I'll bet you never thought you would see an intergalactic alien thriller that all centered on the intricacies of copyright law, did you? Well, if thatI'll bet you never thought you would see an intergalactic alien thriller that all centered on the intricacies of copyright law, did you? Well, if that's what you've been waiting for, then this is the book you want to read.
The universe, as it turns out, is well-populated with other civilizations. Some of them are nearly human in appearance, others are so radically unlike us that they're hard to imagine, much less talk to. Giant snails, two-dimensional beings, foul-mouthed parrots and bio-machine intelligences - all of these and more make up the Refined League, the greatest political entity in the universe. In order to become part of the League, your civilization has to first prove that it can overcome the violent urges that lead so many intelligent cultures to self-extinction. Once it has done that, the League provides it with technology so advanced that it may as well be magic, allowing the new members to completely solve their technological problems and instead focus their energies on creative and cultural works.
And that is where the League shines brightly. Their artistic sense is so far beyond ours that were we to see it in its full flower our brains would likely shut down from the beauty. Their art and architecture, cinema and drama, fashion, food - hell, their calligraphy and paper-making are works of art that make our great masters look like toddlers drawing stick figures in the mud. In nearly all respects, the Refined League outclasses humanity.
Except, as it turns out, for music.
Thanks to some twist in our evolution, we are the only civilization capable of creating truly great music. Indeed, the first music heard by an alien culture - the closing credits song to "Welcome Back, Kotter" - was so amazing and so powerful that countless individuals died from ecstasy overload. As the universe turned its ears towards Earth, they discovered what they had been missing all along, and were soon tapping into our radio and TV broadcasts to get copies of the greatest music ever made. The discovery of Earth's music was so pivotal to the cultural history of the universe, that the League reset their calendars to reflect it, thus making October 13, 1977 the beginning of Year Zero.
For decades, Earth music was recorded and copied and passed along. And while it did still occasionally kill people with its beauty and glory, those who survived cherished the gift we were unknowingly giving to them. While we were not yet prepared to join the League, we were the center of the universe.
Until the law got involved.
The central governing principle of the League is that indigenous laws must be respected, no matter what. It wasn't until our songs had been copied over hundreds of millions of times that the League discovered the incredibly draconian and torturous copyright laws that govern music on our planet, and the heavy fines that are imposed for piracy. Under U.S. copyright law alone, it turns out, the universe owes us money.
All the money.
Two of the universe's biggest stars break through the barrier that's supposed to protect our planet and approach Nick Carter - not a Backstreet Boy, but a young attorney specializing in copyright law - to try and find a way to fix this little problem. But they're not the only ones looking to find a way out of the mess the League has gotten itself into. Members of an entertainer's union - now pretty much defunct since Earth music took everything over - would rather see us gone entirely, so they're prepared to make sure we find a way to destroy ourselves before any kind of arrangement can be reached. Nick, along with the universally-admired celebrities Carly and Frampton, are in a race against a violent alien parrot and an angry vacuum cleaner to save the Earth and the Refined League both, along with keeping the music coming.
It's a very fast read - I went through it in a day - and is built on a very entertaining premise, one which undermines a lot of what we've come to expect from first contact stories. The author's experience in the online music industry no doubt gave him a lot of material to work from, and he made it into a fun race against the clock. Part of the reason I bought the book was its premise - we're all so used to seeing stories about how wonderful aliens are compared to ourselves, and it's nice to see it subverted in a clever and interesting way.
It was also a clear and repeated stab at the way we handle creative property rights in the United States - indeed in most countries around the world. The law firm for which Carter works is so entrenched in the business of protecting copyright that they practically wrote some of the most egregious laws against piracy. They even have their own pet Senator, a thinly-veiled version of Orrin Hatch who is nicknamed "Fido," who does their bidding in Washington. They're not concerned with making sure the artists are compensated, or that their music is treated fairly. They're interested in getting as much money as possible from as many people as possible, and have no qualms about doing what's necessary. What's more, most of the legal plot points settle around real U.S. law – the Copyright Damages Improvement Act of 1999, which mandates fines of up to $150,000 per song.
As a comparison, in the state of Connecticut, for example, the fine for a class A felony (murder) is up to $20,000. So if you were thinking of downloading that new Bieber single, you may as well just kill seven people and pocket the extra ten grand. Admittedly, the CDIA doesn't allow for prison sentences (I think), but a person effectively bankrupted by legal action will probably end up in prison one way or another.
In its way, though, the book does suffer from a common problem that I've been seeing a lot recently: the cardboard villain. In this book, the pro-copyright forces are just plain Wrong, and will clearly not win the day. Now I have no problem vilifying law firms and giant corporations - hell, that's practically a hobby of mine - but I would like to have seen a bit more humanity from them, rather than a giant monolithic force of legal evil. Even the main human avatar of that monolith, Carter's boss, pretty much abandons her position as soon as she realizes the threat that the Earth is under. We know that these laws are wrong, but how they got so wrong is something that could have added to the story.
Of course, that itself could be a book of great and ponderous length, so I can understand why Reid might have glossed over it.
The other criticism that I have of this book is that it will one day be horribly, terribly dated. There are pop culture references everywhere in the story. Some are subtle, some are not, and it was kind of fun being able to pick them out. Everything from GalaxyQuest to Monty Python to Breaking Bad - if you've been paying attention to popular culture for the last twenty years or so, you'll find these little nuggets buried in the story. And they're great, as long as you're reading the book in proximity to those cultural references. I don't know how well it will hold up for a reader twenty or thirty years down the road, but that may not have been Reid's intention.
This is a book written for a specific time and reason, in an intellectual climate that the author understands far too well. Perhaps he just wanted to write a book for this moment, and never meant it to last much longer. Whatever his motivations, I hope he continues to explore this kind of writing, and gives us bigger and better in the future.
