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Mind Over Matter
Cheap Complex Devices
Winners of the inaugural Hofstadter Prize for machine-written narrative, these artificially constructed stories represent the future of post-human fiction.
- GenresScience Fiction
120 pages, Paperback
First published August 26, 2002
8 people are currently reading
60 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 15, 2013
Phantom Limb Pain
So here's the thing:
This book is the literary equivalent of Phantom Limb Pain. Wherein the amputee tries to button his shirt and heedless of the missing arm, the surviving muscles flex and strain trying to manipulate fingers that no longer exist. It becomes an obsessive itch, and that which is gone redefines and reshapes that which remains in ways more deliciously painful than if the arm had never been lost.
So what do I mean by that?
This is a work that is about a missing book.
About the questionable origin of the missing book: was it in fact written by a cheap complex device, a constructed artificial intelligence, or a person trying to fake being an AI to win a prize?.
About how the work became lost: was it negligence, criminal, divine intervention?
About how the missing work, in its absence may or may not have spawned a ghost in the machine to bridge what was and dovetail it into what is.
Enough about plot, how was the book?
Well, brilliant. I will not say that about many books I read, but this is one where I at times set down my kindle and shook my head at how flabbergastingly brilliant it was. Something compelled me to read this, and I think it was the brilliant mechanism. It is like a literary archealogical dig, unearthing shards here and there and gluing the pieces together to reconstruct (or attempt to reconstruct) the missing pottery, which no matter how one works, is still missing.
I see that other reviews, being cutesy, try to emulate the form in order to review this book, but that makes them longish and difficult to understand if you haven't read the book. Which, ironically, also comments on the book in a meta way.
Well worth whatever it costs, to read.
So here's the thing:
This book is the literary equivalent of Phantom Limb Pain. Wherein the amputee tries to button his shirt and heedless of the missing arm, the surviving muscles flex and strain trying to manipulate fingers that no longer exist. It becomes an obsessive itch, and that which is gone redefines and reshapes that which remains in ways more deliciously painful than if the arm had never been lost.
So what do I mean by that?
This is a work that is about a missing book.
About the questionable origin of the missing book: was it in fact written by a cheap complex device, a constructed artificial intelligence, or a person trying to fake being an AI to win a prize?.
About how the work became lost: was it negligence, criminal, divine intervention?
About how the missing work, in its absence may or may not have spawned a ghost in the machine to bridge what was and dovetail it into what is.
Enough about plot, how was the book?
Well, brilliant. I will not say that about many books I read, but this is one where I at times set down my kindle and shook my head at how flabbergastingly brilliant it was. Something compelled me to read this, and I think it was the brilliant mechanism. It is like a literary archealogical dig, unearthing shards here and there and gluing the pieces together to reconstruct (or attempt to reconstruct) the missing pottery, which no matter how one works, is still missing.
I see that other reviews, being cutesy, try to emulate the form in order to review this book, but that makes them longish and difficult to understand if you haven't read the book. Which, ironically, also comments on the book in a meta way.
Well worth whatever it costs, to read.
March 23, 2011
I read Cheap Complex Devices in one sitting, and I am not its intended readership. I know nothing about computers, coding, programming, or so I did not get most of the "insider" jokes that I could sense bubbling gleefully below the surface. Speaking as a layman, I was delighted and riveted by the book. Don't ask me to describe it - it defies description. It's part Pale Fire, part Cryptomonicon, and part heart-string tugging. With some hilarious pornographic moments thrown in - so really, something for everyone! Read it at once, and then go ask your computer-geek friends what all the techno-stuff means. (But truly, you can enjoy it even without understanding that part.)
October 13, 2011
After reading Cheap Complex Devices, I couldn't stop thinking about Borges' mix of fiction and speculation. I was imagining the Argentine writer walking around in the Silicon Valley, examining all the implications of the totally new relation between technology and storytelling.
So, if you are familiar with (or, maybe, with ) you will greatly enjoy the way Mr. Sundman supports, with strong narrative ideas, a deep vision of some substantial issue of our Digital Culture. Anyway, if you love literature, you will discover some tribute to great writers (do you remember ?)
So, if you are familiar with (or, maybe, with ) you will greatly enjoy the way Mr. Sundman supports, with strong narrative ideas, a deep vision of some substantial issue of our Digital Culture. Anyway, if you love literature, you will discover some tribute to great writers (do you remember ?)
November 8, 2013
This was quite a strange book, full of loops and whorls, and a hallucinogenic retelling of parts of Acts of the Apostles. There were several nods to Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach: an eternal golden braid. It was full of weirdness, and I couldn't put it down. It's a book to re-read, to try and find all the in-jokes I missed the first time around.
September 6, 2012
Genius or insanity. I'm not sure which.
May 30, 2009
"Cheap Complex Devices" is one volume of a matched pair with "Acts of the Apostles." Both are laced with references to each other and retell scenes and themes from different viewpoints in an eternal golden braid. Reading both, any geek will enjoy finding the jokes, the errors, and the parodies and elegies of themselves. The whole effect is naughty and pretentious and fun: like drinking Glenlivet, listening to late Beatles, and discussing Dan Dennett with that stunning comp. sci. major you?d rather be sleeping with.
And like the Beatles, it helps to have a guide to the backstory:
The other and earlier volume, "Acts of the Apostles", reads as a technological thriller. It is an entertaining and satisfying story that you can imagine would have Harrison Ford or some other favorite actor in the lead role. It stands on its own.
