Tell me, Abel,” Dr. Francis began, “has it ever occurred to you to ask why the Station is here?”

Abel shrugged. “Well, it’s designed to keep us alive, it’s our home.”

“Yes, that’s true, but obviously it has some other object than just our own survival. Who do you think built the Station in the first place?”

“Our fathers, I suppose, or grandfathers. Or their grandfathers.”

“Fair enough. And where were they before they built it?” Abel struggled with the reductio ad absurdum.

“I don’t know, they must have been floating around in midair!” Dr. Francis joined in the laughter. “Wonderful thought. Actually it’s not that far from the truth. But we can’t accept that as it stands.”

The doctor’s self-contained office gave Abel an idea. “Perhaps they came from another Station? An even bigger one?”

Dr. Francis nodded encouragingly. “Brilliant, Abel. A first-class piece of deduction. All right, then, let’s assume that. Somewhere, away from us, a huge Station exists, perhaps a hundred times bigger than this one, maybe even a thousand. Why not?”

“It’s possible,” Abel admitted, accepting the idea with surprising ease.

“Right. Now you remember your course in advanced mechanics the imaginary planetary system, with the orbiting bodies held together by mutual gravitational attraction? Let’s assume further that such a system actually exists. O.K.?”

“Here?” Abel said quickly. “In your cabin?” Then he added, “In your sleeping cylinder?”

Dr. Francis sat back. “Abel, you do come up with some amazing things. An interesting association of ideas. No, it would be too big for that. Try to imagine a planetary system orbiting around a central body of absolutely enormous size, each of the planets a million times larger than the Station.” When Abel nodded, he went on. “And suppose that the big Station, the one a thousand times larger than this, were attached to one of the planets, and that the people in it decided to go to another planet. So they build a smaller station, about the size of this one, and sent it off through the air. Make sense?”

“In a way.” Strangely, the completely abstract concepts were less remote than he would have expected. Deep in his mind dim memories stirred, interlocking with what he had already guessed about the Station. He gazed steadily at Dr. Francis. “You’re saying that’s what the Station is doing? That the planetary system exists?”

Dr. Francis nodded. “You’d more or less guessed before I told you. Unconsciously, you’ve known all about it for several years. A few minutes from now I’m going to remove some of the conditioning blocks, and when you wake up in a couple of hours you’ll understand everything. You’ll know then that in fact the Station is a spaceship, flying from our home planet, Earth, where our grandfathers were born, to another planet millions of miles away, in a distant orbiting system. Our grandfathers always lived on Earth, and we are the first people ever to undertake such a journey. You can be proud that you’re here. Your grandfather, who volunteered to come, was a great man, and we’ve got to do everything to make sure that the Station keeps running.”

Abel nodded quickly. “When do we get there the planet we’re flying to?”

Dr. Francis looked down at his hands, his face growing somber. “We’ll never get there, Abel. The journey takes too long. This is a multi-generation space vehicle, only our children will land and they’ll be old by the time they do. But don’t worry, you’ll go on thinking of the Station as your only home, and that’s deliberate, so that you and your children will be happy here.”

He went over to the TV monitor screen by which he kept in touch with Captain Peterr, his fingers playing across the control tabs. Suddenly the screen lit up, a blaze of fierce points of light flared into the cabin, throwing a brilliant phosphorescent glitter across the walls, dappling Abel’s hands and suit. He gaped at the huge balls of fire, apparently frozen in the middle of a giant explosion, hanging in vast patterns.

BBC News – Simulated Mars mission ‘lands’ back on Earth.

Stories of Your Life: and Others, by Ted Chiang
I’d read a lot of Chiang’s stuff online, and finally picked this up to get through the last two I hadn’t seen, “Stories of Your Life” and “Understand”. Both didn’t disappoint. Chiang has a way of developing complete, convincing characters and worlds in a very compressed period of time, which makes it feel like he stretches the space of his stories. I’m excited to dig into his novella, The Lifecycle of Software Objects, as soon as the library delivers it to me.

Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy: The Secret World of Corporate Espionage, by Eamon Javers
I was hoping this would be a little less mass-market, which sounds kind of stuck-up, but there it is. Javers details how private security and detectives have turned into freelance spooks and ex-Federal agents working in shadowy Washington corridors on behalf of any and all interested customer, securing all sorts of valuable information at whatever price. Very interesting stuff, yes, and a difficult world to get access to, but I was hoping there’d be more nuts and bolts attached, that he’d get into those corridors to figure out how these guys do their jobs.¹

True Grit
I’m way behind on Oscars viewing, but wanted to get this one out of the way while it was still in theaters. As always, the Coens know how to write dialogue, but I felt some of the thematic elements were a bit unformed, for instance the snake motifs.

