Booking is invariably slow and discouraging. Even when returning to familiar territory, there’s a myriad of favourite venues that have gone under or changed management – or that nightmarish unfamiliarity when someplace you THOUGHT was a huge fan responds with “who is this again?” Sigh. It’s bad enough when a WOMAN does it…
I’ve got a general feeling of unease – but that actually probably has nothing at all to do with the booking process. I’m rereading a series that ALWAYS gives me nightmares. So I should put them down. Peter F Hamilton’s “Deadnight” series – the Neutronium Alchemist books. For whatever reason this dense, slightly trashy space opera always fills me with dread. Every once in a while there’s a book that does that to me, disturbs me in some way – Stephen King’s “The Stand” is the same. From the opening page through to finally putting it down again I have trouble sleeping, and what sleep I DO get is interrupted with nightmares.
But it’s SO good! It’s just so filled with negativity, pain, hatred, disaster. There’s torture and even the positive characters are deeply, painfully flawed. And upon this reading of it, there’s something a little bit deeper. I’ve always been sort of saddened by the author’s vision, 500 years in the future, that our species would still be so deeply divided over religion and superstition. Part of the overall message of the books seem to be that we have to advance beyond these empty things, but that we never will without a concrete and visible and above all very personal threat. It’s the same thinking of today – unable to see beyond our own immediate comforts, or election term – whichever the case may be. I think upon previous readings I’ve just been kind of upset at how much the author enjoyed wallowing in the sex and lies and abuse – but though his other books carry some similar themes, this all-pervading darkness is pretty specific to this series. Reading it this time, I think it seems more like an intentional statement on who and what we are today.
Science fiction often gives us a more optimistic vision of ourselves, if not of our surroundings. These books go out of their way to remind us that we are shallow and spiteful, and I feel that burn inside of me until the story arc completes.
Comparing that to personal struggles and triumphs of Battlestar Galactica (the other epic science fiction story arc that I’m currently using to fill my sparse spare time) – they are two very opposite human ontologies.
Well – in any case – back to booking. Then to band practice. Then maybe we’ll all go out for dessert. Not that playing with my band isn’t pretty much dessert.
