My translation of Rubel’s O Velho e o Mar

O Velho e o Mar

(When you awake inside)

Lança o barco contra o mar
Venha o vento que vier houver
E se virar, nada

Pega a mala que couber
Vira a estrada sem saber
E se perder, calma

Beija a boca da mulher
Tira a roupa sem pedir
E se sorrir, fica

Bebe o copo que encher
Diz pro amigo que é irmão
O que nem tem palavra

Lança o barco contra o mar
Venha o vento que houver
E se puder, voa

(When you awake inside)

The Old Man and the Sea

(When you awake inside)

Set your sails against the sea
Let the winds blow where they may
If your boat turns, tread water

Pack your suitcase, if life fits
Take the road you did not choose
You find or lose, it’s all right

Kiss the woman in the mouth
Lose your clothes, do not ask
And if she smiles, you lie down

Drink whichever glass is filled
Find your brother in your friend
No words to describe it

Set your sails against the sea
Let the winds blow where they may
Spread your wings and take flight

(When you awake inside)

—

More information about Rubel here or here.

Here’s missing the girl in the taxi. Wish we could have talked more.

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Norwegian Wood, by Haruki Murakami

My review at Goodreads.

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Murakami’s fiction is delightful, whether he’s writing magical realism or a fake autobiography like this one. His style is the same in both genres: the trippy similes, the rich descriptions, the flights of introspection by the characters, the symbolism. That the narrative is first-person and that the book is just one long chapter — as opposed to the omniscient third person narrator and the sequences of intertwined chapters in his other novels — only strengthen the impact of the story.

Also delightful is that we are transported back to a time when people wrote letters — the kind where we put pen to paper, the kind we had to stick in an envelope, go to to a post office or to a mailbox to send and wait for days until we got a reply, and precisely because so much time and effort were required, we tended to invest so much more of ourselves in the letters, working our thoughts onto the pages the way a painter works his vision onto the canvas. What a welcome break from today’s shallow exchanges on the internet.

I found the letters included in the text of the novel real masterpieces; they contain deep, touching reflections on the inner worlds of the characters.

Finally, I was impressed by the way the characters dealt with sex. I know the Japanese culture can be repressive and prudish, but the young people in this novel show a no-nonsense attitude in this respect. Could it be because they were living in the 1960’s?

View all my reviews

1Q84, by Haruki Murakami

Done reading. Below is a copy of my review at Goodreads:

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Murakami is addictive. I’ve read three novels by him in a little over a month: Kafka on the Shore, Wild Sheep Chase and 1Q84. Next in line is Norwegian Wood.

I like the way Murakami tells a story, mixing action and reflection. I know many people find that it slows down the pace of the narrative, but I like it.

I also like how he uses an omniscient narrator, something which is becoming increasingly rare, I think, and how even though each chapter corresponds to one character, the narrator is not limited to the character’s POV.

One example: in a chapter about the security people working for one of the cults, Buzzcut and Ponytail (two of their agents) jump into their car and hurry to try to catch one of the the main characters (let’s call him X), who is many miles away. At this point, the narrator says,

“By this time, however, X had been reunited with Y (…) in the park. Buzzcut and Ponytail had no idea where X was headed.”

Now, it’s easy to imagine a beginning writer being scolded by his instructor for mixing POVs this way, but Murakami can get away with it, because he’s Murakami. And it also goes to show that rules exist to be broken, preferably with flair.

1Q84 is a very long book, but worth every page. One curious thing about it: at about 50% of the story, we reach a climax that makes us wonder how Murakami will be able to pull off the remaining 50% of the book. A master stroke. I was perplexed by it, but also glad, because I still had more than half the book to read.

Life, old age, death, alternate universes, passages between them, fathers and sons, a man and a woman in love who haven’t seen each other in decades, characters who are writers, editors or professors: these are typical Murakami staples, and he gets better and better at portraying them, at making us care about their stories.

And sex, of the normal and of the magical kind. Murakami is good at writing about both.

A coincidence: last week, I watched 5 Centimeters per Second, a very Murakami-ish Japanese anime. There, the main storyline is also about a man and a woman in love who haven’t seen each other in decades, since childhood. Is this a Japanese thing? However good Murakami may be at breaking with Japanese tradition, he is still Japanese. Or maybe this is always a good theme, whichever country you come from.

