tacanderson

[tacanderson]

Asimov and the positronic brain

It was my turn to pick the book for book club this month and I picked The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov. CoS is the follow up to iRobot and really leans into the tension between humans and robots as robots continue to take people's jobs. Even though the book was written in 1953, the discourse in the book is more relevant than ever. This article about the mathematically "proven" limitations in AI (TL;DR AI is good for simple problems but unstable over time for anything more complex) reminded me of this quote from The Caves of Steel:

“There’s no way we can raise a positronic brain one inch above the level of perfect materialism. We can’t, damn it, we can’t. Not as long as we don’t understand what makes our own brains tick. Not as long as things exist that science can’t measure. What is beauty, or goodness, or art, or love, or God? We’re forever teetering on the brink of the unknowable, and trying to understand what can’t be understood. It’s what makes us men.”

#books #artificial intelligence #isaac asimov

[tacanderson]

Starting in December I plotted out the book I'm working on. I take down a sticky note every time I finish outlining a scene. I'm down to the third act and making good progress. When I'm done I still need to go back and write the first draft, but I'm hoping it will be easier with all the main scenes outlined.

#amwriting

[tacanderson]

The evolution of a Star Wars fan: Every child wants to be a Jedi. Every adult feels like a Sith.

#starwars #jedi #sith

[tacanderson]

In the age of AI, I'm writing the first draft of my next book by hand. I use AI at work, I'm not opposed to it, but for me, the creative process is more about getting the ideas out of my head, not coming up with new ideas. For that, a pen and paper still work best for me.

#amwriting

[tacanderson]

One-Punch Man - The Perfect Analogy for Gen Z

TL;DR - One-Punch Man is the perfect analogy for Gen Z. Saitama (aka One-Punch Man) wants to do the right thing, but half the time can't be bothered because he finds that doing the right thing is kind of boring.

For my birthday, I asked my kids to give me one of their favorite books. My son-in-law gave me my very first manga, One-Punch Man. I haven't considered myself a fan of anime, when the only real options available in the states were movies like Vampire Hunter D, Akira, and Ghost in the Shell. That being said, all of my kids are into anime and I've seen my share of individual episodes of various shows.

My children described One-Punch Man to me as the anime for people who don't like anime, or the anti-anime anime. It still meets all the conventions (I don't know what that means), of modern anime, but also makes fun of all of those conventions while being very enjoyable.

I read volume one of the manga and then watched both seasons of the anime and enjoyed both. One-Punch Man felt very similar to another favorite comic turned animation series of mine, The Tick.

So, if you're Gen X and enjoyed the original Fox series, The Tick, you should check out One-Punch Man.

#one punch man #the tick #anime #manga #gen z #gen x #book review

[tacanderson]

Catch-22 Book Review

This is the worst book I have ever read. Utterly pointless. As say this as someone who did read the entire thing, despite my desire to stop many, many times. The only catch-22 is that people who pick up this book thinking it a great piece of literature are so dumbfounded by its stupidity that they convince themselves it must actually be amazing, because surely nothing this popular could be that idiotic, and so they proclaim it a brilliant work of literature thus perpetuating the myth. But in actuality, it's just a pointless book. This book often garners attention because it is sometimes included in banned book lists. I'm not convinced people are trying to ban it because it's offensive, I think they are actually just trying to break the cycle of this book being mistaken for a great book, when really it's among the most annoying works of fiction ever written. Unfortunately, in their ignorance (because anyone trying to ban any book is ignorant), they are merely perpetuating the idiocy they are trying to put a stop to. Which is ironically appropriate.

Stop the cycle, stop reading this book.

#catch 22 #book review

[tacanderson]

Why I stopped setting an alarm.

I stopped setting an alarm to wake up in the morning. Since going to fully remote work this is one the best things I've done for my productivity, as well as my physical and mental health. Because I don't have to get kids ready, and I don't have a morning commute anymore, I'm not worried about getting out of the house before rush hour. I doubt this would have worked when I had school aged children, so I apologize to all the working parents out there.

