My Random Rants

The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch

2012-02-23T15:28:00.000+05:30

The Beginning of Infinity is great read. It is supremely ambitious and full of great big ideas on what makes sets humans apart from the rest of the planet.

It is philosophy but it also a great treatise on what makes science work, what makes great art great and what is that makes stories tick. It is about how abstractions are as real as reality itself, how science is not theories but explanations that haven't failed. He talks about how science is about good explanations. He then goes on to talk about how the best stories are the ones that are consistent and that the best fictional worlds have their basis in good explanations. He also talks about how societies prosper, thrive and what causes them to fall by the wayside. There is a chapter in which he explains parallel universes which might get a little weighty for most but the rest of the book should make for some mind bending reading.

That he manages to do this in a style that is clear, concise and lucid, never once talking down to the reader is a feat in itself. Just a brilliant piece of work.

Why textbooks are poorly written

2012-01-15T23:05:00.001+05:30

Over the past year I have read a number of great non fiction books from Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything to Tim Harford's Adapt. The great popular science books all have one thing in common. They are lucid, clear and try to explain things as simply as possibly while not treating the reader like a dunderhead.

Here is where our textbooks come into the picture. If you remember the school books that we read, more than anything else what I remember is how bland they were. They were written without any lucidness and clarity. They were written by committees whose only goal was to get the textbook out. History was reduced to being a hagiography with self serving accounts. There was no conflict and there were no shades of gray. Math was rendered dull without any of the beauty that is so obviously there. Science it seemed lacked all practical applications. The languages required us to write dull long answers and fill up pages with inanities that were mostly pointless obscuring what was really important.

Why is this so? Why are popular science books so much better than the ones we get to read as kids at school. Why do those authors do such a better job of explaining concepts.

My theory on this is that is a matter of incentives. At school the fact that someone does not understand something is usually taken to be the fault of that someone. There is no blame attached to the source of knowledge whatsoever. No one admits that the material is faulty and uninteresting. Instead they say things such as he does not have the determination it takes or he is not sharp enough to understand what is being taught. But consider this for a second, if someone does not understand what just happened in a movie/novel(even if the movie/novel might have the most convoluted of all time)it is assumed that it is the director's or the makers fault. He is at fault for not explaining himself clearly. In effect it is not the responsibility of the viewer to understand what is going on. The same applies to popular science books. The prerogative lies with the author to explain to the reader and it is up to him and him alone to hold the attention of the reader. The same should apply to school textbooks but we just turn a blind eye to the fact that most of them are pathetic and place the blame squarely on the student's shoulders.

On Identity

2012-01-03T21:41:00.003+05:30

Identity is a something that people grapple with all the time but don't really get. Consider for a second looking out of a car with the windows rolled up. When you do this you sometimes see your reflection along with the outside world at the same time. Identity is a bit like that. Who you share as is just as important as who you share with.

This is something that both facebook and google plus get wrong. Have a look at how Sacha Baron Cohen has various personas. What he can do as very different from what he does as AliG even though in many cases the audience is the same. Twitter gets it right because they are the only service that allows multiple handles, monikers and they are essentially the only ones right now who allow(or even encourage) you to have a online presence that is completely divorced from real life.
This is important because people have stereotypes in their head and if your name or picture reinforces those, you are already in a box, out of which it is very difficult to get out of. The message is affected by the messenger which in an ideal world should not happen. This is why authors have different monikers under which they write. Several female authors wrote under male names to gain readership and not put of readers right at the outset in the late 18th century (George Elliot comes to mind immediately, this was a period when women didn't have voting rights and it was perceived that they couldn't write to save their lives. How the naysayers have been proven wrong). Stephen King wrote under the name of Richard Bachman simply to test whether readers were judging his work fairly and not buying them simply because a book was written by him. I sometimes wonder that if I would get more replies if people thought I had an anglo saxon handle on twitter.(Should make for an interesting experiment. Ought to try it out sometimes).
The book blink by Malcolm Gladwell talks of this when he points out that your perception of music changes when you can see who is playing. This happens even to trained conductors who need to choose musicians for their Orchestras. A snap judgement is made simply based on gender. (As you can imagine this tends to favor male musicians especially when picking the cellists).
Identity is simply far more nuanced than the real name policies that is becoming the norm these days. You are more than a photograph and a name.

Online vs Offline bookstores

2012-01-02T21:37:00.004+05:30

There has been a deluge of support for local bookstores across the internet. I am going to take the contrarian view on this and say that buying books online is much better.

Physical bookstores suck to say the least. I remember my experiences way back when I was a kid and hunting for something to read. The people who ran the shops would usually know nothing about the books whatsoever. I remember looking for American Gods by Neil Gaiman and being asked to spell his name and Gaiman is no small fry by any stretch of imagination. The guys there know absolutely nothing of what I want. Next once by some chance you find the book that you are looking for you have to stand in line to get the thing billed. The whole process is lengthy and painful to say the least. Also till recently most books didn't let you read when you got to the shop which means that you would have to buy the book just based on the blurbs without any other signal.

