Rudy Rucker has a new book. Doctorow declares it "vintage Rucker."

Snippets from reviews:

Alt-cultural folk strive to save Earth from digitized doom ...

A computer mogul's threat to replace messy reality with clean virtuality and by a memory-hungry artificial intelligence called the Big Pig propels nanotechnologist Ond Lutter, his autistic son, Chu, and their allies on an interdimensional quest for a golden harp, the Lost Chord, strung with hypertubes that can unroll the eighth dimension and unleash limitless computing power.

Rucker takes on the volatile field of nanotechnology and the presumed inevitable "singularity" of human and computer unification.

More here, including (next month) the novel itself.

Postsingular, by Rudy Rucker

So here's Flurb #4, kicking off a second year of Flurb's world dominance of literary and unclassifiable SF-related webzines ... another fat and juicy issue for which the contributors are receiving no money at all.

And now for a rundown:

... a witty, warped, flowing, political, sfictional, satirical gem about life in Tennessee ... a mind-bending riff on body-mods ... a supremely sinister and satirical Cthulhu piece ... pixel-level steganographic signatures ... something like On the Road compressed into a six-hundred-and-sixty-six word cyberpunk haiku. With a happy ending, no less.

FLURB, a Webzine of Astonishing Tales

Consider this a follow-up to the thread about Alex Ross's new book.

‘Isn’t the East Village sort of like Beauty and the Beast in the summer?” Nico Muhly exclaims. “You know, ‘Bonjour, good day, how is your family, how is your wife…’” It’s our first outing of several together, and we are walking at typical Nico pace—an excitable, bouncier version of the New York Walk. In the span of three blocks, we have passed four people he knows, including a member of the indie rock band Ratatat, and soon we will be picking up a score from composer Philip Glass, Muhly’s de facto boss, who’s eating dinner at the vegetarian kosher Indian joint Madras.

In Muhly’s world, Houston Street as Disney movie makes sense. His life is an odd fairy tale in which he inhabits several characters at all times. There is, first and foremost, Nico the Composer, who has since age 18 assisted Glass, conducting and editing his film scores, and has also emerged as a star in his own right, with an album of his own work, Speaks Volumes; Nico the Helper to Famous Singers, who “enables” the likes of Björk, Antony, and Rufus Wainwright; and Nico Himself, the sweet, gleeful downtown kid, the 26-year-old Columbia and Juilliard graduate in perpetual motion. That last Nico lives in a Chinatown loft (above a sweatshop–cum–mah-jongg parlor), with his cats Duane and Reade and a roommate, Liz, whom he’s known since they were kids.

The Happy Little Minimalist

What really happened to classical music in the 20th century?

Don't be put off just because you don't much listen to classical music. The malaise in 'popular' music has deeper roots. Artistic development relies on the avant-garde ...

Historians, not surprisingly, are still sorting out the collapse of the avant-garde, and so most of the new “narratives” of musical modernism have been less descriptive of what was than prescriptive statements defending what the critic happens to consider desirable.

Alex Ross, the music critic of the New Yorker, has approached the task in a different way in his new book, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century. As he writes in the preface:

Histories of music since 1900 often take the form of a teleological tale, a goal-obsessed narrative full of great leaps forward and heroic battles with the philistine bourgeoisie. When the concept of progress assumes exaggerated importance, many works are struck from the historical record on the grounds that they have nothing new to say. These pieces often happen to be those that have found a broader public. . . . Two distinct repertories have formed, one intellectual and one popular. Here [in this book] they are merged: no language is considered more intrinsically modern than any other.

The result is a volume sharply different in tone from its predecessors—and truer, in my view, to the history of musical modernism.

The book earns a starred review from Publishers Weekly:

Ross leads a whirlwind tour from the Viennese premiere of Richard Strauss's Salome in 1906 to minimalist Steve Reich's downtown Manhattan apartment. The wide-ranging historical material is organized in thematic essays grounded in personalities and places, in a disarmingly comprehensive style reminiscent of historian Otto Friedrich. Thus, composers who led dramatic lives—such as Shostakovich's struggles under the Soviet regime—make for gripping reading, but Ross treats each composer with equal gravitas. The real strength of this study, however, lies in his detailed musical analysis, teasing out—in precise but readily accessible language—the notes that link Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story to Arnold Schoenberg's avant-garde compositions or hint at a connection between Sibelius and John Coltrane. Among the many notable passages, a close reading of Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes stands out for its masterful blend of artistic and biographical insight. Readers new to classical music will quickly seek out the recordings Ross recommends, especially the works by less prominent composers, and even avid fans will find themselves hearing familiar favorites with new ears.

The praise flows freely for this book:

"...[T]hi... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

Beyond the Musical Avant-Garde

The theme is a bit Diggy, but the list is worthy.

1. Requiem For A Dream (2000) (*)
2. Dancer In The Dark (2000)
3. The Passion Of Joan Of Arc (1928) (*)
4. The Seventh Continent (1989)
5. Winter Light (1962) (*)
6. Bad Lieutenant (1992) (*)
7. Straw Dogs (1971) (*)
8. Audition (1999)
9. Sick: The Life And Death Of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist (1997)
10. Come And See (1985)
11. In A Year Of 13 Moons (1978)
12. Safe (1995)
13. Irreversible (2002) (*)
14. Boys Don't Cry (1999)
15. Grave Of The Fireflies (1988)
16. When The Wind Blows (1986)
17. Leaving Las Vegas (1996) (*)
18. Jonestown: The Life And Death Of Peoples Temple (2006)
19. S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (2003)
20. The Last House On The Left (1972) (*)
21. Million Dollar Baby (2004) (*)
22. United 93 (2006) (*)
23. Lilya 4-Ever (2002) (*)
24. Nil By Mouth (1997) (*)

Click through for video clips.

This list is from AV Club, an Onion outlet. Incidentally, the stuff coming out of the Onion News Network lately is pretty incredible. (Most of it is also NSFW.) Consider this one, for example.

Not Again: 24 Great Films Too Painful To Watch Twice

There is no money in recorded music any more, that’s why bands are now giving it away.

The day the music industry died

Built for the budget-conscious space traveler.

More here. You might also be interested in the NASA collection at the Photosynth technology preview.

Your Personal Moon

Everybody writes. Not everybody is a writer. Or at least, that's what some of us think...

Now the web — and its democratizing impact — has spread for over a decade. Over a billion people can deliver their text to a very broad public. It's a fantastic thing which gives a global voice to dissidents in various regions, makes people less lonely by connecting other people with similar interests and problems, ad infinitum.

But what does it mean for writers and writing? What does it mean for those who specialize in writing well?

I've asked ten professional writers to assess the net's impact on writers. Here are their answers to the question...

Is The Net Good For Writers?

Stephen King in NYT Book Review.

The American short story is alive and well.

Do you like the sound of that? Me too. I only wish it were actually true.

The art form is still alive — that I can testify to. As editor of “The Best American Short Stories 2007,” I read hundreds of them, and a great many were good stories. Some were very good. And some seemed to touch greatness.

But “well”? That’s a different story.

What Ails the Short Story

I rarely find anything of interest on The Corner -- a super-high-volume blog -- but this amusing analysis almost makes it worthwhile.

I've decided I really just don't like Star Trek: Next Generation (ST: TNG) very much. For years, I was its defender against all comers. I liked it a lot when it was still on the air. And I liked it in reruns for awhile. But the more I watch it, the less I find redeeming about it (you might see my influence on this score in this quasi editorial). There are things I still like about it, but it's become increasingly difficult to separate the quadrotriticale from the chaff.

It's Time For A Confession | The Corner, on National Review Online