1. Meanwhile, back in Washington, the Anonymous/HBGary thing has stirred up a whole pot of shit, with the relationships Javers describes in the book exposed. We’ll see what Javers has to say–he seems to be stuck on Wall Street at the moment.

Mark Twain’s Autobiography Is Flying Off the Shelves – NYTimes.com.

So when I read in this Newsweek article that around 300 ‘heavily annotated’ personal books were part of the David Foster Wallace archive the University of Texas’ at Austin’s Harry Ransom center bought and recently revealed, I felt inclined to make a big list of them to see if there were any things that seemed interesting and unknown.

So here they are, in case you care too. It ain’t pretty, but it’s all in one place rather than having to page through a lot at the library site. (All these are listed as belonging to the ‘Harry Ransom Center David Foster Wallace Library‘)

Oh how I’d love to spend a few weeks in this archive. Maybe when I finally get that comp lit Master’s this’ll sway me to UT.

What we should have known : two discussions
2007
New York, N.Y. : n+1 Research, ©2007.

Hannibal rising : a novel
2006
Harris, Thomas, 1940-
New York : Delacorte Press, 2006.

Saving daylight
2006
Harrison, Jim, 1937-
Port Townsend, Wash. : Copper Canyon Press, c2006.

Rhetoric : a user’s guide
2006
Ramage, John D.
New York : Pearson Longman, c2006.

Blink : the power of thinking without thinking
2005
Gladwell, Malcolm, 1963-
New York, N.Y. : Little, Brown and Company, 2005.
First edition.

Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
2005
Levitt, Steven D.
New York, N.Y. : William Morrow, ©2005.
First edition.

A reader’s companion to Infinite jest
2005
Dowling, William C.
[United States] : Xlibris, c2005.

The diviners : a novel
2005
Moody, Rick.
New York : Little, Brown and Co., c2006 [i.e. 2005]
1st ed.

Borges, a life
2004
Williamson, Edwin.
[New York] : Viking, c2004.

The idiot
Idiot.
2003
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1821-1881.
New York, N.Y. : Modern Library, 2003.
Modern Library paperback edition.

Chasing the sea : being a narrative of a journey through Uzbekistan, including descriptions of life t
2003
Bissell, Tom, 1974-
New York : Pantheon Books, c2003.
1st ed.

Deep survival : who lives, who dies, and why : true stories of miraculous endurance and sudden death
2003
Gonzales, Laurence, 1947-
New York, N.Y. : W.W. Norton & Company, ©2003.
First edition.

What narcissism means to me
2003
Hoagland, Tony.
Saint Paul, Minn. : Graywolf Press, c2003.

Pattern recognition
2003
Gibson, William, 1948-
New York : G.P. Putnam’s Sons, c2003.

Everything belongs : the gift of contemplative prayer
2003
Rohr, Richard.
New York : Crossroad Pub. Co., c2003.
Rev. and updated ed.

Entertaining America : Jews, movies, and broadcasting
2003
New York : Jewish Museum, under the auspices of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America ; Princeton : Princeton University Press, c2003.

Strangers to ourselves : discovering the adaptive unconscious
2002
Wilson, Timothy D.
Cambridge, Mass. : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002.

The last report on the miracles at Little No Horse
2002
Erdrich, Louise.
New York : Perennial, 2002.
1st ed.

Barbed wire : a political history
Histoire politique du barbelé.
2002
Razac, Olivier.
New York : New Press, c2002.

Quirky qwerty : the story of the keyboard @ your fingertips
2002
Lundmark, Torbjörn.
UNSW, Sydney, NSW : UNSW Press, 2002.

The tipping point : how little things can make a big difference
2002
Gladwell, Malcolm, 1963-
New York, N.Y. : Back Bay Books : Little, Brown and Company, 2002.
First Back Bay paperback edition.

The body artist : a novel
2001
DeLillo, Don.
New York : Scribner, c2001.

The man who loved children
2001
Stead, Christina, 1902-1983.
New York : Picador USA, 2001.
1st Picador USA ed.

Paradoxes
2001
Sainsbury, R. M. (Richard Mark)
Cambridge, England ; New York, N.Y. : Cambridge University Press, 2001, 1995.
Second edition.

Animal portraits
2001
Schels, Walter, 1936-
Zurich, [Switzerland] ; New York, N.Y. : Edition Stemmle, c2001.

Pity the bathtub its forced embrace of the human form : poems
2001
Harvey, Matthea, 1973-
Farmington, Me. : Alice James Books, 2001, c2000.

The colossal book of mathematics : classic puzzles, paradoxes, and problems : number theory, algebra,
2001
Gardner, Martin, 1914-2010.
New York, N.Y. : W.W. Norton & Co., c2001.
1st ed.

Quo vadis
Quo vadis?
2000
Sienkiewicz, Henryk, 1846-1916.
New York, N.Y. : Hippocrene Books, 2000, 1997.