Buying books online is just easier and better. You can look for reviews. Most books have extracts so it is easy to get a feeler for the book. The billing is far easier and makes for a much better experience. They deliver the books to your place. My reading for once has increased tremendously since online book stores came into the picture.

The romanticists claim that bookshops curate and there is no better way to discover books than on the shelves but that is a bunch of nonsense and a way of clinging to the past. The internet has tons of curated content and is a much better way to discover books. There are recommendation engines so far ahead that no one else can complete. Librarything and goodreads usually give me the best recommendations.

Old businesses give way to new ones. Its a fact of life. Local bookstores should move on and accept that online is simply better. There is no way they can compete with the quantity and quality of offer.

Amazon is not an enemy of books.. They have probably done more for increasing reading in the last 10 years other than Harry Potter.

Rule 34 by Charles Stross

2012-01-02T21:04:00.003+05:30

This is one of the great reads of the year(with a terrible cover though). Charles Stross writes a near future police procedural in this one.

Its a future where 3d printers are a reality and plans for printing almost anything are available online(This includes all sorts of weapons of course). This of course leads to a whole lot of materials being smuggled. Its a future where you have to bid to get a bus to go your way. The police instant messages and everything has gone digital. The rise of the internet has lead to an increase of unimaginable crimes. Our lead detective Liz works in the Rule 34 squad.

A series of apparently connected murders take place. Only no one can figure out the perpetrator and the motive behind the crimes. Stross moves from the grissly murders to explanations of AI, singularity and spam with ease managing to keep you on the edge of your seat.

Its a complex novel that virtually demands a reread. It is also written in a weird second person style that jars at the beginning but succeeds brilliantly at putting you in the characters frame of reference.

Its a future that is wonderfully imagined with all its intricacies and richness. There are info dumps that in the hands of a lesser author would put you to sleep but here just add to the whole.

There is also a financial subplot going on which I didn't understand(Like I said demands a reread).

I think in ten years or so we are going to realize how spot on Charles Stross really got things. Its brilliant, inventive and a ripping good yarn.

Adapt By Tim Harford

2012-01-02T19:16:00.003+05:30

In Adapt Tim Harford points out that the world we live in has become incredibly complex. He begins with the example of a design student trying to build a toaster from scratch. (He fails of course because he sets out to even make the alloy the toaster is made of). He also begins the book by laying the foundation for trial and error which is

1) Variation

2) Survivable Failure

3) Selection

He points out that big leaps sound and look better but it is better to make small changes and measure the impact. He emphasizes on keeping failures survivable. He points out that trial and error(evolution) is the best way and also points why it is so hard to do so.(It is ridiculously hard to admit that you are wrong, to take the view that you made a mistake and that failure is very very difficult to deal with.) He deals with how the Iraq war turned when it seemed all hope was lost thanks to the ground forces adapting to the insurgents.

He takes on how bureaucracies stifle innovation and allow bad practices to flourish. He points out what the most successful organizations do to encourage innovation(create a safe haven for research where they are isolated from the rest of the world).

He then takes on problems like climate change and shows that these problems are anything but simple with several lucid examples. He links problem solving to evolution and says that solutions arrived at by trial and error(although he does acknowledge the importance of the occasional aha moment and the intuitive leap), these are the solutions that work best rather than the big picture solutions that aim to solve problems in one swoop. The world is simply too complex for one magic bullet.

He then proceeds to analyze several of the largest failures of the past decade including the oil spills and a mishap at a nuclear reactor and how the safety catches built into these systems backfired. He then proceeds to map out a possible course of how these failures could be kept survivable. He likens these to the safety blocks among dominoes so that the failures are self contained and do not result in a cascading effect.(In case of the oil spill one failure resulted in other systems failing which snowballed into a disaster) He also points out how the financial system's failure can be contained(by breaking up banks) so that the impact does not cripple the whole economy. He talks about decoupling and loosely linked systems.

All in all its a fantastic book, a great read written with erudition, full of ideas and an absolute page turner along with being incredibly ambitious. Here is a talk at Ted that Tim Harford gave that captures the essence of what he is trying to say better than this review ever could. (Watch out for the part at the end where he says everyone he talks to says trial and error is obvious but then does the exact opposite while voting or taking decisions and the part where he talks about how Unilever developed a nozzle to manufacture their detergents)

On Mark Waugh

2012-01-02T18:16:00.001+05:30

The thing about Mark Waugh was the fact that he never looked tired. He had this air of nonchalance, a languid grace about him in whatever he did on the cricket field. He made the game look ridiculously simple.

He was probably the most freakish fielder in the entire game at his peak. Jonty they say was the best but he was forever hustling. Mark Waugh was always there and had an uncanny sense of where the ball would be. He made catching look ridiculously simple and I don't recall a single instance where I saw the ball fumble in his hands. I think all Indians will remember the catch he took to dismiss VVS Laxman in the second innings in the epic 2001 series where Laxman walked away absolutely stunned after a ferocious pull he had hit was pulled out of thin air at short mid wicket by Mark Waugh.

His numbers are not as good as they could be but some of the most extraordinary things he did on the field were never recorded. His ground fielding when he would swoop in on the ball and no matter how uneven the field would collect it in a single go without a fumble and seemingly no worry in the world, his penchant for pulling of catches when they had no right to be catches are things that cricket statistics(at least so far) have not captured.

