In which I discuss science’s identity crisis

I disagree with the book. That’s not the problem. I can’t think of a single logical reason as to why I disagree with the book. That’s the problem.  Hopefully, by the end of this post, I’ll have solved the problem.

The book is called The End of Science and it is by a man named John Horgan. It details, as you might expect, ‘The Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age’ and is therefore a demonstration of his fairly dire premonition of the future of science.

The book is essentially formatted as a series of interviews of famous scientists and philosophers of science in order to make a broader point about the horizons of science. I’m not going to rehash what these people have said because a) it isn’t my intention to make their point for them and b) I’m nowhere near as eminently qualified to do so as other, easily accessible sources. This post will attempt to simultaneously synthesise and address my thoughts on this book as well as try to demonstrate to you my larger (and truth be told, fairly limited) opinion on where science is going to go.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist: A pseudo-review

This summer has been a very special summer. I’ve done my first residential summer course, got my first set of exam results and received my first summer reading list. It is the last of these achievements that is significant in this post, however.

It’s everything a reading list should be. It has a peaceful image of reading as a background. It has a long list of books sorted in no particular order. It’s got the authors right next to the name of the books. It has the sort of books you approach with caution. They’re not intended for light reading. They’re books like Wuthering Heights and Anna Karenina. Some of them have strange names like A Case of Exploding Mangoes and A History of the World in 10½ Chapters. 

Innocuously slotted in the list is a book entitled The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid. As I read through the reading list yesterday, my eyes settled upon this particular title in the middle column. Immediately, my mind flashed back to a rainy afternoon eons (well, more like a few years, to be perfectly honest) ago. I sat in the bedroom, watching my dad pack his suitcase to go travelling somewhere or the other, and in my typical restless manner, my eyes travelled to his bedside table, on which sat the book. I opened it up, and began poring over the first few pages. I don’t remember my exact thoughts, but I do know that I found it an interesting book, and would have subsequently spent the next few hours finishing had my mother not plucked the book out of my hands, citing inappropriate content and placed it back on the bedstand. In a fit of childish pique, I stalked out of the room, promising to finish the book some other time with that kind of youthful resolve that never really comes to fruition.

Now, all those years later, I finished the book. And I quite enjoyed it.

In which I discuss The Cuckoo’s Calling and other sundries.

A few minutes ago, I was reading a book named The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith and thus encountered a private detective named Cormoran Strike. He is, at least to me, a singularly unpleasant individual. He calls his temporary secretaries by their predecessor’s name; his ‘inelastic’ moral fiber is bent by the promise of doubled fees; and only seconds before meeting a client, realises that his shirt is covered with blood and his tie with water. He is, to summarise, not someone I’d enjoy meeting.

Strike is, like the very best of characters, deeply flawed. Inured to the emotional suffering of his client, he listens to the story of the death of a supermodel (who happens to be the adopted sister of the client) with something approaching indifference. He treats evidence provided to him by his client as the frantic, vain hope of someone unwilling to accept their sister’s suicide. He explains to the client, with hardened condescension bordering on indifference, that while Suicide is hard to accept for family members, it must be accepted anyway. Naturally, the client doesn’t take too well to this, and gets rather perturbed. He starts shouting, and tells Strike he was willing to pay double. At this, all of Strike’s misgivings fall away like tree leaves during autumn and he starts paying a whole lot more attention to the client.

What’s interesting about this is even though I dislike Shrike as a character, it’s very easy to understand where he’s coming from. The author describes all his little moves and their intent as well as the random thoughts that flit through his head with little consequence to his life.

My reason for buying the book, however, was rather unusual. You see, I didn’t buy it because the book looked interesting, or even because I read the first chapter and enjoyed it. Sure, I did both of those things, but they had no bearing on whether or not I bought it. I bought it, in fact, because Robert Galbraith doesn’t exist. He’s a pen-name for someone else, someone you may have heard of. The real author’s name is J.K. Rowling. Sound familiar?

Perhaps a little background information is in order. Rowling chose to write under a pen-name so that she could, in her own words, “take my writing persona as far away as possible from me”. She wished to write this book without all the fanfare associated with her name. Thus, she created Robert Galbraith, a military man working in national security (which was also a convenient way of ensuring that no photos or biographies needed of the author). In fact, the only reason why Galbraith was found out to be Rowling was that a thoroughly nosy reporter conducted some research and ascertained that they were one and the same. Rowling later confirmed this.

What fascinates me about this is just how much of a difference the name of J.K. Rowling makes. In the week before the reveal of the author’s true identity, the book only sold 500 copies in the US. As soon as the reveal had occurred, the book shot up to number one on the bestseller list, above both Dan Brown and James Patterson Books.  First edition copies sold for over three hundred dollars, and the publisher tripled the printing of the book.