Uncle Petros and Goldbach’s conjecture
Theios Petros kai hē eikasia tou Gkolntmpach.
2000
Doxiadēs, Apostolos K., 1953-
New York, N.Y. : Bloomsbury, c2000.

NoBrow : the culture of marketing; the marketing of culture
2000
Seabrook, John.
New York, N.Y. : A.A. Knopf, 2000.
1st ed.

Disgrace
2000
Coetzee, J. M., 1940-
New York, N.Y. : Penguin Books, 2000.

Stiffed : the betrayal of the American man
2000
Faludi, Susan.
New York, N.Y. : Perennial, 2000.
First Perennial edition.

Giovanni’s room
2000
Baldwin, James, 1924-1987.
New York, N.Y. : Delta Trade Paperbacks, 2000.

Uses of infinity
2000
Zippin, Leo.
Mineola, N.Y. : Dover Publications, 2000.

The mystery of the aleph : mathematics, the Kabbalah, and the search for infinity
2000
Aczel, Amir D.
New York, N.Y. : Four Walls Eight Windows, 2000.

Zero : the biography of a dangerous idea
2000
Seife, Charles.
New York, N.Y. : Viking, 2000.

The wild numbers
Wilde getallen.
2000
Schogt, Philibert.
New York : Four Walls Eight Windows, 2000.

The universal computer : the road from Leibniz to Turing
2000
Davis, Martin, 1928-
New York : W.W. Norton & Co., c2000.

The best of the Prose poem : an international journal
2000
Buffalo, N.Y. : White Pine Press ; Providence, R.I. : Providence College, c2000.

The name of the world
2000
Johnson, Denis, 1949-
New York : HarperCollins Publishers, c2000.
1st ed.

An introduction to fiction
1999
New York : Longman, ©1999, [1999?].
Seventh edition.

Rhetorical grammar : grammatical choices, rhetorical effects
1999
Kolln, Martha.
Boston : Allyn and Bacon, ©1999, [1999?]
Third edition.

The golden notebook : a novel
1999
Lessing, Doris May, 1919-
New York : Perennial Classics, 1999.
1st Perennial Classics ed.

Desperate characters
1999
Fox, Paula.
New York, N.Y. : W.W. Norton & Company, 1999.

Pu-239 and other Russian fantasies
1999
Kalfus, Ken.
Minneapolis, Minn. : Milkweed Editions, 1999.
First edition.

Hannibal
1999
Harris, Thomas, 1940-
New York, N.Y. : Delacorte Press, c1999.

The hunters
1999
Salter, James.
New York, N.Y. : Vintage Books, 1999.
First Vintage International edition.

The U.S. income tax : what it is, how it got that way, and where we go from here
1999
Graetz, Michael J.
New York, N.Y. : W.W. Norton & Company, 1999.

How to write poetry
1998
Bogen, Nancy, 1932-
New York, N.Y. : Macmillan, ©1998, [1998?].
Third edition.

A dictionary of modern American usage
1998
Garner, Bryan A.
New York, N.Y. : Oxford University Press, 1998.

Inside out
1998
Crabb, Lawrence J.
Colorado Springs, Colo. : NavPress, [1998], ©1988.
Revised & updated, 10th anniversary edition.

The user illusion : cutting consciousness down to size
Maerk verden.
1998
Nørretranders, Tor.
New York, N.Y. : Viking, [1998], c1997.

The Anchor essay annual : the best of 1998
1998
New York : Anchor Books/Doubleday, c1998.

A beautiful mind
1998
Nasar, Sylvia.
New York, N.Y. : Simon & Schuster, c1998.

Understanding the infinite
1998
Lavine, Shaughan.
Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1998.
1st Harvard University Press paperback ed.

The moviegoer
1998
Percy, Walker, 1916-1990.
New York, N.Y. : Vintage International, 1998.
First Vintage International edition, April 1998.

Gain
1998
Powers, Richard, 1957-
New York : Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1998.
1st ed.

The user illusion : cutting consciousness down to size
Maerk verden.
1998
Nørretranders, Tor.
New York, N.Y. : Viking, c1998.

The black brook
1998
Drury, Tom.
Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co., 1998.

Toward the end of time
1997
Updike, John.
New York : Knopf, 1997.
1st ed.

Three trapped tigers
Tres tristes tigres.
1997
Cabrera Infante, G. (Guillermo), 1929-2005.
New York : Marlowe & Co., [1997?]

About Schmidt
1997
Begley, Louis.
New York, N.Y. : Fawcett Columbine, 1997.
First Ballantine Books edition.

Bear and his daughter : stories
1997
Stone, Robert, 1937-
Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co., 1997.

The Puttermesser papers
1997
Ozick, Cynthia.
New York : A.A. Knopf, 1997.

Pafko at the wall : a novella
Underworld. Pafko at the wall
1997
DeLillo, Don.
New York : Scribner, c1997.