While batting, at his best, he was a sight for the gods. Wristy and Sinuous, his flicks of the pads made him an UnAussie batsman if ever there was one. He was great on the on side but it was on the off side that he was decidedly more assured. His 138 on debut was played with such nervelessness and ease that it would put test veterans to shame. I also remember the three sublime hundreds he hit during the 1996 world cup. His batting made you doubt that Mark and Steve were brothers. Mark Waugh was as fluid as Steve was gritty.

An interview with Samit Basu

2011-12-19T22:28:00.004+05:30

This is an interview with Samit Basu, one of my favorite authors. I have a feeling that had he been British or American with a snazzy bestseller name he would have won a closet full of awards by now.

I have enjoyed reading his work immensely and his debut, the Gameworld trilogy(as I have made clear here) has the effect of sticking to my hands whenever I pick it up and leaving only when its done. Heck I even enjoy reading his 140 character tweets.

His last two novels Terror on the Titanic and Turbulence are great rides, written with a verve and panache that few authors match. He has also written short stories(One of which was in an anthology of erotic fiction) and comics.

All in all he is just a fantastic talent and US and UK readers should get a taste of his work soon when Turbulence is published there.

You wrote this trilogy called the Gameworld trilogy(which was absolutely gobsmackingly brilliant and fantastic by the way). Any plans on doing another trilogy soon.

Thank you. It's heading towards ten years since I started writing Simoqin, and it was a very happy time.

I don't know if I'll do another trilogy again; I'd like to, but I'll do it only if the story demands it, like Bollywood actresses say about kissing. I'm working on a story that might demand three books - I'd like to do it as one really fat 1200-pages-or-so book, but we'll see what the publishers say.

Terror on the Titanic had a remarkably convoluted plot for a YA novel linking together many diverse strands of history. Most remarkably it did not talk down to the readers. How do you manage to get your publishers to publish that sort of stuff for young readers?

Well, in India at least, since all five books have done well, publishers have a certain amount of confidence in me - I won't be responsible for their new cars, but I won't bring them into financial ruin either, and the process will be more fun than pain. So they let me do what I like, pretty much. I don't think my books are hugely complicated in essence - it's just that I have a habit of linking very different things together, so the implications are huge even if the actual plots are fairly straightforward. So you can choose to go allusion-hunting or get lost in imagining possibilities, but I think the stories themselves are not convoluted in essence.

I hope there'll be a similar process in the West, of publishers feeling confident that my work, with all its complications, will find readers. Turbulence comes out in the UK in 2012 and in the US in 2013 - I'll be starting from scratch in both countries, which is exciting.

Turbulence was an absolutely mind bending read. How did you come up with the powers that the characters had?

When figuring out powers for Turbulence, the key question was - what powers would be relevant in 2010? Which means, what are our defining/important themes now, in the world we live in today? If the nuclear age gave us Superman, and WWII gave us any number of jingoistic/patriotic national-icon heroes, and the 70s with their race/political tensions gave us the X-Men, what would this generation's heroes be? In Turbulence the link is fairly direct - everyone on a plane from London to Delhi gets physical powers corresponding to their own innermost desires and fears. So the powers would relate not only to the characters who got them, but to the pressing concerns of the time.

India as a nation has a large propensity to believe in the fantastic. Our mythology is probably the richest set of tales amongst all the world mythologies but fantasy and science fiction are still looked down upon.

Why is that the case?

I think the people of any nation are inclined towards loving the fantastic - most of the books that have taken the world by storm and built empires over the last decade are fantasy in one sense or another. And yes, we have a rich mythology, but so do any number of other cultures.

I honestly don't think science fiction and fantasy are looked down in India at all - if they are it's by a small circle of people desperate to imitate literary-fiction people in New York or London, appropriating their prejudices along with the rest of their conversation. The problem is not that there isn't a readership, it's that there simply isn't enough good writing. Also, fantasy/SF ventures in film and animation and TV in India have been uniformly dreadful, which doesn't build an audience for genre literature. It'll change one day, and hopefully I'll be alive to see it.

You dropped out of IIM A (of all places) and went to study in London. How hard or easy was the decision and why did you decide to go along with it.

It was a decade ago. I'd always wanted to write a book, but hadn't started because I hadn't had a single idea yet that I felt was book-worthy. The right idea happened one night in my dorm, at about 2am, when the ending for The Simoqin Prophecies popped into my head. So it made no sense to stay and get a degree I didn't want from a place full of bright people who really, really wanted what it offered. It was an unfortunate time for that idea to strike - I could have made a lot of money if it had hit me, say, five years later. It wasn't a hard decision, it was clearly the thing to do, and the people who knew me best were completely supportive, which made the process easy as well.

Are we living through another Golden age of science fiction and fantasy? I have never seen so much good work being put out by so many brilliant authors.

I guess so. It's also because speculative fiction is now mainstream, across media, which encourages the best writers to write it. I'd say there are now better writers in SF and fantasy than in any other field, with the possible exception of graphic novels. Screenwriting is going through a bit of a golden age as well - a lot of writing for TV and film is fantastic now.

