Can music that springs from our 20th-century acceptance of the chaotic
nature of reality ever attain the heavenly heights of its Romantic predecessors
from an age of order? In The Music of the Spheres Jamie James asks this
question, contrasting the importance of music to life before the Industrial
Revolution with its value now, when we see it more as entertainment than
nourishment. Now that chaos and unpredictability prevail, James wonders,
what place can the music of the spheres have for the average person? In
the absence of certainty, where is the faith that inspired the Romantic
classics? Is not the sound of cynicism unedifying . . . are we beyond beauty?
As William Burroughs observed of our age, ‘Nothing is true, everything is
permitted’, and this breakdown in music, order and the aesthetic sense suggests
that perhaps we are out of key with the cosmos, in rebellion against the
sacred, and so loosed from the ground of being, unable to make our art sing
while our souls lament. Could the rejection by our arts and sciences of
Romantic sentimentalism be anger at our own dissociation from the divine?

Founder of Discover magazine James explores the genesis of sacred and
profane music by examining the work of the great artists and scientists,
and shows how our understanding of the riddles that confront us has robbed
us of our musical treasure by making nonsense of primitive, ancient theism.
It is his premise that the physicists’ search for order in the quantum world
and Freud’s ordering of the psyche reflect the deterministic wisdom of the
Pythagoreans, and that the 20th-century classical composers from Igor Stravinsky,
John Cage to Philip Glass expose the gap we inhabit, between gnosis and
psychosis.

Zen, so dear to the late John Cage, teaches ‘when something is fulfilled,
Heaven strikes it’. James says that perhaps our existential troughs have
trapped and strangled our ability to return to an innocence sufficient to
the task of creating music of the spheres. However, it is equally possible
that we postmodernists, digi-talising ‘natural’ sounds, are aware that the
spheres are in a way empty and it is the inner, not outer, spaces of our
being where the music arises and disappears regardless of its manifestation.

Surprisingly for such an adventurous thinker, James virtually negates
contemporary popular music, yet some of the most spiritual music has come
from young, popular musicians as diverse as The Beatles, The Beach Boys,
Van Morrison and Bruce Springsteen. And the current explosion in experimental
electronic music certainly suggests, in its explicit, if stumbling, metaphysical
aspiration, that perhaps James has cast his net too narrowly.

Nevertheless, James probes deeply into an undervalued question here
and left me wondering at the extent to which our whole view of reality –
and what may lie beyond it – is being revolutionised.

Jeremy Clarke is a novelist and musician.

‘When coupled to virtual reality hardware . . . future officers will have
ultra-realistic visions of battles. The effect of this may be more efficient
and effective war strategies, or even emotional reactions to the horrors of
war made more evident in realistic war games in the 21st century’. So states
James Perry – like many other contributors to this book an IBM man – at the
conclusion of his chapter ‘Computer war games in the 21st century’. As with
so much contained in Clifford Pickover’s compelling collection of
leading-edge research, a seemingly pragmatic conjecture leads to an
ultimately unnerving realisation: the coming shock wave of computer-driven
societal change will not just alter how we live, but who, and even what, we
are. Taking the above example – and reasoning that disasters looming on our
doorstep will be overcome only by agents of change of our construction, yet
with effects beyond our compass to predict – it seems possible that we
finally may be freed of the compulsion for warlike behaviour and war
itself. The agent of change begins no more stupendously than as a
simulation: faced with a virtual revulsion to war, might we be able to
resolve the drive to fight at a new, virtual level?

Again, in the chapter ‘Will computers really think in the 21st century?’,
what this book says is less important than what it tells you. Ira Glickstein
tells us that soft/hardware will likely take hundreds of millions of years
to ‘self-organise to achieve human levels of general intelligence’. A
formidable proposition, even a deterrent to a belief in strong AI. Yet, a
small voice defies logic: given that computer games signify
consumer-revolution-as-evolution, whereby a generation discovers a new
dimension of brain capacity and dexterity ostensibly through ‘play’, it is
not heresy to speculate that at some not-so-distant point we will not be
‘doing’ computers so much as sharing a partnership. At some point a great
leap will occur, long before conservative predictions deem it possible, to
the point where our development of strong AI, and the ability of the thing
itself to reach across the soft/hardware divide, merges.

