Iolet up on CDBaby
David Stutz’s Iolet: Music from the world of Anathem is now up on CDBaby.com! CDs are $20.00 and MP3 downloads are $10.00. Not sure how much shipping is. You can also listen to clips from the songs on the web page. My favorite so far is the Mascheroni Circles, although the Thousander Chant is pretty cool to hear. The album makes use of a wide range of vocal styles - there’s a lot that is reminiscent of medieval chanting, Mascheroni sounds much like a modern choir composition and the Thousander Chant uses throat singing to give it a very unworldly feel. I would love to sit in the Minster and listen to that sound eminating from the Thousander section.
Anathem
Neal Stephenson’s new novel, Anathem, was released on Tuesday. I stopped at Borders on the Strip in Canton and they had the book sitting on the new releases table right at the front of the store! In contrast to Stross’ Saturn’s Children which took me several minutes of hunting and asking for help from a store clerk to find.
So far, I have to say I really find the whole concept of the Avout really fascinating. They live in concens, monastic communities that are built around huge clocks. The clocks control the opening and shutting of various gates that allow people into the communities. One set of doors opens for ten days every year, a second set opens every ten years, the third, every 100 years, and the fourth set only open every thousand years. The seperation of the communities behind the gates from the outside world is thus determined by how long the gates stay closed.
One thing that was mentioned extensively in online postings was a CD of music that accompanied the advanced reviewer’s copy. It turns out that this is not actually sold with the book, it’s a seperate project by David Stutz. Stutz is a former Microsoftie who, in addition to other things, has an interest in acapella vocal music. It’s being sold to support the Long Now Foundation, which is also tied in with Anathem novel.
If you’re interested in getting a copy of the CD (called IOLET:: Music from the world of Anathem), it should be up on CDBaby in a few days.
Anathem [Wikipedia]
Anathem [Amazon]
Neal Stephenson [homepage]
New Neal Stephenson Novel!!!
It’s titled Anathem. According to this post on Boing Boing this morning, it comes with a CD of “Spooky, wonderful music.” What does Anathem mean? The original poster at Boing Boing left this blurb from the book in the comments section:
Anathem: (I) In Proto-Orth, a poetic or musical invocation of Our Mother Hylaea, which since the t[i]me of Adrakhones has been the climax of the daily liturgy (hence the Fluccish word Anthem meaning a song of great emotional resonance, esp. one that inspires listeners to sing along).
Unfortunately, it isn’t released until September 
But you can pre-order it on Amazon today. Amazon recommends pre-ordering it along with Saturn’s Children by Charles Stross.
I still need to get a hold of Halting State.
Avoiding the Undiscovered Country by boldly going where no man has gone before
heh, an analysis of the Red Shirt Phenomenon:
Conclusion:
We can reliably improve the survivability of the red-shirted crewmen by only exploring peaceful, female-only planets (android and alien females included).
It would be interesting to see if the Red Shirt phenomenon continued into the Next Generation. TNG was supposedly on a 20 year mission, but it’s hard to see how they could have survived so long with a 13% per annum attrition rate. It would also be hard to imagine that they would allow children and families on board with those kinds of attrition rates.
If you contrast the mortality rate in TOS to the mortality rates in the nineteenth century Royal Navy, the closest real-world analog we have for the putative future Starfleet, you see that loosing 13% of your crew at one duty station would not be unexpected even during peace-time. According to the Royal Navy web site, the West Coast of Africa station lost 25% of their personnel in one year primarily due to tropical disease. This is an obvious outlier, but a quick Google search turned up this web site, which has mortality rates for a number of duty stations. The UK, Canada, Malta and Gibraltar (essentially “known space”) all had mortality rates under 2% per annum. Madras and Bengal (both in India) had a rate under 6%, but the Windward Islands (in the Caribbean) and Jamaica had mortality rates between 10% and 16%. If we make the assumption that explorers in outer space face risks similar to what sailors would have faced in the nineteenth century (in terms of hostile natives, unknown diseases, and opportunities for amorous adventures), which the creators of Star Trek clearly do, then it raises an interesting question: Did the red-shirt phenomena exist for Marines and shore-parties in the nineteenth century Royal Navy?
Childhood’s End
Sir Arthur C. Clarke has died.
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - Arthur C. Clarke, a visionary science fiction writer who co-wrote “2001: A Space Odyssey” and won worldwide acclaim with more than 100 books on space, science and the future, died Wednesday, an aide said. He was 90…
In an interview with The Associated Press, Clarke once said he did not regret having never followed his novels into space, adding that he had arranged to have DNA from strands of his hair sent into orbit.
“One day, some super civilization may encounter this relic from the vanished species and I may exist in another time,” he said. “Move over, Stephen King.”
More commentary here and here.
The Wikipedia article on Childhood’s End is here.