I have discovered some fantastic authors thanks to your posts including the sublime China Mieville of course. Who are your favorites apart from him.

It's like the Barcelona football team - a constantly changing roster of incredible talent. In the last few years, the new additions are Ben Aaronovitch, Scott Lynch, Joe Abercrombie, Patrick Rothfuss, Jacqueline Carey and Suzanne Collins.

For a while you wrote a few comic series including Devi and The tall Tales of Vishnu Sharma. Any graphic novels in the works?

Yes, two. But while I'm fairly confident about announcing books, largely because I am the only person involved in putting them together, I don't like to talk about projects that involve other people until they're actually out. But yes, two graphic novels, both with fantastic Indian artists.

You have contributes to short story anthologies in varying genres(including the erotic as well). Does writing short stories come naturally to you or is writing a novel easier?

I like any kind of writing. Books, comics, film - which I've been working on - short stories, even tweets.I'd really like to write a video game as well - almost got to do one a couple of years ago, but the project disappeared.

I don't know which one is easiest - they're all very different. Which is fun - writing just one kind of thing makes you age faster.

A book that you read recently that just blew you away.

Habibi by Craig Thompson

What books/comics influenced as a kid.

All of them. Sorry, just too many to list. No one made me happier than P.G. Wodehouse, though.

So with Ra One hopefully we can get some more science fiction and fantasy made in India. Which of your novels could be adapted into films.

I spent a lot of this year trying to push a Turbulence adaptation through. It would be a very expensive and difficult film, so it'll probably take a lot of time. But I think it might happen at some point. I don't think anyone could adapt the GameWorld books or Titanic, at least not in India.

Your thoughts on the whole ebooks vs books issue doing the circles right now. Which do you prefer?

I love both. I don't see why I need to choose between them.

Finally the mandatory question for all writers. Any advice for aspiring writers?

Be patient.

Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

2011-12-06T21:18:00.001+05:30

Thinking fast and slow is the culmination of the decades of research of Daniel Kahneman and his posthumous colleague Amos Tversky. (For the ones who give weight to awards Kahneman is a Psychologist who won a Nobel Prize in Economics, a strange quirk)

Daniel Kahneman talks about how minds are divided into two systems System 1 and System 2. System 1 is our intuition, the fast one, the quick and the default decision maker. System 2 is the rational one, the one that does the hard thinking. Kahneman of course makes the point that System1 and System2 are convenient abstractions and are only models that make it much easier to think about how the the mind works.

The best way to describe the book would be say that it resembles Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, only its a lot more rigorous.

He talks about several human fallacies and how man is in fact not rational but can be manipulated. He talks about experts in which fields are really experts. He points out that to truly become an expert one needs constant feedback so anyone who makes long term predictions is basically incompetent because he has no feedback. Anyone is just as qualified as he is to make an assessment. The political commentators are the example he takes. He also points that Mutual funds are a giant scam and that they are no better than monkeys when it comes to choosing stocks. (They are actually slightly worse).

He also talks about people being more risk averse than gain seekers. A person will take more chances to avoid losing than gaining something even though economically both might be the same. He places several examples but the one I remember is one about golfers. Most golfers will putt better when they have to save a bogey than when they have a chance for a birdie.(For the numerically inclined the difference is around 4%, a sizable difference in a game where tournaments are usually won by a one stroke lead).

He talks about intuition and gives clearest definition of intuition that I have encountered. He says that intuition is recognition very simply. He points that a surgeon operating is no more special than a child recognizing a ball. (Admittedly this might be an over simplification but its a good definition nonetheless and a clear and simple one).
The book is also peppered with anecdotes on his collaboration with Amos Tversky and many other psychologists and economists. He also talks about the time he spent in the Israeli Army and how he was able to apply his training as a psychologist to the problems that he encountered. These lend the book a surprisingly melancholic feeling of someone who has carried out his life's work and laid bare his soul for all to see.

Its a fascinating book but its a long one as well at around 500 pages(I enjoyed it so I didn't really feel it). Daniel Kahneman writes extremely clearly and leaves absolutely no room for confusion. Too often non fiction books get caught in trying to use fancy verbiage which render the subject under consideration unintelligible. If you don't feel upto reading Thinking fast and slow you might want to watch this talk Kahneman gave which sums up the book and his findings far better than I ever could. There are also a lot of extracts doing rounds on the web so you might want to check those out as well.

In the plex by Steven Levy

2011-11-24T22:20:00.001+05:30

If you ever wanted to find out how Google does what it does this is the book.

I have read a few Google stories and none are even remotely as good as this. Steven Levy was granted a lot of access and he made full use of it. The book is rich in detail and deftly puts together the way Google took search, a concept no one thought could be monetized successfully and turned it into a money spinning machine.

Many products are given short shrift but that is understandable given the scope and breadth of the tale. Levy paints the broad strokes using Search, Gmail, Android and Chrome as the anchors. He also takes us through what Google went through in China and how censorship and governmental controls made the time a tumultuous one. He talks about the impact that Google has had and the privacy concerns that crop up all time.

