End of originality?

I enjoy listening to the podcast Do I Dare to Eat a Peach with Dan and Rob Wells every Wednesday. Both have participated in podcasting before, they are both published authors of international renown, and they are brothers (Dan is older by less then two years). And like most siblings they enjoy similar things, but often disagree about them. I enjoy the banter and the information (they are both very intelligent and Rob is a total research nut) but I don't always agree with what they say. For instances in episode 21 they talk about the oddness of the poem that was originally written with Camille Saint-Saens "Dance Macabre" (the 1:09:35 mark in the episode) I was screaming, "It was written in French! Of course it's odd, it's a translation!" Anyway, I've been known to disagree with them, but I still enjoy myself.

 Episode 36 was on covers of songs and it got me musing. Why do we enjoy new versions of something? Covers of songs. Remakes of movies. Re-tellings of stories in novels. Let's take the story of Cinderella. That link will take you the the "adaptations" part of the Wikipedia article. As you look at the list, keep in mind that novels and short stories are not listed. My family has at least two re-tellings in novel form. How many times has that story been retold? I believe I would be accurate to say that it has been done over a hundred times.

In the Do I Dare to Eat a Peach episode, Dan and Rob specifically only look at covers of the songs, not mash-ups (mixing two or more songs), or adaptations and remixes (altering the lyrics). My comparison to Cinderella does include those additional elements. But regardless it begs the question: Why use the same old tired story again. And again. And again.

Dan's other podcast, Writing Excuses covered this question in Season 8, episode 6. Taken from the liner notes they address my question: "Familiar stories let us explore things in new ways, both because we know what’s coming, and because we don’t need to be brought up to speed on the story." They are applying this to written stories, but the same can be said of other media. Rob Wells mentions in an earlier Peach episode that movie adaptations of books are like making apple pie. It takes a whole food (apples), but turns it into  a different food (pie). This provides variation and can produce different perspectives.

For example, JRR Tolkin talks about the sacrifice of Boromir  in The Lord of the Rings: the Fellowship of the Ring. It takes about a two paragraphs (online text here p. 417). It is a stirring scene and you do feel a sense of loss at his death. This scene was taken by Peter Jackson in his movie adaptation and translated to a visual medium. The end product is very different from the original, but the power behind it is equal or arguably greater. NOTE - I am not advocating that movies are better than books, just that they are different and different is not inherently good or bad.

Now let's look at the title of this blog. Is our fascination with established stories ruining our creativity and preventing people from being original? Some may say that it is. I enjoy a variety of YouTube artists and many of them do covers, adaptations, remixes, and mash-ups of popular songs. The last two movies I watched were a Bond film (a book adaptation) and Wreck-it-Ralph a movie pulling from video game troupes. Even Pixar's two upcoming movies are pulling from works they've already established (Planes from the Cars world, and a Monsters Inc. College film). Where is the new stuff?! Well, believe it or not, it's in there. Let me explain.

I recently finished reading Cinder by Marissa Meyer. It is one of the many adaptations of Cinderella and one of the two that my family owns. Allow me to explain how it is original. First, it is a science fiction story that takes place so far in the future that people living on the moon have evolved to be more than human. Cinder, our lowly protagonist, is a cyborg. Oh, and did I mention it takes place in the Orient, or that there is a plague killing everybody, or that Cinder is a mechanic? Like Mary Robinette says in the Writing Excuses episode cited earlier, the story has the important elements that tell us it is a Cinderella story, but everything else is new a exciting. I highly recommend the book. So you know the series isn't done yet, but it's well worth reading.

Allow me one math example here. If you were to look at most advanced math concepts you would discover that, for the most part, they are extrapolations and adaptations of the four basic operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Heck, even multiplication could be seen as an advanced form of addition. And subtraction is just the opposite. So have there been any original science or maths done since the discovery of addition? Of course. Original thinking in math and science (including the social sciences) is often taking established ideas and applying them in new ways, or combining them to create something new. This is the basic idea of synthesis.

The argument could be used that humanity has been creating ideas for long enough that there is no such thing as an original idea - in any discipline. Joseph Campbell in Hero with a Thousand Faces basically says that despite existing thousands of miles apart all the different cultures in the world had, in essence  the same myths and legends. So was humanity ever really original? Yes. Our originality comes from taking the known and mixing it with the unknown. Taking the familiar and crossing it with the strange. Taking two seemingly opposite ideas and combining them and finding not only do they not cancel each other out, but blend in a new and exciting way. Think about the scene from Disney/Pixar's Ratatouille - where Remy tries to explain food to his brother. It's kind of like that. 

For your viewing (and listening pleasure) here is a playlist I put together of some of my current favorite covers from YouTube artists.

Muse on what your next original idea will be while listening to the music.

Scones and Biscuits. Water and Hell.

