The real voyage of discovery consists,
not in seeking new landscapes,
but in having new eyes.
In Search of Lost Time - Marcel Proust
Hey Caesurians, welcome back to The Art of Caesura!
Today I have a bit of an interjection into our regularly scheduled Necromunda content...
One of my goals for this year on the blog was to incorporate some posts about the books I'm constantly reading. Many people do a "Summer Reading List" but with autumn starting on Monday(!) and with autumn being my favourite season, what better time to cozy up with a good book than now!
For my first Autumn Reading List, I'm going to try to restrain myself to one fiction, one non-fiction and one graphic novel that I have read in the past year.
Fiction
A Gentleman in Moscow (2016) - Amor Towles
I came to this novel not knowing anything about the setting, Russia in the 1920's when the aristocracy was being thrown out by the Bolsheviks under Lenin following the October Revolution. This novel is about a particular aristocrat, Count Alexander Rostov, who is placed under house arrest for many years in the Hotel Metropol in Moscow.
The novel beautifully illustrates the tension intrinsic in the Count's microcosmic position through a host of interesting and fully realized characters whose plights we come to feel for. The Count himself is a joy to read. Throughout the book I actually wanted to be the Count! Towles writes him almost as Oscar Wilde would write his characters: full of humour, a joie de vivre and a love of playing with language. He's an intelligent, witty, charming rascal.
But the real gem of this book is the writing! So many sentences are just so rewarding to read over and over.
Take a couple of these beauties in:
“Fate would not have the reputation it has, if it simply did what it seemed it would do.”
“For as it turns out, one can revisit the past quite pleasantly, as long as one does so expecting nearly every aspect of it to have changed.”
“Here, indeed, was a formidable sentence--one that was on intimate terms with a comma, and that held the period in healthy disregard.”
“I’ll tell you what is convenient,” he said after a moment. “To sleep until noon and have someone bring you your breakfast on a tray. To cancel an appointment at the very last minute. To keep a carriage waiting at the door of one party, so that on a moment’s notice it can whisk you away to another. To sidestep marriage in your youth and put off having children altogether. These are the greatest of conveniences, Anushka—and at one time, I had them all. But in the end, it has been the inconveniences that have mattered to me most.”
“For his part, the Count had opted for the life of the purposefully unrushed. Not only was he disinclined to race toward some appointed hour - disdaining even to wear a watch - he took the greatest satisfaction when assuring a friend that a worldly matter could wait in favor of a leisurely lunch or stroll along the embankment. After all, did not wine improve with age? Was it not the passage of years that gave a piece of furniture its delightful patina? When all was said and done, the endeavours that most modern men saw as urgent (such as appointments with bankers and the catching of trains), probably could have waited, while those they deemed frivolous (such as cups of tea and friendly chats) had deserved their immediate attention.”
Anyway, I better stop there, or this whole post will just be taken up with glorious quotes from the novel!
Nonfiction
Superintelligence (2014) - Nick Bostrom
Now, this book is almost the opposite of A Gentleman in Moscow. It is dense, nigh on impenetrable at times, and does sometimes feel like work to read. But of the six or so other non-fiction books I have read recently, the concepts in this have stuck with me the most. Although I do not work in an immediately technological industry, I find myself in daily contact with many of the fears and ideas that Bostrom raises in this powerful book.
Some of the ideas from this book that have stuck with me are that we may reach human (and than instantly super-human) level artificial general intelligence (aka "the singularity") as early as 2030 - eleven years away! And a scary element is that we might not even know we've reached it! Once artificial intelligence is smarter than us, there's no going back. It'll always be smarter. And once it's smarter than us, it'll be able to build other A.I. that is smarter again, an A.I. explosion that would quickly leave us in the dust. And what then? Will we all just ponce around drinking tea and discussing philosophy? With a newborn baby who may grow up in a world where machines continually take over the roles that humans have traditionally held, Bostrom's message feels even more immediate. And that's if things with machines go right!
One of Bostrom's most wide-spread analogies is that A.I. need not be "evil" or malicious to cause humanity great harm. A simplified example is to say that we may program an A.I. to make toilet paper and when it converts every atom in the universe (including us) into toilet paper it has done it's job perfectly well.
