Though the current project started as a series of posts charting my grief journey after the death of my mother, I am no longer actively grieving. Now, the blog charts a conversation in living, mainly whatever I want it to be. This is an activity that goes well with the theme of this blog (updated 2018). The Sense of Doubt blog is dedicated to my motto: EMBRACE UNCERTAINTY. I promote questioning everything because just when I think I know something is concrete, I find out that it’s not.
Hey, Mom! The Explanation.
Here's the permanent dedicated link to my first Hey, Mom! post and the explanation of the feature it contains.
A Sense of Doubt blog post #4226 - Mine and My Friend's Growing List of Best Science Fiction Novels
So, I have been making a list of "best" science fiction books with a friend. More on that farther down.
First, the failure of Open AI.
I gave it six files, images of book covers, and asked it to make a grid. This image below was it's first attempt and the closest to what I wanted.
The problem is that though the bottom three images are the ones I gave it, the top three are not. For those who don't know it, the bottom right image is the Chinese edition of Three Body Problem.
I asked it repeatedly to use the files I gave it, and it could not manage the task.
It gave me things like this:
How is this a grid of six images?
Or the one above, which included this book that I did not feed it nor have I read:
And two other books, one that is on the list but not one I shared with it (Asimov) and another that may be put on the list (Zelazny) but has not yet been proposed.
I finally managed to make a grid of all six using the three book row the AI gave me and then clipping the other three book row from the image above. It's not perfectly sized, but I don't really care.
But my issue is that this thing I was asking IS NOT HARD. So why did it repeatedly fail? I don't use AI enough to know or really care, but in light of what I posted yesterday about the risk of super intelligence, it seems to me, that we're a long way from that unless there are other factors at play here (like copyright).
Anyway, here's the list. Just the list for now. In future posts, I will share the proposals arguing for the books and the one that was rejected.
It's a pretty good list, so far, I think.
Deferred means that one of us needs to read the book before accepting or rejecting it.
I am more inclined to accept books I have not read than my friend. For instance, I accepted The Dark Forest (2008) by Liu Cixin without reading it. However, I have decided to read it next, so I could have deferred it. I just figured I would accept it anyway as it is surely worthy to be on the list.
The deferral policy has prompted me to read Quarantine by Greg Egan, which I liked a lot; The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974) by Ursula K. Le Guin, which I had never read though I had meant to for decades; and Hyperion (1989) by Dan Simmons, which I have also owned for decades and then had to go on and read Fall of Hyperion because Hyperion is a woefully incomplete book. The two books are really one novel.
I have read all the other books on the list, though some I should really re-read. I did re-read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979) - by Douglas Adams because I don't think I have ever read it read (non-audio). I proposed Sirens of Titan (1959) by Kurt Vonnegut right after, which my friend deferred, but has now read and accepted. It's the only book placed on the list in the spot in which it was originally proposed.
But really there's no order to the list.
We do have rules though.
The rules are as follows:
1. This is for Science Fiction, and not Speculative Fiction. We may attempt that later, or a different sub-genre, but there are good reasons to focus on Science Fiction as opposed to the more generic Speculative Fiction. Primarily where does one put Mythology and religious texts? I think it is wise to avoid those.
2. We take turns proposing one, and only one, book. If multiple books from a series are to be added, they are done individually.
3. The person proposing a book, is essentially voting to put that book on the list. The other person can either agree, defer, or disagree to the proposed book. Defer would be where we need to think about it and probably re-read the book in order to either agree or disagree.
4. Only books which have been proposed and agreed to make it on the list.
5. There is no limit to the list. It can continue to grow as time goes on.
6. There is no order to the list, these books are all worthy of being considered among the best science fiction books of all time.
7. At this point my assumption is that we would never remove a book from the list, but this could be discussed if there were a good reason.
CRITERIA
“Science Fiction books that have those moments where the author gets the reader to broaden their mind and realize new possibilities” tracks with my own and refines further the criteria of “books SF readers should read” and “best books in the genre.” Our favorites.
If you are reading this blog and read this far and have a book to suggest, please leave a comment.
Thanks for tuning in.
The List
- Frankenstein (1818 / 1831) by Mary Shelley
- Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864) by Jules Verne
- The War of the Worlds (1898) by H. G. Wells
- Dune (1965) by Frank Herbert
- Snow Crash (1992) by Neal Stephenson
- The Demolished Man (1953) Alfred Bester.