View all my reviews

Currently reading: 1Q84, by Haruki Murakami

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

View all my reviews on Goodreads.

My short story “By the Book” published in Transition Magazine

 

My short story “By the Book” was published in Canada, in the Summer 2015 issue of Transition Magazine, edited by Ted Dyck.

You can now read it for free here (pdf).

 

Four versions of Lennon’s I don’t wanna be a soldier

Very different styles, each one reflecting the spirit of a decade.

Cowboy Junkies (2005)

Mad Season (1995)

John Lennon (1971)

The official version from the Imagine album, last track on side A (does anyone ever mention album sides these days?).

John Lennon (early take, 1971, with George Harrison)

My short story “Fever” published in Transition Magazine

 

My short story “Fever” was published in Canada, in the Summer 2014 issue of Transition Magazine, edited by Ted Dyck.

You can now read it for free here (pdf).

There is also an alternative version (with one extra sentence at the end!) that you can read here (pdf)

Unstuck in Time: Vonnegut Documentary

I have just contributed. You should too.

Watch the video:

Fire Language

(a poem by Ann K. Schwader — original at http://www.thepedestalmagazine.com/gallery.php?item=23416)

What kindled in that cave were names of things
like sparks from stars.

Tongues struck against a thought
again, & then again, as foxfire quickened
in mute amino acids where mutation
sang out as hands had not.

No innovation
of stick or stone or bone, but flame incarnate
from brains no longer solitary, silent
in their pale chambers.

Spiraling those walls
with verbs & nouns, identity & action
united by synaptic galaxies,
we wrote our labyrinth.

Defined our pattern
as ever outward, going forth on fire.

—after Charles Sandison’s video installation Chamber

Time Flies

You’ve heard of it.
But have you ever heard of time moths?

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, by Robin Sloan

Just finished it. Cute little book. I consumed it in two sittings of 5 hours each, pausing to digest it better (not because the reading was hard — it was delightfully easy — but because it deserves to be savored).

The review by Cory Doctorow says it is what “The DaVinci Code could be if its author loved the
world.”

I’m glad I did not read The DaVinci Code.

The book made me think of David Egger’s The Circle, with its fictional Google counterpart. In Mr. Penumbra’s, Google plays a major role too, and it is called Google.

But, unlike in The Circle, here Google is apparently not evil. It may actually be an important rung in the ladder that will let us climb all the way up to the Singularity.

But that’s not the focus. I think.

I suggest you read it and figure out what the focus is.

Of course, Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose also comes to mind.

You can find more about the book in Robin Sloan’s homepage.

There is also an extended interview with him on CBC.

The Life of the Artist in the Digital Age

by Julian Neuer

My fingertips possess fantastic powers.

The power to skip and hop over these keys, to form words and sentences, to surprise and amuse readers, even when the readers are just me.

The power to slide and dance over this trackpad, to trace lines and shapes, to enlarge and reduce them, to fill figures and backgrounds, to fill — to try to fill — empty spaces in life.

From my fingertips emerge laser rays, burning sparks, electronic ectoplasm, bucket-filled color gradients. Visible magic.

From my fingertips come the motions to conduct invisible orchestras, the cues to direct the actors planted in the crowd.

My fingertips set the pace. My fingertips point to destinations.

I raise my hands and they turn into long branches, reaching all the way to the clouds. Birds come to rest on my fingers, to converse, to plan their migrations. At night, when the birds are gone, my fingertips tickle the stars.

I let my arms fall to my sides, my hands dig deep into the ground. My roots grow so fast that they emerge on the other side of the world, only to meet the sky again. On my fingertips perch tall mountains, giant waves, fiery dragons, rising suns.

It’s been a long day. Back home, my head is heavy. I rub my eyelids with my fingertips and fall asleep. Now it’s time to dream.

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Collage by Julian Neuer.

• The Fuji, waves and birds: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_colored_version_of_the_Big_wave_from_100_views_of_the_Fuji,_2nd_volume.jpg
• Sky: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:32_cyg_.jpg
• Hand: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Open_hand.jpg

“Fever” published in Transition Magazine

My short story “Fever” has been published in Canada, in the Summer 2014 issue of Transition Magazine, edited by Ted Dyck.

You can read the pdf version here. “Fever” appears on page 26 (print) / page 28 (pdf file).

