shadowings

I borrowed Shadowings by Lafcadio Hearn from my office lending library yeah we have a lending library and I didn't know what to expect. Half-way through, I still didn't know what to expect. Hearn is an international type guy. He was born (according to a Wikipedia article about him) on the Greek isle of Lefkada (presumably where his middle name comes from; full name Patrick Lafcadio Hearn) to an Irish father and Greek mother. He father happened to be stationed there during the British occupation in the 1840s. Lafcadio came along in 1850. A broken home and a re-stationed father left young Lafcadio bopping around for a while, until he made his way to the US in his late teens. A few years later he found work at a newspaper, and by 1890 was sent to Japan on a story, and he never left.

Hearn stayed in Japan and continued to write, and eventually took the Japanese name: Koizumi Yakumo. He became pretty well know internationally for his writings about Japan, and Shadowings is one of those books. Shadowings seems like a collection of whatever Hearn had on his desk when print time came, and maybe all of his books are like that. This volume includes translations, and re-tellings of traditional Japanese folks tales, the history and meanings of Japanese female names, and at the end a series of ghost stories and essays about dreams. Sometimes dreams about ghosts.

These essays at the end--which are written by Hearn, as opposed to researched and documented or translated, like the first half of the book--are where the book comes into its own. The essays are like a cross between Tom Robbins, Edgar Allan Poe, and maybe a little Carl Sagan or someone like that. He's very honest with himself, his writings are almost journal entries, and he's questioning and probing all kinds of things: life, and its meaning, the after-life, a higher-power (or lack thereof), reincarnation, love, humanity, and the nature of intellect. He even tries to figure out why Gothic architecture is gloomy, and does a thought experiment on the crowd behavior. This is a busy guy!

I didn't love this book, but it was interesting to read.

her (robot love iii)

I don't do a lot of movie reviews, and I'm not even sure this is a movie review, but I saw her last night by Spike Jonze starring Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, and Scarlett Johansson and I had to write about it. It has everything that I've been interested in, when thinking about the singularity, all in one place; things I've written about here on the blog in the past. Spike Jonze actually showed up most recently here at the blog, when I wrote about his sci fi short: I'm Here. I titled that blog post to recall another post about this subject, robots in love, or maybe more accurately, people in love with robots.

The robot jr. post has one of the highest hit rates on the blog, and I just had to write it after running into one too many references to folks falling in love with artificial intelligences. AND, I probably should add, I've got this sci fi book of my own that's been brewing for years, and there is some artificial intelligence interaction in my story as well. One of the reasons I'm drawn to these stories is so that I can witness all of my fresh ideas from my 20 year old book being scooped while my book languishes, but enough about me!

Jonze and company look hard at the potential realities of future human/artificial intelligence relationships and what they come up with is much like you might expect for any inter-species relationship: some things are amazing, and other things, not so much. What I found fascinating was how closely the hiccups and major road blocks to such a relationship--as well as the uncanniness of some element--struck nerves with me that are very closely tied to feelings I have about fairness, equality, and human rights.

Are these types of relationships the next logical step for mankind as some would have us believe, or will they be a more modern version of the typically ill-fated May-December relationship?