While it’s easy to put up this stratospheric increase to simply Rowling’s fame and her skill as an author, it actually has rather sad implications. Even before everyone knew the book was by Rowling, it was still a well written book. Despite this, it was still overlooked in the myriad of other, arguably inferior books that populated the shelves of stores. Business Insider summarises it rather well. It says that it is:

a truly illuminating example of the fundamental unfairness and absurdity that lies at the heart of the book publishing industry. It’s long been known that the publishing industry works through sheer numbers. Publishers throw everything at the wall and see what sticks, and the mega-hits, of which there are few, pay for the flops, of which there are many. What Rowling’s experiment reveals, however, is that even a great book by an unknown author can simply get lost.

People talk about how the internet age has given millions of people a voice, how it’s now so much easier for them to be heard. I think this, however, is an example that goes against it. Despite these countless outlets for content, people still flock to the same old famous authors, they stick with the Jeffrey Archers, John Grishams and J.K. Rowlings. That’s not to say that these people aren’t skilled writers, just that there are countless others who are as, if not more skilled and who simply aren’t well known enough.
So to conclude, I think that this is just a great example of how today, instead of promoting the work of amateurs, we instead cloak them even more in anonymity and instead promote the work of those who don’t really need more promotion. It’s human nature to side  with J.K. Rowling, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have given Robert Galbraith a chance.

Miss me?

*Insert obligatory paragraph about how my exams are over and I can start posting again*.

So over the last month and a half, I’ve done quite a lot of stuff, but nothing particularly blog-worthy so I’m just going to pretend the most stressful period of my life never happened. How convenient.

Yesterday, however, I went to watch the Great Gatsby.

Some of you may not know this, but for the last two years, I’ve been studying the book in English, amongst other pieces. Those of you who have read the book will know that symbolism and hidden messages aside, the book itself is a pretty heavy book. It’s one of the few books where I actually have had to reread paragraphs simply because they were so densely written. So you can imagine that being forced to read large swathes of it at a stretch in English probably wasn’t the most entertaining use of time, and even my English teacher (who, by the way, is quite possible the single greatest individual on the planet) couldn’t make the long-winded descriptions remotely tolerable. But I persevered through the book, with the notion that it was boring growing more and more entrenched every page.

So one fine day, I found myself sitting in a literature exam, analysing a description of a particular character. Having finished this arduous essay, I sat back, and decided to read the piece again. As I did so, I realised something rather strange. It was actually written pretty damn well. It seemed that having finished ever needing to read the book again, my mind immediately gave me the metaphorical finger and decided that I wanted to read it again. Unbeknownst to me, it seems that in a fit of teenage angst, I only wanted to read the Great Gatsby when I wasn’t required to do so. Needless to say, I succumbed to this yearning and  read the book again.

Unfortunately, it was as dense as before, but this time, I found myself appreciating the vivid descriptions, the underlying metaphors behind the characters and just how alien a time it seemed. I realised that it wasn’t really a story about a boring narrator who recounts an even more boring story, but that actually, the characters didn’t exist at all. But I’ll talk about that later.

Moving onto the movie. The Great Gatsby stars Leonardo Dicaprio as the titular character, Tobey Maguire as Nick, Carey Mulligan as Daisy and Joel Edgerton as Tom. It’s directed by Baz Luhrmann. It’s a slightly confusing movie to watch, because as a movie, it’s a really good movie! I enjoyed every minute of the movie because it’s just so vibrant, chaotic and colorful. Some of the scenes in which there is an awkward atmosphere are done brilliantly, and the chemistry between the characters is in general pretty good.

As a reflection of its source material, however, I don’t think the movie did as well. The main problem  is simply that The Great Gatsby is a ridiculously uncinematic (that’s a word now) book. There are countless scenes which contribute very little to the plot of the book yet play a large part in the messages of the book. Scenes like, for example, Nick meeting Daisy’s daughter and how Daisy behaves. Scenes like that just weren’t included in the movie and the unfortunate thing is that they just weren’t necessary. There are also these critical lines in the book like Daisy’s comment on girls which are included in the movie, but again, I get the feeling that the film is basically screaming “Look! This line is important!” to the audience. There’s a closeup on the actors face, a dramatic pause in the music and a moment of sober reflection after the line is complete; whereas in the book, most of those lines are just uttered offhand. Again, it’s difficult to get the same impact in the movie without this change, but it just makes it seem as though the movie is trying a little too hard to get the message across.