Its a brilliant, fascinating and intriguing read about what makes Google tick. It talks about its reliance on data above all else, its grandiose ambitions to make all information accessible and of course the don't be evil mantra. It lays out about how a feisty start up founded by two nerds and geeks with lofty ambitions actually succeeded and became the behemoth it is today. This is by far the definitive book on Google and an absolute cracker of a read.

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

2011-11-22T09:39:00.001+05:30

A sublime biography. Its beautifully written and presents Steve Jobs in all his avatars. From a megalomaniac to a supreme charmer. I read this in a single stretch in one go so so that must mean something.

Isaacson brings out the contradictions of a man at the cutting of technology who lived like a monk nonetheless. A man who repeatedly says that its not about the money but becomes a millionaire and cheats his best friend Steve Wozniak out of his fair share of the profits. The way he disregards authority but is the most commanding person around himself. How even though he liked to hack other people's work(telephone lines and the like) and wouldn't allow the same to his products.(People will screw things up if they can open them)

It is also an intriguing look at his years of failure, after he was ousted from Apple and went on to found NeXT. The creation of Pixar is present as well. It is an intriguing look at the dynamics and how he ran it differently from the way he ran Apple. The segment on the thought process behind the now iconic Stanford commencement address is fantastic. The book also talks about his reality distortion field, his obsession with zen like minimalism in his designs and what shaped him as a kid.

The more I read it the more I discovered that he was a scumbag. Like most great leaders he had a hint of the bastard about him. The guy who comes out looking the best in the entire book surprisingly turns out be Bill Gates and my admiration for him grew by leaps and bounds the more I read.

This is a good read even for those not enamored by Apple and Steve Jobs. It hooks you in right from the start and you are immersed in it. You wonder why they took the decisions that they took and how the same man could be the paragon of charm and yet be a backstabber.

Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan

2011-11-14T22:29:00.001+05:30

Imagine a world(or a galaxy rather) where your mind can be downloaded into any body(called a sleeve) you desire at a cost of course. This is the premise that Richard Morgan starts out with in Altered Carbon, his debut novel.

The rich live forever, have backup memories that are synced with data banks. The poor suffer as always. Takeshi Kovacs is dead. He had no intentions of coming back to life. It is at this point that he is brought back from the dead to investigate the murder of Laurens Bancroft, who is of course extremely rich, powerful and has all the latest bells and whistles . Takeshi Kovacs happens to be an envoy(a part of an elite military unit trained specifically to adapt to different body types). It builds in classic noir fashion where a murder turns into a much larger conspiracy.

Its amazing how far Morgan takes the concept of mind and body being separate(he calls them stacks and sleeves). Multiple copies of the same person exist. Takeshi Kovacs calmly talks to someone he had killed just last week. There is an exploration of how security would work. There is tons and tons of action as befitting a hard boiled detective novel. Gender politics come into the picture(A man's stack transferred into a woman's sleeve and some more). There are also drugs aplenty. Also since your sleeve is in cyberspace all the time hackers get to it and do things with it that you would not wished to be done.

The funny thing is that I read this around an year back and I still remember a lot of the names and there are action sequences still embedded in my head.

A sci fi debut for the ages and an absolute masterclass.

Endymion by Dan Simmons

2011-11-14T21:32:00.001+05:30

Endymion is the third book in Dan Simmons Hyperion Cantos series and it is quite simply brilliant.

Endymion is driven by its characters, indeed the science fiction elements are incidental to the story.(Not to say that the science isn't well done of course).

The characters are fascinating and their dilemmas draw you in.

The plot is very complex(to say the least, there is time travel, there is AI and what not) but in broad strokes it is about about a certain Raul Endymion who is named after the planet Endymion. He somehow gets caught up in a rescue mission but rather than doing the rescuing ends up being the one rescued. The pursuers are the more interesting lot though and their harrowing space travels are described in great detail.

The writing is top notch. Dan Simmons is a deft writer choosing his words carefully and keeping the plot on a tight leash. He has this ability to paint pictures with words which shines through particularly in Endymion.

Hyperion Cantos as a series is well worth your time and one of the finest pieces of Science Fiction ever written.

Moneyball by Michael Lewis

2011-11-14T14:35:00.001+05:30

I think you could give Michael Lewis a random set of numbers and he would still be able to build a narrative to tie them all up.

Moneyball is about Oakland A. A baseball team which doesn't have much money but they still manage to win games(a lot of games) and make the playoffs. To achieve this Billy Beane(their general manager) and Paul(their statistician, a Harvard graduate straight out of college) redefine the metrics they will use to measure player performance. In essence it is about seeing value where no one else does. It is also about figuring out where players are overvalued in the baseball market.

Right from the outset Michael Lewis draws you in with Billy Beane. Billy Beane is archetypal perfect baseball player, the perfect athlete whose career does not play out the way it is expected to. This causes him to have a healthy disrespect for gut instincts and conventional ways of measuring value. This is in essence how the tale is setup.

Michael Lewis brings out the lessons that he learned in wallstreet and writes a non fiction that reads like a thriller and has you gripped from start to finish, a spiffing read, and a thoroughly entertaining and enlightening one.