Commodify your dissent : salvos from The Baffler
1997
New York, N.Y. : W.W. Norton & Company, ©1997, [1997?]
First edition.

The anatomy of disgust
1997
Miller, William Ian, 1946-
Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1997.

Unbridled power : inside the secret culture of the IRS
1997
Davis, Shelley L.
New York, N.Y. : HarperBusiness, ©1997, [1997]
First edition.

Something happened
1997
Heller, Joseph.
New York, N.Y. : Scribner Paperback Fiction, 1997.
1st Scribner Paperback Fiction ed.

Mathematical fallacies and paradoxes
1997
Bunch, Bryan H.
Mineola, N.Y. : Dover Publications, 1997.

After math
1997
Webster, Miriam.
Wayne, PA : Zinka Press, 1997.

Bliss
1996
Carey, Peter, 1943-
New York : Vintage Books, 1996.
1st Vintage International ed.

Generation of vipers
1996
Wylie, Philip, 1902-1971.
Normal, Ill. : Dalkey Archive Press, 1996.
First Dalkey Archive edition.

Nonverbal communication : the unspoken dialogue
1996
Burgoon, Judee K.
New York, N.Y. : McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., ©1996, [1996?].
Second edition.

West’s federal taxation : individual income taxes
1996
St. Paul, Minn : West Publishing Company, c1996.
1997 annual edition.

Against the gods : the remarkable story of risk
1996
Bernstein, Peter L.
New York, N.Y. : John Wiley & Sons, Inc., ©1996.

Galatea 2.2
1996
Powers, Richard, 1957-
New York, N.Y. : HarperPerennial, 1996, 1995.
1st HarperPerennial ed.

On killing : the psychological cost of learning to kill in war and society
1996
Grossman, Dave.
Boston, Mass. : Little, Brown and Company, ©1996.
First paperback edition.

Moo
1996
Smiley, Jane.
New York, N.Y. : Fawcett Columbine, 1996.
First Ballantine Books edition: March 1996.

The following story
Volgende verhaal.
1996
Nooteboom, Cees, 1933-
San Diego, Calif. : Harcourt Brace & Company, 1996.
First Harvest edition 1996.

A practical guide to Buddhist meditation
Change your mind
1996
Paramananda, 1955-
New York, N.Y. : Barnes and Noble Books, ©1996.

Dostoevsky. The miraculous years, 1865-1871
1995
Frank, Joseph, 1918-
Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, ©1995, [1995?]

Of love and other demons
Del amor y otros demonios.
1995
García Márquez, Gabriel, 1928-
New York : Penguin, c1995.

Sacred violence : a reader’s companion to Cormac McCarthy : selected essays from the first McCarthy C
1995
El Paso : Texas Western Press, University of Texas at El Paso, 1995.
1st ed.

The great Gatsby
1995
Fitzgerald, F. Scott (Francis Scott), 1896-1940.
New York, N.Y. : Scribner Paperback Fiction published by Simon & Schuster, 1995.
First Scribner paperback fiction edition 1995.

Trinity fields
1995
Morrow, Bradford, 1951-
New York : Viking, 1995.

Anarcho-Hindu : the damned, weird book of fate
1995
White, Curtis, 1951-
Normal, IL : FC2, c1995.
1st ed.

A tour of the calculus
1995
Berlinski, David, 1942-
New York, N.Y. : Pantheon Books, ©1995, [1995?]
First edition.

The Sailor who fell from grace with the sea
Gogo no eikō.
1994
Mishima, Yukio, 1925-1970.
New York : Vintage International, 1994.
1st Vintage International ed.

The lion, the witch and the wardrobe
1994
Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963.
New York, N.Y. : HarperTrophy, 1994.
First Harper Trophy edition.

Infini et inconscient : essai sur Georg Cantor
1994
Charraud, Nathalie.
Paris : Anthropos : Diffusion, Economica, c1994.

The spirituality of imperfection : storytelling and the journey to wholeness
1994
Kurtz, Ernest.
New York, N.Y. : Bantam Books, 1994, 1992.
Bantam trade paperback edition.

Money and the meaning of life
1994
Needleman, Jacob.
New York, N.Y. : Doubleday/Currency, 1994, c1991.
1st Currency pbk. ed.

Operation wandering soul : a novel
1994
Powers, Richard, 1957-
New York : HarperPerennial, 1994.
1st HarperPerennial ed.

Trinities
1994
Tosches, Nick.
New York : Doubleday, 1994.
1st ed.

The middle passage : from misery to meaning in midlife
1993
Hollis, James, 1940-
Toronto, Canada : Inner City Books, ©1993.

On writer’s block
1993
Nelson, Victoria, 1945-
Boston, Mass. : Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993.

Writing past dark : envy, fear, distraction, and other dilemmas in the writer’s life
1993
Friedman, Bonnie, 1958-
New York, N.Y. : HarperPerennial, 1994.
First HarperPerennial edition.

