Eifelheim

Eifelheim is a book written by Michael Flynn that came out back in 2006. Flynn is a notable third wave science fiction writer that's won some prestigious awards. This book is ancient by today's memelord society (because it came out in 2006). Its a science fiction novel about aliens that visit human civilization in medieval Germany (1340s AD). Meanwhile, in the future these physicists are trying to decipher what happened to the town because it seemed the town of Eifelheim just disappeared right off the map. Its an interesting idea and noteworthy because of how prolix the writing is.

The writing in this book is hard to get around. Difficult. Unrewarding throughout the entire book until the very end. However, that doesn't mean its a terrible novel. Rather, you get to notice how much work went into this projeckt. This isn't just a book. Its about a historical narrative, science and physics, metaphysics, and spiritual searching and reformation. All great ideas rolled into one book. Something like Star Wars could never compete with something like this. Although the book is 'difficult' (for lack of a better term) you get a sense that you are learning about something, all the things I just mentioned.

The book starts with the aliens crash landing in medieval town Eifelheim and this priest named Dietrich is the first human to meet with them. He eventually comes to befriend these demons from the sky and he realizes that they aren't so bad. They crashed and their ship was wrecked. Now they were stuck and had nowhere to go. They needed to get supplies to fix the ship and fly back to their home planet. Simple enough.

Dietrich learns to converse with these grasshopper-like creatures and he comes to the conclusion that these creatures must be saved in the name of Christ. So he tells them about Jesus and converts them. Can humans convert aliens? Michael Flynn says yes you can. Why not, right? Its a novel idea and something I've never seen before in science fiction. That alone constitutes reading the book. If anything its a great idea. Of course it makes you wonder if that's really possible why is it that sometimes we can't even convert ourselves? But I digress.

The aliens steal some steel wire somewhere and Dietrich gets upset. But in the end the aliens fix their ship and fly home. However, some aliens stayed in Eifelheim. The Black Plague was purging the entire region and it had reached Eifelheim. Those remaining aliens that stayed helped to take care of the sick, as they were immune to the disease. What a wonderful part of the story. You help me and I help you, what a great intergalactic Utopian moment for the book.

At one point Dietrich is accused of being a heretic for converting demons but he gets out of it through politics and knowing the right people, mostly knights in the army. The book ends with Dietrich fleeing the Black Plague-infested Eifelheim. Meanwhile in the future the physicists had worked out the idea of how the aliens used time and space travel to get there and leave. The idea that aliens had been there was ruled out until the very end of their findings. There was talk (earlier in the book) that these demons might have even been Chinese.

They decide to go to Eifelheim and look for themselves. They dig up the town's graveyard and find skeletons of the grasshopper aliens and even their German names written down on plaques. Knowing that they discovered something of lasting importance to the human race and civilization they revel in their discovery, and that ends the book.

Pretty great idea ain't it? I think so. I haven't read science fiction like this before and I'm not sure there's really any other books out there that are like this one. It got me interested in the Dark Ages and I've even got Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror checked out. History can be science fiction too. Its so foreign to me that it might as well be from another planet.

Long live the Devil home!

New Music, Jazz History, and Science Fiction

I've been doing more research into jazz and new music, avant-garde classical music. I've also been reading science fiction and such.

The science fiction novel is easy enough to explain. It's a science fiction novel set in the future where a scientist is trying to find out what happened to a town in Germany called Eifelheim. Then it goes back into Medieval German times where a priest named Dietrich is working as the communication between humans and these insect-like aliens called Kreken. The novel explores this idea: Can we convert aliens? There's other ideas and tons of rocket science abstraction (dense reading!) in it but this is the primary subject of the book. Its called Eifelheim and its written by Michael Flynn. The book was nominated for a Hugo award back in 2007. Although the book came out in 2006 this is already ancient by today's memelord society.

I also picked up two new books on jazz. Both seem superb after only reading a bit. They're two books written by Nat Hentoff. Jazz Life and Jazz Is. Both explore jazz in a variety of ways with interviews, history, and in depth analysis of the music, the musicians, the audience, and the time periods (some of which include when jazz wasn't popular). Hentoff is a Jewish writer (that wrote for pretty much every major publication) that was well known for his politics. He comes to know the music personally because he met and knew most of the "greats" as a kid in New York. I find his insight on the people to be enlightening. He explains that although the people who play jazz are flawed, the music itself isn't. I'm looking forward to reading both books and I hope to learn a lot more about the history (black history) and people that made such great music.

Then there's the readings on and about the new music scene. I've become a listener of the avant-garde, so called "new music", or as I like to say avant-garde classical music. It started during the Chicago trip when I saw Messiaen's Quartet For the End of Time performed and then it just expanded from there like a mothership dropping its young onto an unsuspecting planet.

I've become particularly fond of Xenakis, Ligeti, Guillermo Gregorio (Argentinian clarinetist and improviser), Stravinsky, Stockhausen, and others. Xenakis wrote a great book about mathematics and music but once I got past the initial introduction the book goes a little over my head. Interesting to check out and read about still.

The thing I like about this sort of music is that it sounds like it could've been completely improvised but it was all written down and thought about. They didn't just throw together random stuff and some people say it sounds random and not music at all (a general opinion on the avant-garde) but I've come to learn that music can be made out of anything and everything, a lesson this music has taught me more so than ever. These composers were revolutionary because they didn't follow the standard norms of composition and influenced music of the twentieth century in a profound way. 

Guillermo Gregorio's music is great. His playing is as my dad put it,"dated". He has a sound that was popular back in the mid to late 1960's jazz, free jazz to be specific. He has the sound of Eric Dolphy, if Dolphy was from Argentina and became an intellectual artist inspired by architecture and European art and philosophy. I don't want to generalize him but his playing reminds me of Dolphy a lot. And I dig that very much.

On the other end of the spectrum (the one where European/American art music and rap don't mix!) I read the entire LA Weekly edition that just came out and in the back they had a list of fifteen of LA's best rappers. I'm not a fan of rap but I figured I would check out some of these guys and see if they had done LA proud with their work. DJ Quik has a nice funky style and Tyler the Creator has become a rap darling. Apparently the guy who doesn't give a fuck about anything actually cares.

All of this stuff will enrich my musical and literary palette. I'm trying to improve the blog, do more editing and limiting my posts and sentences, something before I never would have done because I thought too much editing was a bad thing almost akin to censorship. My goal is to eventually be showcased somewhere on a website and for something to come out of all of this. After all, nobody should write for free. But a free thinker must express his ideas to others lest it all sit inside one's head. As Grace Slick (from Jefferson Airplane) sang in White Rabbit, "Feed your head."

Picture is the composer Ligeti