::A Geek in Korea::

I was at a bookstore yesterday and took a peek around the novels to find a surprise. A book I actually wanted to read! I had been reading about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies for a while. It hit the Internet like a storm when it was first announced, but seeing as I never get to go anywhere, and I don’t order books online because I want the excuse to travel to Seoul from time to time to pick them out, I didn’t think I’d see a copy of this.

This is a weird book. I’ve never read Pride and Prejudice because I have little interest in the social and class structure of 19th century England. The fluffy prose from P&P is the backdrop for having zombies attack and slaughter a bunch of boring English people. I guess if I had read the original book and knew the differences I’d be able to appreciate the difference adding in some light hearted zombie killing might make. That would require me to read a long book about English manners and social conventions, so I’ll skip it and just try to appreciate the zombie killing for what it is.

The main character, Elizabeth Bennet is like a proto-Buffy though, which is fantastic. The illustrations of a woman with long gowns kicking the crap out of Zombies is precious. Strong women that kick ass? I’m totally down with that. Natalie Portman is involved in making a movie version of this, which could be awesome too.

The push for supernatural horror being more main stream is something I fully endorse. Twilight might suck, but if it causes stuff like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to be more successful in the mainstream and bring more fans to the supernatural or arcane horror genre, I’m willing to ignore goofy sparkling vampires.

This is actually the second Zombie related bit of fiction I’ve read this year. I also finished World War Z which was a “realistic” account of how a civilization on the brink of collapse fought back against a gigantic Zombie hoard. It was delightfully nerdy. Something I might have talked about in college with friends. I’ve already loaned that book out, and I plan on finishing this one sometime this vacation so I can give it to friends too.

Now I need to find something new to take the journey up to Seoul to buy. Right now I just don’t have a reason to make the trek.

Around the time I started carrying a PMP with me everywhere, lost all my breaks at work, and had a fierce habit of playing Dungeon Crawl all day, I stopped reading books casually. It might have been because I was listening to Audiobooks as I was busy around town or walking the dog. Reading requires time to sit around and concentrate, whereas the audiobook is just piped in my ears. It was either the change in delivery, or the choices I had made for myself reguarding book purchases that had stifled my book reading for a few months.

With my vacation nearly over, and a recent trip to the book store completed, I have gotten back into the habit of reading at little more. While I was up in Seoul I picked up Mary Roach’s latest book, Bonk. I’ve already read her previous books, Stiff and Spook. She’s the most entertaining science writer I’ve discovered, and I picked up Bonk, about the intersection of Science and Sex simply because the first book of hers I read, Stiff was so entertaining. I had picked it up not knowing anything about it at all, and was blown away when I actually got into it.

I remember traveling around Europe, reading about cadavers in Stiff. It was fascinating, but at the same time, horrible. She could explain something like actual cadavers being used in crash tests, and why it was done at the time in history when there were no plastic dummies. Here I was giggling despite the ghoulishness of it all. It takes a talented writer to pull that off. Trying to explain why something horrible like that would make me laugh was beyond me at the time, but it made me a big fan of Mary Roach’s work. Now whenever I encounter one of her books, I buy it and expect to be disgusted and entertained at the same time.

She hasn’t approached the gross out situations and facts presented in Stiff, but she hasn’t disappointed either. Reading about how science approaches sex is interesting and funny too. I’ve spend the better parts of the past few afternoons reading about it in Bonk and have been entertained by it all. I’ve got a few other books to read, but I don’t know when I’ll find the time for them, with the summer intensives and the baby being very demanding of my free time during the work week. It’s good to be reading again.

I’ve been a big Neal Stephenson fan since college. Snow Crash and Diamond Age are two of the most badass books I’ve ever read. The ideas presented in each of these novels alone are enough for me to spend days thinking about.There are so many predictive things that have come out of that novel that it’s hard to imagine understanding social spaces on the Internet without having read it. I didn’t know I liked “Cyberpunk” until I read those books. They’ve both greatly shaped my desires as a reader for more of that sort of storytelling.