Nick’s a rather interesting character in the book. He serves the part of a narrator, but has no bias and in fact, goes to great lengths in the first chapter to explain this. He basically tells events as they are and if you think about it in terms of the story, he seems pretty unnecessary. There were plenty of other ways to get Gatsby and Daisy to meet. So ultimately, he’s not really needed in the movie because you can’t see things from his point of view. It’s not possible for him just to be cut out of the movie, so in order to include him in the movie, an interesting backstory is made up about how he’s recounting the story to his therapist at a sanitorium because he’s become a depressed alcoholic as a result of the events in the book and during the events of the book, Nick just wanders around looking stoned. The therapist recommends that Nick writes in his journal, which allows for convenient montages of Nick typing feverishly into his typewriter and giving long monologues which are almost verbatim what is written in the book. That amount of narration gets kind of overwhelming, but to the director’s credit, there isn’t really any other way to incorporate it. What wasn’t as elegant, though, was the last few lines of the book and how they were translated into the movies. The lines themselves are lovely, incorporating the human condition into a metaphor about boats, and the director recognises this. Unfortunately, he chooses to broadcast this importance by actually typing up the lines on the screen as Nick types them in his typewriter. It was just so overtly done that it made me cringe.

The Great Gatsby has a lot going for it. It’s a beautiful looking film, the soundtrack is brilliant, and I’ve never seen such crazy parties. There’s this scene in the book at Gatsby’s funeral, where his Dad comes and talks about Gatsby and just generally makes him look good. It doesn’t contribute much to the story, and so it’s removed from the movie. And in a sense, the whole movie is a bit like that. It’s almost complete and has everything that’s necessary to be adequate, but it lacks that final element which makes it amazing.

So in conclusion, this is a Gatsby that’s fun, entertaining and sounds great. It’s a good Gatsby. But as its title suggests, it should be great. And it doesn’t quite get there.

Long time no see!

Hi there! Ok, I haven’t posted for some time, and I probably won’t be able to post that often, what with exams and things coming up, but I just recently signed up for goodreads, and I reviewed a book today, so I’m just sharing that with you. If you can’t be bothered to read it on goodreads, I’ll also copy it here so you can read it here.

From now on, I will post my usual stuff here, but I’ll also post my reviews and stuff so you can see it. Enjoy 🙂

Here’s the link: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/563305445

The little things

Here’s the trailer of the new James Bond movie, Skyfall. Watch it.

Towards the end, there’s a very short bit that I really, really like. So Bond jumps onto a train with a crane eating into the carriage behind him. He’s bleeding, there are explosions and all that fun stuff behind him, and the first thing he does is straighten his suit jacket.

Of course, that has absolutely no significance to the plot whatsoever, but it’s a nice touch.

Skyfall is a good movie, but that’s not what I want to talk about.

When I’m reading something, or watching something, I enjoy seeing these little things, the small things that make it more realistic. Personally, I feel John Grisham and Jeffrey Archer are masters at this. Whether it be the origins of the clothes the characters are wearing, the number of books on the shelves, or how many times a character blinks after a particularly weighty announcement, it just makes it seem a lot more real to me

It’s got something to do with building an environment or atmosphere up. If I know the subtle nuances of a character, what makes them tick, it makes me relate them much better and understand the story a lot better.

Of course, having these little details doesn’t always make it a good story, but it helps. It’s interesting to know the backstory behind some of these stories.

A roll of the die

While I was writing my last blog post, I noticed a die lying on my desk, and I started to play around with it. All of a sudden, an idea popped into my head for a concept that could be used in a story. I decided that for this post, I could  just write small part of it and see where it goes.

Be aware that I’m making this up as I go along and so it probably won’t be perfect.

Let’s do this.

A fantastical rambling

Recently, I’ve been reading George R.R. Martin’s fantasy novel ‘A Game of Thrones’. It’s actually a really good book, but there’s something about it that sets it apart from other fantasy books that I have read. In fantasy series such as Eragon and the Lord of the Rings, the world is obviously distinguishable from our world in that it has elements such as Magic or otherworldly races. This reliance on unrealistic things is much less pronounced in A Game of Thrones, and in fact, everything so far that I’ve read has not relied on this kind of stuff. Sure, there’s been some mentions of Dragons, but apart from that, I can really imagine the events of the book happening a long time ago on Earth. In fact, the main plot of the story seems to  generally be a political battle.

So today, I thought I would talk about what  I think goes into making a good fantasy novel.

Characters

In a fantasy novel, I think characterization is really key. Obviously, the characters probably aren’t going to be exactly like a normal person these days, and I think it’s really important to establish that so that it is considered the norm in the story, and doesn’t come as a surprise to the reader when it comes into play. I think that A Game of Thrones actually does this really well, and all the characters and their key character traits are introduced very soon.