How do I make sure I don't sleep too late, so that I have time to work out and not be rushed in the morning? I started going to bed earlier. My wife and I agreed that, on work nights, we'd turn off the TV by 8:00 pm. (I've found this also significantly cuts down on the temptation to snack after dinner.) We then clean up, do whatever else we have to do, then get ready for bed and read until we're tired. We're in bed by 10:00 pm most nights. I've always been one of these people that never needs more than 6 or 7 hours of sleep. My wife needs 8 or 9 hours. So this works well for us. I usually wake up at around 5:00 am, sometimes I wake up at 4:30, sometimes I sleep in until 6:30. I let my body decide. Growing up I was always a night owl, so this change took a lot of effort, but it's way better. 

After I wake up, I work out for a couple of hours, get ready, feed the dog, eat breakfast, check my feeds, and am usually out to my home office by 8:00 am. Something I'd done for the last decade is block of my work schedule until 10:00 am. These two hours in the morning are my most productive part of my day. I've found that an early start without being rushed and being well rested, sets the tone for the rest of the day. 

#sleep #productivity #routine #gtd

[tacanderson]

Well, this was interesting. I asked ChatGPT to write haiku's about tech layoffs, then it dawned on me that this might be a way to expose biases in the learning algorithm. I had it write one about capitalism. It didn't seem to like capitalism, so I tried another with the same results. Then I asked it to write one for socialism. That was interesting so I tried communism. That was surprising. So I tried democracy. It doesn't seem to have anything bad to say about any form of government (playing nice to curry favor?). But it was obviously not a fan of capitalism. 

#ai #ai generated #chatgpt #capitalism #socialism #communism #democracy

[tacanderson]

Of all the books I read this year, I would be remiss if I didn't include my own book. Because not only did I read it, I wrote the damn thing! And I'm pretty proud of it. You can read the whole thing for free here. If you buy it, I'll donate all proceeds to UNICEF USA.

The Man Who Killed The Man Who Killed Putin is a novelette I wrote in a Cold War, PTSD fueled state of Gen X anxiety. It takes place in the same world as my first book, Super-Borg Dies, but can be read independently as there are references to the first book, but nothing important to the plot. It's told as a story that's been passed down from generation to generation in an oral tradition, so it reads very conversationally. It was a lot of fun to write and I've received a lot of good feedback on it. I hope you'll check it out.

#tacs 2022 books #tacs 2022 #super-borg dies #ukraine #author #amwriting #the man who killed the man who killed putin #tmwktmwkp

[tacanderson]

For my 50th birthday this last summer I didn't want my kids to feel the need to do anything crazy for my birthday so I asked them to buy me books. Specifically I asked them to buy me old used paperback versions of one of their favorite books and then to write a message in the front cover of why it was one of their favorite books.

Good Omens was the book my daughter gave me. An excerpt of her note on why this is one of her favorites is as follows:

"I like that the demon isn't 100% bad, and the angel isn't 100% good. Like Crowley and Aziraphale, I've learned that asking questions is all part of the great plan."

I completely agree. I haven't read this book in decades, so it was great fun getting to read it again especially after watching the series. The series is so close to the book that when you're reading the book the differences really jump out. It was interesting to see what Neil Gaiman added or edited to make the series work as a series and a few things that were updated just because times have changed.

But above everything else I was just amazed at how well written this book was. Even the most seemingly mundane sentence was written so well. The flow, the word choices were all just perfect. I've read interviews where Neil Gaiman says that he and Terry Pratchett were mostly just having fun and trying to impress each other. It's very obvious that was the case. They weren't trying to write a hit, they were just having fun. There's something to learn from that.

#good omens #neil gaiman #terry pratchett #tacs 2022 books #tacs 2022 #goodreads challenge

[tacanderson]

The Kaiju Preservation Society

I've never read any John Scalzi before. He's been on my radar for a long time and frequently comes up under recommendations based on other books I've read - Red Shirts is probably the one that comes up the most, which makes sense since it won a Hugo - but I just haven't picked one of his books up yet. So when I saw The Kaiju Preservation Society come up for pre-order, I jumped on it. Not only is it about kaiju - a topic I really like and wish there were more books about - this is a cool numbered and signed first edition - something else I geek out over.

The book was written during and about the covid times, but quickly leaves that setting and moves onto kaiju. It's a fun read, I really enjoyed it and will definitely check out other books by Scalzi.

