My Favourite Painting

I don't like rain. I accept it as part of the natural cycle (droughts are a Bad Thing). But I don't like it. Yes, sometimes, it might be pleasant to be cosy inside when the tempest is raging without, but as a rule of thumb, I'd rather pass on rain. But Brentford or Preston are not improved by rain shower, much less continuous heavy rain. Preston particularly can do and does do rain.

It  was a bone of contention between Alison and myself. She liked rain. I seem to recall that in the lunar colony in Earthlight, there is a shower in the early hours of every morning for a few minutes. That's the kind of place I want to live. Northern California would do. Or why not combine the best of both worlds and live in an O'Neill colony. Which leads me to My Favourite Painting.

Don Davis painted it for NASA Ames in the mid-70s thanks to the NASA Ames Research Center for making it available in the public domain). I want to live there. Alison couldn't understand why I wanted to live in a space colony.

I want to go gliding in the low-g skies of that colony. I want to go hiking in its hills and forests. I want to drive my electric car across that suspension bridge. I want to go sailing in a yacht on the lake and then have a quorn steak in a quayside restaurant, cunning flavoured to taste like sea bass, with curried roast potatoes, washed with a decent local hydroponically grown sparkling Pinot Noir/Chardonnay blend. That's why I want to live in a space colony.

The NASA Ames space settlements site is a thing of wonder. There is even the entire text of the CoEvolution Quarterly book on space colonies. Now, CoEvolution Quarterly was a thing of wonder too. I remember coming across News That Stayed News- 1974-1984 Ten Years of Coevolution Quarterly at Celestial Weasel/t__m__i's place in Redditch in 1987. CoEvolution Quarterly became The Whole Earth Review and then Whole Earth Publication was suspended in 2003 before issue 111could be printed. This is actually particularly annoying as issue 111 was to be have been about the Technological Singularity. However, many of the articles from issue 111 can be read at the website and there is still (some) hope that one day the magazine will be revived and issue 111 see publication in physical form.

How I remember those days in Redditch flicking through copies of Whole Earth Review that CW procured (I believe) from the much lamented Compendium Books in Camden Town! I went there for the last time in 2000 only to discover that it had closed. There was a notice on the door saying that the kind of people who came to Camden these days were not the kind of person  they wished to be associated with. I can concur with that feeling, although it's not terribly inclusive. So much for the Alternative University of London, brought low by crusties and Italian foreign language studies. (I suppose the Alternative University was really brought low by the end of late 60s/early 70s student radicalism. But the bookshop survived until 2000. I seem to recall that there was some kind of manifesto associated with the "university" displayed in the shop. But then I also remember when Borders on Charing Cross Road was Books Etc and was a radical bookshop).

From CoEvolution Quarterly, I learnt the meaning of the word vanilla in the context of BDSM. A useful thing to know. I wonder if polyamory ever featured in the pages of Whole Earth? I'd be surprised if it didn't. Stewart Brand was the driver (i.e., he drove the bus) for the Merry Prankster. He went on to write The Media Lab - Inventing the Future at MIT. I have a copy in front of me as I write. Unfortunately, it belongs to Imperial College Library. I still mourn for that copy I mislaid at the Carnforth Bookshop. Everyday. Perhaps I should order a used copy of Amazon. Do they come (the books) if you do that?

There is picture of Stewart wearing a tie on the back cover. I want to write a post one day on the links between Judeo-Christian eschatology,  the Military-Industrial Complex, New Age thought, artificial intelligence,  the Maya calendar, narrative theory, Belle de Jour, Kondratiev waves and mainstream economics, life coaching, epistemology, the Lisbon Strategy, the Secret Masters of the Universe, James Joyce, Deep Time, oulipo, the Global Business Network, The Tao of Cricket, Thuraya, postmodernism and the Technological Singularity. 

Comments

[John B]

I went to Compendium once to look for Mondo 2000. Looking back, Compendium's stock was too political for me, and gawd knows why I hunted for Mondo. I retreated from Whole Earth Review like I did from Skeptical Enquirer, and even Wired did not keep me in geekdom in the late '90s

Its only the 00's that I've decided that technological mastery is worth having, but I still think counterculture is so much wank.

[del]

I've always liked that picture too, except for one thing... why build a *suspension bridge* over what is essentially a shallow prefabricated-concrete paddling pool? Why not put pylons in when they were building the colony, and lay the bridge on the pylons? Or if the bridge has to be suspended, why not suspend it all the way from the centre of the colony?

[Paul]

I seem to recall that one of your work colleagues at Logica asked you to get it for him. In those days, it wasn't that easy getting hold of obscure stuff.

There is a strong overlap between the Counter-Culture, geekdom and technical mastery. The Clock of the Long Now is a wonderful example of technical mastery. It is very much part of geekdom. But it is also, in part at least, associated with the Counter-Culture. The Counter-Culture itself is only interesting to me as an anthropological phenomenon. And as a souce of ideas. I'm interested in sources of interesting and exciting and new ideas.