Plot

The great thing about writing fantasy stories is that they really allow your imagination to roam free when making a plot. However, I don’t think it’s a good idea to allow it to roam too far, or you may lose your grounding. The last thing you want is for you to lose track of reality as we know it and stretch your story to the limit where the reader can scarcely relate to the story. This happened to me when I first read Lord of The Rings, and I think that that’s  a slight problem. The sheer number of races and complex dynamics of each of the races are easy to lose track of. The climax should also not seem to tacky, for example having the protagonist suddenly realize he has an incredible power. That cliché is overused, and it really irritates me.

Themes

Most of the fantasy series I’ve read embody the primal conflict between good and evil, love and hate, or something of the sort. While fantasy is a really good medium for exploring this theme, I think it might be interesting to do something else. You could, for example, write about two tribes/civilizations which develop in very different ways and somehow interrelate the two. It would also be interesting to make a fantasy which doesn’t have any magic, or new races, but is just about a new civilization of humans and their development. The great thing about fantasy is that it is a beast which can be tamed in any way you see fit and used for any purpose.

Conclusion

You should know that fantasy isn’t my favorite genre of books. I like it, sure, but I prefer things like mystery or thriller. My reason for this is very simple. Of the fantasy books I’ve read, they are at their core very similar stories. In a sense, they all inspire each other and so sometimes it seems like if you’ve read one of them, you’ve read all of them. That’s why it was such a joy to read A Game of Thrones. The style of fantasy is so different to anything I’ve come across, and this makes for a really interesting read.

Until next time 🙂

Interesting characters

I’ve been thinking about what exactly it is that makes the main character of a book or movie memorable, and in doing so, I’ve come up with some ideas for characters that might be especially interesting. I thought that today I would share with you some of these characters. Now I haven’t decided on anything final like their names or anything, so this just talks about a general picture of the character. Enjoy 🙂

• The fractured man: This person has, for some reason or the other, gone through some event or the other that has led to him becoming extremely mentally unstable, so much so that he lies in a semi-vegetative state in an asylum. However, his mind is far from dormant. In it rages a battle between two different personalities, one which acts completely rationally, and the other which succumbs to the rage of emotion each time.
• The manipulator: This guy never really associates himself with a crowd, but prefers to just stand on the outside and observes. He has the ability to recognize who the major players in any social hierarchy are, how everybody interacts and is then able to tip that delicate social balance to his favor. I thought that an interesting twist in his story would be his finding out that he was being manipulated by someone who was even better than him.
• The vigilante: This is a man whom no one can relate to. A man who has his own completely different set of morals and listens to nothing than those. This man suddenly feels that the way the current world is going is going wrong and vows to destroy the world. Obviously, he needs to be stopped. But here’s the catch….he can do this only because no one knows who he is.
• The technological genius: The CEO of some tech company has pioneered a system in which people can connect to each others minds and collaborate (realistic, I know). Now, this program is awesome and everyone loves it, until a rogue hacker finds a way to access all of someone else’s thoughts and edit them. Now, when the CEO finds out about this, he doesn’t try to stop it. Instead, he buys the software and sells it to the highest bidder.

All these characters seem to be very different from people I can relate to, and I think that’s what makes a book character interesting to me. Not being able to relate to the character makes me question what they do and so they stick with me a lot longer.

Well, that’s about it. Until next time  🙂

A tremendous trilogy

So a couple of weeks ago, I did a Lord of the Rings movie marathon with a couple of my friends. I had never watched them before then (cardinal sin, I know), and I went in, not sure what to expect. If I had to put it in words, I think I was expecting movies that were good, but perhaps forgettable. I had heard about the movies before, so I knew it wouldn’t be a complete letdown.

What I got, however, was completely different. Instead, I spent 13 hours and a bit watching what were possibly the best three movies I have ever seen.

When I first finished the movies, I wasn’t too wowed by it. But by the time I had got in the cab and was just thinking about the movies, I was absolutely gobsmacked. Three weeks later, I’m still as amazed at how well they made the movies. From the schizophrenic treachery of Andy Serkis as Gollum to the noble honor of Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn to the slowly-deteriorating sanity of  Elijah Wood as Frodo, all the acting is stellar. The camera work is also incredibly good, and even in the first movie, you lose count of the number of breathtaking panoramas they show. The soundtrack manages to stand on the fine line between sticking in your head and not irritating the hell out of you, and brings a tear to even the most hardened metalhead.

But that’s not really why those movies are so amazing. It’s because they endure.  I haven’t watched even a minute of the movies since then, but I still feel disgusted when I think of the indifference with which Denethor treats Faramir. I still feel despair when  I think of how Gollum throws away Sam and Frodo’s elven bread. I still feel touched when I think of Sam making the single greatest monologue ever at the end of the battle of Ozgiliath, and I still fell relief when I think of  Frodo collapsing on the sides of Mount Doom after dropping the ring into the cracks of death.

‘The return of the king’ won all the Oscars it was nominated for (all eleven of them), and it deserved it. All three movies did.