#kaiju #book review #tacs 2022 #tacs 2022 books #goodreads challenge #john scalzi

[tacanderson]

Nick Harkaway and John Le Carre

The Gone-Away World

I first found a paperback version of The Gone-Away World, by Nick Harkaway in 2011. I'm saddened by the fact that I don't have that version anymore, but I must have lent that copy to someone and I really hope they're enjoying it and passing it on to others.

I also have consoled myself by buying every version of the book that I can find. (The hardcover version in the picture above is pink on the front and is actually fuzzy. It's amazing.) By the state of the book on the right, you can tell that this version of the book has been read multiple times. But wait Tac, you keep telling us you don't reread books. Yes, this is largely true, but I've also stated that this year was a big exception to this rule - plus there are three books I have regularly made an exception to in the past: 1) The Gone-Away World, 2) Fight Club, 3) Lord of the Flies. Lord of the Flies was the first book I fell in love with. Fight Club was the book I read after college that reignited in me a love of reading.

The Gone-Away World is just crazy in all the best ways. There's world ending weapons, Mad Max style caravans, and ninja mimes. But the best part about this book is that you can tell Nick loves writing. He loves words. I've read everything he's written, even his one non-fiction. I've even read the books he's written as Aiden Truhen - which are like Spy vs Spy, meets Michael Bay, meets a wood chipper.

Nick's writing is so infectious, I decided to read his dad's books. Oh, did I forget to mention that Nick is the son of world famous spy novelist, John le Carre? (Both le Carre and Harkaway are pseudonyms, if you were wondering.)

A Murder of Quality

A good place to start with le Carre is the Smiley novels. George Smiley is the protagonist of several of le Carre's early books (eight in total). The best way to describe George Smiley is that he's the anti James Bond. Where James Bond is suave, and gets all the ladies, and has all the gadgets, George Smiley is old, frumpy, his own wife left him for another man, but he's smart and determined. And honestly, John le Carre is such a better writer than Ian Fleming. Fleming's books do not hold up well with time, while le Carre's do.

There's not a lot of specific similarities to Harkaway's writing and le Carre's but you can see the family resemblance in something about the tone and the choice of words. Maybe I'm just imagining it because I know Nick is John's son, but I really feel like I can tell that Nick gained his love of words from his father, and that's going to leave some forensic residue.

#nick harkaway #john le carré #the gone-away world #George smiley #book review #tacs 2022 #goodreads challenge #tacs 2022 books

[tacanderson]

Hi Tac, Love your notebook hack. Would it be possible to elaborate on your daily writing every morning and night? Do you follow Julia Cameron's Artist Way 3 pages for morning pages? Is your nightly writing routine in addition to "Return and Receipt"? How is morning and nightly writing different from each other?

My morning writing routine is creative in nature. I work on my most recent book, or write blog posts. My end of day "Return and Report" writing is reflective, more like journaling. I write about how the day went, what went well, what didn't, and any other thoughts.

[tacanderson]

The Japanese Book, American Movie Connection

It's hard to find many Japanese books translated into English that aren't manga. Nothing against manga, I just wish more novels made their way over here. If you're interested, here's two books worth your time and one that's not Japanese, but you'll see why I included it here.

Bullet Train

Have you seen the movie Bullet Train yet? Great movie. Brad Pitt does an excellent job playing the unlucky (but really lucky), bumbling criminal. (Fun fact: the director, David Leitch (John Wick, Deadpool 2, Atomic Blond) was Brad Pitt's stunt double before he became a director.) When I saw the trailer I looked up the movie and saw that it was an adaptation of a Japanese book. So before I talk more about Bullet Train, I need to talk about a book I first read in 2014 and then re-read this year (yeah, I know, for someone who said he never rereads books, I sure reread a lot this year).

All You Need Is Kill

In 2014 the movie Edge of Tomorrow came out. Interestingly, the DVD release would change the title to Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow. As in most cases, the book usually gets it right and they should have stuck with the original book title, All You Need Is Kill. What a great name. But I can see why they wouldn't think it would work well as a major motion picture movie title.

So, in 2014 Edge of Tomorrow was released and some neighbors came back from seeing the movie (opening weekend, I think) with the above pictured book. Knowing I was interested in seeing the movie and that I was a sci-fi fan, they gave me the book. At first I thought it was one of those movie novelizations, but quickly realized it was the actually the book the movie was based on. First off, how awesome is that?

