A Book A Week - Week 8: Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?

This week's book:
    Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?    by Philip K. Dick

Grade:
    B+   including the last three pages 
    A     if you stop reading before the last three pages

I'm going to come clean:  I'm a bad nerd.  Until this week I never read any of Philip K. Dick's stories.  Not a one.  This novel is the basis of one of my favorite movies of all time, Blade Runner, but I never got around to it.  My loss entirely.  To kind of make it up to Mr. Dick, who died back in 1982, I bought the e-book.

Set in a nuclear-devasted future Earth, this book examines what it means to be human, and how we're going to tell humans from machines - or manufactured humans - when that eventuality comes to pass.  That scary possibility is much closer now than it was in 1968 when this book was first published.

The story moves at a decent pace, not too fast that you don't know what's happening and not too slow that it gets bogged down in pointless detail.  We see that humans who are left on Earth - who haven't moved on to Mars or somewhere else - are united, and possibly kept from open revolt, by a kind of shared suffering, a communal empathy machine, that has become the worldwide religion.  Spoiler alert, the entire premise behind that shared suffering is exposed as a fraud, which deepens the question the author is proposing.

The book's hero has the same name as the movie's, Rick Deckard, and he's a bounty hunter who has to 'retire' androids who've returned to Earth illegally.  The androids are not actually made of gears and pulleys but flesh and bone just like real people.  The differences are the androids begin life full-grown and have a shelf life of about four years.  And they completely lack empathy for anyone or anything else, which is why they're dangerous and how Deckard can tell them apart from real people.  'Retire' is a euphemism for 'murder,' as a bounty hunter Rick has no 'dead or alive,' option, only 'dead.'

During the hunt for six androids Deckard makes several discoveries about himself and the androids that make him question his job and his place in the universe.  The author had done with this novel what all good sci-fi should do, which is examine the human condition for us now by setting the story in a different time and place.

I really liked the story quite a bit, I was invested in the characters and the situations felt real, if bleak.  I did not, however, like the ending, the last three pages.  I think the book should have either ended three pages earlier, or had a different resolution if the author kept the story going.  The ending was not satisfying, and I think almost invalidated the premise of the novel.  So I gave the book two grades, one with the last three pages, one without.

The 'electric sheep' refers to the fact that nuclear war has rendered almost all animals extinct.  People instead have electronic facsimiles - little animal androids - that they tend to.  Like Tamagotchi pets but in 3-D.


Next week:
   The Perks Of Being A Wallflower     by Stephen Chobsky
    From 1999.  At least I'm getting closer to current books.  It's also a movie.

A Book A Week - Week 7: The Crying of Lot 49

This week's book:
    The Crying of Lot 49     by Thomas Pynchon

Grade:
    C-

Thomas Pynchon is famous, but he's famous for not allowing photographs of himself.  No one but his family knows what he looks like nowadays.  Fifty years ago, perhaps, he was more famous for his fiction, but now he's kind of the anti-Kardashian, and instead of plastering media with his image he's notable for exactly the opposite.  But he's been touted as a possible Pulitzer nominee for decades now, so I thought I'd give his prose a try.

I hated - HATED - the first three chapters.  Seriously loathed them.  They were wordy and pretentious and not at all entertaining.  If this is literature, then 'literature' means 'boring run-on sentences that don't track and leave me not caring about the message at all.'  Based on the first three chapters - there are only 6 chapters in all - I was set to give this book an F.  Yup, that's how much I hated the first three chapters, I thought 'Twilight' was better.
    I hated the first part of the book so much I actually went back and re-read the first three chapters again, after I finished the book, to see if I could tell what it was that sent me over the edge.  I found the first three chapters really no different than the last three, but by the time I got to Chapters Four through Six, I was no longer outraged and incensed, I had grown used to what I was reading.  Like living by the airport, at first the sound drives you insane, then it becomes background noise.

Once I got past the first half of the book the story picked up and I got a little more interested.  But only a little.  I still didn't care at all about the main character, or about her struggle, or about whether she had really stumbled onto a worldwide conspiracy or had just become paranoid.  Honestly, the only thing I cared about is whether any of the plot threads would be wrapped up by the last page.  Some were, most weren't.  Whatever.  Meh.

I think this book both benefits and suffers from being a product if its time.  Published in 1965, it was the first thing of its kind published.  Or, at least, it was the first thing the Baby Boomers thought was published, which was why it made it on the shelves.  It's a pale imitation of James Joyce, done by a kid just out of college without any of the world experience an author needs to pull off this kind of rambling, almost stream-of-consciousness narrative.  He tried to bring in contemporary music and cultural references but those just fall flat, like he's a stand-up comic calling out familiar things because he can't think of anything funny to say.  'Hey, look, the Beatles, and Pismo Beach, and the Mafia - those are things in the early '60's!'  There are dense passages of description that don't really pack an emotional punch, and purposefully absurd character and place names that do nothing but call attention to themselves and don't advance the narrative.  It's an experiment that failed.

 Since this reads to me like a Senior thesis from a Creative Writing major, I gave it the grade I thought it deserved.  Nice try, but give it a rewrite to tighten up the narrative.  And give me characters I care about, instead of names on a page.