The joke : definitive version
Žert.
1993
Kundera, Milan.
New York, NY : HarperPerennial, 1993, c1992.
1st HarperPerennial ed.

Notes on Blood meridian
1993
Sepich, John, 1951-
Louisville, Ky. : Bellarmine College Press, c1993.

All the pretty horses
1993
McCarthy, Cormac, 1933-
New York : Vintage Books, 1993.
1st Vintage International ed.

Bodies electric : a novel
1993
Harrison, Colin, 1960-
New York : Crown Publishers, 1993.
1st ed.

Writing fiction : a guide to narrative craft
1992
Burroway, Janet.
New York, N.Y. : HarperCollins Publishers, ©1992, [1992?].
Third edition.

Blood meridian, or, The evening redness in the West
1992
McCarthy, Cormac, 1933-
New York : Vintage Books, 1992.
1st Vintage International ed.

Awareness : a de Mello spirituality conference in his own words
1992
De Mello, Anthony, 1931-1987.
New York, N.Y. : Image Books/Doubleday, 1992.

Hostage to the devil : the possession and exorcism of five living Americans
1992
Martin, Malachi.
San Francisco, Calif. : HarperSanFrancisco, 1992.
HarperSanFrancisco edition.

Crossing & cruising : from the golden era of ocean liners to the luxury cruise ships of today
1992
Maxtone-Graham, John.
New York, N.Y. : Charles Scribner’s Sons, ©1992, [1992?]

Muscle : confessions of an unlikely bodybuilder
1992
Fussell, Samuel Wilson.
New York : Avon Books, 1992, c1991.

The insanity of normality : realism as sickness : toward understanding human destructiveness
Wahnsinn der Normalität.
1992
Gruen, Arno.
New York, N.Y. : Grove Weidenfeld, 1992.
First English-language edition.

Et tu, babe
1992
Leyner, Mark.
New York : Harmony Books, c1992.

Strong motion
1992
Franzen, Jonathan.
New York : Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1992.
1st ed.

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Find it at U T    Introducing Don DeLillo
1991
Durham, [N.C.] : Duke University Press, c1991.

The world’s religions : our great wisdom traditions
1991
Smith, Huston.
[San Francisco] : HarperSanFrancisco, c1991.

Flow : the psychology of optimal experience
1991
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly.
New York : HarperPerennial, 1991, c1990.

The Sixties : art, politics, and media of our most explosive decade
1991
New York, N.Y. : Paragon House, 1991.
First Paragon House edition.

The culture of narcissism : American life in an age of diminishing expectations
1991
Lasch, Christopher.
New York, N.Y. : W.W. Norton & Company, 1991.

Teaching what we do : essays
1991
Amherst, Mass. : Amherst College Press, 1991.

Room temperature : a novel
1991
Baker, Nicholson.
New York, N.Y. : Vintage Contemporaries, 1991.
1st Vintage Contemporaries ed.

War fever
1991
Ballard, J. G., 1930-2009.
New York : Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1991.
1st American ed.

Live from earth
1991
Olsen, Lance, 1956-
New York : Ballantine Books, 1991.
1st ed.

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Find it at U T    The ultimate rip-off : a taxing tale
1991
Crumbley, D. Larry.
Sun Lakes, Ariz. : Thomas Horton and Daughters, ©1991, [1991].
Revised.

Literature : an introduction to fiction, poetry, and drama
1991
New York, NY : HarperCollins, c1991.
5th ed.

Dead Elvis : a chronicle of a cultural obsession
1991
Marcus, Greil.
New York : Doubleday, 1991.
1st ed.

Laura’s skin
Geographie der Lust.
1991
Federspiel, Jürg, 1931-2007.
New York : Fromm International Pub. Corp., c1991.
1st U.S. ed.

Mao II
1991
DeLillo, Don.
New York, N.Y., U.S.A. : Viking, 1991.

Practically painless English
1990
Wallace, Sally Foster, 1938-
Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Prentice Hall, ©1990, [1990?] + instructor’s manual (iii, 69 pages; 23 cm).
Second edition.

Instructor’s manual to accompany Literature, an introduction to fiction, poetry, and drama, fifth edi
1990
New York, N.Y. : HarperCollins, c1990.

Dostoevsky. The years of ordeal, 1850-1859
1990
Frank, Joseph, 1918-
Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1990.

What if? : writing exercises for fiction writers
1990
Bernays, Anne.
New York, N.Y. : HarperCollins Publishers, 1991.
First HarperPerennial edition.

Morte d’author : an autopsy
1990
Hix, H. L.
Philadelphia, Penn. : Temple University Press, 1990.

Coming to our senses : body and spirit in the hidden history of the West
1990
Berman, Morris, 1944-
London, England : Unwin Paperbacks, 1990.