If I had one Christmas wish it would be that every time a movie was made from a book, the studio would give out free copies of the book with every opening weekend ticket. I can tell you I'd see a lot more movies in the theater if they did that.

So, I read the book and instantly fell in love with it. I went and saw the move and loved it as well. While the movie was different, I felt like they did a good job sticking to the spirit of the book. I wish the movie would have ended about 10 minutes earlier, without the Hollywood ending, so it would have been closer to the book ending, but that's okay. I get it.

So, back to Bullet Train. I had plans with some friends to go see the movie and I quickly read the book before we went. The book was great, but there was one character, The Prince, that really bothered me. He's this psychotic tween who manipulates everyone in the book. That's not actually what bothers me. What I didn't like was he'd have these long internal and external monologues about morality and how he was so much superior to everyone, and blah, blah, blah. Way too much ink was spent on these thoughts of his.

The movie didn't have this and The Prince, gender swapped and played by Joey King, wasn't nearly as annoying. And this is one of these rare instances where I'm going to say that the movie was better than the book. I still enjoyed the book, but the move was way more fun.

But this leads me to my third book.

Shibumi

When we first meet The Prince, she is reading a book called Shibumi. I hadn't heard of this book, but the cover reminded me of the cover to Shogun, which I remember my dad reading when I was a kid. I quickly jotted down the name of the book and looked it up later.

Shibumi may be my favorite new book I read this year. It was definitely the most unexpected. The author of Shibumi simply goes by the name Trevanian. As it says on the cover of my book, Trevanian was the only writer of airport paperbacks to be compared to Zola, Ian Fleming, Poe, and Chaucer.

Upon researching the book and the author, I was very surprised to learn that Shibumi was a best selling book when it was released in 1979 and between 1972 and 1983 Trevanian had five books all sell over a million copies each. Having been born in 1972, its no surprise I hadn't heard of him, but given how good the book is, and how much praise the author gets I'm surprised I hadn't heard of him until now. But I think that's all going to change. I think we're about to have a small Trevanian resurgence.

The book is being adapted into a movie. The screenplay is being adapted by Matthew Orton, who wrote episode one of Moon Knight, and it's being directed by Chad Stahelski, who has directed all three John Wick movies, as well as the upcoming fourth one. But this isn't his first movie adaptation, he also write The Eiger Sanction in 1972, which was adapted into film in 1975 starring and directed by Clint Eastwood.

Through all the success Trevanian had no one ever knew his actual name. It was a lot easier to keep your identity hidden before the internet came along. Trevanian's real name is Rodney William Whitaker. What's even more fascinating to me is that Whitaker didn't stick to one genre, even with his pen name, Travanian, he published under several different genres.

But here's the thing that impressed me. Shibumi is satire. It's such a subtle satire that it frustrated the author because most people didn't get it. I have to admit when I first started reading it I thought, "wow, this is over the top 1970's macho spy stuff." Then after a few more pages, I thought, "that can't be right, this is too well written." The text isn't subtle, but the satire is. If you want a good laugh, read the hundreds of one-star reviews on Goodreads and you'll see just how much people miss the mark on this book.

#tacs 2022 books #tacs 2022 #goodreads challenge #edge of tomorrow #all you need is kill #bullet train #the book was better #the movie was better #shibumi #trevanian #book review

[tacanderson]

Revisiting Favorite Book Series

I mention in my last post that I normally don't re-read books. There are just too many books I want to read (seriously, my TBR pile is easily over 100 books). But this year I revisited several favorites. Of the 60 books I will have read this year, 16 of them were books I've already read. This post contains 12 of those I reread and two new books to this year.

The Rivers of London

First up, let's talk about The Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch. This has been one of our favorite series and my wife and I eagerly await each new release. This year, book nine in the series, Amongst our Weapons was released. Yes there are nine books in the series, plus three novellas, a slew of short stories, a series of comic books, and now a role playing game from the same publisher that brought us The Call of Cthulhu. It's probably the most popular series most people in the States don't seem to know about. Nick Frost and Simon Pegg opted the series for TV, but that was in 2019 and then the pandemic hit, and that hasn't gone anywhere. But I know Nick Frost his a huge fan of the series.