Oh, and for those curious about the title, it refers to 'crying' an auction, or 'calling' it, where the various lots are put up for bid.  Lot 49 is the lot of stamp forgeries that might lead the main character to a person who can tell her whether the worldwide conspiracy she feels closing in around her is real or a figment of her imagination.  And that is precisely where the story ENDS.
   Yeah, I feel cheated too.


Next week:
   Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep    by Philip K. Dick
    The inspiration for the movie 'Blade Runner.'

A Book A Week - Week 6: One For The Money

This week's book:
    One For The Money     by Janet Evanovich

Grade:
    B+   

I chose this book precisely because I have never once, in all my peregrinations through bookstores, been tempted to pick up a Janet Evanovich book.  Gave it a pass just like I do Stephen King or Danielle Steele.  Her books just never seemed to be something I'd like, with their bright dust jackets and loud typefaces.  Like those neon-colored poisonous rainforest frogs, they said 'keep away, Don, you'll just be wasting your money!'  Not my cup of tea, is what I'm saying.

So I bought it - no library book for this one - and read it.  And I liked it.  I didn't like it as much as I've liked other fiction, but I did not hate it nearly as much as I've loathed other stories.

I'm not a mystery genre person, so I don't know how much this one adheres to the conventions, but I thought the author did a very good job of portraying mood and setting, and there was definitely tone.  Tone all over the damned place.  And maybe tone is what's made this series successful, because I had the mystery figured out halfway through the book.  Either the author didn't do a good enough job of obscuring the real villain, or I'm a regular Scooby-Doo.  I do like sandwiches and snacks...

I know from my own writing that beginnings are the easiest part of a story, endings are the second easiest part, and the middle is the hardest part by a huge margin.  Most bad stories fall apart in the middle.  This one almost did that.  There was a lot of going here to there for the heroine, a lot of visiting the same places over and over again, a lot of detail that did add to the tone but really didn't do a whole lot to advance the plot or obscure the mystery.  There were about fifty pages there in the center of the book where I was wondering if I'd skipped back a chapter or two and was re-reading what I'd read before.  But the author upped her game and the plot got moving again.
    The end seemed to be wrapped up pretty quickly, almost all at once and in the very last pages of the novel.  Like I said, I'm not a mystery person so this may be exactly what the genre requires, but for me it was a little jarring.  Story-story-story-story-story-story-story-reveal-ending.   Boom.  Done.

I'd say if you like mysteries, and have not yet read any of Janet Evanovich's books, you should absolutely give this one a try.  And there are a lot more to choose from, I think she's up to Ninteen now.
   If you're not a mystery person, still give it a shot.  The heroine is likeable, the supporting characters seem reasonably well fleshed-out, and the setting feels like a real place.  You may like it.


Next week:
   The Crying of Lot 49     by Thomas Pynchon
    I think this counts as 'literature,' pronounced 'LIT-ra-chaw.'  We'll see.

Expand The Tribe

Did you know that 100 years ago people did not know about galaxies?  They didn't know that our Sun was part of a larger galaxy, and they certainly did not know that the Milky Way was just one of - literally - billions of other galaxies.  It's only in the past century that human beings have come to understand the truth: space is staggeringly, mind-numbingly, impossibly huge, and we're just a teeny, tiny part of the whole.
    But our religions were all developed by people who thought the Sun went around the Earth.
   Take a moment for that to digest.  We follow religions formulated by people who knew in their heart of hearts that the Earth was the center of the cosmos.  Believed it from the day the village elder told them so until the day they died.  They didn't understand the Earth circled the Sun and not the other way around.  For most of human history, our spiritual lives have been guided by advice from well-meaning people who were completely and utterly wrong about the way the universe works.
   It's time to re-think some of this religion stuff.
   I'm not saying we need to re-think morality or checklists for moral behavior or anything like that.  There are some things that are true no matter how big the cosmos gets.  The major point all religions have in common is the Golden Rule - treat others the way you want to be treated.  Don't steal, don't lie, don't murder, etc. etc. etc.  It's all a variation on the Golden Rule.  People need morality, and most people need guidelines to practice that morality, and religion does a fantastic job of laying out the rules and the consequences.  So that part's good.
   The fault of religion the way we practice it now - the way that's been handed down for thousands and thousands of years - is that it's extremely, violently, pointlessly parochial.  Tribal, even.  Us versus them.  Our group over here against your group over there.  Zero-sum.  If we want to win, by necessity you must lose.  Most world religions claim to be inclusive but in actual practice they're very exclusive, and I think it's because the trappings of religion - the practice, not the message - evolved during a time when people really, truly believed the Earth was carried on the back of a giant tortoise.  When strangers could come into your village and steal your goats and your grain and leave you and your family to starve.  Of course there are people alive today who would like to take us back to that blissfully ignorant time, before vaccines and microchips and communications satellites, but that's a different rant for a different time.
   If people would take a step back and look at how small and fragile the Earth is compared to the vastness of Creation we might come to undertand that we really are all in this together, our tribe is not just those we can touch versus those within a spear's throw.  Our tribe is all of us, everyone on the planet, and we depend on each other to a degree that hasn't really become clear before we had the technology to see it.
   It's time to expand the tribe.  We now have this incredible tool, the Web, that allows us to do something we never could before: decentralize, democratize, and share knowledge.  No more tribes, no more people stuck in a mountain valley cut off from the rest of humanity for hundreds of years.  Now everyone can know what everyone else knows, and the truth is no longer subjective it's objective, true for everyone. 
   This can be the new religion, the pursuit of truth.  Real truth.  Provable truth.  Knowledge that lifts us all together instead of superstition that keeps us all apart.