But, if A.I. did want to take over the world, it wouldn't be via Terminator-esque robots, it would first be through the media. We are already using A.I. to influence elections, and many articles for reputable news sources are written by A.I. So imagine your BBC app (or other "reputable" news app) erroneously notifies you that North Korea has just nuked L.A. - okay, that's an extreme example - but there could be many more subtle ways to cause immediate social and financial instability.
Bostrom did not write this book with a tinfoil hat on, rather it is a treatise to encourage better stewardship of the A.I. that we are currently creating.
Here are a few quotes from the book:
“On one estimate, the adult human brain stores about one billion bits—a couple of orders of magnitude less than a low-end smartphone.”
“Far from being the smartest possible biological species, we are probably better thought of as the stupidest possible biological species capable of starting a technological civilization - a niche we filled because we got there first, not because we are in any sense optimally adapted to it.”
“Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an “intelligence explosion,” and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control.”
Graphic Novel
Hellboy: Seed of Destruction Omnibus Volume 1 (2018) - Mike Mignola
My love of Hellboy has been well documented on this blog, so it probably comes as no surprise to find this omnibus in the graphic novel throne for this year. Prior to this omnibus, I had read the odd Hellboy comic here and there, but more than many other comics, I found that the more of Mignola's Hellboy I consumed in a sitting, the more my love for the art style deepened. The, almost Art Deco, swathes of colour are so bold, and they really emphasize the negative space of shadows - giving shadows a physicality of their own and setting an atmospheric tone for the weird tales.
One of my favourite stories in the collection is The Wolves of St. August, and like most Hellboy stories, it falls into the familiar rhythm of beginning with Hellboy and friends investigating some strange goings-on (most of which are based on real folktales / myths), before they encounter the OogadeeBoogadee and a big boss battle ensues. Check out a couple of panels from this story...
not in seeking new landscapes,
but in having new eyes.
In Search of Lost Time - Marcel Proust
Hey Caesurians, welcome back to The Art of Caesura!
Today I have a bit of an interjection into our regularly scheduled Necromunda content...
One of my goals for this year on the blog was to incorporate some posts about the books I'm constantly reading. Many people do a "Summer Reading List" but with autumn starting on Monday(!) and with autumn being my favourite season, what better time to cozy up with a good book than now!
For my first Autumn Reading List, I'm going to try to restrain myself to one fiction, one non-fiction and one graphic novel that I have read in the past year.
Fiction
A Gentleman in Moscow (2016) - Amor Towles
I came to this novel not knowing anything about the setting, Russia in the 1920's when the aristocracy was being thrown out by the Bolsheviks under Lenin following the October Revolution. This novel is about a particular aristocrat, Count Alexander Rostov, who is placed under house arrest for many years in the Hotel Metropol in Moscow.
The novel beautifully illustrates the tension intrinsic in the Count's microcosmic position through a host of interesting and fully realized characters whose plights we come to feel for. The Count himself is a joy to read. Throughout the book I actually wanted to be the Count! Towles writes him almost as Oscar Wilde would write his characters: full of humour, a joie de vivre and a love of playing with language. He's an intelligent, witty, charming rascal.
But the real gem of this book is the writing! So many sentences are just so rewarding to read over and over.
Take a couple of these beauties in:
“Fate would not have the reputation it has, if it simply did what it seemed it would do.”
“For as it turns out, one can revisit the past quite pleasantly, as long as one does so expecting nearly every aspect of it to have changed.”
“Here, indeed, was a formidable sentence--one that was on intimate terms with a comma, and that held the period in healthy disregard.”
“I’ll tell you what is convenient,” he said after a moment. “To sleep until noon and have someone bring you your breakfast on a tray. To cancel an appointment at the very last minute. To keep a carriage waiting at the door of one party, so that on a moment’s notice it can whisk you away to another. To sidestep marriage in your youth and put off having children altogether. These are the greatest of conveniences, Anushka—and at one time, I had them all. But in the end, it has been the inconveniences that have mattered to me most.”