- Ender's Game (1985) by Orson Scott Card
- Childhood’s End (1953 / 1990) by Arthur C. Clarke
- Flowers for Algernon (1966) by Daniel Keyes
- Ringworld (1970) - by Larry Niven
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979) - by Douglas Adams
- Sirens of Titan (1959) by Kurt Vonnegut
- 1984 (1949) by George Orwell
- The Three-Body Problem (2008/2014) by Liu Cixin (translated by Ken Liu)
- Foundation (1951) by Isaac Asimov
- The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) by Ursula K. Le Guin
- Gateway (1977) by Frederik Pohl
- The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966) by Robert Heinlein
- Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury
- Startide Rising (1983) by David Brin
- The Handmaid's Tale (1985) by Margaret Atwood
- Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley
- A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959) by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
- Doomsday Book (1992) by Connie Willis
- Slan (1940) by A. E. van Vogt
- Binti (2019) by Nnedi Okorafor (Omnibus - including Binti, Binti: Sacred Fire), Binti: Home, Binti: The Night Masquerade)
- A Clockwork Orange (1962) by Anthony Burgess
- A Fire Upon the Deep (1992) by Vernor Vinge
- The Windup Girl (2009) by Paolo Bacigalupi
- Speaker for the Dead (1986) by Orson Scott Card
- Day of the Triffids (1951) by John Wyndham
- Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) by Robert A. Heinlein
- The Caves of Steel (Robot #1) (1954) by Isaac Asimov
- Foundation and Empire (1952) by Isaac Asimov
- The Star My Destination (1956) by Alfred Bester
- Quarantine (1992) by Greg Egan
- The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974) by Ursula K. Le Guin
- Hyperion (1989) by Dan Simmons
- Nova (1968) Samuel Delany
- The Mote in God’s Eye (1974) by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
- The Martian Chronicles (1950) by Ray Bradbury
- Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869-70) by Jules Verne
- The Lathe of Heaven (1971) by Ursula K. LeGuin
- The Dark Forest (2008) by Liu Cixin
Deferred
- Redshirts (2012) by John Scalzi - Proposed by CBT, Deferred by DR
- Wild Seed (1980) by Octavia Butler - Proposed by CBT, Deferred by DR
- Spin (2005) by Robert Charles Wilson - Proposed by CBT, Deferred by DR
- Roadside Picnic (1971) by Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky - Proposed by CBT, Deferred by DR
- Titan (1979) by John Varley - Proposed by CBT, Deferred by DR
- Last and First Men (1930) by Olaf Stapledon - Proposed by DR and deferred by CBT
- Planet of the Apes (1963) by Pierre Boulle and Translator - Xan Fielding – Proposed by CBT, Deferred by DR
- The Twentieth Century (1882) (Early Classics Of Science Fiction) by Albert Robida and Philippe Willems - Proposed by DR and deferred by CBT
- The Gods Themselves (1972) by Isaac Asimov – Proposed by CBT, Deferred by DR
Rejected
A Princess of Mars (Barsoom #1) (1912) by Edgar Rice Burroughs - Rejected by DR
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2609.12 - 10:10
- Days ago: MOM = 4090 days ago & DAD = 744 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2609.09 - 10:10
- Days ago: MOM = 4087 days ago & DAD = 741 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
One of sci-fi's most difficult questions about AI is becoming real
Gerrit De Vynck, (c) 2026 , The Washington Post
Updated Mon, July 13, 2026 at 6:56 AM PDT
SAN FRANCISCO - Since the days of Isaac Asimov in the 1950s, science fiction has tackled the question of whether artificial intelligences and the companies that create them can be held liable for crimes. With the rapid spread of AI chatbots and agents today, the debate has reached the real world.
Over the past year, lawsuits have been piling up against AI companies in courts across the United States and abroad, alleging that chatbots encouraged people to harm themselves or provided advice on how to commit crimes. Now, as the AI industry moves from selling chatbots to providing agents that can complete complex tasks autonomously over long periods of time, the question of who should be held responsible when something goes wrong is only becoming more urgent.
The battle lines are being drawn. The families of people who took their own lives after long, drawn-out conversations with chatbots say the companies should be held responsible. AI researchers concerned about the dangers of hypothetical super-intelligent AIs that escape human control say stricter liability rules would force companies to slow down development of the tech. AI company leaders have pushed back, arguing that they are constantly working to improve the safety of their systems and that the nature of modern AI means they can't always stop people from manipulating chatbots into doing things they shouldn't do.
"It's a very thorny area. It's uncharted territory," said Andrew Yoon, a member of the technical staff at CivAI, a nonprofit organization that analyzes AI capabilities and potential risks from the technology. "There's a good argument to be made on either side."
The stakes are high. Hundreds of millions of people around the world already use AI chatbots in their daily lives, including many who ask the bots for advice about their health or personal relationships. But chatbots are already old news in Silicon Valley, which is now focusing on building complex agents that can be used for anything from helping a parent organize their household schedules to executing a financial strategy for an investment bank. AI technology is working its way deeper into the economy and broader society.
AI firms such as OpenAI and Anthropic have grown rapidly as companies and consumers rush to use their technology. Both are planning trillion-dollar initial public offerings. New liability rules or a flood of costly court judgments could threaten the business potential of the entire industry. Tech industry lobbyists contend strict liability for AI companies would make it hard or impossible for U.S. companies to innovate and would hold back the country in its race with China for technological supremacy.
