be honest, I never thought he’d finish it (especially after his several threats of retirement). I’m not sure I would have minded, either, because I’ve always been a bit disappointed by the way he ends a lot of his stories. It often feels like he’s just making it up as he goes along, assembling various interesting ideas and using them to drive a story, but he sometimes backs himself into a corner. In any case, about a year ago, King started publishing new Dark Tower novels on a regular schedule. In these new novels, I’ve been noticing things that lead me to believe that the ending is going to stink, that King knows it, and that he is attempting to lower expectations. There are several examples, and I’ve posted about them before. I guess this is a bit repetitive, but I find it interesting.

The first page of the new book has several quotes from various sources (authors often do this, choosing quotations that go along with the themes of the story), one of which is Robert Browning’s poem “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came” which King claims was the inspiration for the entire Dark Tower series. Another quote, by Trent Reznor (from the Nine Inch Nails song Hurt), doesn’t do much to assuage my doubts:

What have I become?

My sweetest friend

Everyone I know

Goes away in the end

You could have it all

My empire of dirt

I will let you down

I will make you hurt

I know this is a bit unfair to Mr. King, but I have my doubts. Then again, expectations play a big part in perception, and I could certainly end up happy with the ending because I don’t expect it to be good (a la my feelings on The Village).

Blame it on Ka

Arts & Letters / /

This is a follow up to my last post on Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. I just finished the latest installment of said series, entitled Song of Susannah. In some ways I’m not very happy with it, but I’m willing to give King the benefit of the doubt. I still don’t expect to like the ending, and King seems to be dropping hints all over the place indicating that my fears are well founded. I referenced one in my last post, but there were others in this book, such as this one in which Roland talks to a “fictional” Stephen King who is afraid he won’t finish the story:

“I’m afraid.”

“I know, but we’ll try–”

“It’s not that. I’m afraid of not being able to finish.” His voice lowered. “I’m afraid the Tower will fall and I’ll be held to blame.”

“That is up to ka, not you,” Roland said, “Or me.”

I didn’t much like the idea of King writing himself into the story, but the way he did so was agreeable enough (I don’t like that he did it at all, but considering that he did, it could have been worse). In any case, it’s stuff like that excerpt that make me think King is trying to lower expectations. What’s more, he’s blaming it on ka (for the uninitiated, ka is roughly translated as “destiny” though there is more to it than that)! He’s done this before too – in my last post I referenced the cliffhanger ending of the third Dark Tower novel, The Waste Lands. He claimed that the ending just felt right, that “the wind just stopped blowing” and that the book should end where it did. Further, he claimed that he didn’t even know how it would end. Six years later, he wrote the next book in the series and finally resolved that conflict. Such an event, if we are to take King at his word, strengthens the suspicion that he’s just making this up as he goes along. Naturally, I’m worried about how this is going to end.

On the bright side, Song of Susannah was a quick, fun read – a real page-turner. And I do think King could pull this thing off, but I’m very suspicious. Or perhaps I’m just subconsciously trying to set the standards low so I won’t be disappointed in the series when it ends (a la my post on expectations and The Village).

Bracing for Disappointment

2 Comments / Arts & Letters / /

I’m currently reading the latest installment of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, entitled Song of Susannah. The series started over twenty years ago, with the publication of The Gunslinger. The series tells the tale of Roland of Gilead, the last gunslinger, and his quest for the Dark Tower. Along the way, he picks up 3 companions, and they travel along a challenge ridden path, filled with imaginative characters and landscapes. It’s astoundingly ambitious, and the story has always had a teasing sort of visible potential.

Unfortunately, I’ve often felt that King doesn’t know how to end his novels – it seems like he just makes up a bunch of compelling concepts, follows through a bit, then promptly corners himself. He sometimes manages to weasel his way out of it, but I don’t generally end up satisfied. Even within the Dark Tower series, he’s done some odd things (namely, the way he ended the third book – The Waste Lands – was a cliffhanger, and he didn’t write the next book for 5 years). So naturally I’m a little apprehensive about the impending end of the Dark Tower series.

I read a part last night which made me feel like King knows we’re not going to like it. It’s a piece of dialogue between two characters (actually two personalities in the same person, but I digress), but it might as well be between King and his audience:

And remember Susannah-Mio, if you want my cooperation, you give me some straight answers.

I will, the other replied. Just don’t expect to like them. Or even understand them.

What do you–

Never Mind! Gods, I never met anyone who could ask so many questions! Time is short!

