The promised spoils of information technology are: Unfettered communication with anyone; the accumulated knowledge of humanity available instantly; and information about the world in real-time. The technorati among us already benefit from these advances; in the near future, everyone will.

This poses a problem for novelists. How to concoct story lines that are immune to the relentless advance of technology? What does it take to write a future-proof plot?

This is not a new problem. Many of the novels and films conceived as recently as 10 years ago contain plot lines that would strain credibility if set in 2006 — now that mobile phones and the internet are ubiquitous. My habits have changed drastically over the past 10 years as a result of these twin inventions, as have those of my friends. This has turned virtually everything fictive produced up until the late 90s into unwitting period pieces. Novels being written today relying on current technology will age even more rapidly.

Many of the classics could not have been conceived today. In The Great Gatsby, the narrator would have googled Jay Gatsby by page 5. Romeo and Juliet would have SMSed each other constantly, removing any need for an unreliable fat friar. Cyrano de Bergerac would have been bested by Skype video. Not one single Hitchcock film could have been made had the protagonists had mobile phones.

There have been some interesting responses to the influence technology exerts on plot possibilities. Fantasy and science fiction coöpt the problem, consciously adding or removing technology to the fictive universe, and exploring where the plot lines might lead. What if there is no electricity but dragons are a viable form of transportation? What plots are possible if teleportation and warp speed are feasible?

Less successful, in my opinion, is magical realism, which likes to have its cake and eat it by allowing ghosts and ESP and other assorted pseudoscientific claptrap into the universe of the allowable, yet still insists on being called a literature of the real world. Magical realism is the snobbish aunt of literary genres.

Another response is to write historical fiction. The study of how Roman technology presented opportunities for plot twists animates Robert Graves’s I, Claudius, for example. John Fowles in The French Lieutenant’s Woman has Sam, a disgruntled footman, crucially fail to deliver a message between the two lovers, and it turns their worlds upside down. Fowles is exploring the genre conventions of the 19th century novel; in those days, messages were at the mercy of unreliable servants — servants were the weak link, and subsequent advances in communications technology made them redundant in this respect.

Fowles’s novel illuminates why technological advances threaten the novelist’s art. Plots traditionally depend on the possibility of error, of misunderstandings, of miscommunication, on the inability to verify claims made by others about the world and the room this leaves for destructive human emotions to grow. Technology aims to eradicate these impediments to our quality of life, but in doing so also empoverishes the novelist’s toolbox.

In the near future, then, we’ll be able to reach anyone, unless the attempt is refused. We’ll be able to verify anything via the internet. And everyone will have equal access to news about the world, unless a choice is made to tune out. We’ll be like Greek gods, omniscient if we wish, yet still governed by petty human inclinations. What will literature look like then? Will it even be possible?

Yes, definitely. The very first literary genre, the Greek myth, deals precisely with such characters. Zeus is all-knowing and all powerful. Iris is the flawless messenger. Helios sees everything. The Greek gods are unconstrained by technology, which frees them to perform ever crueler tricks on one another. With plot twists no longer at the mercy of technology, but instead as a result of uninhibited human volition, the literature of the near future should come full circle, adopting the literary conventions of the myth.

Back in January of this year, I wrote about Viola IlmaThis post makes more sense if you first read Viola’s googliography., an older woman who influenced my childhood and who, it turns out, had a fascinating past.

Six months later, because the internet really is a giant serendipity dispenser, another person who knew Viola — Stu Gitlow — came across my post, as anyone googling Viola Ilma is now bound to do. He left a comment in which he mentioned Honor Holland, a frequent companion of Viola. She was often present when Viola and I spent those rainy afternoons researching stamps in her kitchen. Like Viola, Honor also wrote a book on philately, The Art of Postage Stamps.

Three months after that comment, I got the following email in my inbox:

Hello,
 
I am Elisabeth Reich from Geneva, Switzerland, and I believe you may know my grandmother’s half sister, Honor Holland, a philatelist in New York.
 
Unfortunately, since I have lost contact with her, I wondered if you might be in a position to give me her address.
 
She was 10 years older than my late mother and should therefore be about 88.
 
I hope to hear from you and thank you in advance for your kind attention.
 
Best regards,
Elisabeth

I did not have Honor’s address, but I was able to forward her Stu’s email address, and asked to be updated on the progress of her quest. The very next day I got a reply, which I reproduce verbatimLinks in the correspondence below were added by me. (with permission), as the story she tells is fascinating:

Hello Stefan,
 
I have written to Stu Gitlow and am now waiting for a reply.
 