A pair of jeans

2011-11-07T22:37:00.002+05:30

So this one time Chacha, Chintoo and me happen to be sitting and discussing nothing in particular when we decide to take one of our usual walks around the campus.

Now usually on these walks I just head off in whatever I am wearing but for some strange reason I decide to put on a pair of jeans. Chacha and Chintoo are as surprised as I am but we set out nonetheless.

Our campus has roads are practically empty and hence great for walking. You could walk for hours on end without feeling the slightest of fatigue. As we walk we hit the usual checkpoints, the girls hostel(in which Chacha and Chintoo happen to have a stranglehold) and then after dawdling around and making fun of the guys who hang about the GH we carry on and reach the Outreach(The outreach is one of the newfangled centrally air conditioned buildings on our campus which is the center for a lot of events, usually art of living and the like and home to the Placement Office). I am just about to begin complaining about walking around in jeans when shorts are so much more comfortable that we see something.

Of all the things that could see we happen to see a cake being cut and its not one of those small cakes either. This is one of those big wedding cakes that they show in movies and of course we step in to get a serving of the cake. The cake is amazing. (Can you imagine, the day you decide to wear a pair of jeans for a walk around the campus someone decides to give you cake, if only life were that way).

We eat, I don't know how many pieces of cake with relish and nobody questions our existence there because we(or at least I am) are so engrossed that no one dare disturb us.

It also turns out that the cake is just the beginning. We then overhear someone mention the fact that there is food to be had in the visitors hostel.(Now the visitors hostel makes some of the best food on the campus and your appetite tends to double when you eat mess food all the time). So we saunter in and help ourselves We hardly know anyone there(Which I suppose is for the best) of course and no one knows us so all is well and good. This is when one of Chacha's acquaintances steps into the fray and she asks us what we are doing there(as if it weren't obvious, but I have noticed that people have an annoying habit of asking the most obvious questions), we make our intentions clear, no one seems to mind and we carry on eating.

The acquaintance then informs us whole thing has been organized by the Biological Sciences department as a sort of get together for the faculty and the first year students to meet and interact and so while the rest of students and faculty were busy interacting we were busy eating and I dare say we overdid it by quite a bit. At the close, we tell the acquaintance that you are free to come to our department anytime and have a meal. (This casts quite an impression on the acquaintance).

Finally a professor comes along and asks Chacha's acquaintance(She happens to be the coordinator we think) as to what we are doing and from what we could make out she politely informs him that these guys see food and eat it.(What else are you supposed to do with food I wonder)

At this point we see the professor turn his head in our direction and see him make the tiniest twinge of his right foot towards us, we make a run for it and we are out after having had one of the best meals we had on campus. All because of putting on a pair of jeans.(Well I am sure we would have gone even if I was in shorts but this makes for a better story)

An interview with Mark Charan Newton

2011-11-07T17:14:00.001+05:30

This is an interview that I had the opportunity to do with Mark Charan Newton, who was gracious enough to oblige. Mark Charan Newton is the author of the Legends of the Red Sun series of which three books have been published. The books are self contained and are some of the best written fiction out there. I reviewed City of ruins here which I thought was a fascinating read from start to finish.
If there is an author that you want to read he would be a good start.

Anyways enough of the introductions and onto the main stuff.

In City of ruin the characters who are the most heroic are also the most socially deviant. Commander Brynd Lathrea and Jeryd to name a few. Is this a deliberate choice?

I think I find socially deviant characters more interesting! It's certainly not a conscious choice, though - I mean, it's a case that these particular characters have an certain, different outlook on life, and therefore make for slightly unusual perspectives on a story. As long as it remains interesting to write, I'm happy, and both Brynd and Jeryd made writing interesting for me. If they were dull, I wouldn't enjoy the process.

What are the books that you read as a child that really influenced you and show up in your writing when you least expect them to?

I don't think anything I read as a child influenced me to this day, which is probably fortunate, as I read a lot of terrible things. When I was 12, I even read a few Jeffrey Archer thrillers - the shame! My main childhood fiction for me wasn't SFF, it was Willard Price's Adventure books, featuring two young lads on wilderness escapades. I read them so many times, but perhaps it led onto other things - a fascination with interesting landscapes, I dunno. I think it's almost impossible to tell what influences a writer from that far back.

Sticking to influences, it is accepted that writers steal from wherever they can. What are your main influences apart from books?

Political news. Wholeheartedly the news. And, as much as it can be, proper news, not the recycled press releases/propaganda that makes it into the Daily Mail.

I can't think of a more interesting time, politically speaking, in the last 20 years. There's a real sense of upheaval, and that actually excites me. I know a lot of people don't pay much attention to news and politics, but it's real world-changing stuff - as a writer, who writes about cultures and worlds, what better influences can there be? There's so much that can inform your own fiction.

Who are your favorite contemporary authors apart from a certain China Mieville of course

Well, with the genre - Christopher Priest, M John Harrison and the late Robert Holdstock kept my mind ticking over. In mainstream fiction, Don DeLillo. For crime, Henning Mankell and C.J. Sansom… Annoyingly, with the novel writing, I don't have as much free time to read fiction as I used to, but I'll always return to these writers when I can.