Ok, so it’s unfair to put those words in King’s mouth like that, but that’s basically how I think the rest of the series is going to go – he’s going to answer a lot of the questions he brought up, but I don’t expect to like them, or even understand them. It just feels like he’s making it up as he’s going along, and he’s written himself into a corner again, with no way out. I hope I’m wrong, and I don’t want to write King off completely, but if the chapter that follows the exerpt above is any indication, I’m worried.

Perfidious Literature

4 Comments / Arts & Letters / /

For the past week or so, some perfidious folk have been posting about a list of “great works” that had been circulating the net. I won’t go into the details of the list, nor will I denote which works I’ve read (I’ve read several, but not a ton and not as much as several of the people who responded to that post), but I did want to comment on their attempt to revise the list to include some science fiction and humor. In addition to the list cited above, they came up with:

HST: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Miller: The Canticle of Leibowitz

O’Rourke: Parliament of Whores

Stephenson: Cryptonomicon

Bester: The Stars My Destination

Heinlein: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Toole: Confederacy of Dunces

Pynchon: Gravity’s Rainbow

Bukowski: Run With The Hunted

Burroughs: Naked Lunch

Hammett: The Maltese Falcon

An excellent list, though I have only read a few of them (and if they weren’t in the book queue, they are now). Then they went ahead and asked for some more, with the following ground rules:

First, nothing newer than, say, about 1970. Works need some time to settle into a canon, and we should not be thinking about something written after I was born. Second, philosophy and history should be eliminated from the list unless they have compelling literary value. Clausewitz is terrifically important, but nearly unreadable. Gibbon however, is a delight to read as well as being profoundly ensmartening. Third, light on the poetry. And fourth, no matter how painful it is, no more than one example of an artist?s work unless they are a) Shakespeare, b) writing in two distinctly different genres/modes, or c) both.

With those rules in mind, Buckethead came up with these additions:

Milton, John – Paradise Lost

Chandler, Raymond – The Long Goodbye

God – The Bible

Gibbon – The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Frank Herbert – Dune

J.R.R. Tolkien – The Lord of the Rings

These additions to the original list turn out to be more in line with what I tend to read. In general, these sorts of lists tend to eschew genre, especially science fiction, fantasy, horror, and even mystery, which is why I like the additions so much. So in the spirit of this discussion, I’d like to make a few humble additions.

  • More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon: This exceptional 1953 novel about a group of misfits banding together for survival should be accepted as a genuine piece of literature. It is a powerful novel, and it’s just as relevant as Bradbury, Heinlein or Asimov.
  • I am Legend by Richard Matheson: I’ve mentioned this novel on the blog several times before, but it’s worth repeating: This 1954 novel is a study of isolation and grim irony that turns the traditional vampire story on its head. This might be one of the most influential novels you’ve never heard of, as there have been many derivatives, particularly in film. This is the sort of novel that gets passed over becaues it is a genre piece (and, even worse, it’s about vampires!) However, even a short glimpse at it’s contents reveals that it cannot be relegated to the obscurity of the horror bin…
  • The Haunting by Shirley Jackson: This 1959 book is a classic that is rightly praised as one of the finest horror novels ever written. Undeniably creepy, but still profound and worthy of a list such as this…
  • Foundation by Isaac Asimov: This was a difficult choice, as there is a lot to choose from when it comes to Asimov. But this is the work he is best known for, and there is a reason for that. When I refer to Foundation, I’m referring to the three central novels (really 1 story made up of 8 short stories collected in 3 volumes, which is why I’m bending the rules slightly to include this one). These were originally written between 1942 – 1949, and they have aged well.

Honorable mentions or novels at least worthy of consideration would include the works of H.P. Lovecraft, Kafka, and Arthur C. Clarke (and I think I might even favor Rendezvous with Rama over 2001, though it’s a toss-up). Again, all of these novels are generally passed over in discussions of high literature simply because they are genre pieces. However, whatever respect that science fiction or horror have gained, these works are at least party responsible for…

Just for fun, and to keep up with this perfidious discussion, here are the books I’ve been reading recently. I tend to read more fiction than non-fiction, but that has been steadily changing as time goes on. In any case, I’m only including the last few… Here they are:

Fiction

The Confusion by Neal Stephenson (current)

Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

Galveston by Sean Stewart

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson

1984 by George Orwell (re-read)

Red Army by Ralph Peters

Watchmen by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons (illustrator)

Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

Non-Fiction

Benjamin Franklin by Walter Isaacson (current)

Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich

Parkinson’s Law by C. Northcote Parkinson

Blind Man’s Bluff by Sherry Sontag

On War by Carl Von Clausewitz

There you have it. If you’d like to share what you’ve been reading lately, feel free to leave a comment…