I was listening to Grammar Girl's "Quick and Dirty Tips" podcast this morning (episode 355) and she was talking about subject-object usage. The subject being the person/object that is the instigator of the action (verb) upon whatever the object is. So, "I threw the ball" involves "I", the subject, "throwing", verb, "the ball", object. While you can tell that spelling is not always my best skill and I have a tendency to think faster than I type (i.e. I occasionally drop words on accident) I enjoy language and how it works and flows. However, English grammar for me did not start to make sense until I studied Russian. I started in 10th grade and eventually minored in it. My teachers talked about subject, verb, object, indirect object, gerunds, imperatives, post predicates, etc. and unless I learned what the blazes those were in English I did not know how to use them in Russian. I'll be honest, I like Russian grammar than English grammar. It is a lot more structured yet maintains some great freedoms of expression.

It's curious how American English has formed over the years. I had a linguistics class my fresman year, "Latin and Greek Elements in English" taught by the wonderful Dr. Mark Damen. I describe his lectures as going to a stand up comedy about Greek tragedy. I almost fell out of my desk one day from laughing so hard in his class. In addition to being a very humorous professor, he is also very thought provoking and I consider him one of the best instructors I ever had. He had a lecture on "American English" in this class and the biggest thing I took away from the class was in language, just like biology, separation breeds new species. If you take two microbes that are initially identical, and separate them in different environments you will eventually end up with two differ species of microbe. We are not taking about trans-species evolution, but simple adaptation. The same is true of languages.

English is a wonderful example of this because the British Empire spread the language everywhere. You have British English, Australian English, Indian English, American English, African English, and even Engrish (although that is due to bad translations more than long time development). Not only do these groups speak with different articulation, and use words differently but also some have words that others don't. Several years ago my wife and I were at a restaurant for dinner. Behind me, in the next booth over, there was a couple from the British Isles as we could tell from their speech. Not being able to help it we heard their exchange with the waitress when she came to take their order...

Guest: "Excuse us, but what is a Navajo Taco?"
Waitress: "It's got beans, and lettuce, and hamburger on a scone."
Guest: "Oh, you mean a biscuit. We know that what we call scones, you call biscuits."
Waitress: "No, it's not on a biscuit. It's on a scone."
Guest: (pause) "So, what's a scone?"

I can't remember the reply, but I do remember smiling at the confusion of both parties. The waitress probably didn't think anything else in the world could be called a scone and the guests were amazed that even with their preparation, the language barrier had still managed to rear it's ugly head.

So, remember, as you travel and learn new languages, or different versions of your native one, Just expect to put your foot in your mouth at least once. For my part, I managed to change, "Would you like me to boil (some) water?" into "Would you like me to burn in Hell?" As soon as I said it, I realized what I had said. To his credit, my friend replied, "Would you like me to answer that questions?"

What do frogs and Schlock have in common?

While listening to the NPR podcast How To Do Everything (episode 91) on my way to work I learned something very interesting. I learned that frogs and carbosilicate amorphs have something in common. First, what is a carbosilicate amorph I hear you ask?

This is.

Meet Sargent Schlock of Tagon's Toughs from www.schlockmercenary.com. Schlock was my first descent into webcomics and I'm glad I started with him because Howard Tayler, the creator of this wonderful "pile of poo" started on June 12 / 2000 and hasn't missed a day yet, which means that the archive is very large. Never fear, dear reader. If you want to read Schlock Mercenary you can start any of the storylines easily through the archive link, or simply purchase the physical books. I highly endorse this comic if you are looking for daily comedic epic science fiction.

If you don't know what a frog is, here is one of my favorite ones: Dendrobates azureus a.k.a. the Blue Poison Tree Frog 

These guys are about the size of a paper clip and are deadly poisonous (not venomous - venom needs to be injected, poison is ingested). They live in the Amazon and over the course of many years have had themselves removed the the inner workings of the food chain by the simple fact that anything that eats them dies. While many animals are not very bright, most have learned to steer clear of these little guys. They are often called poison dart frogs because aboriginal tribes apparently use their poison for hunting and warfare.

Anyway on to my musing. According to Albert Lebedev of Moscow State University frogs can secrete different solutions through their skin. Since frogs do not have other defensive measures (teeth, spines, claws, etc) they had to develop something to protect themselves. This is the reason Poison Tree Frogs have the name they do. Apparently frogs can secrete many other kinds of cocktails that are used in killing everything from microbes to viruses and in the podcast he even mentions tumors. Something else he mentions is a vomit inducing mixture that makes it hard to swallow the given frog. There is an article here that give an overview of his research if you want more.

Here is where the connection lies - Schlock also is a chemical plant looking for place to spill over. As seen here (strip from July 5 / 2003) Schlock's chemicals cause the carnivorousness plant to spit him out. Or here (strip from Aug 18 / 2007) Schlock's immune system (visualized by his plasma cannon) expels blood nanies (nanorobots designed to function, interact with, and in this case try to take over physical and mental capacities) from his system. This sounds a lot like what Albert Lebedev was discussing on the podcast. The biggest difference is the Schlock is not from around here and is a lot bigger than any frog on earth.

So the question I have: is this Science fiction mimicking reality or a mad genius just coming up with something cool that happens to be true in reality?

Now isn't that interesting?