A Book A Week - Week 5: Good To Great

This week's book:
    Good To Great   by Jim Collins

Grade:
    B    if he'd left off the last page, it would have been an A

I came to this book fully prepared to hate it.  It's been one of the must-read business books since it was first published in 2000.  I generally hate business books, they're usually written by academics or psychologists who have no idea how the real world works.*  'Good To Great' was also written by an academic - part of the reason I was certain I would hate it - but its premises and conclusions are backed by empirical research.  Hard to dispute that.  So I didn't hate it, and I actually came to appreciate most of the points the author made.  Until the very last page.  More on that later.

The idea behind the book was to see if the research team working on the book could find any commonality between companies that went from merely good to great, regardless of their industry.  'Great' defined as beating the stock market average regularly and by a large margin.  Right away he's pre-selecting for public companies, but I'll let that slide.  How would you research private companies?  As I read further and further in the book I found that I completely agreed with their methodology, and from the way the author describes their research it seems like they covered all their bases pretty thoroughly.  So I went from being almost hostile in my dismissiveness to fairly receptive to their conclusions.  Which were unsurprising but revolutionary for American corporations.

I won't rehash those conclusions - you can read the book for that - which are fairly straightforward.  Mostly it's 'know where you're going and trust your people to get you there.'  Again, not surprising at all, unless you're a corporate drone who thinks 'monetize' is a word and that meetings actually accomplish things.

He had me, Mr. Collins turned me around.  Up until the last page.  There he addressed the same question I had when I picked up the book, which is 'why does a company need to be great?  Isn't it enough to be good and successful?'  I read on, eagerly anticipating a great answer.
   However, Mr. Collins responded to that question not with an answer, but with a rejection of the question:
     'Indeed, the real question is not 'Why greatness?' but 'What work makes you feel compelled to try to create greatness?'  If you have to ask the question 'Why should we try to make it great?  Isn't success enough?' then you're probably engaged in the wrong line of work.'

Ahh... the academic's response to someone questioning their precious research.  'Oh yeah?  Well... you're a stupid-head... why would somebody even ask that question?  Unless they're a stupid-head... '

If he had just treated the question like the valid inquiry it was and answered it appropriately, he would have found a convert in me.  All he had to do was say something like 'all public companies have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to return as much value as possible, and the best way you can do that is to try to make your company great' and he would have kept me.  But rejecting the question as unworthy of asking?  That's juvenile and makes me question the entire book and the time I spent reading it.

Is this book worth the read for the small business person?  For the entrepreneur?  Yes, but with qualifications.  The studies were of large corporations with a long history, which entrepreneurs don't have.  So take their conclusions with a grain of salt and apply them to your situation only with great consideration.  The principles are sound, but your execution might need to be adjusted to make them work for your small business. 

Next week:
   One For The Money     by Janet Evanovich
    I would never in a million years have picked up this book, which I why I chose it for my 'Book A Week' effort. 



* Like 'Who Moved My Cheese?' easily the worst business book ever published.  I will not be re-reading that one, not this year or ever.

Things That Worry Me Which Probably Shouldn't

I'm worried that someday I might need knee surgery.
   It's not that I'm worried I might have complications during surgery, or that the surgeon might operate on the wrong knee, or even that insurance might not cover the procedure.  All that stuff usually takes care of itself.
   I'm worried that they'll have to shave my leg.
   See, I've got reasonably hairy legs, not as densely forested as some I've seen, but definitely not smooth as a baby's bottom either.  The nurses would need to prep the knee area, meaning scrub and shave it.  And only that area, enough to get the surgery done and no more.
   I can't abide asymmetry, and a ring of hairless skin around my knee with hair above and below would drive me bonkers.  I'd need to shave my entire leg, from big toe all the way up.  And since having only one leg shaved is also asymmetrical, I'd need to shave the other one to match.
   You can see where this is going.  If I have shaved legs but not shaved arms that's also out of balance, so I'd need to take a razor to my forearms.  Same thing then with my chest, stomach, back, and... bikini area.  It wouldn't stop until I'd shaved my entire body from the neck down.  I'd have to become as hairless as one of the pretty young boys Tom Cruise keeps locked in his basement, all because I'd had knee surgery.
   Even worse, it would probably get very itchy as it all grew out.  So I'd be tempted to keep up the manscaping.  I'd go broke buying razors.  Or buying Nair, all that hair's got to go somehow.
  Then, of course, there are the plumber bills after I have to call them out every few weeks to unclog the shower drain...  Just better for everyone if I give knee surgery a pass.