While those two novels in particular are some of my favorite books, nearly everything he’s written is a book I’ve enjoyed in one way or another.  Cryptonomicon is also a great read. It deals with cryptography in an interesting way, and ties up multiple stories into a grand epic adventure. Even the first book of the Baroque Cycle novels held my interest when I finally got into it. Neal Stephenson writes books that are intimidating and long, but once you finally get “into” them, you can’t stop despite their length.

I’ve decided to experience Anathem, Stephenson’s newest epic novel in a new way. Instead of carrying around the massive tome and never getting a chance to read, I’ve decided I’m going to listen to the audiobook. This is still a massive undertaking (32.5 hours of solid listening.)  The first bit of the story was a giant speculative fiction time line, and the first time I listened to it I thought that I’d actually need to take notes to understand any of it. It’s completely baffling because he invented an entire world’s history, complete with new words. They have roots and near Earth equivalents that help you along, and dictionary entries that explain the subtle differences, but at the beginning everything hits you like a bag of bricks.

My first reaction to the audiobook was to put it on hold, stop, and wait a little while before I started listening to it again. I’ve done this with many books over a certain length. Eventually, I’ll come back to them and make the decision it’s worth my time to try to finish it off. While Anathem remains thick with architecture, philosophy, math, and general weirdness of a culture from an alternate Earth-like universe, the story has started to get compelling. As the protagonist explores the world, you slowly build up an understanding of the culture and ideas behind the world, and things pool into this wonderful set of ideas that make the story work. It seems intimidating at first, but even the protagonist doesn’t always understand it all either. It’s amazing to think this world all came from the mind of one person. The audiobook is fantastic, and I highly recommend it.

One of the “characters” in the book is the massive compound the characters inhabit. This got me thinking of other strange places, and how I used to play a game that was nothing more than creating strange cities for dwaves. After fishing around for some more Dwarf Fortress tutorials on Youtube, I eventually decided that if I was going to give the game another chance to occupy my time, I’d have to find a way to get the graphic tiles working.

I’m not a “GOOD GRAPHICS!” purist by any means, and I can play an ASCII game like Crawl without them, but Dwarf Fortress had gotten out of control for me the last time I played. I decided to try fresh, with the graphics in a newly generated world, to see if I could have a better run of luck. It took a little fiddling with some files and init.txt entries, but I got the graphics working, and they’ve radically increased my ability to stay in front of the game. It’s a lot more cute and satisfying for me to play with small graphics. I don’t know why. I’m also in a spot more suitable for farming, and with a better local environment.

At the moment, my fortress looks like it will have food for winter, which is a first. I am still learning the basics, but I’ve gotten over the early beginning’s learning curve. I’ve got to start learning what happens when you attempt to play for a year through the entire game, instead of quitting in frustration or when things start to get out of control. I’m probably going to get slaughtered if something ever tries to attack, which is fine, because it’ll be fun. I know it’ll all spiral out of control eventually but it’ll provide many hours of entertainment regardless.

My buddy had a list over on his website of part of The Guardian a list of 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read. Following his format, here are the sci-fi/fantasy novels on the list I’ve read. The ones I’ve read are in bold, the ones I attempted but gave up on are italicized:

Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
Brian W Aldiss: Non-Stop (1958)
Isaac Asimov: Foundation (1951)
Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin (2000)
Paul Auster: In the Country of Last Things (1987)
Iain Banks: The Wasp Factory (1984)
Iain M Banks: Consider Phlebas (1987)
Clive Barker: Weaveworld (1987)
Nicola Barker: Darkmans (2007)
Stephen Baxter: The Time Ships (1995)
Greg Bear: Darwin’s Radio (1999)
Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination (1956)
Poppy Z Brite: Lost Souls (1992)
Algis Budrys: Rogue Moon (1960)
Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita (1966)
Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Race (1871)
Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (1960)
Anthony Burgess: The End of the World News (1982)
Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars (1912)
William Burroughs: Naked Lunch (1959)
Octavia Butler: Kindred (1979)
Samuel Butler: Erewhon (1872)
Italo Calvino: The Baron in the Trees (1957)
Ramsey Campbell: The Influence (1988)
Lewis Carroll: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871)
Angela Carter: Nights at the Circus (1984)
Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000)
Arthur C Clarke: Childhood’s End (1953)
GK Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)
Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004)
Michael G Coney: Hello Summer, Goodbye (1975)
Douglas Coupland: Girlfriend in a Coma (1998)
Mark Danielewski: House of Leaves (2000)
Marie Darrieussecq: Pig Tales (1996)
Samuel R Delaney: The Einstein Intersection (1967)
Philip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
Philip K Dick: The Man in the High Castle (1962)
Umberto Eco: Foucault’s Pendulum (1988)
Michel Faber: Under the Skin (2000)
John Fowles: The Magus (1966)
Neil Gaiman: American Gods (2001)
Alan Garner: Red Shift (1973)
William Gibson: Neuromancer (1984)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Herland (1915)
William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)
Joe Haldeman: The Forever War (1974)
M John Harrison: Light (2002)
Robert A Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
Frank Herbert: Dune (1965)
Hermann Hesse: The Glass Bead Game (1943)
Russell Hoban: Riddley Walker (1980)
James Hogg: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824)
Michel Houellebecq: Atomised (1998)
Aldous Huxley: Brave New World (1932)
Kazuo Ishiguro: The Unconsoled (1995)
Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House (1959)
Henry James: The Turn of the Screw (1898)
PD James: The Children of Men (1992)
Richard Jefferies: After London; Or, Wild England (1885)
Gwyneth Jones: Bold as Love (2001)
Franz Kafka: The Trial (1925)
Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon (1966)
Stephen King: The Shining (1977)
Marghanita Laski: The Victorian Chaise-longue (1953)
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: Uncle Silas (1864)
Stanislaw Lem: Solaris (1961)
Doris Lessing: Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)
David Lindsay: A Voyage to Arcturus (1920)
Ken MacLeod: The Night Sessions (2008)
Hilary Mantel: Beyond Black (2005)
Michael Marshall Smith: Only Forward (1994)
Richard Matheson: I Am Legend (1954)
Charles Maturin: Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)
Patrick McCabe: The Butcher Boy (1992)
Cormac McCarthy: The Road (2006)
Jed Mercurio: Ascent (2007)
China Miéville: The Scar (2002)
Andrew Miller: Ingenious Pain (1997)
Walter M Miller Jr: A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960)
David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas (2004)
Michael Moorcock: Mother London (1988)
William Morris: News From Nowhere (1890)
Toni Morrison: Beloved (1987)
Haruki Murakami: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1995)
Vladimir Nabokov: Ada or Ardor (1969)
Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003)
Larry Niven: Ringworld (1970)
Jeff Noon: Vurt (1993)
Flann O’Brien: The Third Policeman (1967)
Ben Okri: The Famished Road (1991)
Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club (1996)
Thomas Love Peacock: Nightmare Abbey (1818)
Mervyn Peake: Titus Groan (1946)
John Cowper Powys: A Glastonbury Romance (1932)
Christopher Priest: The Prestige (1995)
François Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-34)
Ann Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space (2000)
Kim Stanley Robinson: The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
JK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997)
Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses (1988)
Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry: The Little Prince (1943)
José Saramago: Blindness (1995)
Will Self: How the Dead Live (2000)
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818)
Dan Simmons: Hyperion (1989)
Olaf Stapledon: Star Maker (1937)
Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash (1992)
Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
Bram Stoker: Dracula (1897)
Rupert Thomson: The Insult (1996)
Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court (1889)
Kurt Vonnegut: Sirens of Titan (1959)
Robert Walser: Institute Benjamenta (1909)
Sylvia Townsend Warner: Lolly Willowes (1926)
Sarah Waters: Affinity (1999)
HG Wells: The Time Machine (1895)
HG Wells: The War of the Worlds (1898)
TH White: The Sword in the Stone (1938)
Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun (1980-83)
John Wyndham: Day of the Triffids (1951)
John Wyndham: The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)
Yevgeny Zamyatin: We (1924)

My wife and I are polar opposites when it comes to media spoilers. I avoid spoiler materials for nearly everything I can. When I read a review I get annoyed if there was something given away.  If I watch a television, I’d rather approach it fresh and watch it attentively, then follow up on anything I am unclear about by reviewing the material while reading Televisionwithoutpity reviews. I’m also past the age where I need to find out details of all the things I watch before they come out. I’ll wait for it to be delivered to me and see what is there.