However, I think I can give you some update on the reason of Haile Selassie’s photograph.In my original post on Viola, I had written: “I vividly remember a picture of Haile Selassie, the last emperor of Ethiopia, hanging on a wall. I was under the impression she was related to him, for some reason.”
 
Honor’s grandfather (my great-great-grandfather) was a Swiss missionary in Ethiopia by the name of Theophilus Waldmeier.Here is a interesting description of his autobiography, on sale online for £500. He married Princess Yubdar and they had eight children, among them my great-grandmother Hannah and, I suppose, Viola’s mother or father. The family moved to Lebanon later-on and my great-grandmother was raised there. Mr Waldmeier founded the Brumana High School in Lebanon (still existing) and a psychiatric hospitalThe Lancet report on Waldmeier’s efforts in 1903.. My great-grandmother married a Mr Newson (who was Irish) and they moved to Cork. At my great-grandfather’s death (my grandmother was 8), the family moved to England where Hannah met Algernon Holland, Honor’s father.
 
When Haile Selassie was in exile in England, my great-grandmother spent a lot of time with him, as they were far away cousins. Therefore, she had the title of Princess Asfa Yilma. She even wrote a book about Ethiopia, Haile Selassie and their discussions. It’s title is Haile Selassie Emperor of Ethiopia (published in 1936)Found on this page, third book from the top. It, in turn, is mentioned in other books on Ethiopia. and can still be bought today. It was recently reprinted.
 
After World War II, Honor moved to Ethiopia with a woman, perhaps already Viola. She lived in the palace as far as I know, but started a revolution against Haile Selassie with the crown prince as she felt something had to be done for the poor and hungry. Well, as history tells you it went wrong and she had to flee to New York, where you have met her.This part is just stunning.
 
I hope above will lift some of your childhood mysteries. However, I will keep you updated on the success of my research.
 
Best wishes
Elisabeth

A day later, I received a third email from Elisabeth:

Hello again,
 
Here is the reply I got from Stu Gitlow:

I’m sorry to be the bearer of sad tidings, but I now understand that Honor passed away several years ago. I’ve asked Dick Beresford to provide me with any details he may have so that I can pass the information along to you. I worked closely with Viola Ilma, Honor, and Dick for quite a few years while I was in high school. They were all always friendly and supportive, frequently surrounding themselves with young people sharing similar interests. I lost touch with them all after I left for college in 1980 but more recently began to hear from Dick again.
 
My apologies for this sad news.
Stu Gitlow

I had the pleasure to meet Honor several times in Switzerland. She used to come and visit us from time to time when I was a child and young adult. As I moved several times, and as my mother passed away at a relatively young age, we unfortunately lost track, but I always found her a fascinating personality. […]
 
Best regards,
ElisabethFuture Googlers, email me for Elisabeth Reich’s email, or she can leave it in the comments if she wishes.

I’ve just finished Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown — and what an engrossing novel it is. The prose is luxuriant but the pace is deft; there is never any wading through verbiage. As before, Rushdie’s lexicon employs thousands of words unfamiliar to the tongue — this time it’s Kashmiri names, customs, tools and flora. The effect is that of a literary Wall of Sound, wholly immersive.

And yet I notice some misses. Small ones, mind you, unimportant ones, were it not for the fact that the novel fixates on a precisely documented timeline meant to graft its fictional events onto modern history. Avoiding anachronisms becomes Rushdie’s own high-wire act, but on two occasions I’ve found him to slip:

But even her closest intimates didn’t feel real to her anymore, […] not even her friend who left his wife for a man of the same name, not even her geek friend who was losing his dot-com fortune, not even her broke friends who were always broke, […]

What’s wrong with that fragment? If it takes place in 1992? Life before the World Wide Web is indeed impossible to imagine, but surely not literally?

Elsewhere, our latter-day heroine is driven into Kashmir in an “olive-green Toyota Qualis”, a make of all-terrain vehicle that comes to replace the generic term “car” on several pages. This fictional event takes place around 1993, when I too happened to travel through Kashmir for a few weeks, except that I don’t remember any Toyota Qualises. Toyota Land Cruisers, yes, Mitsubishi Pajeros aplenty, but Qualises?

That would be because the Qualis was introduced in 2000 as a locally produced Toyota make, and was discontinued in 2005, a quick google shows. I can certainly appreciate that in 1993 Rushdie was not in any position to travel to Kashmir himself to check out the cars, but that’s what the internet is for in 2003.

Maybe I’m being overly nitpicky, maybe Rushdie knows all this but decided the sonorous qualities of “Qualis” outstrip the penalty of an anachronism. Maybe a novel as good as Shalimar the Clown needs some flaws.Felix Reviews Shalimar the Clown on MemeFirst, also loves it, yet suspects a plot hole. But these are items I would have edited out.

