Eight Years Later

And now, Alex understands, as best he can, the source of the cloying sound coming from the other hilltop, as he watches the Lutanists assembled behind the Starcatchers playing their foul instruments, and strung to these instruments by vibrating cords are wingbound lancers, men whose very clothing forms wide wings. By some enchantment, the cloaks worn by the lancers collect and focus the sound, so that they are lifted from the hilltop, soaring into the air at great speed. As they do so, Alex watches in horror and disgust as the proud eagles of Galvany fall to their lances.
And then the Starcatchers strike, and all hope is lost.
The star-kites they have unwound fall short of the eagles' attack, but they had never been intended as snares, leastwise, not for the eagles. An unfortunate wind has blown the kites much closer to the hilltop on which Alex stands, and, distracted from the eagles' demise, he watches in amazement and then growing alarm as the star-kites swoop down at the mages less than a stone's throw away. The kites are attracted, they must be, by the mages' magic. And whenever a kite strikes a mage, that mage falls down dead, first the mages of Oakenshore, and then the less powerful crop mages, and among them, Alex's father.
And thus ends the battle of Galvany Fields, and so began the Teertsi occupation.
If it weren't for the events of that day, of course, Alex would probably have stayed in Galvany Fields, and become a crop mage like his father. This was a bitter truth.
Eight years later, to the day, Alex found himself in a dilemma. The plan, developed and embellished in secret, had been simple. The plan had in fact been so secret, that Alex, involved as he would become, had had no knowledge of it until he had been called to his Head Master's chambers earlier that day, only to be met by a taskforce of mages and government officials.
"The plan is this, and there is little time, so listen carefully," Head Master Peeps had instructed him, before continuing: "We are going to hurl you into the Teertsi Hole as it opens. When you get to the other side, we are going to pull you back, and you are going to tell us what you saw there."
Stupid plan, Alex had thought.
And just how are you going to do this? How are you going to hurl me?"
"By catapult, of course."
"And... pull me back?"
"Rope."

Starcatchers

And of course, Alex was well aware that many had not, that many of the poverty stricken members of society, who had before relied upon charity for their well being, had simply died of hunger. Many had been killed by the policemen of the occupying force during the early uprisings that took place in the first year of the occupation. And many had attempted to leave the Delta, though few had succeeded.
So the cities had adapted to their oppressors, and, in secret, planned their downfall.
"Filthy, oily bastards! Why?" Alex was weeping now. And of course, there was no answer, although he couldn't shake the strange feeling that someone, or something, was watching him.
The Starcatchers open their silvery cages, and shimmering star kites are released, stretching out into the sky on silken filaments. These filaments are attached to the cages by miniature winches, which the Starcatchers spin out rapidly. There are only a dozen or so.
What initially draws Alex's attention to the hilltop on the other side of the fields is the sound, which he initially thinks is coming from the group of Starcatchers. He can barely make out what they are doing, but the sound seems to come from the strange boxes they are holding, or from the bright kites rising from the crowd.
"The kites! The kites! They're trying to snare the eagles!" He yells out, and the other farm-folk join in the chorus.1
Silent they become as the mages of the Oakenshore Guild and the remaining crop mages pool their energy and cast out devastating curses to the opposing hilltop, obliterating several of the Starcatchers on the spot. Flying above the kites, the eagles descend on the hilltop, similarly bent on carnage.
The cacaphony from the other hill only grows. When he was a child, Alex had watched, horrified, as a group of older boys tortured an alleycat for their own amusement. This sound is similar, but worse, pure but awful, a cross between the sound of music and the sound of agony.