-------------------------------- "Our legal scholars have researched [the Copyright Damages Improvement Act] thoroughly. And they unanimously agree that it is the most cynical, predatory, lopsided, and shamelessly money-grubbing copyright law written by any society, anywhere in the universe since the dawn of time itself." - Carly...more
How many times have you heard that? From bona fide rock stars to teenage wannabes, there's something about music that occupies us,"Music is my life."
How many times have you heard that? From bona fide rock stars to teenage wannabes, there's something about music that occupies us, that possesses us and just won't let go. Even if you're not a big music lover, there are probably songs which can ease your mind, pull you out of a dark mood, or set your heart to racing. There's music that'll lift your heart and make you think the world is a better place than it really is, and songs that will convince you that the dark heart of the world is just as decayed and corrupt as you always thought it was. Music has a kind of magic in it that can reach to the very core of who we are as thinking - and more importantly, feeling - beings.
That magic is dangerous enough on our world, where magic doesn't actually exist. Imagine how powerful it would be on one where magic really was real. Like, say, to pick one out of thin air, the Discworld.
Of course, the Discworld has had its share of trouble with popular entertainment before. Acting troupes brought about an Elf invasion in Lords and Ladies and the Horrible Betentacled Things of the Dungeon Dimension nearly escaped thanks to the Disc's proto-cinema in Moving Pictures. There's just something about the arts in Discworld that leads to trouble - usually the world-ending kind.
In this case, though, the introduction of rock and roll - better known in Ankh-Morpork as "Music with Rocks In" - is only really dangerous to one person, the young Imp y Celyn. Just eighteen years old and already one of the best bards of Llamados, he wants to make something of his life. He wants to be more than just another bard, and in a mysterious shop that has only recently always been where it was, he finds his chance. Or rather, his chance finds him. A guitar-like instrument that does what no guitar should do - it whines, it growls, it sends out noises that run straight down your spine and make your nerves run with fire. It's clearly not of this world, and it wants nothing more than to live. For that, it needs to change Imp's fate, and by extension the fate of hundreds in Ankh-Morpork.
Soon, Imp and his band - The Band With Rocks In - are the most famous thing in the city, and the strange magic of this music is being felt everywhere. Even the wizards are helpless against it. Normally this would result in the aforementioned Horrible Betentacled Things, but in this case it's more of a reversion to teenage years that never were. Still, Archchancellor Ridcully knows that there's some force acting on people that shouldn't be there, and nothing good ever comes of that.
As if that weren't enough, Death has decided to get existential and tries to figure out how he can make himself forget for a while. Why he decides to do this is not clearly explored, but it results in him leaving his duty. In his place comes his young Granddaughter, Susan, who would be great for the job if she didn't think the whole idea of personifying a force of nature was just romantic woolly thinking. And it would be even better if she knew what her connection was to the doomed musician Imp y Celyn.
This book can be seen as a companion to the earlier Moving Pictures as an examination of and homage to popular culture. By transplanting it to the Discworld, Pratchett is able to look at rock music from the point of view of people who've never even thought about such a thing before, and who can more easily see the magic of it. And of course, it's his big chance to make as many music jokes, puns and references as humanly possible, from the translation of Imp's name ("Imp" meaning "small bud" and "Celyn" meaning 'of the holly") to some proto-heavy metal musicians trying to make leopard skin pants from a cat that has some severe hearing difficulties.
It's a sort of love letter to rock and roll and all that it has brought us. From teenyboppers to punk to the horrible misuses of leather and spandex, it holds a mirror up to the way that rock music has influenced our modern culture. But it does not mock, oh no. It shws great attention to and reverence for this young art form that has done so much to change the world. To list all the references made in this book would be nearly impossible, but the amount of work and thought that went into making it is quite clear.
More importantly, though, the book addresses some questions that are a little deeper than the simple rock and roll jokes. Like Death's question: "WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT? SERIOUSLY? WHEN YOU GET RIGHT DOWN TO IT?" Probably since the beginning of music, people have tried to find meaning in it. People have connected to music and to musicians in ways that they could never connect to other people, even family and friends. People find meaning in music, which then gives meaning to their lives, and the more you give your life to something, the harder the crash when that thing goes away. Imp discovers this in a very literal sense, but out here in the real world that is just as true.
People mourned for Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, Kurt Cobain and other superstars as if they knew them. And in a way, I'm sure they thought they did. Like so much else in the world, though, music doesn't have any meaning but what we give to it. The truly great musicians, the ones we always lose too soon, give everything they have. They manage to say to us what we've been saying to ourselves, but could never really figure out how to put into words. Music is the voice our emotions could use if our brains didn't get in the way so often, and the best people lucky enough to be able to create it gain a kind of immortality.
Not the literal kind, unfortunately.
If you love music - especially rock music - then this is a book you should pick up and read. Even if you're not a Discworld fan, you'll probably enjoy it....more
Oh, you may think you know, but you don't. Studs Terkel has spent most of his adult life talking to peopleYou don't know music like Studs knows music.
Oh, you may think you know, but you don't. Studs Terkel has spent most of his adult life talking to people, and most of those people have been musicians. In his long and storied career, he has interviewed some of the greatest names in music. This is a collection of a few of them.
In this book, he talks to opera stars, blues singers, concert pianists, jazz trumpeters, scat musicians and folk song bards. They tell Studs about their relationship with music - what got them into it, and what they get out of it - and what struck me is that most of them come from the point of view that they make music because they can't imagine doing anything else. For some it's a craft, for others it's freedom, but for all of them it's a look into what makes them sing.
If you have a musician on your Christmas list, this'll be a good buy.......more
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