As Hans Moravec of the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute, Pennsylvania,
says in ‘the universal robot’ under the subheading ‘Mind children (2050+)2’,
‘Intelligent machines, which are evolving among us, learning our skills,
sharing our goals, and being shaped by our values, can be viewed as our
children, the children of our minds. With them our biological heritage is
not lost. It will be safely stored in libraries at least; however, its
importance will be greatly diminished’. Such a vision could call forth the
all-too-human feeling of self-pity, and raises the real possibility that, as
intuition suggests, we are at present laying the foundations of technology
that will not only relieve us of much, but to an extent replace us.
Depending on your perception of humanity and of yourself, this prospect will
strike you as either a great blessing or a great curse.

On a more mundane level, Davis Foulger, in his ‘Computers and human
communication’, compares ideas of future communications typified by the
television series Star Trek: The Next Generation with what is now possible
and, while giving credit to its creators for a reputable degree of reality,
adds that their ‘vision of the future of communication does not satisfy’,
because it underestimates the possibilities already in the field.

It is this precociousness and confidence of its contributors that makes
Pickover’s book a world of imminent discovery and, in a way, a challenge. In
line with the revelations contained in the many other complementary books he
has written or edited, Pickover chooses material conducive to a feeling, a
sneaking suspicion, that the (near?) future will be unlike anything we can
at present imagine. This is not just because, as this book amply shows, we
don’t actually know what artistic, technological or computer features it may
comprise. It is also because we will be very different. Visions of the
Future shows that this future is at hand.

Jeremy Clarke is a writer. His latest book is published by Fourth Estate.

The newest in the Zone series, Incorporations produced by the Media
Lab funded by MIT – is very much a playground for the intelligentsia. That
is not to demean it, on the contrary, the panoply of ideas directed to defining,
identifying and giving meaning to the factors that create modernity may
exhaust you, but they will also challenge.

Contributors come from around the world (many of them from France) and
exhibit a remarkable ratio of indulgence to insight, so Incorporations draws
an intellectual, sometimes elitist map of the modern. It identifies a myriad
patterns, trying to place them in the context of evolutionary growth. Instructively,
many pieces follow the trail back beyond the turn of the century.

But it fosters an uneasy awareness that books such as this, reliant
on so many words and monochrome stills, are inadequate to the task. They
have become a sort of relic: en route to the modern, such writing itself
has become the domain of yesterday’s people. There is too little frivolity,
too much sterility and far too much insularity. The future happens when
Junior discovers Nintendo, not when academicians decide to announce it.

In fact, Incorporations is beautiful for its wishful ignorance of what
really happens on the street when modernity is, so to say, going down. In
pursuit of the modern, its editors and contributors are trying to second-guess
the future, and playing to a small, self-congratulatory audience.

Reality is not a matter of attribution, and as brilliant as some of
the theories and positions propounded in these pages may be, they are finally
too busy and self-obsessed for times when the idea of modernism itself is
old-fashioned: should that not be post-modernism? Also, while the pages
devoted to dissection of classic modern films such as Performance, Alien
and Full Metal Jacket make compelling reading, they defeat the utter disposability
so crucial to the modern: what can’t be instantly forgotten becomes an
impediment to what can next be accessed and experienced.

J. G. Ballard’s delightful Project for a Glossary of the 20th Century
is perhaps the exception that proves the rule, a playful but nonetheless
perceptive piece that claims, for example, that answering machines ‘are
patiently training us to think in a language they have yet to invent’. He
exhibits a brevity and wit sorely missing elsewhere as professional thinkers
struggle to make a point without positively paving the reader over with
gratuitous jargon.

Incorporations is fascinating reading, but leads to one inescapable
conclusion: books are slow.

Jeremy Clarke’s novel God is Love (Get It In Writing) is published by
Fourth Estate.

Amazing Beetles by John Still, Dorling Kindersley, pp 32, £4.99

The vogue for wordy, busy-looking fact books for kids – ‘visual information
books’ to the trade – takes another stride forward with these two new volumes
of an extensive ‘Amazing World’ series covering everything from monkeys
to snakes, and soon to encompass cars, boats, bikes and more. Pitched at
the three-to seven-year-olds, it is hard to imagine any child between two
and ten not being captivated.

Smaller children will be enthralled by the vivid photography, and bigger
ones by the veritable feast of facts. The text displays an admirable simplicity,
moving assuredly from generalities as broad as Mayan ‘bat gods’ to specifics
of pigmentation of beetle wings. The learning is made more fun by the catchy
headings.

There is a dazzling visual variety in the book, with each spread designed
according to the size and shape of the central photograph. The photography
speaks for itself; the striking image of the golden beetle, benefiting from
excellent reproduction, is truly beautiful, while less savoury specimens,
like the bristly rove beetle, appear literally larger-than-life in all their
weird glory. Dozens of illustrations provide a useful contrast to the photographs,
while the corners of the page are populated with comical illustrations accompanied
by fun facts.