Eight Years Earlier

First to arrive was the mage army of the Oakenshore Guild, who after a brief, uneasy parley with the crop mages (who had retreated to a hilltop overlooking the battlefield), turned their efforts to the ground assault, hurling bolts of lightning and explosive curses against the Teertsi shock troops.
Soon after arrived the nimble lion-riders of Galvany, who were able to destroy much of the Teertsi ground offensive, distracted as the shock troopers were by the Oakenshore magic. With the lion-riders came birds of the sky, great eagles, which swooped down on the battlefield, plucking soldiers up and hurling them at their allies.
The lion-riders set up a whooping battle cry, rallying and re-rallying as they tore the Teertsi to pieces. From the vantage of their hilltop aerie, Alex and the other farm-folk joined in the rallying cry. His chest nearly burst with pride as he watched the tide of battle turning.
That battle had taken place eight years ago now, almost to the day. In actual fact, it had been eight years exactly.
"Eight years of occupation! Eight years paying tribute every year to those filthy oily bastards!" Alex yelled out into the void that surrounded him, but no answer came.
Every year since the occupation, on the day of the Autom Feast, the Teertsi Hole had reopened, and every year, a tribute of flour, lumber, preserved fish and various other goods was taken back to Teerts. There was nothing the Delta-folk could do about it, either, for the Teertsi were among them now.
And in many ways, ironically, the twin cities of the Delta had prospered since the occupation. The Teertsi occupation had ended the war between Galvany Fields and Azure Spires, for one. And though the Teertsi themselves were not hardworking, the people of the two cities had had to work that much harder in order to prosper, and many had risen to the challenge.

Chaff Demons

Alex's father and the other crop mages now agreed that it was time for action, and so, strengthening and redoubling the hexes they had made on the chaff demons, they sent them at the intruders. But the chaff demons were no match for the Teertsi ground offensive, and again and again the straw men were beaten down, trodden underfoot or exploded into nebulae of hay, only to be brought into being again by the tireless crop mages.
"We can hold them! Keep them together, lads!"
Alex prayed that his father was right. He was almost too young to believe that his father could be wrong.
When the first wave of shock troops met the straw men in combat, they had smashed them with brute force. The crop mages pooled their guile and arcane energy, and the straw men were whirled back into being, forming larger and more powerful homunculi, which seemed momentarily to push back the Teertsi ground force. But then Alex had witnessed a terrifying sight, as some amongst the ground force drew forth lit torches, and set their comrades ablaze. Such was the nature of the Teertsi armor that it protected the wearer from the flames, while feeding the blaze. Alex watched as the burning soldiers tore a swath through the straw men, which kindled almost immediately into towering infernos, exploding from within as the crop dust took.
Trolls, Alex had seen, on one memorable (and quite frightening) occasion when he had traveled with his father to the Mithwood, to trade with the people who lived there. But these invaders, in many ways troll-like, were different. The trolls had been ruthless, but had only been protecting what was theirs. These people were relentless, intent only on breaking through to Azure Spires and neighboring Galvany.
And eventually the crop mages and their allies had had to do just that: to let the Teertsi pass through, and hope that they had given the twin cities of the Delta adequate time to prepare their defenses.
Had this only been the case, the occupation would have ended there, but there had been strife between the cities, and so the cities were prepared for attack, but not from this direction, and the reinforcements they mobilized were delayed.

Evil Magic over Galvany

When the Hole opened over the fields, there was confusion. The dark aperture occluded the sun as it enlarged from an occult pinpoint in the sky to a wide tear. Baffled by its appearance, the crop mages huddled together. And then the Teertsi gangs began to emerge.
"What... what is that?" Alex's father, an elder among the crop mages, had cried out.
"It looks like the sky is being torn!"
"This is evil, evil magic."
Alex could only agree.
The first sight the Delta folk had had of the Teertsi were the heliothopters, spidery airborne vehicles with only a single rider, pumping pedals and bellows to keep his flimsy craft aloft - but these were only scouts, soon followed by handfuls of airships, proud and terrifying zeppelins. Within short moments, the airships were dropping balloons filled with only enough hot air to slow their descent, and attached to these balloons were baskets brimming with Teertsi ground troops in their oily black armor, made from the hide of no beast Alex had ever seen. From these baskets also emerged the Starcatchers and the Lutanists, who began setting up their equipment on a nearby hilltop. The ground troops charged down the hillside and across the fields of Galvany.

The Old Washerwoman of Scrub Sheelie

"...so wherever you are, you will eventually leave the quandary!" This would have been reassuring to Alex, if this were in fact a quandary in which he was floating, but it came as cold comfort, as this particular aetherial non-conformity allowed of only two exits. He remembered that much from his hurried briefing, only hours earlier.
A dilemma then... was the same thing true of a dilemma? He couldn't remember. So! He might be in here forever. Surely they hadn't intended that! The whole thing had happened so quickly. And there again was that strange voice in the back of his head. Alex asked it to go away, and it did.