What is your writing process like.

I have a day job, so I'm confined to working in the evenings. I schedule in a couple of hours each night, every night, and just… write. Other than that, a comfy chair, a laptop, and a mug of coffee. It's pretty dull!

Any tips for aspiring writers

Write. Get words down on paper. Have confidence, but writing is hard work. You can always tinker with them later, but so many people start and never complete a story or a novel. Once you've finished that, start something else. Get the bad words out of your system. Also: read a lot. Read widely, in and out of your chosen genre.

Also, make sure you enjoy it as a hobby. Many people never get published, but if they still enjoy writing, then surely that's a good thing?

Is this the second golden age of science fiction and fantasy. Never have I seen so many great books come out and so many fantastic writers working in the field? Your thoughts.

Hard to say, and it depends on your definition of what SFF is. Certainly there's more acceptance now than ever before. And the internet creates the illusion that there are so many new and exciting things going on in genre right now, like never before. But, ultimately, I'd say SFF has been a solid industry for the past 30 years. Every generation likes to think they're reinventing the wheel, but there's nothing to be ashamed of in admitting things were great before - and possibly even more experimental than now. Mass market fiction is rather homogenised compared to even a decade ago.

There is a bristling debate going on these days between what is Science Fiction and what is Fantasy and when people tend to get confused they tend to label it as speculative or weird fiction. Your thoughts?

Categories exist solely to help sell books, basically. They're there to draw a circle in the sand so that people know roughly where to find books they'll like, but everyone's mileage varies on the issue. I'm all about genre taxonomy though - I think it's great, I think it's nice to find certain lineage's of authors, but I don't think culture or society is going to move on if ever a conclusion was reached on the topic!

Hopefully I can keep going and get more interviews with the authors I enjoy reading.

Crytonomicon by Neal Stephenson

2011-10-25T10:48:00.000+05:30

The first book of Neal Stephenson's that I picked up was Anathem and I found that to be really tough going. This one though turned out to be a totally different beast( and a beast it is, at around 1100 pages). I was hooked in the first 100 pages(although admittedly it took me really long to finish)

Cryptonomicon connects two story lines one based in World War II and the other in 1990s internet era and they are connected by some strange family coincidences.

There is a lot of math and computer science going on here and Neal Stephenson does an admirable job of explaining it all. This is a geek novel if ever there was one with the most developed character being a fantasy card playing, slightly round around the paunches unix loving geek.The novel is very detailed in everything that it does and Stephenson takes great pains to explain everything that is being talked about and even goes so far as to provide equations. Heck there is a perl script thrown in with the actual text and the appendix contains a treatise on Solitaire by Bruce Schneider of all people.

This being a world war novel, Stephenson takes it into his hands to talk about the various cultures the novel is based in from Germany, Philippines to Japan(which he refers to as Nippon). In fact Nippon and Germany are disparaged and dealt with a tad harshly but then again the most heroic characters turn out to be a German and Nip so it certainly is a weird mix.

One thing though that clearly comes through is the fact that Stephenson clearly loves to write about Crypto and the World War. Its a long and rewarding read and its at least equivalent to reading a trilogy and the feeling I have now is the one I had when I finally finished Lord of the rings(which is a good thing) and this book will stay in my head for at least a few days to come.

On Success and Perception

2011-10-23T00:07:00.001+05:30

Success changes most things but the thing it does really well is change perception.

He is a micromanager. He gives no one any freedom, everything has to be exactly as he says, He is a bloody control freak. On succeeding he is called a perfectionist.

He is too set in his ways. He never listens to anyone. He never takes any advice. On succeeding he is said to have conviction in his ideas and having a vision no one else had at the time.

He is an arrogant bastard. He is rude to people. He doesn't hesitate to expect the best out of people.

He lacks all social niceties On succeeding he is said to have a cavalier disregard towards rules. It is said that he makes his own.

He doesn't get what he should say in any situation. He has this tendency to blurt out anything that strikes his fancy. On succeeding it is said that he always speaks his mind irrespective of the situation he is in.

He is quiet. He doesn't know how to make his presence felt. On succeeding he is said to be humble, modest and speaking only when the need arises.

Freedom of speech

2011-10-22T23:44:00.002+05:30

Freedom of speech is an interesting concept because people always think that they should have it but the asshole next to him doesn't deserve it.

In most places freedom of speech is an ideal and indeed the rules and the media do their best to ensure that it remains an ideal. Indeed I doubt there is any place where there is actual freedom of speech.

Shoaib Akhtar can come in and say, write whatever he wants to about Sachin and it shouldn't really matter because he has the right of expressing his opinions.(His opinion might even be an informed one seeing that he actually bowled to him several times). Nobody should be allowed to ban his book event simply because he presents disagreeable views. No book should be stopped from being published because it offends someone's religious sensibilities(Harry Potter, Satanic Verses etc etc). A release of a movie should not be stopped because it handles a difficult subject or indeed dares to present truth but alas the real world is not simple. Once there are curators deciding that 'should' be seen and what 'should' not been seen the whole concept of Freedom of speech goes for a toss.

