The Anubis Gates, by Tim Powers

I picked up this book based on recommendations from random internet folks commenting on The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger. Both books use time-travel subtly, such that the reader isn’t distracted by mind-numbing technical descriptions, and aren’t plagued with plot holes caused by miscreants such as the grandfather paradox, but that’s where the similarities end.

The Anubis Gates chronicles the adventures of Brendan Doyle, an English professor inadvertently caught in the intrigues of a cabal of sorcerers seeking to restore the Egyptian gods to the power and glory that was stolen from them by the Christians. Add a dash of the supernatural in the form of magic and unsolved paranormal phenomena, and a dose of historical fiction provided by a roster of notable 19th century figures including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron and Muhammad Ali (no, not the boxer), and you should have a book that’s brimming with possibilities.

In spite of this, I found the book to be unsatisfying. Whereas every paragraph of Time Traveler’s Wife was an essential part of the story, I found myself thinking several times that certain sections were added just to reinforce the point that there is only a single temporal continuity. Pacing and characterisations were uneven, with some side plots – e.g. the beggar clown-king Horrabin’s quest for power through an alliance with one of the sorcerers – receiving way too many words for way too little pay-off, and the much more interesting character of Jacky, a.k.a. Elizabeth Jacqueline Tichy – who dresses up as a beggar boy to avenge the death of her fiancé – given woefully little space.

I also have an aversion to historical fiction that treats the supernatural as real. For example, while I generally think well of the movie The Prestige, it still troubles me that the cleverness of it stems from what is essentially a deus ex machina plot device (I won’t give it away here for those who haven’t seen it). The book makes much of sorcery as a dying art, probably to do with the waning power of the Egyptians. However, the way Powers describes it, with various occult paraphernalia and constantly iterated explanations about the effects (or lack) of magical power, is to magic in fiction what scientific descriptions about quantum theory and the like are to other books about time travel.

So despite its rambling nature and lengthy descriptions of even the most pedestrian events, Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle still holds the spot as the best “fiction set in historical England” that I’ve read. Oddly, because it’s not one of my favourite genres or anything, I have yet another book in my “unread” pile that’s set in a similar period: Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, my copy of which, I discovered just now, features an introduction by Audrey Niffenegger! God, I’m having another one of those Truman Show moments…

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Buy The Anubis Gates, by Tim Powers

Smarter Planet

Earlier today, Sam Palmisano, IBM’s chairman, delivered a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations called “Smarter Planet”. In it, he outlined IBM’s vision for the future, a vision where technology helps improve people’s lives all over the world by becoming “digitally aware and interconnected”. But the thing that interests me is how the proof points deal almost entirely with efficiency problems: electricity losses from the grid, wasted food, petrol burned while sitting idly in traffic, and more besides.

The timing of the announcement couldn’t be better. As I stated at the end of my previous post, the topic of efficiency has been on my mind for a while now and quite serendipitously, this gem gets dropped into my lap. I didn’t plan to start writing about it so soon, but I got caught up in the Zeitgeist sweeping through the IBM community.

Let me start by stating the problem: humans are manifestly inefficient; the primary evidence being the amount of waste that we generate. Our limited brains and selfish nature mean that we spend most of the time doing things that are either necessary for our personal survival, or leads to our pleasure. So what a rare time in history we find ourselves in today, when humanity is starting to wake up to the fact that its collective burden on the environment is causing negative change. Scientists are even beginning to label this as a new epoch: “the Anthropocene” – the time when human activity started having a significant impact on the earth.

Like most, I worry about the future, but I tend to focus on unusual resource management issues, such as what will happen if we keep flinging our limited terrestrial resources out into space? And I think several people have heard me talk about my career aspirations as a garbage sorter (it’s not enough to separate the recycling from the ordinary rubbish in my own home, I want to do it for everybody else too). It is from these thoughts that spring my visions for the future.

I dream of crazy machines that liquify garbage, with nanobots to sort the output into piles of base molecules and elements ready for resuse. I imagine computers that can keep track of every single object on earth, so nothing in good, working condition that could be reused by somebody, somwhere, is ever discarded. I’ve considered starting a global database of instruction manuals and spare parts, so that whatever can be fixed, will be. All of this makes perfect sense in my head – I just wish somebody, or some business, would make it a reality. And it seems IBM could very well be that business.

I often tell people how much I love my job. Now that it has become apparent that IBM’s vision aligns so closely with my own, I know that I couldn’t be happier anywhere else.

Cooking up some social change

The Sunday Telegraph ran an article last month on a surprising phenomenon: cookbooks are selling better than ever despite the financial crisis. The journalist, Charles Miranda, points out the wartime themes chosen by notable celebrity chefs such as Jamie Oliver and Delia Smith, and offers it as evidence that the public (in the UK at least) are adopting a recession mindset. However, I think that the global downturn has resulted in more than just people rediscovering the joys of cooking; the attractiveness of a lifestyle financed through credit* has lost its glossy appeal.