In the earliest days of the Teertsi occupation of the Azure Delta, stories had been passed around from neighborhood to neighborhood; like, for instance, the old washerwoman from Scrub Sheelie, who, after the Teertsi gangs had taken her family from her, had turned her strong hands from wringing out the days laundry to wringing the necks of any young Teertsi foolish enough to venture out after the curfew they themselves had imposed. In Galvany Fields, where Alex had lived before coming to Azure Spires, the standard rejoinder to this story had always been that, were the Teertsi youth not so filthy that they rarely had their clothes laundered, the poor woman might have accepted their trade instead.
Alex had cringed when he heard stories like these. In those first days of occupation, his family had known both poverty and mistreatment at the hands of the Teertsi. He would never forget this.
He had been there to witness the Teertsi Hole opening. This he would never forget either. There had been chaff demons in the fields that day. Each year at the harvest, the crop mages would set hexes on the straw and threshed hay, separating the usable wheat and other grains from the rest. As the hexes took effect, the chaff would form whirlwind homunculi, thin and tall, graceful manakins which would then lend their assistance during the rest of the harvest. They were neither strong nor durable, but the chaff demons were reliable, until the Autom Feast after last harvest, at which they would dance themselves to pieces.

Quandary

Alex was in a quandary. At least, that was where he thought he was, but he was unsure. If only he had paid more attention.

Oh well, he had all the time in the world to ponder it now. He silently cursed himself for not paying more attention in his Psychic and Magical Telemetry and Geography of the Arcane World classes. Only last month, there had been a guest lecturer who was rumored to have spoken very knowledgeably on the subject of "Topological Non-Conformities in the Aether." Alex, naturally, had skipped the lecture to go floating in the Tane, the small river that ran through the center of campus. It had been the hottest day of midsummer, far too hot to spend in a stuffy lecture hall.
For almost two years now, Alex had attended the School of Arts and Magic, in the College of Dweomer at the 'Varsity of Azure Spires. He was barely squeaking by with a passing grade in most of his subjects, "Psych and Madge" included.
"Now let's see... solutions: the quandary has four potential solutions, or egresses," he muttered to himself. "Indeterminability: you can never be completely sure which solution you are approaching... but... but..." There always was a "but" or a "however" attached to these sorts of definitions, a matter which had caused Alex serious grief in the past. "But!" he exclaimed, "you are assured of eventual egress as an invariant state of the quandary, based on the impossibility of stasis."
Put simply, if you can't stand still, you will eventually have to leave. Which is, ironically, a phrase several of his professors had applied to Alex in the last handful of months alone.

Horns of a Dilemma: Introduction

In an effort to ignore this space so I can get some work done in other areas of my life (more on this at an appropriate time), over the next month, I am serializing an excerpt from one of several unsuccessful attempts at "National Write a Novel Month," in 8 installments, published Monday/Thursday. Enjoy!

Writers who Tweet

Following is a group of writers who I have been following in Twitter. They are all professional, in that they all would like to get paid for what they are doing. The phrase "professional writer" is undergoing some growing pains at the moment, much like the phrase "professional journalism," but simply put, most people want to get paid for what they do at some point, and we need the professionals in these estates, as much as we need the amateurs.

@bruces - Bruce Sterling wrote one of my favourite science fiction novels, Schismatrix; as well, Sterling's early cyberpunk anthology Mirrorshades set the stage for an entire genre. Sterling doesn't post as often as I'd like, but when he does, I always pay attention. A writer with his eye on the future.

@GreatDismal - William Gibson and Bruce Sterling collaborated on the steampunk prototype The Difference Engine, and it was William Gibson who has consistently hammered in the nail of cyberpunk. He is interviewed in a fantastic film No Maps for These Territories.

@1889ca - MCM is creator of Rollbots, animated mayhem currently showing on YTV in Canada, and soon elsewhere around the world. MCM is actively searching for different ways to perform and commoditize the process and distribution of writing. Also insane.

@scalzi - John Scalzi has written numerous fiction and non-fiction books, notably The Last Colony. He lives in Ohio, so when he tweets about finishing his writing quota for the day at 2.00 on the west coast, I have to realize it is dinner time in the east. Also a creative consultant for Stargate: Universe, which should get interesting.

