Jason’s Random Thoughts

It’s not too often that I see a book and think “I must read it”, but this happened to me late last week.

At my work there is a shelf of English novels that instructors and students can borrow from.  As expected, there are a large number of books that I’m not particularily interested in, but a few did catch my eye.  Ender’s War, Eon, The Years of Rice and Salt … these are all classics in my opinion.  Each one has coloured the way I’ve seen the world around me.  Orson Scott Card, Kim Stanley Robinson and a large number of great authors have played such a critical role during my turbulent teenage years, and I learned quite a bit from each of them.  Last week, though, there were a few additions to the shelf.  One in particular caught my attention:  Robert Ludlum’s Bourne Supremacy.

Score.

I’ve been a huge fan of the Bourne movies ever since watching Bourne Identity in the theatres all those years ago.  Unfortunately, I’ve never been successful in finding the novels.  Chapters never had stock, and I didn’t want to order it online and wait.  Oddly enough, my favourite eBook provider (eReader) has never managed to get a copy of the book, either.  Suffice to say, when I found Bourne Supremacy on the shelf with a zero-yen sticker price, I jumped at the chance to read the original concept for Jason Bourne and his war against everyone.  We can only see and hear so much in a movie, and books have typically been far superior to anything I’ve seen on screen, so the 638 page book should have been an incredible journey with a man driven both by rage and a cold, calculating brain … right?

I’ll warn you now that I’m about to throw out a few differences between the movie and the book.  If you don’t want me to spoil the plots for you, it might be a good idea to read some of my other posts on books or technology.

So what’s different between the book and the movie?  You’ll love this:  everything but the names.

The movie takes place initially in India, then goes into Europe and Russia with a few scenes in the United States.  The book starts in the US, where Jason Bourne (who knows he’s David Webb and is trying to rebuild his life) lives with his wife Marie.  Marie was not a gypsy, but instead an economist from Canada who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Jason saves her life, and she helps him become David Webb again.  In order for Jason Bourne to return and go on a killing spree, representatives from the US government kidnap his wife and fly her to Hong Kong, where he must follow and capture a copycat in order to have his wife safely returned to him.  90% of the story happens in Hong Kong and China, and it’s set in 1987.

All in all, I did enjoy the book.  With everything taking place in that era, I had the opportunity to appreciate just how difficult things would have been for spies and assassins.  No cell phones.  Few electronics.  The things that we see Jason Bourne and the other hired guns use in the movies were all distant science fiction concepts when this story was written.

Were there car chases?  Not really.

Were there amazing fights and complicated story lines?  Yeah, there were some good action sequences.  As usual with novels, you need to use your imagination quite a bit.  But when it’s all said and done, the whole story was very well told.

Personally, I would have enjoyed watching a movie like this in the theatres.  Sure, it didn’t have very many technologies, and the key audience is probably too young to remember the political situation that was brewing in Hong Kong a decade before its return to China, but it would have been just as exciting as the remake.

If you do have the chance to read the book, I’d definately suggest it.  Earlier today I found the first book (Bourne Identity) at work and might just borrow that during the Christmas break.  I love to read, but that did take quite a bit of time out of blogging and properly preparing things at work
Have you read any of the Bourne books?  Which story line do you like better?  The ex-Vietnam War mercenary, or the “damaged” US covert ops agent?

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People love hearing stories, and the art of story-telling is as old as language itself. How can we resist a good story when our lives are often repetitive and ordinary? For almost ten years I’ve had this one story stuck in my head, and I’d love to get it all down on paper to share

Like many of the stort stories I’ve written, it has one primary character and a series of questions. I don’t like creating people that already know everything, or that can burst into a room and instantly handle any situation. Come to think of it, I don’t think there’s been a clear ‘hero’ in any of my stories. Characters like Captain Kirk or James Bond work great in movies and TV, but seldom leave much room for personal growth. What’s their challenge? What makes them tick? Occasionally an author can skillfully delve into the specifics of their heroes while keeping readers engaged in the story, but this often isn’t the case.

This story has survived four major revisions, but each time the premise has remained the same. Now I’m penning the fifth (and final?) revision and left with the same question that I had when the plot was originally conceived: who else has written this story?

Books are amazing. While being ultra low-tech, they’re capable of sending us to the farthest reaches of the galaxy, to unexplored regions of history, or into fantastic worlds with mythical creatures. They can tell others of our personal struggles or planned accomplishments. There is nothing that has not been written before. So why are we still writing stories?

Look at the size of the fiction section in a huge bookstore or library and imagine how many different stories are told between the covers. Even the largest and best stocked stores will carry less than half-a-percent of all the currently available books out there. Then, for every book that’s still available, there are at least another 50 that aren’t. Then there are the books written in other languages to consider. With so many stories, how can there be anything left to write?

