Are you a seeker for the next big thing? Do you go into bookshops looking for the current bestseller that all the bookshops are promoting? Do you hunt down the next Pulitzer/Orange/Booker Prizewinner? The current/past Nobel Prize winning authors (do you really like reading Hemingway?). 

Do you prefer your books to have a common theme? 

• Space travel
• WWII
• Historical
• Dragons and Elves
• Political

Or are you like me – always looking for something different to read; gliding past with ease all the display books on the display stands with stickers and banners advertising their importance and universal acclamations, and looking instead with curiosity for that one book that no one is giving any attention to. Maybe it’s only had one glowing review, one lukewarm review, or no reviews at all. Maybe that book you are looking for is the one that sits on it’s own, tucked in on the shelf between Patterson and Proust, a reserved confidence on its spine, winking at you with an enticing allure.

Maybe you just need a cover that doesn’t scream “BUY ME, BUY ME – I’M JUST LIKE ALL THE OTHERS!!!”, but quietly whispers “Hey you walking down the aisle, wanna come in and flip through my pages? See what you find?”

Books are wondrous things, filled with words that could delight, encourage, and inspire; or darken, disappoint, and dismiss. But they all deserve a place on shelves to be discovered, flicked through, and considered for a time in our lives to be read.

The hardest thing I've ever had to do, is continue living a life I did not want to live.

The easiest thing I've ever done, is to make a change so I could enjoy the life I was living.

I wrote a new journal entry today, the first in my green handwriting book since 1st June - a full four months ago. 21 days after that I started a job as a yardperson/forklift operator assisting builders with timber purchases, while also serving behind the counter when needed. The job requires filling out dockets detailing the yard products with the accompanying codes so the purchases can be invoiced to the company. I didn't like any of the pens I was using, so opted to use my writer's pen. It seems a little sacrilegious, but I had ordered the wrong pen inks - black instead of blue - and was loaded up with all these refills I was unlikely to use, since I'm such a stickler for using one specific pen and blue ink to write with. So my writer's pen with black ink became my job pen for writing out dockets and any specific notes on offcuts I needed to make. 

So, in this sense, yes, I have been writing, I guess. 

Outside of that, there have been a handful of Goodreads Reviews of the books I finished and was unsatisfied enough to have some words about. 

And my previous blog where I talked about music needing to be in every part of our lives, rather than letting it exist in its own space for special occasions: concerts. This subject I have more to say about, and today's handwritten journal entry was a case where I needed to express some more along those same lines. 

Right now, as I type this, I sit in the living room of the house I am looking after while the owners are on holiday, only the sound of my fingers hitting keys, a few tweets from birds, wind and tyres on the tarseal far below travelling through the valley, the plonk of the cat outside climbing over the railing and landing on the verandah, can be heard. I enjoy this quiet without music. 

I enjoy the red sky burning under grey clouds above without beats and melodies distracting me from the beauty of its glow.

The night grows dark, and I am at peace.

...because there is no room for peace and quiet in your life any more. There must be music on a big screen screaming at you while in the supermarket like you are at a concert venue instead of just quietly going about your business shopping for groceries; there must be music at your place of work repeating the exact same songs every day twice a day for the entirety of your working week for three months on end; there must be music blasting from a loud speaker at your job site annoying every co-worker and neighbour who doesn't like your music choices; there must be your own choice of music blasting at a volume to drown out somebody else's music; there must be music interrupting your ability to read in the bookshop you are trying to find a book to buy at; there must be music, there must be music, and it must keep playing so you can avoid that god-awful thing called silence, or peace and quiet, that you experienced once in your life and you were so traumatised by that you swore never to be subjected to that peace and quiet ever again. 

I walked into the New World supermarket at 279 Wakefield Street, Te Aro, Wellington, and was subjected to John Farnham on, not just one, but two big screens, as though I was invited to join in and chant "You're the voice, try and understand it, make a noise and make it cleaaaa-earrr-earrr..." when all I was there for was to buy groceries. 

• Dear New World: "Is there not already enough noise with the beeping of checkout counters, the clanging of trolleys, the voice on the loudspeaker?" 

Now every place I patronise has decided that it wants to create an atmosphere of noise, produced by music that does not suit my tastes, and often doesn't suit the actual decor of the retail outlet that plays it. Not music gently playing in the background, subtle, and soothing, but music loud and obnoxious without any care about how I feel as a paying customer. 

I get that the Customer Service Representatives want to be able to enjoy their work environment, but my question is: How can they enjoy having the exact same songs played over and over without getting insanely sick of it? The other question, is if they work with people who have different music tastes, is it acceptable that one person be allowed to enjoy their work environment while the other suffers? 

We all have different music tastes, and to be honest, even I wouldn't want to be subjected to the bands I love day in and day out on an eternal repeat mode. An experience I had last year subjected me to Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath in a Wellington cafe. Great! I thought, Music I love. But it was so loud that I couldn't hear my own mother talking to me. This is what I don't get. How does loud music encourage customers to walk into a store? 

