SOUNDTRACK: FIRE-TOOLZ-“mailto:spasm@swamp.god?subject=Mind-Body Parallels” (2019).
Every year Lars Gotrich publishes his list of favorite music in an NPR podcast called Viking’s Choice: The Year In The Loud And The Weird. I always listen to these songs because I’ll never hear them anywhere else (he mostly seems to scour bandcamp for unknown music.
One that he especially liked was by this band Fire-Toolz. He says:
When I try to describe the simultaneously fantastical and obliterating sounds of Fire-Toolz to folks, I usually throw my hands up — not out of frustration, but from awe. Angel Marcloid has clashed New Age synthscapes, clubby raves, jazz fusion and metal shrieks for a few years now, but Field Whispers (Into the Crystal Palace) goes beyond the mash-up, into an idiosyncratic master’s pure creation.
The album credits indicate: Angel Marcloid: voice, drums, electric & acoustic guitar, fretless bass, virtual studio technology, field recordings, circuit-bent junk, composition, lyrics, recording, production, mixing, mastering.
The only other musician is Ian Smith: who plays what can only be described as a smooth-jazz saxophone solo. Oh, and her cat, Breakfast, gets a vocal turn.
I have listened to some of the whole record, (a lot of tape manipulation on track 2), but nothing sums up the project like the first song, “mailto:spasm@swamp.god?subject=Mind-Body Parallels” (yes, that’s the title). In 2 minutes and 11 seconds, she includes more genres than I can name. And the amazing thing is that unlike other artists who squeeze many genres into one song (there are those who do this well and those who do not), these shifts feel at once hairpin but also natural.
The song starts with a skittery electric melody that almost sounds like digital pipe organ. It’s very new-agey, but with heavier drums than you might expect. The quiet death metal growling is certainly unexpected, but somehow it doesn’t feel out of place (and is low enough in the mix to feel more like another sound than vocals–I have no idea what she’s saying).
After the first verse the music shifts to a kind of jazzy new age followed by a punishingly fast electronic drum and a scorching heavy metal solo and the song devolves or crescendos with inhuman growls.
Welcome to 2020!
[READ: May 2019] The Long Mars
I found the first book in this series rather compelling–almost surprisingly so given that it’s not a fast-paced book and, to be honest, not a lot happens.
But it was really well written and the things that do happen are compelling and fascinating. And I couldn’t wait to read more.
In the first book:
A man creates an invention (The Stepper) which allows one to step into a parallel world that is next to ours. There are a possibly infinite numbers of parallel worlds in each direction (East or West). The worlds that are closer to ours are almost identical to our Earth (known as Datum Earth). The further you go, the greater the differences. But none of them have experienced humanity before Step Day (aside from earlier hominids).
The main character is Joshua Valienté. Joshua is a natural “Stepper.” He doesn’t need the device to Step from one word to the next, nor does he feel the nausea and other side effects that most people feel as they travel. Most of the book follows his exploits.
The Black corporate has a ship with an entity known as Lobsang who claims that he was a human reincarnated as artificial intelligence. Joshua is sure that Lobsang is a computer, but Lobsang’s human skills are uncanny. This ship has managed to Step as an entity, meaning everything in the ship can go with them. Normally you can only bring what you can carry (aside from metal).
The novel more or less is an exploratory one with Joshua and Lobsang Stepping through millions of Earths. Not a lot happens, but the novel never grows boring. The interactions between Joshua and Lobsang are often funny. And the writers have infused the Earths that they stop in with just enough differences to make each stop strangely compelling (this must be Baxter’s hard science leanings).
I found the second book less compelling on a story level, but no less compelling on a conceptual level. There was still some cool stuff going on.
Joshua Valienté has settled down in a town called Hell-Knows-Where. He has a wife, Helen, and a child, Daniel, and lots of regrets about what happened at the end of book one. He is embedded with the rest of the community. They show off what a successful community can be way out in the Long Earth. It is more or less cut off from Datum Earth, which means that everyone needs to work for the community to survive. Since trust and companionship are key to survival, people don’t really try to take advantage of others and crime is pretty much nonexistent.