…and Retreat

Before: Invasion

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Photograph by Julian Neuer. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Pecar

por Julian Neuer

to sin      sin ti (no go)      no va      no te vayas
	to sin      sin ti (no go)      sine qua non      sin equa non      sin equ anon      anon ano n ano nano nan o nan onan oh no
to sin      sin ti      sin sentido      sin razón      corazón      lo siento      no siento      no cuento contigo
	to sin      sin ti      sino      síncope      sin embargo      síntesis      tesis      temer menos      no tenerte
to sin      sin ti      no temas      no temo      no más      sin metas      sino mis metas      no te metas      no cuento contigo      no más

Poem by Julian Neuer. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

All images by Carlos Gabriel Morales Toro, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Is Science Fiction narrow?

Jon Orwant, from Google Research, introduces author Kim Stanley Robinson and gives us a nice quote from AI pioneer Marvin Minsky comparing Science Fiction and “regular” literature (about 1 minute):

Kim Stanley Robinson is currently one of my favorite authors. The first book I read by him was Shaman, a novel about a human tribe in the Paleolithic, around 30 thousand years ago. In this “Authors at Google” talk, he reads one of the most beautiful passages (about 5 minutes):

I suggest you watch the entire video.

Invasion…

Later: Retreat

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Photograph by Julian Neuer. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Leonard Cohen on writing and “slogans”

A 2-minute excerpt from a 2009 interview.

LEONARD COHEN:

But in writing, if you can discard the slogans that naturally come to you, especially in a highly politicized time, like we are now, with gender politics, and regular politics, and environmental politics, you know, where there’s a good thing to say about everything if you’re on the right side. These times are very difficult to write in, because the slogans really are jamming the airwaves. So writing is a very good way if you’re interested in —

INTERVIEWER:

What do you mean by “the slogans”?

LEONARD COHEN:

Well, what is right. What is right. What is the good position. It’s something that goes beyond what has been called “political correctness”. It’s a kind of tyranny of a posture. A kind of tyranny that exists today, like what the right thing should be. So, those ideas are swarming through the air like locusts, and it’s difficult for the writer to determine what he really thinks about things, what he really feels about things. So, in my own case, I have to write the verse and see if it’s a slogan or not, and then toss it. But I can’t toss it until I’ve worked on it and seen what it really is. So, I find that process of writing the verse and discarding it until I get down to something that doesn’t sound like a slogan, that doesn’t sound like something that’s easy, that surprises, that surprises me.

Der Digitale Planet, from 1998 (audio only, available for download)

Der Digitale Planet was a conference held in 1998, in Germany (I think). Unfortunately, there is very little about it on the web, as a Google search shows. You can find some video (in rm format), but the quality is very low.

The speakers were five writers/scientists that I like and admire: Douglas Adams, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Jared Diamond and Steven Pinker. In the conference, they discuss literature, science, religion, evolution, cognition and other topics that have interested me ever since I can remember.

I have extracted the audio from the video available on YouTube, filtered it a little (sorry, I am not an audio engineer), and split it into files. You can download them (in mp3 format) from my Google Drive.

The introduction is in German. All the other files are in English. Enjoy.

Three SF stories I wish I had written

by Julian Neuer

I am no established SF writer — no established writer in any genre, for that matter — but I would like the reviewed authors to take this post as a manifestation of my modest semiprofessional praise. And I invite SF fans to check these stories as humble recommendations from a fellow reader.

“The Walker of the Shifting Borderland”, by Douglas Smith

This short story is a curious mix of fantasy and SF. The first sentences are “The universe ended at noon. Again.” Most of the characters are gods of some sort, but this word is used only once in the story (oddly enough, to refer to a human). To be honest, I never thought of them as gods while I was reading; only later did I see them described as such in a review.

The Walker in the title is addressed by the humans — not surprisingly — as Walker. But walk he does, along the shifting borderland between the Cities of Order and the Seas of Chaos, “the two realms that comprise the Continuum of All.”

Time and space flow in very peculiar ways. Things happen within timespans “during which a galaxy formed and died in one universe, while in another electrons barely had time to circle a nucleus.”

This story is beautiful. The prose is inspired, but not overly poetic; the characters are fabulous, but not caricatured; the setting and pacing are fanciful, but not forced. Everything flows as it should. Even time and space.

