Appleseed

Dear minions,

I specifically instructed you to go out and buy John Clute's novel, Appleseed. I opined, not preposterously, that a few hundred extra readers were sure to shave 20,000 off its ignominious ranking: 765,915. Yet now it languishes at 771,739.

I have no recourse but to type some short passage in to whet your appetite, while listening to the fine CD, "It's a Wonderful Life", by Sparklehorse, who deserve your custom.

But first, some Sparklehorse lyrics. All these, in fact. Sometimes they sound like a cross between Bettie Serveert and Neutral Milk Hotel, with a sort of fey, we-could-beat-up-Teenage-Fanclub edge. Sometimes - well, on one track, "Dogdoor" - they do a surprisingly good Tom Waits imitation, complete with obvious homage to "Starving In the Belly of A Whale". Good chorus - call and response:

pitchfork (pitchfork)
crowbar (crowbar)
clawhammer (clawhammer)
hot tar (hot tar)

But where was I? Ah, yess. At this point, you know almost as much as I did at this point in the book.

The commander of the Insort Geront ark in spy orbit dared to contact Opsophagos of the Harpe himself at the helm of far-distant Alderede, in the midst of preparation for the next stage in the War of the Lens.

Wrigglies rushed into mouths, as the commander bided their sibling's hour.

"Well," thundered the tripartite thorax in the ceiling, finally.

'Honoured siblings,' growled the commander, with bravery, stuffing its breakfast mouth to keep from eating the mouth that talked. 'You wished to know when the transfer had been made.'

'Yes?' thundered the elder sibling, many light-years distant.

'The Battle Minds have been taken abourd.'

There was a dreadful pause. Rain steamed down the commander's flanks.

'How many Minds? Plural? Plural? Plural?'

The commander's skin fissured.

'Two, honoured sibling.'

Opsophagos screamed wordlessly down the thorax. They sreamed thrice. Then a small still voice of Opsophagos whispered in an ear of the commander:

'Only one, sibling. Only one Mind is fixed. We inserted only one Mind into the data haven ark. There was no breach of integrity. Where did the other come from?'

The commander's suckers carved a triad of ones in their own skin. The small voice of Opsophagos's tinest and most deadly mouth began to repeat ones up the scale, and became supersonic.

There was silence within the walls of the ark command warren, except for the slush of thick rain. The commander counted their remaining fingerlings.

Now don't you want to know what happens? Go forth and buy it. Me? Wife and kid are off with grandma on a Thai island. Rented "Two Towers" on DVD. Gonna watch it.

Comments

[ben wolfson]

That's not a Tom Waits impression—that's Tom Waits. In addition to singing he plays a giant bean pod on that track. (And Blood Money wasn't released until about a year or so after It's a Wonderful Life was.)

[jholbo]

Well, color me fact-checked! The things you can learn by actually opening up your CD case to check whether Tom Waits is there!

[Walt Pohl]

I _almost_ went and bought the book after you ordered me to, but then I realized that taking orders from random strangers on the internet has to be the first step on the road to ruin.

[jholbo]

Yeah, I remember that old AOL ad with the wide-eyed guy. "My friends told me to get 10 free hours with AOL." [Or whatever exactly he said.] And it should have ended: "Now I have thousands of friends who tell me what to do!"