• Is it just me that has overly sensitive hearing? 
• Is it just me that doesn't want loud music interrupting every moment?
• Is it just me that finds conversation difficult with loud music overlapping every sentence? 
• Is this just a generational thing? 
• Is this a consequence of growing up on farms vs. growing up in cities?
• Is this the result of children being subjected to an external noise source, like a TV, or music, being played all day in their home environment? 

In Wellington city, it is very hard, if not impossible, to find a retail outlet that doesn't play obnoxiously noisy music. Even libraries, those once-upon-a-time havens of peace and quiet, have become obsessively noisy in recent years. All I want is cafe to sit in and drink my cappuccino in peace. But no such luck.

The city is all just noise, noise, noise, and more noise. When it tries to add music as a contrast to the noise, as a way of creating a sound environment that attempts to relax or bring joy to the citizens lives, it only creates more noise. Because now the music is competing to rise above the noise, and it all joins together in a cacophony of irritating, trauma-inducing, pain. 
 
That is what I am left experiencing in the city: Pain.

Look, I may be anti-advertising, but every person has their limits: 

(Please contact me if you need me to promote this product! :-D )

My perfect cafe doesn't play easy-listening jazz endlessly like a malfunctioning public toilet. It allows a piece of music to be played, to end, and then to let the silences breathe and become a functioning part of the atmosphere.

And then, the customer might suddenly notice some strings playing out a tune, before an orchestral tutti bounces a response, and the Presto from Mozart's Linz Symphony brings a new dimension to the cafe experience.

Seven minutes later we sit with the sounds of the shop again: the customers coming and going, the patrons in gentle chatter, the barista banging, and perhaps some clanking from the kitchen. All normal and 'natural' sounds of the environment we have created. 

When life without background music starts to feel a little too weird, a little 'too' quiet, the opening brushes of Take Five breaks the perceived silence. Five minutes later, and for five minutes afterwards, we sit with the memory of Jazz's all-time biggest selling single caressing our minds.

Time passes, and you and the attendants are left with a clean slate to think through some thoughts, to not be aggravated by music you don't like, or don't want to hear. And you may go now, knowing that you can always come back and sit without music, and maybe hear some music along the path of sitting and sipping.

Maybe then, you might hear quietly in the background the opening buzz of 'Pushit' by Tool, or the electronic pulse of 'Electric Dream' by Shapeshifter, maybe Avril Lavigne, or even The Beach Boys.

The music does sit in the background, but it also does not intrude, and it doesn't niggle and upset continuously like an earworm in the back of your brain. The point is never to override the calm spaces, but to momentarily relieve the quiet and provide alternative listening, maybe a temporary mood resetting; but to always return to the quiet space that brings calm and relaxation that musical sounds can never do.

Cafes are already noisy. And the world we have created adds to all that noise. Music in the background, whether easy-listening or hard-listening just adds up to more noise. Sound on top of sound doesn't improve, or cancel out noise. Sound layered on top of sounds create noise.

There is never any true quiet, but non-musical moments help to cleanse the palette.

As I got to know my partner’s reading habits, I began to realise there was a massive gap in her reading of science fiction. So I decided to make amends to this with the idea of recommending all the great classics, or the ones that I think still hold up, such as The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester) and Gateway (Frederick Pohl).

I began compiling my list pretty quickly, but as soon as I declared my intentions, she quickly quipped “I don’t want to be reading a bunch of ‘lonely men in space’ books.”

I was nothing short of horrified at her shallow judgement of such great past literature.

But then I had a little think.

And much like the trope of damsel in distress, or women in refrigerator, I did realise there was some truth to her perception of the genre. After all, it had been dominated mainly by heterosexual white men, and even authors like Arthur C. Clarke, who was by all accounts gay, did little for the plight of women in space. Of course, there were women writers all along, like C.L. Moore, Andre Norton, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Kate Wilhelm, but by and large SF was written for males and featured male characters with little input from female characters. And the story of James Tiptree Jr., if you don't know, begins with a woman, Alice Sheldon, writing under a male name to avoid attention for being a woman writer.

When I looked at the books that I was recommending, I realised that many of them could be distilled down to a simple 'lonely man in space' blurb. So, here’s my list of great, and maybe not so great, books from the fields of Science-Fiction and Fantasy distilled down to the most simplistic of blurbs.

~//~

The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester)
    • Lonely man in cold space seeks hot revenge.


Star King (Jack Vance)
    • Lonely man in space starts pogrom of revenge on interstellar crime bosses.


Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
    • Lonely boy in space commits genocide.


Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Philip K. Dick)
    • Lonely cop commits android genocide.


Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)
    • Lonely fireman commits book-genocide.


Dune (Frank Herbert)
    • Lonely man on desert planet becomes messiah. Later he commits genocide.