Freedom of speech deserves to be become something larger. Everyone deserves to have their say no matter what they are saying. It also automatically implies that there should be no censorship which is actually defacto in the world we live in. Everything is sanitized and the rarely does the truth ever gets out.

Perhaps the hardest thing about Freedom of speech is that it sounds good in practice but it also implies that anyone is allowed to say anything about you. Freedom of speech means that someone could call you a fuck up in public and you would have to accept his right to say so.

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

2011-10-15T15:52:00.000+05:30

Quite a fantastic book. Enjoyed it immensely and laughed a lot as well.

The blurb mentions it as the finest rough guide to science and I cannot think of a better description.

Bill Bryson takes on dry subjects with ease and makes them interesting and even fun. The title is an apt description because the book really is about everything. More intriguing than the science itself is the brilliance with with Bryson describes the quirky and eccentric scientists all the while adding his own wry observations.

Before I was famous - An artist rants

2011-10-08T19:53:00.001+05:30

When I was a not so famous musician, I played what I liked. Now I just play the same songs over and over again. Few listened to what I sang and played about but at least the admirers I had were genuine.

Then I had to get famous and people admired me because other people admired me. They looked up to me not because of what I did but simply because others did or they thought that others did.

The critics were equally harsh. The fools did not give a damn about what I wrote, what I sang about. They criticized to be different, basing their own opinions on someone else's.

At least the admirers I had before were genuine.

-From a musicians autobiography

City of Ruin by Mark Charan Newton

2011-10-06T22:00:00.000+05:30

A fantastic read from start to finish. The book in essence is about a detective solving many murders and a general trying to hold of alien beings from invading Villirien.

This is straight off inspired from the Bas Lag novels of China Mieville and I couldn't escape the feeling that I had while reading Perdido Street Station.(Which is a good thing) .

There are vivid creatures at every turn but Mark Charan Newton doesn't bore with with details and the book never gets expository. Indeed its amazing how much he reveals through bits of conversation along with the biases and racism inherent in any city. He also has a taste for the macabre and the deaths are truly terrifying when they happen. Also the author has a healthy fascination for Whisky.

Its a well written and a very accomplished novel and Mark Charan Newton can add me to his growing list of fans. I look forward to seeing what he does next.

Gone Baby Gone

2011-10-06T16:37:00.002+05:30

So yesterday I saw Gone Baby Gone, A crime thriller and one of the best I have ever seen. A bit of googling later it turns out to be based on a book by Dennis Lehane, the guy who penned Shutter Island.

Dennis Lehane has this knack of taking common situations and making them morally ambiguous by the end and Nothing shows this off better than Gone baby gone.

The opening lines of the film are the most poignant. In that southern drawl of his Casey Affleck delivers the lines

"I always believed it was the things you don't choose that makes you who you are. Your city, your neighborhood, your family. People here take pride in these things, like it was something they'd accomplished. The bodies around their souls, the cities wrapped around those. "

The things we cling on to most are not our own but hand me downs.

From here on in the movie gets even better holding your attention with the case of a disappeared young girl and the twist in the end just makes the ride a whole lot better and sets you thinking as well. A rare feat.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu

2011-10-02T12:01:00.002+05:30

This is a story of a time machine operator who talks about time a lot of the time but its more a memoir of a father son relationship. There is sadness and melancholy in equal parts. Also this book gets extremely meta meta in parts.

Its probably the geekiest book on father son relationships currently in existence. A good and light read (Although you will get a headache if you dwell deeply on the time loops and start mapping out the time travel like I did).

The Dervish House by Ian McDonald

2011-09-25T15:55:00.003+05:30

This is McDonald's third in his novels about developing cities in the future. The law of trilogies tell me that this will be his last in the series for some time to come.

The Dervish house is set in Turkey which is at the heart of a nano tech revolution. River of gods was about AIs in India and Brasyl about Quantum in Brazil so I think he has got his bases covered. The plot deals with a few characters linked by a Dervish house and a bomb blast which turns out not to be one.

The thing with McDonald is that you know what you are going to get. You know that the prose is going to be bloody brilliant, the plotting is going to be virtuoso but he always manages to surprise. This one is no different.

There are passages of such staggering beauty, sections of such brilliance that they make the book worth reading all on their own. No one can meld philosophy and and an action sequence in a single breath the way he does. Also no one, no one writes a football game the way McDonald does. I said this in Brasyl and that seems to hold true here as well.

As always his descriptions of technology are spot on and eye openers. He has the uncanny ability to see how the greatest advances in technology will be used by the most conservative societies. He has that vision about how developing countries will interact with the future.

And what do you say about the characters. Wonderful, fully realized, vividly etched out but my favorite just happens to be the Kebab master chef(who albeit has an extremely minor role). As always though with McDonald it is the city that takes centre stage. I doubt if Istanbul will seem as magnificent and McDonald has made it.

The Dervish House is an excellent book. A deserving awards nominee(and by my reckoning one of the best books I have read this year). I have to hunt out Desolation road and Ares express to read now, in fact all of his books.