@agnieszkasshoes - Dan Holloway is writing a novel on Facebook called The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes. He also blogs and is a member of the Year Zero Writers collective. When Dan tweets from the U.K., it is either really late on the west coast, or really early in the U.K.

I realize these are all male writers, and I will try to rectify that with a future list. Elizabeth Hand, possibly my favourite living writer, blogs at LiveJournal as the +1 in the Inferior 4+1, but refuses to tweet.

Please leave comments on female writers who tweet!

Writing with ink and erasers

Tolkien wrote the lion's share of his work in pencil, in standard school notebooks, over which he overwrote in pen, later erasing the pencil. This allowed him, amongst other things, freedom to change the underlying linguistic framework of his stories as he was writing them. This is something a word processor will not allow me to do.

Judgement and Discrimination

Okay, I firmly believe in the importance of judgement, that often it is more valuable to be the person saying "no" when others are saying yes. Judgement is undervalued; but discrimination in any form is sickening and morally reprehensible.

This in response to a study conducted by U.B.C. prof Philip Oreopoulos, which found that, in a phony mail survey of resumes sent out to online job postings in the Toronto area, mock applicants were 40 percent more likely to get a call back than those with Chinese, Indian or Pakistani names.

40 percent.

This is the 21st century, is it not? I am shocked, but not surprised by these numbers.

I recently posted an article regarding Ivan Krstić's move to Apple. While I was looking at other articles about the move, I came across the phrase He's also looking for a vowel for his last name. I am sure this is intended as a jest, but, still... Judge people by what they do, by what they say, but not by the way they spell their name.

Ivan Krstić joins Apple Core Security

I have been following Krstić's writing for several years now, and have found his weblog to be both informative and entertaining. I have no doubt that he will perform many good deeds at Apple, not the least of which will be adding an element of transparency to the organization. Consider me a fan of his writing, and I hope he continues to do so as he has in the past.

For more information, look here, here and here

Sugar on a Stick

Currently enjoying Cincinnati's Koala Fires - follow them on twitter to download a copy of their debut ep.
Also enjoying Loney, Dear's Daytrotter Session

After all has been said and done about the successes and failures of the One Laptop Per Child organisation, it is still built on a very sound set of principles, one of which is that children's education works best when the child owns the technology. When Sugar Labs separated from OLPC, they took this premise with them. Sugar on a Stick is a project currently in beta at Sugar Labs, which allows you to leverage Fedora LiveUSB to store the complete running Sugar OS on a USB stick.

I encourage you to help out with this project if you have primary school aged children (even older - I have really enjoyed the TamTam music software available with Sugar). The Sugar OS has been designed with children in mind. People who criticize the OLPC project for not training children in the use of Microsoft products (because these are an industry standard), are missing the point, I believe. Microsoft operating systems and applications are an industry standard because they are ubiquitous. You use them at work, you have a pirated copy at home, etc... just as the Macintosh equivalents are similarly pervasive. I love my OLPC XO for a variety of reasons, but it is an island in my life, because I am surrounded by pervasive operating systems and applications, and I always have been. Unfortunately, the OLPC laptop doesn't change this.

Sugar on a Stick could.

Technology is ownership, portability, pervasiveness. With the Sugar on a Stick beta, Sugar Labs is driving toward these goals.

So maybe I should build a facebook application now?

A couple weeks back, in response to Mary Rotman's interview with Jesse Stay on O'Reilly FYI, about his new book, I posted an idea for a facebook application, and am now receiving a freebie copy of FBML Essentials. For what it's worth, here is a description of the application I proposed:

I would love to develop a collaborative authoring/incentivized blogging application for facebook. Imagine: you begin playing and discover a 'location', for which you provide a description; you explore the location and discover 'characters', and describe their activities as you employ them to explore your world, discovering and detailing more locations, more characters. Further explorations discover 'neighbours' (friends playing the game); when you interact with their locations and characters, the outcome is determined by the amount of descriptive content you have already supplied for your own characters (hence incentivized). As a storyline becomes more involved, it can be extracted as RSS or PDF, say, which can then be published into your news feed.

This would be an experiment in 'facebook social media', like an alternative to Harlequin, Gossip Girl, reality television etc. One approach would be to extend an existing open-source CMS like WordPress, laconica or atomicWiki by adding custom features. Unlike mySpace, fb isn't a blogging platform, but this would not be a conventional weblog, something more akin to fanfiction.

