I admit that the last couple of albums he made in the early noughties didn't do much for me. But the man stands and walks alone, and I can't just ignore a new release, you never know, just one new Bowie song that I really like is magic.
Update: below the first-released video from the album. I heartily apologize to those who like it, but to me, it has that same quality which I did not much care for in the post-millennium albums, a sort of sad, lamenting quality in the melody and voice. He's king, he can do whatevs the frick he wants, no doubt, but this style is just not my thing.
I admit, I honestly thought he had retired...
ReplyDeleteWell, he did create this song in 2006.
LOL! I'd forgotten that one!
ReplyDeleteHe's not so fat now, but he still rubs me the wrong way. Though he clearly has talent and brains.
Bowie can really be funny.
Ricky describes his befriending Bowie here.
ReplyDeleteHe's back, but compared to his glory days he's kind of shite. I mean, if it weren't for those glory days no one would care about the mediocre new song. Remember Sick Boy's Theory of Life?
ReplyDeleteI *really* hate to admit it, cuz I don't see why it should be like that, but there is some truth to it. It is hard to think of any artist in any medium with a career longer than a couple decades, who is not pretty much copying themself.
ReplyDeleteMaybe there are exceptions amongst writers. I still think some of the recent books from Pratchett, W Gibson, and Iain Banks are tops.
I think I should watch Trainspotting again, I think my impression of it the first time was marred by the sensationalistic bits.
The only real weakness to the movie is that they don't look like heroin addicts. Although, I've never known a heroin addict but I would think they wouldn't look quite so well fed and pink cheeked. Other than that it's pretty good. The book was kind of overrated, its success probably based more on its use of the Scottish dialect than anything.
ReplyDeleteMaybe there are exceptions amongst writers. I still think some of the recent books from Pratchett, W Gibson, and Iain Banks are tops.
Iain Banks is probably better now than he was before, I liked his most recent Culture novel better than the very first one for example. I've never read Pratchett and only read Gibson's first novel and I think a short story. Writers I think tend to improve over time rather than the opposite but in a lot of other lines of work talent declines. Einstein did nothing in his later years of any consequence, same for Newton, Michelangelo lived to be 90 but did his best work well before that, maybe up to his 40s, others didn't live long enough - like Van Gogh. I don't know, there are exceptions probably but generally Sick Boy's right.
"The only real weakness to the movie is that they don't look like heroin addicts."
ReplyDeleteI guess not. Probably some look normal for a few months, but man it goes pretty quick. I caught of of those bounty hunter shows, they arrested a black H user, and holy god, I couldn't believe how bad that guy looked. His teeth, his skin, everything looked like was three months in the grave.
"Iain Banks is probably better now than he was before, I liked his most recent Culture novel better than the very first one for example."
Totally.
Try another of Gibson's books. Pattern Recognition for example.
For a while now his novels haven't been SF, but they still have some of the feel of it. An affinity with technology I guess.
I've only read a couple of Banks' books. The very first and some short stories. They were interesting but I'd hate to live in that society where humans have made themselves irrelevant. More of a dystopia.
ReplyDeleteIn all the ones I've read there are characters who seem to realize this, but then it's never that cut and dried. And also if you were raised in that society you'd think nothing of it, which is maybe the problem. His books are a lot more complex than they might at first seem and there aren't any easy answers.
ReplyDeleteThis is not an uncommon perspective, and I can understand it. But I see it more like: Humans have been freed from the constant slavery of making their bodies survive, and are free to work on the things which matter more.
ReplyDeleteIf one can't find things that matter more than protecting and forwarding the mortal flesh, then I thing there is where the problem is.
That has nothing to do with it. The Minds have taken over everything - they can do everything better. What is the point of having people in Contact except to throw them a bone and let them think they're useful. Humans in other science fiction have tried to hold on by saying that computers can't be creative but I bet in the Culture universe they can be. So that's it - people are totally unnecessary.
ReplyDeleteI don't think you have to be Lord of all creation to be worthwhile. Even now, computers play better chess (and now, trivia) than humans, but that doesn't stop humans from enjoying those activities.
ReplyDeleteIt's not about the Lord of All Creation. We can handle a computer playing chess better. They can already crunch numbers far faster than the best "human calculator", and have been able to from very early on, but what separated Einstein from other men in his field? His creativity. That's the only edge humans have. You like to think of yourself as an artist - would you bother to create art if a computer could do it better, so much better that what you made was like a 2-year-old's finger painting and what a computer could do was like the Sistine Ceiling (or any other great art you like - Starry Night, whatever). You probably wouldn't bother. Everyone needs to feel like they are contributing, like they have a purpose, but no person has a purpose in The Culture. In The Player of Games Gurgeh wasn't really needed - a Mind could have, through a realistic humanoid drone, have done what he did and without the uncertainty. (That wouldn't make a very good novel, though, I guess.)
ReplyDeleteOf course there are leeches in our society. People who are not bothered by living off the toil of others, who feel no need to create anything or feel useful. Maybe that type predominates in the Culture and, maybe, the 1% who don't join Contact and other things and get to at least delude themselves into thinking they have a purpose.
If feeling that you have a purpose depends on Society keeping itself below the level where machines take care of our survival, maybe we are already deluding ourselves.
ReplyDeleteIn Consider Phlebas that's what the Idirans did but that's not the answer either. I remember an Isaac Asimov story where a robot travels back in time and at the end it's revealed that in the future biological humans no longer exist having been superseded by robots - but it's not a bad thing as these robots, created by humans, are seen as the next step in evolution - biological life having gone as far as it could, I guess. In a way that's how it's gone with the Culture - you have the Minds who run everything and who make all the decisions, consulting other Minds for the really big ones, and they keep humans as pets.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure whether it would bother me that much anyway - sometimes I think it would, other times I figure it might be pretty sweet. I do think there wouldn't be any point in actually trying to create something, though, when the machines had thought of everthing already - an artist, for example, wouldn't have anything new to say (although that's partly because their society is stagnant). You'd have to just enjoy yourself - hang out on the beach, ride waterslides, that sort of thing.
Well we can agree at least that he hasn't lost it yet, there are exceptions to Sick Boy's theory.
ReplyDelete