The CCD volume contains the novella, "Bees, or, The Floating Point Error." This reads like Hunter S Thompson narrating Douglas Hofstadter: "Goedel, Escher, Bach" on acid.
Also included in CCD is an introduction to both stories. It purports to be an academic article describing each story as written by a computer program for an AI story-telling contest.
Finally, we have a forward in CCD that presents an explanation of why there are two separate volumes, several different John Sundmans, and yet another name for the collection.
All are threaded with malfunctioning brains and psyches and processors. There's guilt and Ted Kaczynsky and a quest to internalize God. But while the craft of "Acts" is in telling an entertaining story, CCD is deeper and closer to the author. Like many a second album, it might not be appreciated by people who enjoyed the popular hooks of the premier.
A cognitive science course might have readings from such collections as Anderson's "Minds and Machines" or Haugeland's "Mind Design." These contain essays on what it is to be human, to have a mind. CCD is an artist's telling of the same tale in experiential, rather than academic form.
And it is fine art. Behind all the games and metaphors, CCD is ultimately honest and naked and beautiful. As the author says in the CCD introduction:
"As to the hypothesis that what you have in your hands is one
upside-down novel, 'Mind over Matter' start to finish, written
by one man... The literary tricks. The untrustworthy narrator.
The novels within a novel. The sophomoric self-reference, and
ham-fisted roman a clef are all cheap and tired devices; they
increase complexity without much noticeable benefit to the
reader. It's hard to imagine that a writer with so much talent
and so many important things to say would squander his audience
by indulging in literary tchatchkis, trinkets, knick-knacks,
gimcracks, bric-a-brac, gee-gaws, baubles, do-dads, and
ephemeral things."
So read "Acts of the Apostles." If you want to push deeper into the mind behind it, read "Cheap Complex Devices."
And like the Beatles, it helps to have a guide to the backstory:
The other and earlier volume, "Acts of the Apostles", reads as a technological thriller. It is an entertaining and satisfying story that you can imagine would have Harrison Ford or some other favorite actor in the lead role. It stands on its own.
The CCD volume contains the novella, "Bees, or, The Floating Point Error." This reads like Hunter S Thompson narrating Douglas Hofstadter: "Goedel, Escher, Bach" on acid.
Also included in CCD is an introduction to both stories. It purports to be an academic article describing each story as written by a computer program for an AI story-telling contest.
Finally, we have a forward in CCD that presents an explanation of why there are two separate volumes, several different John Sundmans, and yet another name for the collection.
All are threaded with malfunctioning brains and psyches and processors. There's guilt and Ted Kaczynsky and a quest to internalize God. But while the craft of "Acts" is in telling an entertaining story, CCD is deeper and closer to the author. Like many a second album, it might not be appreciated by people who enjoyed the popular hooks of the premier.
A cognitive science course might have readings from such collections as Anderson's "Minds and Machines" or Haugeland's "Mind Design." These contain essays on what it is to be human, to have a mind. CCD is an artist's telling of the same tale in experiential, rather than academic form.
And it is fine art. Behind all the games and metaphors, CCD is ultimately honest and naked and beautiful. As the author says in the CCD introduction:
"As to the hypothesis that what you have in your hands is one
upside-down novel, 'Mind over Matter' start to finish, written
by one man... The literary tricks. The untrustworthy narrator.
The novels within a novel. The sophomoric self-reference, and
ham-fisted roman a clef are all cheap and tired devices; they
increase complexity without much noticeable benefit to the
reader. It's hard to imagine that a writer with so much talent
and so many important things to say would squander his audience
by indulging in literary tchatchkis, trinkets, knick-knacks,
gimcracks, bric-a-brac, gee-gaws, baubles, do-dads, and
ephemeral things."
So read "Acts of the Apostles." If you want to push deeper into the mind behind it, read "Cheap Complex Devices."
April 6, 2014
A strange book, and possibly impenetrable to those who have read Sundman's previous but still an enthralling one. What it all means is up for argument: a computer-written novel, a psychotic break, a brain in a tank hallucinating? Who knows - still I finished it in a single sitting.
August 22, 2020
This is a strange and wonderful thing. I will not attempt to describe it, but I find little bits and pieces of it lying around the corners of my mind, years later. Each time I do, they are somehow new, and fit together differently.
If you are willing to not know the answers to your questions, I can not recommend this more highly than I do.
If you are willing to not know the answers to your questions, I can not recommend this more highly than I do.
Read
July 11, 2011trust the machine. the machine can write.
September 11, 2013
WTF did I just read?
I doubt that this book can bee comprehensible to anyone outside the Silicon Valley.
Still, if you want an excursion to that kind of mind...
I doubt that this book can bee comprehensible to anyone outside the Silicon Valley.
Still, if you want an excursion to that kind of mind...
August 12, 2014
Awesome book but there's just so much to it that I think I'm going to reread it again. Interesting read, very well written and, as always, gives unique things to ponder and think about.
This is the second book in the Mind Over Matter series. If you haven't read the first book (The Acts of the Apostles), be sure and get that book as well. Might even want to read it first! You'll be so glad you did...
This is the second book in the Mind Over Matter series. If you haven't read the first book (The Acts of the Apostles), be sure and get that book as well. Might even want to read it first! You'll be so glad you did...
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