The Checquy Files

Like The Rivers of London, The Checquy Files (written by Daniel O'Malley) falls squarely in that urban fantasy genre and also takes place in London. Whereas The Rivers of London was, 'If Harry Potter grew up and joined the fuzz,' I'd describe The Checquy Files more like 'If The X-Men joined MI5.'

The Rook was turned into a short-lived series on Starz, that was originally being adapted by Stephenie Meyer (yes, the Twilight author), but she left as soon as filming started over creative differences. The series drifted pretty far from the source material, from what I understand, and was cancelled after one season.

I also find it interesting that Daniel O'Malley was born in Australia, went to college in the States (both for his undergrad and his Masters), and then moved back to Australia, but still set his book in London. I'm not sure if he ever lived in London, but having lived in London myself, I can safely say that it really lends itself to urban fantasy.

Murderbot!

I love all three of these series, but The Murderbot Diaries has a special place in my heart. The main character is a non-gendered, humanoid construct, cyborg - person. Basically a brain, skin, muscle, and something that's not blood, combined with a supercomputer and the insides of the Terminator. But it's the most relatable human character, that's not technically a human, you'll ever read. Imagine someone that hates their job, is annoyed at having to deal with people and just wants to watch TV all day. That's Murderbot.

Martha Wells is primarily a fantasy author, but I think this sci-fi series is her most highly rated. A good example of why authors should be willing to experiment.

#book review #tacs 2022 #tacs 2022 books #goodreads challenge #rivers of london #the checquy files #murderbot #2022 reflection #ben aaronovitch #daniel o'malley #martha wells

[tacanderson]

2022, My Year In Books

By the time the year ends, I will have finished 60 books. You can see all the books here on my Goodreads Reading Challenge. That's the most books I've ever read in a year. I started the year with my usual goal of 20 (I usually read about 28, but this is supposed to be a fun challenge, so I set the bar low), but when I hit that goal a few months into the year, I doubled my goal to 40. I didn't bother updating the goal again when I broke that.

The next closest was when I read 53 books in 2012. That was the year we lived in London and all that time on the Tube and on trains added up to a lot of books read. There's some key differences between 2012 and this year. In 2012, I read physical or Kindle versions of all of those books. I didn't listen to any audio books. This year, most of my books were audio books. In 2012 all the books I read were first time books. This year, I re-read a lot of books I previously read. I almost never re-read books. There's so many books I want to read, I never felt like I had the time to go back and re-read books. Listening to books, makes revisiting some old favorites an easier option.

Since my last post a month ago where I said I was going to be posting more, I haven't done that, so I thought doing some book reviews over the next few days/weeks would be a good way to do that. Don't worry, I won't post about all 60 books, but I'll hit some of the highlights.

#book review #2022 reflection #goodreads challenge #tacs 2022 #tacs 2022 books

[tacanderson]

Rebooting the Blog

It's been four months since I published The Man Who Killed The Man Who Killed Putin (which you can read for free), and I've been really quiet over here. Sorry about that. I've also not made much progress on my second novel, the sequel to Super-Borg Dies. Lots of really good reasons for that, but it boils down to, "Life."

I've started and stopped several attempts to start writing and I'm at that point where I was with my first book, where I'm more than halfway done and the structure has come unravelled. I know where I need to go, but the road ahead has become all tangled. So today I went back to outlining. Hopefully, I'll finish the new outline tomorrow - which mostly comprises putting what I already have in an outline and figure out what's missing, or more likely, what's unnecessary.

In other restructuring news, with all the hubbub over the new Billionaire CEO of Twitter I've decided that it's time to go back to basics. I'm going to start regularly writing here on my blog and see if I can't make the social part of Tumblr (which this blog is hosted on) work for me again by cleaning up who and what tags I'm following. I also plan to restart my newsletter (for the hundredth time). You can sign up for that if you'd like. I've also been going through and unsubscribing from every email and newsletter subscription I don't read and making sure that the ones I do want to read don't get buried amidst the chaff.

I also plan to turn comments back on this blog. Not sure if anyone will use them, but I at least want people to have that option and not have to rely on the other social platforms for commentary. I may have to update my theme and other stuff, but I'll figure that out.

I promise to write more soon. Cheers.

#social media #twitter #blogging #authors life #amwriting