I just got back from a visit to my dad in the UK. Because he is essentially bedridden, he watches a lot of TV, so I saw a great deal more of it than I usually do. The big news in Britain on Monday was the trial of Dhiren Barot, accused of being a top al Qaeda man, with big plans to make big bangs. None of these plans were ever actually carried out, for which, of course, we are thankful!

The press didn’t have much material to use in its hours of coverage: one photograph of the man and some court transcripts. They’re not allowed to film the trial, so they showed a photo of one of the barristers, superimposed on a computer-generated courtroom.

One of Barot’s ideas for causing mayhem had been to rent three limos, stuff them with gas cannisters and other explodables, and blow them up in garages underneath some of London’s swankiest hotels. To illustrate this point, the BBC showed footage of a white limosine, with an anonymous figure (head cut off by the framing of the shot) putting green gas cannisters inside. In other words: not having anything real to show, the BBC did a “recreation” of an event that never took place. At least they did not go so far as to fake up an explosion.

It seems that the line between news and fiction is getting mighty blurry.

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I check up on the world hourly or so, via Google News. It’s the first page that comes up when I open my web browser, and I’ve set it to show headlines for the World, US, Business, Sci/Tech, Health, India, and Italia (I’ve just eliminated Entertainment as a category because I’m sick of Madonna, Paris, Pitt, et al). I don’t have any choice about the Top and Recommended Stories that Google picks for me, which is annoying because the stories they choose are often of little interest to me.

I don’t actually read many of these news stories. I can get an overview just scanning the headlines and the line or two of story given on the Google page, and I prefer to get my in-depth news from the Economist and the New York Times. Still, I’m absorbing tons of information every day, and there’s one journalistic phenomenon – no, two – that I would like to complain about.

1. Stating the Obvious: A recent headline read “N. Korea denounces sanctions”. Well, duh. Given what we know of that evil little man who’s running the place, what else would their reaction be? This is NOT news. It would only be news if the reaction had been anything different.

Similarly, world leaders “condemning” the latest violence of whomever against whomever – it’s all just hot air until and unless they actually do something about it. So don’t waste my time on telling me that they all expressed outrage and horror. In fact, I’d just as soon the leaders didn’t waste everybody’s time convening press conferences to express their feelings – we can take those as given, stop wasting taxpayers’ money on telling us how sorry you are that the world is a rotten place. Instead, go do your job and try to fix the bits you can!

2. The Clever-Clever Headline: Journalists (and/or their editors) are always thrilled to go for the easy pun, most of them so gaggingly awful that I will spare you any repetitions – you know what I mean. As soon as some news stories begin to hit which involve particular names and places (and are not so awful that a humorous headline would be out of place), we can all predict exactly what some of the headlines will be. It€™s another case of stating the obvious, and there’s nothing more boring than the obvious.

NB: Yes, I try (and often fail) to be clever in my own headlines. But, since my topics are not usually big news stories, at least mine are not so predictable!

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An Internet meme I’ve been meaning to get to for a bit:

“Below is a Science Fiction Book Club list most significant SF novels between 1953-2006. The meme part of this works like so: Bold the ones you have read, strike through the ones you read and hated, italicize those you started but never finished and put a star next to the ones you love.”

1. The Lord of the Rings*, J.R.R. Tolkien (Read many times, though I always said the girls weren’t having enough fun. Now I like the movies better.)
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert (Read the first one, wasn’t impressed, though the discomfort of stillsuits is still vivid in my mind.)
4. Stranger in a Strange Land*, Robert A. Heinlein (I was crazy about Heinlein in high school – I think it’s a phase a lot of kids go through. But I preferred “I Will Fear No Evil”)
5. A Wizard of Earthsea*, Ursula K. Le Guin
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson (One Gibson was enough for me – too pessimistic, no sense of humor.)
7. Childhood’s End*, Arthur C. Clarke (I read this over and over again in Bangladesh, partly because I didn’t have many books. The ending creeped me out every time.)
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?*, Philip K. Dick (Read it in high school, need to read it again. Very different from the movie.)
9. The Mists of Avalon*, Marion Zimmer Bradley (Though in the Arthurian vein I prefer Mary Stewart.)
10. Fahrenheit 451*, Ray Bradbury
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz*, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
17. Dangerous Visions*, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight*, Anne McCaffrey (One of my all-time favorites from age 12.)
22. Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson (Didn’t care for these; “The Mirror of Her Dreams” is much better.)
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone*, J.K. Rowling
27. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams*
28. I Am Legend*, Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice (Well, of course.)
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin*
31. Little, Big*, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light*, Roger Zelazny
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith*
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
43. Snow Crash*, Neal Stephenson
44. Stand on Zanzibar*, John Brunner (Preferred his “The Shockwave Rider” – has some lessons for today, I think.)
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

Wait on – what the hell happened to Brin and Spinrad? How could they not be on this list? And Ted Chiang?

“And a similar meme surrounding female sf/f writers:”

Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale)*
Diana Wynne Jones (Everything she’s ever written – and I haven’t read nearly all of it. Original, funny.)
Vonda McIntyre (One great book that I know of – Dreamsnake. After that?)
Robin McKinley (Nowadays my favorite fantasy author.)
Connie Willis (Excellent.)

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Not an original proposition, I know. But is it an excuse, a rationalization – or a fact? I can offer some evidence from my own experience:

I used to download music from the Usenet, my favorite newsgroups being those which offered soundtracks and musicals. Contributors to those groups vie with each other to post the strangest and rarest albums, or to be the first to post the latest film soundtrack. For long-distance fans of the Great White Way, it’s a great way to keep up with what’s happening on Broadway. Probably the phenomenon most hated by those in the biz is the people who smuggle tape recorders into shows and upload full bootleg soundtracks, dialog as well as songs. I tried a couple of these, but found them merely annoying: the quality, not surprisingly, is not good (you hear a lot of audience rustles and coughs) and many shows are incomprehensible without seeing what’s going on. But for some show-starved fans far away who will never be able to see a show live, I guess it’s better than nothing.

Since I don’t live in New York (or London) and don’t follow theater news closely, these newsgroups were a way for me to keep up with new musicals and explore less-familiar old ones. I had not known that the John Waters film “Hairspray” was being made into a musical until the soundtrack appeared in a newsgroup. I downloaded it out of idle curiosity, and fell instantly in love with it, as did Ross. We listened to it in the car while visiting friends that weekend, and their teenage daughter also loved it (the girls’ favorite song was: “Mamma, I’m a Big Girl Now”). Both families bought the CD from Amazon, and we all wished that we could see the show in New York. The closest we could get was a New York Times review which included a video clip of one of the musical numbers.

About a year later, our friends got to see the show when a touring company came to Minneapolis. Ross and I saw it, finally, in New York in January, braving the big blizzard to get to the theater. To see a show at all was a last-minute impulse decision, and there were lots of others we could have seen that afternoon for the same price or less, many of them a shorter walk in the snow from where we were. But we chose “Hairspray” because we already knew we’d love it.

So the accounting on my original act of piracy looks awfully good for the show’s producers: an initial illegal download of the soundtrack turned into $40 spent on CDs right away, and $300 or so in theater tickets later on.

I know that not everyone who downloads music (and likes it) will then buy a legal copy and/or see a show (even if they have the opportunity). But a closer look at the behavior of the downloading population might pleasantly surprise the entertainment industry execs who are currently spending so much effort and money sueing people.

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