How hard is it to get facebook funding, anyway?

Currently enjoying:
Crystal Castles, "Death (White Lies Remix)"
Kristin Hersh - Mississippi Kite - Follow Kristin on Twitter - her tour notes read like a Tom Robbins novel or Tom Waits song:

borrowed airmiles to fly to the west coast shows...they'll fill the gas tank to get our kids home...in problem-solving mode again

man, crows are the wickedest...got a whole murder outside this morning

Deerhoof and Creative Commons - Offending Maggie

Reposted from O'Reilly News: Regarding "Offending Maggie"

On June 3rd, 2008, "Fresh Born", the first single from San Francisco band Deerhoof's upcoming album, was posted as sheet music under a Creative Commons license. In a few months, a full twenty versions of "Fresh Born", recorded by all and sundry, have been recorded and contributed back to the CASH Music website.

Roky Erickson sighting: Where the Pyramid meets Mogwai

I just think this is so cool: available digitally on September 9th, the new Mogwai EP will feature vocals on the closing track by none other than 13th Floor Elevator legend Roky Erickson. I cannot wait for this release!

In defense of SUGAR

Have I mentioned how much I love love love the Hood Internet? I am always impressed when a project is able to straddle the intersection of theory and practice, and to do so seemlessly. The idea behind the Hood Internet, apparently, is that people no longer have time to listen to both hip-hop/R&B AND indie rock, so the two djs who are the Hood Internet have made it their mission to mash up the best and the worst of the two genres, and the results are nothing short of spectacular. Standout tracks for me were R Kelly/Broken Social Scene, Project Pat/Shout Out Louds, and the ABSOLUTELY FREAKIN' ASTOUNDING Common/Bloc Party track (courtesy of Dr. J). All tracks are freely available (through zShare, which can be an awful pain, unfortunately), and if you get a chance, suport the Hood by checking them out live at various music festivals.

I love my XO, and what One Laptop Per Child stands for. There has been a lot of talk recently about Sugar breaking away from OLPC, culminating in the recent foundation of Sugar Labs, and this can only be a good thing. For me personally, the Sugar interface presents an incredible shift away from the time-wasting and procrastination which have plagued my past endeavours. In a similar vein, I have been really impressed in the past with the simplicity of the operating system, if you would call it that, in the original Alphasmart word-processor. The Alphasmart has now evolved into the Dana, a cool word-processor designed for students, which runs PalmOS, but the original OS consisted of 8 buttons each representing a file. Click the button and start writing or editing. This leaves no scope for time-wasting. With Sugar, you benefit from a similar simplicity. When I open up my journal (the Sugar activity manager is called the journal), I see links to the last 10 activities I have been working on. More are available if I scroll down, but I rarely do, since, chances are, I want to resume one of these ten activities, even if I have no activity in mind when I turn the laptop on. When I complete an activity, for instance, by finishing up a document, I back it up on the SD card and remove it from the journal

Another innovation that raises the Hood Internet one level beyond is their use of photochoppery to enhance user experience: each audio mashup is accompanied by a visual mashup, showing the various artists hanging out, often in unusual circumstances. These images are offered for comic effect, but the effect is perfect, and well-executed and effortlessly ironic. I am myself a fan of the independent rock, however, I do find it often lacking in old-school Elvis-style libido, which, as Kurt Cobain taught us, rhymes with mosquito.

I can see the advantage to this for a child or a student or myself, as a writer; in my professional capacity, I have spent countless hours digging about for a particular document on Windows, but I deal with countless documents. When I am writing at home, however, I may have two or three documents in progress, but not more than this, and by being able to access "the last thing I was doing," quickly and efficiently, with no mucking around, I am saving time.

This is one reason I like Sugar, and one way it does something for me that Windows, or for that matter KDE or OSX, does not.

NIN == PBS, The Future of Ideas


Okay, so I was working this weekend, so I didn't hear about the new Nine Inch Nails album until monday, so it was too late to drop $300 on the deluxe edition, if I was so inclined. Instead, I fell asleep on the sofa watching KCTS Cooks Breakfast. I have pledged to PBS a couple times, always at the lowest level, and always for the geeky Red Dwarf t-shirt. For the most part, however, I experience PBS without supporting PBS.

