For the World is Hollow, and I Have Touched the Sky

Hollow Earth by David Standish is an entertaining introduction to a fairly silly notion that has been played with in fiction, considered by science, dreamed of by utopians, and promoted by crackpots. Standish takes a fairly lighthearted approach to his topic, which I suppose is pretty reasonable. This is probably not the last word on the topic, but it's a decent read.

That would be about it, but something about the topic has grabbed me. Something about a subterranean civilization, a sub-terra incognita, if you will, appeals to me. Perhaps it was watching The Phantom Empire as a kid. Maybe it's a memory of a high school classmate who read a paperback on the subject and was himself a believer. I think I just want to find out what happens when you fall down the rabbit hole.

"Enchanting and Coquettish"

What's the Chinese word for schadenfreude?
(via A&L)

Overheard Oddity

There were a couple of guys sitting next to me on the train the other day. They were chatting pleasantly when the question of destination came up.

“Why'd you get on this train?” the one fellow asked.

“Caprice.”

I love that.

Goodbye Forry

4SJ is gone. Dr. Acula will rise no more. Forrest J. Ackerman is dead, and I'm none too happy about it. I met Forry briefly when I was still a young owlet. It was at a Worldcon. He was wearing a replica of the costume he had worn at the first Worldcon in 1939. He was, I am told, the first person to wear a costume to a convention. I'm sure I made no impression on him, but it was a thrill for me. He was the man who invented the word “sci-fi.” His home, the Ackermansion (in Karloffornia) housed the best collection of science-fiction, fantasy, and horror memorabilia in the world. He was a living link to the earliest days of American SF fandom and a vital part of what eventually became geek culture. Once upon a time I thought that I would forever be a part of that world, but eventually reality intruded and I let my childhood slip away. Ackerman was far wiser. He was the ultimate fanboy to the very end. Cheers Forry. R.I.P.

The Art of Memory

I like to think of memory as a raw material, like clay or paint. It is what it is, but we bend, shape, and smear it into the image that serves us best. Sometimes we do this deliberately, as when we take our memory of someone else's work or idea and use it as part of our own creation, our own new thing. The best fiction, people will tell you, comes from experience of real life, but I remember what a wise professor once told me. “Books,” he said, “come from other books.” Art comes from art. We take that art, bring it into our minds, bend it a little, take things away, add other things, and we have something new. To try to create the wholly new is a folly. Our minds are stuffed with memories. They are the building blocks of human creation.

Humans are not the only creators in this universe. I just read a good book called Why Birds Sing by David Rothenberg. Rothenberg is a musician with the inquiring mind of a scientist and the pen of a poet. He tries to answer the titular question and, in my opinion, forgivably fails. It is too big a question for one consistent answer (it is large, it contains multitudes). The point of reading this book is the journey, not the destination. Which brings me to one of the more interesting stars of Mr. Rothenberg's book, the marsh warbler.

I've never heard a marsh warbler. I'd like to, but I don't have the means to travel across the Atlantic just now. The warbler is a migratory passerine that summers in Europe and winters in southern Africa. It is a mimic and Rothenberg describes it's song thus: “One by one it repeats nearly all the sounds of all the other bird species that live in its habitats, one after another with little recognizable pattern or repetition, packing a few tiny fragments into every second like a bird song identification tape played at double speed.” European ornithologists had identified about half of the warbler's song as being mimicry of other birds. The other half, they assumed, was the warbler's own song. They assumed that until the late 1970s, when Françoise Dowsett-Lemaire followed the bird's migratory path to Africa, listened as she went, and then heard the warbler's song anew. The warbler's journey is a songline that fills the traveling bird's memory with the music of two continents. The songs are borrowed from other sources, but the final version is all the warbler's own. The bird that mimics is not simply a playback machine. It is a careful listener and a deliberate creator.

All art is like that, whether we are conscious of our influences or not. That which we call sui generis is not, in fact, completely new. It is a basic law of physics. Something cannot come from nothing. In striving to make art we take the somethings that we have in our minds, the bits and pieces of memory, and shape and combine them in new ways to create meaning and beauty. If you would be an artist of any kind you must be like the marsh warbler. Pay attention on your journeys. Read widely. Listen intently. Gather up all the culture and nature that you can. Then do something wonderful with it.