An adult child’s guide to what is “normal”
1990
Friel, John C., 1947-
Deerfield Beach, Fla. : Health Communications, Inc., ©1990, [1990?]

The safety of objects : stories
1990
Homes, A. M.
New York, N.Y. : W.W. Norton & Company, ©1990, [1990?]
First edition.

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Find it at U T    My cousin, my gastroenterologist
1990
Leyner, Mark.
New York : Harmony Books, c1990.
1st ed.

The best American short stories, 1990
1990
Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 1990.

Bill W. and Dr. Bob
1990
Shem, Samuel.
New York, N.Y. : Samuel French, Inc., ©1990, [1990?]

The drama of the gifted child
Drama des begabten Kindes.
1990
Miller, Alice.
New York, N.Y. : BasicBooks, ©1990, [1990?]

Life after television
1990
Gilder, George F., 1939-
Knoxville, Tenn. : Whittle Direct Books, ©1990, [1990?].

The silence of the lambs
1990
Harris, Thomas, 1940-
New York, N.Y. : St. Martin’s Paperbacks, ©1990, 1988.

Play it as it lays : a novel
1990
Didion, Joan.
New York, N.Y. : Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1990, 1970.

Georg Cantor : his mathematics and philosophy of the infinite
1990
Dauben, Joseph Warren, 1944-
Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1990.

Mathematical thought from ancient to modern times
1990
Kline, Morris, 1908-1992.
New York : Oxford University Press, 1990.

American short stories
1990
Glenview, Ill. : Scott, Foresman/Little, Brown Higher Education, c1990.
5th ed.

Running dog
1989
DeLillo, Don.
New York : Vintage Contemporaries, 1989.

Ratner’s star
1989
DeLillo, Don.
New York : Vintage Contemporaries, 1989.

Players
1989
DeLillo, Don.
New York : Vintage Contemporaries, 1989.

Americana
1989
DeLillo, Don.
New York, N.Y., U.S.A. : Penguin Books, 1989.

The Sermon on the mount : the key to success in life ; and, The Lord’s prayer, an interpretation
1989
Fox, Emmet.
San Francisco, Calif. : Harper & Row, 1989, c1938.
First Perennial Library edition.

The now habit : a strategic program for overcoming procrastination and enjoying guilt-free play
1989
Fiore, Neil A.
Los Angeles, Calif. : Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, ©1989, 1989.
First edition.

Recovering from a broken heart : a companion guide for the journey from suffering to joyful awareness
1989
Golabuk, Philip.
New York, N.Y. : Harper & Row, ©1989.
First edition.

Journey into madness : the true story of secret CIA mind control and medical abuse
1989
Thomas, Gordon, 1933-
New York : Bantam Books, 1989.

Warlock
1989
Harrison, Jim, 1937-
New York : Delta/Seymour Lawrence, 1989, c1981.
New Delta ed.

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David Foster Wallace’s Personal Files – Newsweek.

With a flyer boasting quotes from both J.G. Ballard and Colonel Kilgore of Apocalypse Now, by the time my chum Luis and I arrived at NYU a few weeks back for a special lecture we knew we’d be in for an interesting discussion.

Steve Goodman, aka Kode9, dubstep producer and owner/chief curator of the massively great Hyperdub record label, was talking about his new book Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear. (MIT Press)

Introduced as a “rogue academic” and member of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit, it wasn’t immediately clear if the talk was going to be highly abstract or grounded, but it turned out the latter–lucid, well researched and informative. Here are some notes.

Goodman started by saying he was at first interested in “taking literally the way certain currents of electronic music culture were describing themselves using military metaphor,” for example, Underground Resistance. But he found most was an outpouring of male fantasy and conspiracy theory. Then, he turned to non-lethal weaponry, which is now essential in an overexposed world with real-time televised events.

“[It's an] arms race in which the opponent is the general population,” Goodman said, noting microwave pulses that can modulate behavior without supposedly lasting effects or visible traces. In his definition of a sonic weapon, it’s something that can cause modulation of feelings and behavior, be it violence, pain, seduction, trickery (advertising!), deception, unease or fear.

Most politics of music, he said, deal with content and language, text that can be deconstructed and lyrics that can be reinterpreted. More fundamental is how sound and music affects and modulate the body and mind, but not always consciously or representationally, part of the “vibrational relationships between things, sometimes humans,” as part of a continuum of vibrational forces that have been colonized by different groups.

Military research into acoustic weapons tends to focus on to repelling people, dispersing crowds and essentially making a group into individuals. Seduction indicates branding, to induce consumption behaviors and to get people to buy things. In music culture and sound art insidious frequencies to attract crowds, bring people together.

So we have forces of repulsion and forces of attraction.

Goodman then moved on to the origins of sound produced in the military, as a fanfare to call to arms, and drumming to discipline the troops in time: a soundtrack to war.