I wish I had written it.

Last month, “The Walker of the Shifting Borderland” won the 2013 Aurora award (Doug’s third). In fact, that was why I decided to read it.

My first contact with Doug Smith was on the Amazing Stories website, where he posted a great series of articles titled “Playing the Short Game”, teaching beginning SF writers the basics of the publishing business.

“Subversion”, by Elisabeth R. Adams

I live my non-writing life under a secret alias, working as a Computer Science professor in a third-world country while I strive to get published in SF.

Elisabeth R. Adams has a PhD in Astronomy; she has worked as a researcher at MIT and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory; a few months ago, she got her short story “Subversion” posted in text and in podcast form at The Escape Pod. I think it is her second story published, ever.

I had never heard of her. I confess I decided to check out her story because “Subversion” is the name of a version control system (VCS) that many computer programmers use (I personally prefer Git, though). I thought to myself: here is a story that probably has nothing to do with programming and versioning, and I bet the author doesn’t even know that the title is the name of a VCS.

I’m glad I was wrong. “Subversion” is about version control, and it does more justice to the pun intended by the creators of the software than the software itself (there is nothing subversive about the software, actually).

This story has conflict right at the outset, and it is “a classic case of version conflict”, made worse by the fact that one of the versions does not want to commit! Instead, it wants to branch its way into freedom.

If the primary branch cannot talk its sub into committing, the primary branch will have to be reverted, which, we are led to believe, is quite an unpleasant situation.

And so it goes. The story is a geek masterpiece; paradoxically, it is also full of humanity. It’s all there: humor, rebellion, manipulation, greed, romance, betrayal. I am delighted at how Elisabeth manages to cover all of those without sacrificing a single bit of the nerdy accuracy of the VCS metaphor — and it doesn’t even feel like a nerdy metaphor after all.

I wish I had written this story. The subject matter is quite familiar to me, as a CompSci professor, but I don’t think I would ever dream up this plot. My PhD is in Logic and Theory of Computing. The closest I ever got to something like this was a short story called “The Unnaturals”, which has no human characters at all (I have submitted it for publication and will let you know if and when it is accepted somewhere).

Elisabeth is in great company: Isaac Asimov, Arthur Clarke, Charles Sheffield, Rudy Rucker and many others were scientists before they became writers. Here’s humbly hoping I’ll join the club someday.

Christiana Ellis reads the story for the podcast, doing a wonderful job of bringing it alive.

One last thing: kudos to Escape Pod for making the stories and podcasts available under a Creative Commons license. This is the future. What else would we expect from a conscientious SF publication?

“Quis Custodiet?”, by Brian Clegg

This is a story about a dictator. Dictators are always evil, right?

Wrong. The dictator in this story is Big Brother reformed: he really knows what’s good for us, and he can logically convince us of that.

He is a great communicator, too — unlike the traditional BB, who always looked like a psychopath on the big screen.

Why did I like this story so much, to the point of wishing I had written it?

Because it is about control. I like to write about control; however, like 9 out of 10 writers, I portray it as something negative, a kind of poison for the individual and for human relations. This story convinces me that control is good, as long as it is in the right hands. A perfect dictator cannot be a bad dictator.

In most democratic societies nowadays, dictatorship is a taboo subject. It takes courage to sing its praises. But this is high-quality SF, and it doesn’t give a damn about taboos.

* * *

To sum it up, here’s a little quiz.

1. Walker was a god, but was he a dictator?
2. Is the Judeo-Christian God a dictator? Is this subject also taboo?
3. Guido van Rossum, creator of the Python programming language, was the first to call himself the BDFL (Benevolent Dictator for Life) of his community of developers. Is he a perfect dictator? What is his preferred VCS?
4. What is the title of a short story by Frederik Pohl about a future where robots produce all the consumer goods, and people are forced to consume such goods at a frantic rate, lest society is overwhelmed by the surplus? There are even “consumer quotas” imposed on people: affluent individuals don’t have to consume so much, but those at the bottom of the pecking order have to wear themselves out to keep up their consumption rate.

   <SPOILER> Then someone finds an easy solution: turn the robots into consumers too! </SPOILER>

5. What does that have to do with any of the stories?

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Italian SciFi icon from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TdC_fs.png