This independence is a major concern for the governments of Datum Earth. In fact, some of the more thriving distant communities (like Valhalla) want to declare independence from Datum Earth altogether.
Another issue is human (or alien) rights. The trolls from the first book have become a part of most communities at this point. And yet, the way they are treated seems largely dependent on who they are with. Some are welcomed like family members, other are treated like animals, slaves or worse. And the mistreatment of a mother and son troll are what set a series of events in motion. Maggie Kauffman is a new character introduced to speak on behalf of the trolls. Before their otherwise peaceful nature gets pushed too far.
Another plot line (and there are quite a few) concerns Roberta Golding, a young genius who goes on an exploratory mission with the Chinese. The Chinese are exploring the “East Earths” (most of the other travelers went West). Roberta is an odd child, who anticipated jokes and therefore finds nothing funny. She is cold and emotionless. Her story remains unresolved by the end of the book. But her crew managed to get to Earth East 20,000,000 with the crew.
When Sally tries to get Joshua involved in an adventure once again, he is reluctant, but Helen is the one who spurs him on–as long as she and Dan go with him. This adventure is a bit of backtracking, though–an attempt to use Joshua’s name and status back on Datum Earth–where he is not welcomed by everyone. He tries to prevent the government from harming trolls–because he knows what is at stake if the trolls grow angry.
In their adventure, they also encounter a race of beings known as Beagles. It is a pretty dark and disturbing world, with Joshua getting tortured and Sally and Monica being the only things keeping him from a brutal death. There’s a lot of brutality now, which is not unexpected given the reality of the situation, but it does often seem rather harsh
That’s a lot of summary to prepare for Book Three. But book three does continue the saga, just another twenty years or so later.
The third book (there are five in total), is set in 2045.
There are three main plots in this story and they are more or less independent of each other, although they do cross paths from time to time.
In the year 2040, the Yellowstone volcano erupted putting datum earth under a huge cloud. If the nuclear blast in the first book didn’t hurt datum earth enough this volcano certainly tried to do it in altogether. And yet people remained.
Although for all practical purposes the main Earth has moved to Earth West 5. This is where the Black Corporation has more or less made its headquarters. And where goes the Black Corporation, so goes everything else. Lobsang and Sister Agnes (the other AI and the two most interesting characters in the books) have been discussing what would happen next with humanity–the inevitable next stage of evolution. And it turns out that someone they (and Joshua) knew is in fact the progenitor of such an evolved state.
Lobsang invites Joshua to seek out this new breed of humanity. Indeed, he had already met one such individual. Paul Spenser Wagoner, a young man whom Joshua knew since Paul was a little boy in the orphanage. Joshua kept in sporadic touch with him. He was now a post-teenager full of himself and his abilities: “Not immodest just truthful.”
The second plot is the further exploration of the Long Earth. With new technology, its easier to Step further and further. Maggie Kauffman intends to take two ships–Armstrong and Cernan–as far West as they can and hopefully to find the previously lost expedition. Her nominal target is Earth West 250,000,000. Roberta Golding was going to accompany her. She had been in politics but was moving beyond that now.
Maggie was excited for this trip and enjoyed being in charge of the expedition. She was less excited to have Douglas Black on board. But he was sequestered in his own cabin. His reason for going on this expedition were cryptic, although they ultimately reveal themselves to be a kind of quest for eternal youth.
She had plenty of civilian academics on board to document what they saw an a contingent of trolls. She also had a Beagle from that joker world as well as her cat (who is actually Lobsang). They proceed very quickly through the Earths that others had seen. They flew out to the world of Beagles picking up Snowy (nice to see him again). It was after this world that Maggie felt the journey really began:
passing a hundred thousand worlds a day, within days they were past West 2,000,000.
Each of these notable lands has some enjoyable paragraphs written about them, but I’m just summarizing the trip.