Where Amazing Beetles leaves the reader boggled by the complex diversity
of the species, Amazing Bats impresses with the sheer bizarreness of this
species. Far from demythologising this disreputable beast, the book enhances
its proud place in the childhood lexicon – the more you know, the stranger
it seems. Indeed, the bats, staring glassy-eyed at you, upside down between
numerous squat columns of facts, make for a graphic reading experience.
The photograph of a horseshoe bat at rest typifies the stunning images employed,
in this case verging on the surrealistic. Elsewhere, dramatic freeze-frames
or time-lapse sequences of flying bats amaze and unnerve.

The books come complete with an index, and represent a boon to the science
project enthusiast and undoubtedly a belated eye-opener to many parents.
Teachers will use them to set confounding quizzes and school librarians
will find them rarely on the shelf. And for a hardcover potpourri of their
calibre, the price makes them an exemplary gift choice. As for the preschool
nature buffs who call every insect a bee and anything airborne a bird, they
will come away with a new perspective.

Granted, there is an element of gimmicky showiness about the books,
but in this age when entertainment is practically a prerequisite to learning,
the publishers can hardly be faulted for sugaring the pill. Promising to
explain what makes these members of the animal world so unique, they use
any means at their disposal. This spirit of adventure informs the books
and rewards the reader with what amounts to a visual joy ride.

The execution and impact of this design will soon be standard, as children
come to expect in books the sort of enjoyment they apparently derive from
cartoons and film favourites.

Jeremy Clarke is a musician and writer. Fourth Estate published his
God is Love (Get it in Writing) last year.

Parents exhausted evading their youngsters’ infernal, unending questions
will be tempted, after skimming Moonlight’s excellent new translations of
the French First Discovery series from Gallimard Jeunesse, to lock their
children up with them until they can fully comprehend them.

In creating a series so compelling to young minds the publishers intend
that the six books of the series introduce readers from three to six years
old to basic facts about their world. However, where many children’s early
science books gloss over difficult concepts, First Discovery makes them
its mainstay.

Each book begins with a question. Fruit presents the child with a delicious
illustration of an apple and asks: ‘Do you like eating apples?’ Then it
leapfrogs the reader into some degree of abstraction, for example, varieties
of apples. In each book several illustrations are part of an overlay, under
which you discover cutaways, such as an apple showing its pips, that lead
to further revelations.

These overlays are a major feature, and a successful alternative to
the prevalent use of ‘pop-ups’ to bring energy to a subject, mimicking the
actual process of opening up and examining something. The clarity and realism
of the illustrations and the laconic factuality of the text invite the child
to stretch his or her powers of abstract thought, to the point where, as
I found with my own three-year-old daughter, their struggles with the material
frequently lead to silent absorption.

With repeated reading, the child can soak up a great deal of information
and build up a detailed knowledge of cats, eggs and more. The ideal age
group for these books, would have to be four to six, but younger children
will get much out of them.

As with The Ladybird, the outstanding volume in the series, the books
tend to begin with a sharp, familiar focus, then, having hooked the child’s
attention, make detours to varieties of beetles, the feeding habits of the
ladybird’s predators and, finally, the anatomy of insects in general. To
make the drier facts more platable, the books carefully balance facts with
frivolous hooks. So in Vegetables, there is a comic carrot ‘car’ that makes
the material fun, and also introduces a short section on gardening, just
as Trees deals with woodpeckers and wood products while revolving largely
around the growth of the familiar conker.

In Cats, this formula is doubly successful because, since most small
children’s working knowledge of cats is relatively superficial, it creates
in their mind a whole new appreciation of the complexity of an animal they
have previously seen in an understandably simplistic light. It is quite
captivating for a child to grasp how cats’ claws work and how they show
their differing moods by body movement. The bold full-page pictures of big
cats let the child appreciate the subject at full face value.

Weather has evocative overlays of fog, snow and rain that are quite
superb. Colour explores primary colours found in everything from ice cream
to chameleons.

The Egg has overlays showing the egg inside the hen, and then the embryonic
chick inside the egg itself. It aids broaching the sometimes difficult subject
of reproduction without sacrificing realism. Having said that, my own embarrassment
at having to explain an illustration of ladybirds mating is an indication
of the hazards of these wonderful books!

Jeremy Clarke is a musician and writer. Fourth Estate published his
God is Love (Get it in Writing) last year.