“For his part, the Count had opted for the life of the purposefully unrushed. Not only was he disinclined to race toward some appointed hour - disdaining even to wear a watch - he took the greatest satisfaction when assuring a friend that a worldly matter could wait in favor of a leisurely lunch or stroll along the embankment. After all, did not wine improve with age? Was it not the passage of years that gave a piece of furniture its delightful patina? When all was said and done, the endeavours that most modern men saw as urgent (such as appointments with bankers and the catching of trains), probably could have waited, while those they deemed frivolous (such as cups of tea and friendly chats) had deserved their immediate attention.”
Anyway, I better stop there, or this whole post will just be taken up with glorious quotes from the novel!
Nonfiction
Superintelligence (2014) - Nick Bostrom
Now, this book is almost the opposite of A Gentleman in Moscow. It is dense, nigh on impenetrable at times, and does sometimes feel like work to read. But of the six or so other non-fiction books I have read recently, the concepts in this have stuck with me the most. Although I do not work in an immediately technological industry, I find myself in daily contact with many of the fears and ideas that Bostrom raises in this powerful book.
Some of the ideas from this book that have stuck with me are that we may reach human (and than instantly super-human) level artificial general intelligence (aka "the singularity") as early as 2030 - eleven years away! And a scary element is that we might not even know we've reached it! Once artificial intelligence is smarter than us, there's no going back. It'll always be smarter. And once it's smarter than us, it'll be able to build other A.I. that is smarter again, an A.I. explosion that would quickly leave us in the dust. And what then? Will we all just ponce around drinking tea and discussing philosophy? With a newborn baby who may grow up in a world where machines continually take over the roles that humans have traditionally held, Bostrom's message feels even more immediate. And that's if things with machines go right!
One of Bostrom's most wide-spread analogies is that A.I. need not be "evil" or malicious to cause humanity great harm. A simplified example is to say that we may program an A.I. to make toilet paper and when it converts every atom in the universe (including us) into toilet paper it has done it's job perfectly well.
But, if A.I. did want to take over the world, it wouldn't be via Terminator-esque robots, it would first be through the media. We are already using A.I. to influence elections, and many articles for reputable news sources are written by A.I. So imagine your BBC app (or other "reputable" news app) erroneously notifies you that North Korea has just nuked L.A. - okay, that's an extreme example - but there could be many more subtle ways to cause immediate social and financial instability.
Bostrom did not write this book with a tinfoil hat on, rather it is a treatise to encourage better stewardship of the A.I. that we are currently creating.
Here are a few quotes from the book:
“On one estimate, the adult human brain stores about one billion bits—a couple of orders of magnitude less than a low-end smartphone.”
“Far from being the smartest possible biological species, we are probably better thought of as the stupidest possible biological species capable of starting a technological civilization - a niche we filled because we got there first, not because we are in any sense optimally adapted to it.”
“Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an “intelligence explosion,” and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control.”
Graphic Novel
Hellboy: Seed of Destruction Omnibus Volume 1 (2018) - Mike Mignola
My love of Hellboy has been well documented on this blog, so it probably comes as no surprise to find this omnibus in the graphic novel throne for this year. Prior to this omnibus, I had read the odd Hellboy comic here and there, but more than many other comics, I found that the more of Mignola's Hellboy I consumed in a sitting, the more my love for the art style deepened. The, almost Art Deco, swathes of colour are so bold, and they really emphasize the negative space of shadows - giving shadows a physicality of their own and setting an atmospheric tone for the weird tales.
One of my favourite stories in the collection is The Wolves of St. August, and like most Hellboy stories, it falls into the familiar rhythm of beginning with Hellboy and friends investigating some strange goings-on (most of which are based on real folktales / myths), before they encounter the OogadeeBoogadee and a big boss battle ensues. Check out a couple of panels from this story...
While Mignola is no Moore when it comes to the actual writing, the structure of his pieces rings of classic, slow-burn, horror...and I just love it all!
To those who have made it this far, thank you! I hope you have enjoyed this new type of post that I hope to turn into an annual affair. If you have had any stand-out must-reads this past year please let us know in the comments below.
See you next week on The Art of Caesura!
Reading: The Wicked and the Damned - Various
Listening: The 2Ps Podcast
Drinking: Prosecco
Next Week:
From the Necromundan 8th...
Comments
Post a Comment
Tell me all...