Their first stop is Earth West 17,297,031–the first world in a belt of worlds dominated by crabs and crustaceans. The crustacean worlds were not too dissimilar from ours–they had wars and violence–they used other animals as pets and or transportation. By 3,000,000 they reached the “purple scum” worlds–world after world where the Earth was just purple sum. By 102,453,654 multi-cellular life had returned (which was a relief). But soon they were in an anaerobic belt of worlds that had no real oxygen. They needed to find a joker world in this belt to find one teeming with life. On 161,753,428 animals were like a cross between a jellyfish and Hollywood UFO. There were also flying snakes that also happened spit fire.
Then on Earth West 182,674,101 they found where the the Neil Armstrong I had crashed. Here’s were the plots converge somewhat because the survivors of the crash were not on the official crew roster. Rather, they were Next people from Happy Landings. They were glamorous and could easily sway people to do their bidding. People either loved them or hated them instantly. But most loved them.
And they spend a few days learning the truth about what these citizens of Happy Landings did and exactly what happened to the Neil Armstrong I.
They got as far as 250,000,000 but it was barren. The last interesting place they saws 239,741,211 and on the way back they stopped there for some relaxation.
And then they come back home–bringing the Next children with them
The third plot is the Long Mars of the Title. Sally Lindsay has been invited by her father (inventor of the original Stepper) to explore the Long Mars. It stands to reason that if Earth has sideways Earths, then Mars must as well. The scientists near the Gap world (where the is no Earth) have been working on space exploration in the Earth-less space. People are able to step into nothingness and that non-gravity makes it a heck of a lot easier to get to Mars. Once on Mars, it’s easy to step to the next one.
I loved meeting all of the characters at the Gap Earth—the geeks and techie heads who are really interested in the space program and the world of space exploration—something that has been made attainable to nearly everyone now. I love that the one of the guys at the Gap Earth is wearing a T shirt that says Smoke Me a Kipper (from Red Dwarf) and that they call it Cape Nerdaveral.
And so Sally and her father along with a retired USAF airman head off to Mars. Frank Wood’s story is interesting. He always wanted to be an astronaut, but by the time of the Challenger crash, space exploration was sort of over. This was his chance–in an unconventional sense–to fly to outer space. There was no fanfare when they launched nothing like NASA–they just stepped.
Their journey is more prosaic—a lot of meandering in the way of the first book. Nothing happens for long stretched of time because the authors are exploring the words as well. It’s not exciting, but I found it very compelling,
There’s an interesting moment when they discover that the Russians have already settled on the Gap Mars (they called it Marsograd) and were more or less waiting for someone else to arrive.
Later they discover that most of the Mars are devoid of life—although there is life under the dust. Creatures that seem like whales surface in the dust. In fact, something even bigger than the whales that comes out form underground to attack the whale creatures. It’s a barren thankless journey but occasionally they do see signs of a sand worm type of life–scary and dangerous.
Its not until 40 days and 1,500,000 steps East of the Gap Mars that they found a city. There were monoliths in the distance that seems to keep them forcibly away from exploring them. There were also beasts that could shoot fire.
The last 100 pages that are the most exciting.
3 million steps from the Gap Mars, Willis Lindsay says he found what he’s looking for–a kind of cable that reaches into space like a giant elevator. I don’t rally understand what they’re talking about here. But he is very excited to discover this technology. He knew it would be there from reading Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson.
This technology is an easy and cheap way to get into space. You could do this on Earth but you would need a cable 22,000 miles long. Mars’ gravity is much less so its much easier and only 11,000 miles. He intends to retro-engineer what he finds here to make something suitable for Earth.
But even though the world looks abandoned, it isn’t. And the thing living there doesn’t like these outsiders showing up. It’s a very exciting sequence.
The end of the book looks at the Next children–are they dangerous enemies to the future or are they the future. Since most of these individuals came from Happy Landings, was it in humanity’s interest to destroy the place? And just who gets to decide the fate of millions?
The book is kind of a slow meandering story–like wandering through space–until the end which is really exciting.
Book four is just around the corner!
I Just Read About That... 
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