I find this heartening, because it’ll now be easier keeping up with the Joneses. Not that I’ve ever been particularly envious of others’ houses, cars, share portfolios or whatever, but there are times when I just know I’m being Compared; for example: “You’re still in the same job? You know you could get more if you look elsewhere/had more ambition/changed roles once in a while,” or “You really should invest in shares/property/super to get ahead.”

Despite the many attempts in the past, I just can’t muster up enough enthusiasm or motivation to climb to the top of the heap. The pyramid view of the world never rang true for me, and now with this credit crunch, the pointy end is starting to collapse: climbing the social ladder by using credit to live beyond your means is banished, and people are learning to save instead of spend (or cooking at home instead of eating out). Now we have a much more level playing field, and I really hope that these changes in behaviour will drive a stake through the heart of our current capitalistic, consumeristic, materialistic society… said he who in the intervening hours since writing that last sentence, spent $429 on a brand new Dyson vacuum cleaner. Mwahaha!

I strongly believe that this economic rationalisation, along with the environmental issues currently being played out on the world stage, will lead to a new social order, which for now I’ll simply describe as “Efficiency” and leave the elaboration for a later post. It’s something that I’ve been thinking about for a while, and I’m looking forward to finally spending some time trying to articulate it.

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* I have a slight racist tendency in my belief that the love of credit is a malady that mainly affects Western society, but a few friends have said that South Korea is also in a state of near-collapse due to a high level of consumer debt.

Tomb Raider: Legend

This is the first Tomb Raider game I’ve played since the very first one way back when. The consensus from a few internet reviews that I read is that I haven’t missed much. Legend is the first Tomb Raider game produced by Crystal Dynamics, who were given the franchise to resurrect after the supposedly abysmal Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness. They took the pre-existing Lara Croft, with her aristocracy and disinterest in anything other than archaeology, and added a new back-story, which is fed to the player a piece at a time by the game’s narrative structure. As one who appreciates game stories as much as the regular variety, I liked the extra depth that this brought to both the character and the game.

While I readily admit that the developers did no disservice to the character design of Lara, I wonder if my wife should be more worried that I’m even more appreciative of the quality and variety of level design, and the attention to detail shown in ways such as the change in Lara’s character animation during the cocktail party scene. I’ve had several “wow, look at that” moments… and not all of them for Lara! I’m only about 1/3 of the way through the game so far, but the experience has been the closest that I’ve felt to being immersed in environments that are believable, and participating in a story that is as exciting and compelling as a movie. The recent Prince of Persia games, which I also greatly enjoyed, had great level design and presented an exquisite fantasy world, but it always felt very dry and sparse to me, and not just because it’s set in a desert, and the Prince is a self-absorbed, narcissistic loner. I can’t think of any better way to describe it, except maybe that the environments lacked soul? Crystal Dynamics have done an excellent job of creating a vibrant, lively world. (I’d also like to give a quick mention to Deux Ex, which features an awesome futuristic Hong Kong.)

The quality of the game is also apparent in the way that I’m choosing to suffer intense nausea just to play it. One of the problems with Tomb Raider: Legend is that the camera often swings around wildly and uncontrollably, making my eyes and inner ear have arguments in my brain about the gymnastics that are(n’t) supposedly happening. On a side note, the Wikipedia article on motion sickness mentions that drinking soft drink helps. Maybe that’s why the stereotype of gaming geeks usually involves a bottle of fizzy somewhere, because apparently, motion sickness is quite common.

Now I just have to try and get through the rest of the game without throwing up. Pace myself, that’s all I have to do. It’s supposed to be a pretty short game anyway. I’ll do a follow-up post if there’s anything worth writing about that I haven’t mentioned already, but I think I’ve already gushed enough!

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The lego figurines (or “minifigs” in the vernacular) are the creations of Justin R. Stebbins. You can find more pictures at his Website, Saber-Scorpion’s Lair.

Shelf sufficient

It just occurred to me that we have a lot of bookshelves around the house. It’s not only because we have a lot of books (we do), but because bookshelves seem to have become the de facto storage type for everything.

We have a tall, skinny one which has all of our shoes and shoeboxes, a few Ikea jobs for DVD’s, CD’s and games, and a half-height one that a previous landlord kindly gave me acting as a chest of drawers for my clothes.

Then there’s the big looming black things in the dining area that we’re borrowing from the owners of our current place, which are supposed to be display cabinet-type things, but they’re really nothing more than bookshelves with glass doors (and it’s where I keep our cookbooks anyway).

Now to find somewhere to put all the books…