Dune: House Atreides (Brian Herbert)
    • Lonely son commits patricide.


Gateway (Frederik Pohl)
    • Lonely man on earth recounts lonely time in space to robot psychologist.


Beyond Apollo (Barry N. Malzberg)
    • Lonely man on earth writes autobiography about being a lonely man in space.


The Voyage of the Space Beagle (A.E. van Vogt)
    • Lonely man at typewriter sues 20th Century Fox for plagiarism.


Harlan Ellison (Harlan Ellison)
    • Lonely man at typewriter sues everyone for plagiarism.


A Time of Changes (Robert Silverberg)
    • Lonely man on planet takes drugs to avoid loneliness.


Solaris (Stanisław Lem)
    • Lonely man on earth visits lonely planet in space to escape lonely memories of dead wife.


The World of Null-A (A.E. van Vogt)
    • Lonely man with big brain tests big brained leaders to prove his big brain is even bigger than their big brains.


Elric of Melniboné (Michael Moorcock)
    • Lonely weak albino emperor discovers lonely talking sword that turns him into lonely strong albino emperor.


Rendezvous with Rama (Arthur C. Clarke)
    • Lonely men in space explore lonely cylinder in space.


Steel Beach (John Varley)
    • Lonely and bored man (later woman) on moon colony.


I am Legend (Richard Matheson)
    • Lonely last man on earth invents zombie genre.


The Day of the Triffids (John Wyndham)
    • Lonely man runs away from man-eating plants. (I sense some kind of metaphor growing out of this one...)


Neuromancer (William Gibson)
    • Lonely keyboard-warrior hacks computers.


Foundation (Isaac Asimov)
    • Lonely man combines science and psychology to predict the downfall of the first galactic empire.


Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein)
    • Lonely martian-man returns to earth and freaks even the hippies out.


Way Station (Clifford D. Simak)
    • Lonely man in space station has tea and biscuits with alien visitors.


Hospital Station (James White)
    • Lonely man doctor in space hospital unable to relate to human female seeks solace in alien patients.


More than Human (Theodore Sturgeon)
    • Lonely young man discovers how to not be lonely by talking to other people.


~//~

It is interesting that there is a certain preponderance for men to write about men in a singular sense, especially across the genre of Science Fiction. More so in the pulp category which relies on the male fantasy of conquering aliens, planets, and winning the affections of females. When women wrote in the same setting, they often followed the same rules and guidelines, even with female leads. The rise of the 60s counter-culture and the writings of James Tiptree Jr., Ursula Le Guin, and Joanna Russ, saw a change in how women's roles in SF should be perceived.

But still, the men wrote about men. As it were.
And space is a lonely environment. There aren't exactly a multitude of space party books...

For most who are aware and critical of gender roles, it is relatively common knowledge that men have been taught by a culture of masculinity to be ashamed of their feelings, and as a consequence there is a tendency to recoil into oneself, or take the opposite route and put on a façade of extravagance or extrovert behaviour (often in the form of machismo). There is loneliness in a physical space, as well as loneliness in a crowd, and when men reach out they aren't aligning themselves with the human experience, but the male experience of being lonely. In Science Fiction their dreams of freedom could be realised. In Science Fiction their dreams of connecting with fellow men could be realised.

This sounds belittling of the genre as an exercise in thought. There is a great intellectual pursuit in Science Fiction that can be found in some of the best male writers like Olaf Stapledon, H.G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Stanisław Lem, and Frank Herbert; while others, like Jack Vance, who would garden worlds, populated their planets with love and care. But for what reason was that intellectual pursuit, that love and care, not extended out to the female characters?

It's impossible to believe that male writers can't empathise. Even after the year 2000, I still see reviews of males writing one-dimensional women. Are they still so out of touch with their own feelings?

My partner suggests a way to look at one aspect of male fragility: "There's a difference between being able to express feelings and working with someone to cure loneliness. When these particular men get lonely they try to define the social norm on their own terms and expect others to fit in with that. And if they can't fit in, well it's exclusion and rejection for that person - my way or the highway." I still see these attitudes existing in men of my own generation, which I find disappointing.

Anyway, some of these authors are disappointing too, but the books as ideas and concepts are almost always interesting.

I really value studies like this. Even if it's a personal science experiment, the reason for doing it is a symptom of the world that has been created around us. It is my view that we have created a society of noise, and we pile music on top of the noise to try to hide, or obfuscate, it. But if the music isn't sound you want to hear, then it too becomes extra noise on top of the noise. Music used to be listened to as entertainment, as well as an art-form. Although that still exists, music is available at any time, and anywhere, and often in the spaces we might not want to hear it (the beach, or a forest walk, for example). We become accustomed to hearing music all the time, and then we become unable to separate ourselves from being able to listen to music - not being able to deal with silence, for example, because it's a strange and unknown environment.