He went into the Urban Funk Campaign and Operation Wandering Ghost¹, two Vietnam era projects to experiment with sound in battle, and talked about the ghost army the allies set up in World War II.

Goodman then went into his three definitions of “unsound”–that is, having suspect methods, “politically unsound”, below the threshold of hearing, or most interestingly, things you can’t hear because they haven’t been created. “The potential between the vibrational field, what futurism in music culture has always been intereted in, the shock of the new.

This leads to an interesting premise: “what a body can hear is not something that is fixed in time.”

Hearing aids let us hone in on certain frequencies, hi-tech prosthetics. “We don’t yet know what the sonic body is capable of.”

Much of the talk around sonic warfare (that isn’t waging it) consists of debunking military press releases, according to Goodman, and names Dr. Jurgen Altman as a leader.

Most effort in that field is involved in directional ultrasound, things like sonic lasers. Rather than use sub-frequencies (like Goodman and many musicians) the military tech focuses on directional devices that create hole-y space, and pockets of audition.

He talked about how military technology trickles down, as of the case of the vocoder, initially a speech encoder so Roosevelt could talk to Churchill. Then came two great quotes, that I may have mis-attributed, or under attributed in my notes; I have “Kintler”. Anyway, the quotes are (on seperate lines because they’re great):

All entertainment media is an abuse of military media.

The discoteque was a boot camp for World War 3.

The latter meaning it was subtly improving our nervous systems to function in a situation of sensory overload.

He touched a bit on the Mosquito, post-9/11 urban culture and its pelethora of sirens, the LRAD, playing Balinese gamelan on the greatest soundsystem known to man and studying the brain’s response, sonic booms and sonic warfare as war crimes, the monopolization of the means to experiment with frequencies, schizophrenia as “split voice”, Project Jericho and more.

Goodman’s keeping a blog on various topics related to the book here. You can preview it on Google Books.

UPDATE: Luis adds this. Very appropriate.

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1. From WFMU: “The Urban Funk Campaign is something much more evil. It was employed by the CIA Audio Harassment Division in Vietnam and Laos. The idea: bombard the local citizenry with sound instead of bombs. The desired effect: rouse the populace from their hideouts and destabilize their resolve.

   In 1972, 13 choppers were equipped with Sound Curdler Systems (costing $50,000 each). The Curdler is a small oscillator unit that is capable of hundreds of hours of uninterrupted operation from a simple 9v. battery. It emits a shrill pulsating shriek at 120 decibels at 10 meters. (Standing on a runway during takeoff of a 747 measures 112db, in other words, potential aural harm.)

   The system is also called a “People Repeller” when used with a hand portable US HPS1 Public Address System with a 350 watt amp and anti-feedback microphone. This system delivered intelligible speech over 2.5 miles. The system also came with an optional siren system with built-in wail/yelp audio frequency oscillator with adjustments to frequencies from 500-5000hz.

   Code-named “Wandering Soul” because the audio engineers spent weeks recording eerie sounds based on their exposure to local music, foklore, ghost stories. The eerie sounds are similar to the soundeffects employed during a radio mystery play, but transposed to live theatre of Vietnam. These sounds were intended to represent souls of the enemy dead who had failed to find the peace of a proper burial. The wailing soul cannot be put to rest until this proper burial takes place.

   The purpose of these intrusive sounds was to enhance panic instincts and facilitate crowd dispersal and the disruption of troop strategies, village chanting, rites, routines, and celebrations. The target audience (victims) are forced to drop everything to cover their ears. At night the system was at its most effective as it harassed the sleeping and preyed on the sensibilities and superstitions of the target population. It was further intended to destabilize beliefs, disorient the human targets, and enhance intra-community irritability.

   The 10,000-watt airborne systems were mounted on the choppers so as to best project sound downward in a pyramid apexing at 3,500 meters altitude. This was the technological heart of psychological warfare.

   In 1973 the Urban Funk Campaign tested super/sub-sonic and ultra/infra sound with a weapon system called a Squark Box which creates 2 simultaneously inaudible ultrasound tones at pitches of 16 and 16.002khz. These 2 ultrasonic waves of highly directional beams are aimed to coincide at the target point. This interference pattern creates a sub-beat of 2hz outside normal auditory perception and when played at immense volumes causes ars, shoulders, chest wall and buttocks to resonate. It converts the target body into a human tuning fork. Symptoms include headache, visual distortion, epidermal tinglings. the skin actually gets heated by localized ultrasound and gently cooked.” Other effects are the formation of cavities or bubbles in the body, choking, excessive salivation, testicular pain, nausea and giddiness – a technological extension of witchcraft. And when combined with rapid flickering hi-intensity lights it caused systematic disorientation, sensory destabilization. Prototype for the modern dance floor where for an admission price, revelers willingly submit the ennui of their everyday bodies to the photo/auditory-epileptic effects of intense stroboscopic light. Synchronized at between 10-30cps – photoepilepsy will occur during intense prolonged conflict exposure.”