It’s Friday after work in Kungsholmen, and once again I find myself standing in line to take the numbered ticket that saves a spot in the queue for the right to buy booze from the state alcohol dispensing monopoly, SystembolagetPreviously blogged here and here..

The only reason this situation is not outwardly ridiculous is because the numbered ticket obviates the need to stand in an actual, physical alcohol dispensing line, which would just look Soviet and sadWhy didn’t the Russians ever use numbered ticket dispensers in their times of scarcity (which were plentiful)? They certainly weren’t using it in 1993, when I lived in Moskva. I suspect it is because had there been such a system, it would just have created a black market in numbered tickets, where, interestingly, the price would go up as the time to execution diminished, but would then crash if there were no takers by the time the number was called.. Fifteen minutes separate my entering the shop from being called to a counter to declare the particulars of my alcohol dependency. That’s plenty of time to ruminate, as was no doubt the intention, on whether I really should be drinking (and I must, it’s my money). Instead, what actually happens is that I get to seethe silently at the fact that the nearest specialist shop with a proper selection of real (Belgian) beer and more than a smattering of good cheap South African wines is probably in Estonia, where queues are considered a problem, not a solution.

As it is, the 15-minute wait for my turn leaves plenty of time to peruse the glass cabinets, where alcohol is exhibited like exotic insects, tagged with ID number, defining characteristics and native habitat (by way of a flag). I’ve tried to take advantage of this objective approach to displaying merchandise by making my own scientific investigations, and can now announce with some certainty a startling fact about red wine in general:

Cheap to mid-range red wines with sans serif labels have a much higher quality to price ratio, on average.

First, some evidence:

For only one krona above the default SEK 69 price ($9), Albak de Elviwines 2003 (nr 99564) is a delicious Spanish wine that leaves a far more complex aftertaste than its price promises. And South Africa’s Man Vintners has some lovely pinotages (nr 16016, nr 99408). Compared to these, most of the the serifed wines just taste flat and unadventurous.

Therein lies the secret as to why you really can judge wine by its label: Companies where the management has an atrocious taste in labels tend to be the old-school type, uncertain about innovation, parochial about marketing and under the impression that serifs imply prestige. Anyone relying on serifs to get a leg up in the wine stakes is suspect, methinks. A surfeit of colors or an overly florid arrangement of castles and gold leaf also bodes ill for the wine, much like a painter who prefers his works in elaborate gilded frames. Instead, extensive testing confirms that a sans serif font and white space on a wine label constitute a secret sign, a wink by the vintner that their approach to winemaking matches your approach to typography and graphic design. Use this knowledge as a shortcut to good wine.

Coincidence is destiny. Had I not forgotten my security card as I left the office early on Friday, I would never have been back on Stureplan in the late afternoon, facing Hedengrens, where I noticed I very much wanted to read fiction.

Inside, I headed for the English-language titles. I passed over the newest Umberto EcoEco is no longer translated by William Weaver, I noticed. It turns out he is ailing, sadly. and the latest Julian Barnes, and then my gaze locked onto a sprite of a book half-hidden behind much thicker tomes — it was called Borges and the Eternal Orangutans. There was only one copy.

WaPo review
Guardian review

I immediately suspected foul play. If it were anyone’s intention to subvert my free will, compelling me to buy a particular book, they’d do so by titling it Borges and the Eternal Orangutans. And they’d make it short, just like the book in my hands. They know I hate long books.That’s because they’ll have read this post.

Had it been placed there specifically for me? Was this the beginning of a plot, with me as its unwitting protagonist? In any case, no other book in the store could compete. I made my purchase, and had finished the first chapter by the time I stepped out of the Tunnelbana on my way home. I would end up reading the book in one sitting, in the dying light at the water’s edge on Norr Mälarstrand, amid the joggers and the couples.

Borges features prominently in Borges and the Eternal Orangutans, a Holmes to the narrator’s Watson in a succinct detective story. I was delighted to see various orangutans discussed — including the one that types out all possible literary works, prompting Borges to note that it would leave The Swedish Academy no choice but to award that orangutan the Nobel Prize in literature.This is ironic of him to say so, of course, though I don’t think the narrator noticed.

I encountered more references to Stockholm as I read on, amid a dawning realization that I was indeed being manipulated — that I was the target of hidden purposes.

By then I didn’t mind. This novel is an autological marvel — superficially a detective story, it is also an homage to Edgar Allan Poe, and yet a parody of the genre he inventedSorry to be so vague, but I don’t want to give anything away..