Free Stuff - Lawrence Lessig's The Future of Ideas has recently become available through a Creative Commons license - thank you Lawrence Lessig and Creative Commons, and thank you Random House for releasing the text from copyright. While The Future of Ideas may necessarily seem dated in places, it is evident from a rereading how pertinent these ideas still are, and how they have evolved from Code to Code v2; technologically, it is now the future, but the cultural spaces which Lessig continues to explore are much broader than the technologies supporting these spaces.

If I do download Ghosts I-IV, it will be the same situation; I will support it only with my eardrums, not my wallet. However, there are 2500 people who are supporting Nine Inch Nails at the "corporate level", and there $300 a pop adds up to a decent $750,000. Wow, thanks!

more free stuff - My broken iPod has been spinning the prerelease from the new Nada Surf album for months now. Lucky has now officially hit the shelves, and it delivers on the promise of "See these bones." The album is also available as a full album stream for a limited time, so you can get taste the whole, rather than the bite-sized morsels that even indie radio portion out. I'm curious, though; I remember REM promoting an album with a full album stream, and I remember Neil Young streaming his Living with War album, in this case, an act of protest. Streaming a full album enacts something different from releasing a single through the regular channels; I wonder if this act will lose its impact over time as the practice becomes more commonplace.

I think the future of music will be a movement in this direction, which is really just a realisation of the fact that some people are prepared to pay more than others, many people are prepared to carry around the long tail, and the majority of people are free to listen to the radio. And the people who are really driving this movement are the local bands, who have no reason not to give things away, and the NIN's and Radioheads, who can afford to do whatever they please, really.

SaveInternetRadio.org:
If you love internet radio (soma, ioio, woxy, pandora, etc), time is running out before U.S. congress signs off on a rate hike that will, basically, anihilate the landscape of internet radio and support for independent music and thought as we know it.

Time and options are running out for Internet Radio. Late this afternoon, the court DENIED the emergency stay sought on behalf of webcasters, millions of listeners and the artists and music they support.

UNLESS CONGRESS ACTS BY JULY 15th, the new ruinous royalty rates will be going into effect on Sunday, threatening the future of all internet radio.

If you live in the United States and you rely on internet radio in any way, I implore you to find out who your senator or representative is (lists are available), and call, email, whatever. In two days time, it's going to be awfully quiet.

Internet Radio Day of Silence: One day is enough! savenetradio.org

So, if you're like me, music is an integral part of your day. I am an avid listener to an internet radio station, and recent events have me worried.

The future of Internet radio is in immediate danger. Royalty rates for webcasters have been drastically increased by a recent ruling and are due to go into effect on July 15 (retroactive to Jan 1, 2006!). To protest these rates and encourage the millions of net radio listeners to take action and contact their Congressional representatives, today is a national Day of Silence.

savenetradio.org

When my beloved WOXY went off the air last year, they were resurrected for the 3rd time by an angel in the guise of lala.com. But, had they stayed off the air, I would have had many other options. If the royalty rate increase goes through as planned, that's it. Across the board, mainstream and alternative entertainment sources will suffer, and that's sad. So make your voice heard if you care about internet radio.

On a related topic, WOXY's benefactor, lala.com, have now launched a DRM-free music service that will download music directly to your iPod, bypassing iTunes. How successful will this be? Well, it's gutsy, that's for sure, and a company well worth keeping an eye on.

On an unrelated topic, Danah Boyd's Apophenia blog is getting a massive number of hits in response to a blog-essay she posted recently on an apparent class separation between high school mySpace and FaceBook users. Unfortunately, many of the blog-essay's readers have apparently missed the point that the essay itself deals with teens, and is intended to open a dialog, not as an academic paper.

What amazes and saddens me is that Danah has intentionally put a blurb on the front page of her blog:

Welcome! If you're new, please check out Best-Of Apophenia. A feed for this blog is here.

Which I think is an absolutely brilliant idea, to situate the arguments that she is about to present. Unfortunately, most commentary on the blog is apparently made without the benefit of this context, which is really too bad.

When you read a post on a blog, try reading at the very least a few other posts before commenting; you might save yourself coming off as an ignorant ass!