Pssssst….

My buddy Dan posted this on Facebook the other day and it reminded me of one of the key points in Scott Berkun’s excellent “Confessions of a Public Speaker“. I read “Confessions…” late last year and have been talking about it to anyone who frequently presents or is involved in speaking in front of an audience; its a great resource.

Anyway, a point Scott makes is amply illustrated here: The audience wants you to succeed.

In Dan’s heartwarming case, he got a heads up on his fly being open, and probably went into that talk knowing he at least had one guy in the audience rooting for him.

Dan writes “Today I had to speak in front of about 70 people at this pharmaceutical company near Jersey when this fine older gentleman nonchalantly got my attention and passed me this note:”

Photographer Caroll Taveras emailed the other day with some end-of-project news from her Photo Studio project, which you may remember from our visit this winter. Selections are online, and there’s a book in the works, and, according to Caroll, she’s going to be bringing cheap (but great!) portraiture to more cities. Stay tuned!

(ps., turns out, as you can see above, I made the website, alongside Stefan Ruiz, a photographer and briefly creative director of the iconic magazine Colors.)

(pps. In other eminent Brooklynite news, Jim Hanas, my predecessor at Creativity/AdCritic, has a nifty full-pager explaining why you’ll never be famous recently gave at his lecture series, Adult Ed, which I have shamefully yet to attend. Congrats, Jim–if they didn’t tell you about the perks, by dint of the Post filing you in the Opinion/Op-Ed columnist bin you’ve earned a one-year trial membership to the John Birch Society and a 2010 copy of G. Gordon Liddy’s ‘Stacked and Packed’ calendar.¹

1. I kid, but while working on the desk at the Post I got into a protracted phone conversation with one of Liddy’s radio producers that called for some esoteric sports stats and he sent an autographed, dedicated copy of the calendar to me at the paper in thanks. I put it in my mail cubby to take home later, as I was due at the bar that night and didn’t have safe transport, but the next day it was gone.

I’ve been anticipating the movie adaptation of Roberto Saviano’s landmark piece of journalism, Gomorrah, since I finished the book about a year ago and proceeded to recommend it to anyone who’d listen. Unfortunately, while it’s a good enough movie by itself, compared to the book it falls short.

First, a word or two on the book. Saviano, a native of the Naples area, lived and breathed the Camorra, the network of clans of organized criminals growing up, and after twenty-something years had enough and wrote a blow-by-blow account of all the different ways it infects the region, from its fashion output to the mozzarella it eats.  Saviano, who narrates the book while hopping from murder scene to murder scene on his scooter and detailing his own family’s determined path around the muck, published the work to the dual accolades of it becoming the most-requested tome in the Italian prison system as well as drawing death threats from the clans whose foibles and excesses it chronicles. And it made him a very rich, well known (both deservedly so) man, at the price of his own safety and freedom–a true commitment to the cause.

The movie adaptation follows a half-dozen different narratives, all part of Saviano’s story, switching between the different arcs. The tailor is under pressure to churn out designer dresses at his sweatshop. The young graduate joins an old hand at the toxic waste dumping business. A tender grocery delivery boy rises in the ranks of the clan. Two cowboys try their hand at existing outside of the system and being outlaws among outlaws. The clan’s welfare dude distributes thick bundles of Euros to wives whose husbands are in the can.

In the book, the central character is Saviano, his relationship and repudiation of this terror that’s destroyed his country and is a scourge on Europe. While he gives in-depth history of the clans and cites dozens of jarring statistics and items of courtroom testimony eventually it all comes back to him. The movie, however, takes these mini-narratives and places them all in a sort of dilapidated project-type area (seen above) where the junkies, the kids, the money man all prowl around. While there’s strength in the crumbling neighborhood epic, taking the mini ecosystem half of the individual narratives center around and making them interrelate gives you something falling short of La Haine. The other three prowl around on their own and reach a violent denouement suggesting some balance or restoration of order before the screen goes dark and cites a few statistics of medium impact (such as, one person is killed every three days in the clan areas).

Technically, at its worst, the film’s pacing feels like a made-for-TV movie, with overslow shots juiced for maximum cringe value. There are only a few notable gangsters in the movie, but dozens of colorful characters, ruthless beyond rationalization, in the book. The film’s images are shocking, but are nothing compared to the brutality described by an indignant Saviano.

That’s the film’s biggest failing–it’s inability to capture the outrage central for any impartial observer (channeled by Saviano) and contrast it with the die-and-let-die mentality that is shown to be pervasive in the area.

If you’re interested in seeing the film, pick up the book first. You’ll finish it in three days and get much more from the experience. It’s an old saw, but in this case the book is far better than the movie.