But there is an upside to this over-crowded market. With all the selection out there, it’s next to impossible for us to read everything. With all the authors out there, it’s a rare occasion when we find a new favourite. Anyone can write something on paper, but can they make that paper speak to us?

So to anybody that is writing a book, or has finished one and would like to see it published, just remember to forget. Forget about everyone else and what they’ve written about. Just because somebody told a similar tale doesn’t mean that you can’t do a better job. Heck, if bloggers never wrote about the same topic as another there would probably be just a few dozen of us online.

How boring would that be?

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A little while ago I had discussed a birthday card I made for Reiko, as no other card seemed to say what I wanted to share.  The good news is that Reiko loved the card, and the words within.  The odd news is that Reiko has recently suggested that I start writing again.

Creative writing has always been present in my life, and it’s usually been well received.  It strikes me as odd, considering how most of it is just random words tossed from the fingertips and arranged in no particular order … kind of like my non-angry blog posts :???:  But throwing caution to the wind, I’ve decided to start sharing some of my writing from the last few years.  There’s quite a bit of the early stuff that’s lost forever, including the one and only short story that was published back in 1994.  Hopefully, though, old archives will surface over time and I’ll have the opportunity to convert those old WordPerfect files into plain text for easy uploading.

You can read some of my writing from the new Creative Writing page.  As more stories and poems are written, I’ll add them to the index.  Perhaps in a few years time someone will think the collection warrants a publication and I can see my words shared around the world in printed format, rather than digital.

Let me know your thoughts on the work.  If everything is terrible, I’d much rather pull the plug now and keep my writings private.  If some things are decent and others are horrid wastes of internet space, I’d like to know that, too.  I don’t expect to make any money from the content, but it would be nice to know that someone out there thinks that some of it is worth the read

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Rob recently offered ten reasons why eBooks suck and, though I am an avid e-book reader, I’m forced to agree with most of his points.  Since 1998, I’ve purchased the majority of all fiction books in a digital format from eReader and been quite happy with the format thus far.  The reader application is a light-weight program that runs on Palm, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Mac and PC platforms (though I couldn’t imagine reading a book on a huge computer screen or something as small as a cell phone), and gives me all the functionality I need from a book reader.  It shows me text, and I can easily carry hundreds of books around at any given time if I so choose to … which I don’t.

In my humble opinion, eReader’s solution is perfect.  The books are readable across multiple platforms, a very simple DRM is in place and generally accepted, and we don’t need to buy a seperate device to read these files, as one would assume we already own a PDA or Symbian-based cell phone if we’re buying the books.  Which makes me wonder why Amazon is pulling a Palm.

There has been quite a bit of talk online about Amazon’s upcoming Kindle.  It’s going to be ugly as sin, and less usable than the eReader software.  I wish that hardware designers would take a hint from Apple and start designing things that at least *look* appealing.  I can live with crappy performance and an infuriatingly unintuitive interface if the machine at least has some sex appeal.  But this thing has nothing.  It reminds me of the Tandy computers from the early-80’s and contains about as much power.

Just to make matters worse, this thing is going to be bulky as heck.  Sure, it’ll have a 6″ screen with a resolution of 800×600, but this is going to be a 4-level grey scale screen.  It will also be about 18 mm thick (0.7 inches), carry 256 MB of memory, an SD expansion slot, a standard 3.5 mm audio jack and, most surprising, an EVDO/CDMA wireless modem.  The expected sticker price for this wanna-be 80’s apparatus is $400 USD.

On top of this, Amazon plans on introducing yet another form of DRM for these books, and other file formats will not be compatible.  This means that if anyone has a nice collection from eReader or other sources, they will not be able to read their legit books on Amazon’s Kindle reader.

Way to kill the eBook, Amazon.

I’m curious to know who designed this thing.  Was this a design that the people at Palm threw away years ago and Amazon picked up for a bargain?  Is this just a test device used to ensure the OS is stable and us consumers will get a sleeker and more fashionable unit?  Is this Amazon’s attempt to finally kill the eBook market, ensuring we continue to read paper books at premium prices for several more decades?  I’d really like to know.

Less than a year ago I was in the midst of designing a PDA that would fit all of my needs.  I’ve wanted something with a nice 6″ colour screen, smooth lines and the standard connectivity options for years but never found one.  Often times the devices that are released seem incomplete … as though something was intentionally left out to give consumers hope for the next model.  XDA’s PDAs come incredibly close, but I don’t want to wait for something as simple as a mini-tablet PC without a keyboard.  Palm was the leader in portable computers for years, then Sony, and now it’s pretty much up for grabs.  It doesn’t take a genius to design a good looking device with smooth lines and a nice compliment of hardware and, aside from the manufacturing constraints, my design was practically ready for prototyping after 4 weeks of research and design.  It might be time to dust off those designs and start assembling components.