Borges and the narrator also theorize at length about H. P. Lovecraft and his Necronomicon, and how the location of Stockholm matters crucially in this regard. Quite by coincidence, MiskatoniCon, the first-ever Scandinavian H. P. Lovecraft convention, will be held in Stockholm this coming November. And as coincidence is destiny, I now know precisely what Borges and his eternal orangutans are instructing me to do.

I was eager to play early adopter and try SAS’s inflight wireless web connection on my flight to New York, and have now done so, only to find an email from a friend saying she was fine after a “tragic attack on London.” This led me to all the news sites, and then to trying to contact my sister in London, hoping for reassuring news.

You can’t use mobile phones on planes yet, but you can sure use Skype if you are connected via SAS’s wifi service$30 for the entire flight (and electric plugs are only for those in Business) or else $10 for an hour + 25c per minute thereafter (my choice).. I tried to Skype out to people’s phones in London but either they were not answering or the phone lines were overburdened (as they were with 9/11). I Skyped dad on the phone to ask about my sister, but he couldn’t hear me over the aircraft noise. Makeshift solution: I instant-messaged a friend (okay, it was Matthew) and asked him to call and report back. It turns out everyone is fine.

Moral of the story: Use a headset if you want to talk to Skype from an airplane (unless you have no qualms about shouting like a hijacker). However, if all you want to do is check if someone is alive, you just need to wait for them to pick up the phone. You can hear them fine.

In other news: SAS, like other airlines, has a little screen in the seat in front that can be made to show a world map with a position of the plane. Post-Google Earth, it is beginning to look decidedly less impressive. It occurred to me that, given internet access on planes, a GPS device and Google Earth on my laptop, you could construct a home-grown replacement that is far more impressive. The only hack you’d need would be somehow manage to link a GPS device’s live position to Google Earth. Can’t be too hard. (In fact, Google should team up with ATi or NVidia to market this to airlines.)

Finally, my row of 8 seats has 5 iPods on it. If that rate is multiplied by 40 rows, there should be around 200 iPods on this flight. Crazy, no?

On the northwestern edge of Sandön, in the Stockholm archipelago, there is a rocky outcropping that is a perfect place to watch the sun go down.

Behind the memorial, the Reichstag’s new dome, the chariot atop the Brandenburg Gate, and a crane helping rebuild Berlin. A bit laden with symbolism, true.

The Holocaust Memorial is Berlin’s newest landmark — a month and a half old — and it is still finding its place in the city. The concept itself is simple: 2,711 stone slabs of varying heights and irregular tilts are arranged in a rectangular pattern a stone’s throw from the Brandenburg Gate. Between them runs a grid of narrow paths, and if you venture into the middle of this field of slabs, they easily swallow you up. On a bright sunny day, as on my visit, the slabs offer you shade. On a rainy day there is little shelter from the rain.

The monument is not overbearing, nor does it bait for solemnity or histrionics, and schoolchildren readily take to playing hide and seek amid it. Walk along the gridded paths, and you are sometimes surprised by another visitor suddenly appearing from the left or right. There is a lot of random bumping into people — you think you might be alone, but suddenly you are not. And no matter how deep you venture amid the tallest of the slabs, every intersection has four clear straight ways out — 2,711 is a prime number, and also the number of pages in the Babylonian Talmud. A coincidence? Apparenty, yes. symbolic, perhaps, of the moral compass that the Nazis never managed to extinguish, even as they murdered millions of Jews.

The slabs on the edges of the terrain are lower, and you can sit on them, and people do. But when I was there, a few people — teenagers mostly — were standing on them, hopping from slab to slab towards the middle, which is easy enough to do (though you risk a nasty injury if you misstep). I happen to know what the concrete slabs represent — Jewish burial tombs — and so I felt it would not be appropriate for me to join them, even if the vantage point looked like it might be excellent for taking pictures. Some of the slabs already have small stones placed on their edges, which is a sign of respect for the dead in Jewish cemeteries.

It turns out that the debate around what is appropriate behaviour towards this memorial is something the architect, Peter Eisenman, would like to foster. A lack of stated rules means that people themselves need to decide individually how (or if) they show respect. And that is a good thing, I think, as it turns the memorial into something that forces an individual response.

The glass dome atop the Reichstag is a wonderful piece of architecture that fulfills its symbolic duty — reminding legislators below that they are there to serve the people. Plenty of mirrors provide not-so-subtle photo ops, but sometimes you just have to take the obvious shots.

Berlin Templehof airport is an instant favorite. The main building supports a huge arching overhang that swallows planes whole. The architecture is monumental, imposing, and employed in the service of nazism would have done an admirable job. Later, for a while, it became the symbol of the cold war. Its days are numbered now — it sees few flights, and looks set to be decommissioned soon.