Watching something for the first time should be a new, uninterrupted experience. The most interesting part of media is the thrill of self-discovery, and when something is spoiled, you are robbed of that.  Something spoiled is always something “less than” the reward of finding out something on your own. You can rewatch something and get something out of materials, but you’ll never have that first time satisfaction of getting through materials on your own. Rewatching is never better than going in fresh in my opnion.

My wife, on the other hand, hates surprises. She’ll ask me to tell me the entire plot of any movie I watch, regardless of when she starts watching it. I was always told it was bad manners growing up to tell people what was happening next in a movie.  She’ll ask me, “What happens next?” while we’re watching a movie all the time. This isn’t a speculative question as if she was trying to see how I was thinking the story would turn out. She really wants me to tell her everything so she doesn’t get surprised. This is occasionally impossible, because I won’t know, having kept myself free from spoilers.

It’s not just movies and television ruined by spoilers. I had the big twist in one of the Harry Potter books spoiled. Video games are also subject to being ruined. I think spoilers were one of the reasons why Super Smash Brothers Brawl didn’t wow me as much as I thought it would. The game is great, but it didn’t live up to my expectations due to all the massive spoilers I had read.

The hype for that game included a website that detailed, day by day, all the features of the game. When the game was pushed back repeatedly, they got into the minutea of characters and revealed nearly every secret possible. At the time, the hype was unavoidable, and it was a very new thing to see a game’s development being so upfront about what they were attempting to do. It was also fun to speculate one what else might be locked away to find. When all the secrets and spoilers were finally uncovered, well before I got the game, I didn’t have anything else left to find. One of the best parts of Melee was unlocking a new character and thinking it was amazing there could still be things left to discover. When I got the last character in Brawl, I kind of just felt “finished”. I play it every once in a while, but it’s not the same.

Don’t spoil me, okay?

I’ve been reading Quicksilver: The Baroque Cycle Volume 1 by Neal Stephenson. I have this massive 900 page paperback book that contains the first of the three books in the series. There are two more volumes in the series, which are equally massive. Each paperback is broken up into three separate stories with plots that may or may not overlap. I’ve only finished a third of the first book. If I finish this series, I’ll have read close to 3000 pages of literature.

While I was up in Seoul, I went looking for the second book in the series. I wanted the 900 page version that contained all the next parts of the stories I’ve been reading in my current book. While I couldn’t find that, I did find a book called “The King of the Vagabonds: The Baroque Cycle #2“. This book was wrapped in plastic, and the cover was incredibly vague. Was this was I looking for this book? I hadn’t finished the previous volume yet, but I didn’t know the next time I’d have the chance to find the next book in this series at all.

I didn’t know if this was the entire next book or not, but with #2, I thought it was the sequel and what I was looking for. I couldn’t open it up and check, and I didn’t have the massive 900 page paperback available to check.

When I finished the first third of my first volume, I discovered that the vague #2 on the cover was referring the second story in the first volume. The book I bought was already in the volume I owned. I didn’t discover this until today. Luckily we kept the receipt, and I never took the plastic off the book. Now I have a book that cost 8,000 won, but no reason to read it. While it would be nice to carry around a 400 page book instead of a 900 page book, it’s not worth that much to me since I can only focus on Stephenson’s work in the quiet of my home.

The cost to deliver the book back to the store by delivery cost more than the book was worth. We’d lose money returning it to them on our own. There are no book stores of this franchise in Daejeon either. Someone we know is going to Seoul soon, and we’ll pass it off to her to get our refund.

This is the second time I’ve attempted to read this book. The first time, when I bought the book in Europe, I failed. However, since visiting London, I’ve grown to appreciate the story to a greater degree. Having seen the setting personally, and learned some of the history, it was much more interesting. If I can get through the second and third “books” in this volume, I’ll look for the next volume. It’s taken me several years to get through this first volume though, so I’ll have some time.