[Paul]

"...why build a *suspension bridge*..."

Because it looks good. Although it might look even cooler if it was suspended from the centre of the colony. I suppose Don Davis didn't establish an architectural commission to determine the design of the interior of the colony. Is this kind of thing discussed in the NASA/CoEvolution publications, I wonder? But the bridge is there because it helps to create the Northern California/Bay Area feel of the painting. There is something very American about the size of an O'Neill colony and all that "wasted" volume. OK, this is Island III. I think it significant that Island, the Bernal Sphere, was conceived of by a West Brit in the 1920s.

[Celestial Weasel]

I have ordered lots of books from abebooks and had them arrive. I don't see why the Amazon thing should be different. Have you read Brand's book on Architecture. That is his best to my mind, if you are remotely interested in such things, or even if you're not really.

Compendium gone? Larry gone? Dear, dear Larry.

On my last trip to the smoke, as we like to say in an ironic and postmodern way, I took a trip on the North London Line from Willisden Junction to Stratford. I thought of getting off at Camden Road and then walking through Camden to Camden Town and then joining the NLL somewhere else, but I didn't. I would have been disappointed to find Compendium gone, but probably not surprised. This is what we have teh interweb for these days (and Amazon and Abebooks etc.).

I still own the Whole Earth Reviews and Coevolution Quarterlies. Most other magazines I have thrown out, but not them. Again, teh interweb has made all this somewhat redundant, back in the day where could one have found things out without strange American magazine and radical bookshops that sold them.

I did subscribed to CoEv and WER on and off. As I have probably said, the Curse Of Weasel is that magazines go bust or turn crap if I subscribe to them. I have subscribed to the new O'Reilly magazine 'Make' so that will turn out to be crap too. I am hoping it will be suitably zeitgeisty, the zeitgeist has certainly fled Wired these days.

I can't remember if I had come across the term 'polyamory' before seeing it in LJ in the last year or so. Obviously I have come across the practice before, but I don't remember anyone IRL using the term to describe themself.

Now, Thuraya and Life-Coaching, there is a link I hadn't thought of. Perhaps we should collaborate on a non-fiction book (or possibly even a fiction one, or the PVC pilot script). I have a title for the non-fiction book I am happy to donate to our masterwork -'Icing the Body Electric'. I am not sure I have an angle yet, however (or even a solid angle, in steradians).

The Morris Dancing Goths, however, I am keeping for my novel ('in the temple of love', tinkle tinkle tingle whack) . I am also keeping the title for my second novel, about the deaf poly-bi vegan, entitled 'the poetry of indie-rock lyrics'.

[Paul]

I think you can keep the morris dancing goths, although i wonder if morris dancing has got a bad press over the years. It involves getting drunk and then hitting people with a pig's bladder. What's not to like in that? (Except for the pig. Perhaps the bladder was diseased and removed and replaced by an artificial one.)

"Icing the Body Electric" is a fine title with a definite Dickian note to it. (I want to write a novel called "The Owl in Daylight" sometime, which was the title of the book PKD was working on when died. There's a new biography of him due out soon.) One of my favourite titles is Tom Disch's "The Dreams Our Stuff is Made of" http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684859785/qid=1105310563/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_0_2/026-9330436-9266854).

I am available for collaboration on fiction and non-fiction projects for all media from 12 September 2005.

[Celestial Weasel]

I will aim to finish the novel by 12th September then!

I thought 'The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of' was a crap book, unfortunately. It suffered from the usual flaw of surveys of SF of dwelling on the pre-Gernsbackian history of scientific romance. I am with Barry Malzberg and Peter Nicholls on this one, this stuff is very peripheral. (Actually, I have lost / lent / mislaid my copy of TDOSIMO, I was vaguely toying with getting a replacement even though it was crap to see if there were any good points I had forgotten).

I would put that joint top of my list of 'titles that have been abused by being used for crap books' along with 'Northern Lights'. I am sure I have mentioned what Northern Lights should really be about, it should involve the Orkneys, a beautiful dark long haired girl, first contact with aliens, love and loss etc. etc.

[Paul]

Yes, I agree, I always thought that "Northern Lights" was a poor title for... "Northern Lights". This might explain why it's called "The Golden Compass" in the US, whish seems a much better title to me. Your "Northern Lights" sounds as though (a) it has a theme and subject matter more appropriate to the title; (b) it is a book I want to read.

A friend of mine (Kevin Rattan) long, long ago spoke of Pierre Boulle's short story "Garden on the Moon" about a Japanese asytonaut who makes a one way suicide trip to the Moon building a Zen garden there in which to die. Kevin felt that the idea of the story was so perfect that he could not read it because there was no way that it could live up to the idea of it in his mind.

But I am sure that the Weasel's "Northern Lights" will exceed the wonderful vision of it I have in my mind.