Late World Book Day Meme

Taken from dungeonwriter

Late World Book Day Meme...

The book I am reading: John Dies at the End by David Wong. Funny yet very disturbing horror novel about eldritch abominations infesting a typical small Midwestern town.

The book I am writing: Seasons In the Abyss, a follow-up to Apocalypse Woman.

The book I love most this year: Gone by Michael Grant. Intriguing YA novel about a California town cut off from the outside world where all the adults have disappeared and the remaining children are developing superhuman powers. I hope the rest of the series is as good as the first book.

The last book I received as a gift: The Pathfinder RPG core rulebook. Looking forward to running a game of it soon.

The last book I gave as a gift: I gave two at the same time at Christmas: a copy of John Dies at the End for Lesley and a copy of Chicks Ahoy! for zombiecowboy. It's a collection of short stories about chainmail fantasy babes. I hope they're enjoying them.

The nearest book on my desk: The Edgar Allan Poe Audio Collection, one of chassit19's audio books. I should listen to it some time.

Digital nightmares in the sensual world

Yesterday I scored a used copy of Kate Bush's 1989 album The Sensual World. I got it mostly for the lead single "Love and Anger" which is just one of "those" songs that gets inside you and stays with you through the years. But it also contains a very interesting song called "Deeper Understanding." This song tells the story of a lonely, emotionally isolated woman who uses a computer program as an escape from her dreary life. She gets so obsessed with it that she stops eating, sleeping, or getting up to go to the bathroom until finally her family breaks into her home and saves her. But even afterward she's changed, habitually talking like she's in her virtual world when trying to interact with real people.

Keep in mind this song was released in 1989, well before most people had any idea what an internet even was. And now we live in a world where what she's singing about actually happens and people wind up dead or in mental health programs because of it. It's hardly the first time someone has written a science fiction tale only to have it come true just a few years later, and it won't be the last. But the way she sings about it just gives it this creepy anachronistic property that makes it the more disturbing. When you read a Heinlein or Aasimov story from the 50's you can tell its from the 50's even though it's full of stuff we see every day now. "Deeper Understanding" just feels a little too contemporary to have been written so many years ago.

Oh, and for extra brutal irony it's this really upbeat, optimistic-sounding song. If you weren't paying attention to the lyrics you'd think it was some happy story about two lovers who have found a "deeper understanding," as the chorus says. No, it is about a woman surrendering herself to a Lotus Eater Machine.

I suppose I could go see if someone's posted the song on Youtube or something and share it but I'd really just rather not think about it anymore right now.