Rant finished, I hope that Amazon pulls the plug on their Kindle.  Nobody in their right mind is going to pay $400 for an ancient looking brick that only reads books (which makes me wonder why it has an audio port).  Perhaps when my prototype is built, I’ll suggest it to Amazon.  Not only will it be able to read books, but it’ll be a nicely featured PDA running a friendly OS, too.

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Once every few years we find a book that is so astounding that we have an uncontrollable need to share it with the world.  These books are typically great works of literature where the reader often considers putting their entire life on hold until the story is completely told, and leaves us speechless for a short time after.  I believe that Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us is one of these books.

Before getting into the details, though, I would like to say that this is NOT a paid review.  After reading this book at the behest of a friend of mine, I think it’s something that everyone should read.  The conversations that have been sparked as a result of this novel have left my brain thirsty for more, and I’d welcome an international audience
With all the questions that surround us on a daily basis, there is one that many of us have considered as we stop to reflect on the large buildings that reach high into the skies, and the pollution that we have both buried in the ground and burned into the atmosphere; What if we didn’t exist anymore?

Much like the other eternal question, “Where did we come from?”, we know that we can never truly say how the world would change if we were not present.  Thinking of the question, let alone answering it, requires a magnificent suspension of the vanity that characterizes most humans.  But as we hear more about the effect we play on the world’s biosphere with our wasteful ways, this question is asked by more people.

Alan Weisman, an author, journalist, radio producer and professor, has asked this seditious question in his new book, The World Without Us.  Forcing us to acknowledge the effects we’ve all had on the planet, he engages our imagination in what could have been or might have been, or even what might still be yet to come.  Rather than ask how we humans will go about fixing the mess we’ve made over the last few thousand years, he simply takes us out of the equation and allows us to think about the possibilities.

Using some of the most up-to-date science, Weisman asks the quesions and then explores the answers with some of the world’s greatest scientists.  What would happen to animals and stocks without agriculture?  What would happen to the cities?  Would another species see their opportunity to conquer the world?  How long would our humanly constructs last?  Would the Pyramids stand against time better than the city of Tokyo?

Using some of the last areas of the planet devoid of humans, he takes us to the primeval forests bordering Poland and Belarus to the Kenyan heights.  He tells us about a four-storey hotel in the war-torn Cipriot town of Varosha and the trees that are growing between the cracks in the asphalt, the buildings literally falling apart beside him.

His description of just how quickly nature woud dismantle Manhattan, returning it to the wildlife after five hundred years of colonial rule, is incredibly well written and makes us wonder just how long some of the world’s most beautiful cities could survive without human intervention.  Without us to heat and repair our buildings, our tall structures of steel and glass would begin to decay in just a few years.  Subways and many of our roads would be destroyed within a decade.  Our strongest bridges, while able to withstand incredible forces of nature, would begin to fail after just a few centuries.

Interestingly enough, though, our plastics will long outlive even the most advanced of city structures.  In the half-century since the large-scale manufacture of plastics started, more than one billion tons of the stuff has been produced and there is still no real plan for recycling this material.  All but a tiny, incinerated portion of it still exists, dumped somewhere in the environment with a large quantity going out to the ocean.  Plastics are immune to decay from bacteria and sunlight, making it our immortal polymer.

Weisman reports that a quarter trillion pounds of plastic is produced every year, and quite a bit shows up on beaches around the world, carried by tides, and eaten by sea creatures that later die from intestinal problems.  A 1998 study showed that there was six times as much plastic in the ocean as plankton by weight on the surface of a thousand-mile crossing of the North Pacific Gyre.  He also cites a study nearly four months later near the mouths of creeks in Los Angeles feeding into the Pacific Ocean that showed 600 times as much plastic as plankton.  With our ever-disposable society throwing more away, this number is constantly on the rise.

Currently there are over 6.1 billion humans on the globe and, if our reproductive rates continue on their current trend, the world’s population will reach 9 billion by the middle of this century.  Nine billion is a number that most experts believe is just too large for the world to handle.  Offering a rather draconian thought on the situation, if every human female on Earth were limited to bearing one single child, the human population would drop to about 1.6 billion in time for the start of the 22nd century.  That’s not to say that it’s women’s fault for the number of people on the planet, as it takes two to tango, but it does give us something to think about.

So … what then?

Weisman’s final thoughts are poignant.  Just as light keeps moving, so does human thought.  We’ve been transmitting our thoughts in the form of television and music for a hundred years, and much of this has bled off into space.  Maybe, he posits, that will be the human legacy that nature can never erase.  Once we are gone, maybe our thoughts or even our memories will keep bouncing around the universe, eventually finding their way back to the post-human Earth we betrayed and abandoned.

Seriously … if you only read one book in the next 10 years, make it this one.

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