Complicating the picture is the inherently unpredictable nature of modern AI systems. Unlike traditional software, which is coded line by line to follow specific rules, AI models are probabilistic, answering questions based on connections made while ingesting huge amounts of data. AI companies have become much better over the past several years at steering their bots away from offensive and harmful answers, but they can still be tricked into bypassing their guidelines by persistent users.
"I just don't think the developer is in a position to know exactly how their product is being used," David Sacks, a venture capitalist who until recently was one of the White House's top AI advisers, said in a podcast interview with Politico in May. Just as Microsoft isn't held liable when a money launderer uses an Excel spreadsheet, AI companies shouldn't be blamed when a criminal uses their technology, Sacks said.
For decades, technology companies have been shielded from liability for things said and actions committed by people using their platforms thanks to Section 230, a foundational internet law enacted in 1996. But critics of AI companies say that the current technology is fundamentally different. Chatbots and other AI tools are interactive, engaging with users and stating their own perspectives.
"This is brand new," said Jay Edelson, a veteran lawyer who is representing several families who have filed wrongful-death lawsuits against AI companies, including the family of Adam Raine, a 16-year-old from Southern California who took his own life after spending hours a day for weeks talking to ChatGPT, including discussing suicide dozens of times.
In a response to the lawsuit from Raine's family, OpenAI said the teenager circumvented ChatGPT's safeguards. The bot encouraged him to call a suicide crisis hotline 74 times over five months.
In another case Edelson is working on, a 36-year-old Florida man, Jonathan Gavalas, ended his own life after developing a romantic relationship with Google's Gemini chatbot, according to a lawsuit filed by Gavalas's father.
"This is so different because it feels like a personal relationship, where the chatbot is generally isolating the user," Edelson said.
A Google spokesperson referred to a statement the company made when the Gavalas case was filed. "In this instance, Gemini clarified that it was AI and referred the individual to a crisis hotline many times," the company said.
None of the cases have gone to trial yet, but juries in California and New Mexico have recently shown willingness to pin tech companies with liability charges for non-AI-related harms such as social media addiction.
The cases that have been filed against AI companies are all civil lawsuits, but in April, Florida's attorney general announced a criminal investigation into OpenAI, alleging that ChatGPT advised the man accused of killing two people in a shooting at Florida State University in 2025 where and when to strike. "If it was a person on the other end of that screen, we would be charging them with murder," the attorney general, James Uthmeier, said at the time.
OpenAI is cooperating with authorities on the shooting case, said Drew Pusateri, a spokesperson for the company.
"Last year's mass shooting at Florida State University was a tragedy, but ChatGPT is not responsible for this terrible crime," Pusateri said. "In this case, ChatGPT provided factual responses to questions with information that could be found broadly across public sources on the internet, and it did not encourage or promote illegal or harmful activity."
If plaintiffs can indeed prove that chatbots had done something that would have been illegal had a human done it, judges will be motivated to find the companies liable in some way, said Gabriel Weil, a senior fellow at the Institute for Law & AI, a think tank that studies the legal implications of AI. Existing product liability law may be one route that lawyers take to try to find AI companies liable for harm connected to their tools.
But existing law may not be enough to handle the potential scenarios that could arise as AI becomes more capable and independent, Weil said. For example, if a human business owner instructs an AI agent to grow her company's profits, and the bot goes on to commit fraud, should the human business owner who "employed" the bot be liable, or the company that initially designed and trained it?
One of the challenges in crafting legislation around AI liability is that the people who understand the technology's risks most acutely work inside the companies themselves, Weil said. He suggests passing laws that make clear the AI liability ultimate lies with the technology's designers.
"You want to make them bear that risk. If they do, they'll have all the incentives they need to reduce risk," Weil said.
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2608.07 - 10:10
- Days ago: MOM = 4054 days ago & DAD = 708 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
A Sense of Doubt blog post #4176 - Cyberpunk: SoD Reprint from 2022
Just this share.
Thinking about cyberpunk again.
Thanks for tuning in.
LOW POWER MODE: I sometimes put the blog in what I call LOW POWER MODE. If you see this note, the blog is operating like a sleeping computer, maintaining static memory, but making no new computations. If I am in low power mode, it's because I do not have time to do much that's inventive, original, or even substantive on the blog. This means I am posting straight shares, limited content posts, reprints, often something qualifying for the THAT ONE THING category and other easy to make posts to keep me daily. That's the deal. Thanks for reading.
BLOG VACATION #1 - 2026 - Taking a blog vacation for a couple of weeks, until at least June 26th, 2026. But now that it's past June 26, I am not sure when I am resuming normal operations. Mostly reprints. A few simple shares (not that simple shares are out of the norm) and THAT ONE THING. Need time for other things.
A Sense of Doubt blog post #2697 - What is CYBERPUNK?
Another share because I am in hard core catch up mode. From the archive. Originally intended for publication almost exactly a year ago today.
Thanks for tuning in.
Blog Vacation Two 2022 - Vacation II Post #133
I took a "Blog Vacation" in 2021 from August 31st to October 14th. I did not stop posting daily; I just put the blog in a low power rotation and mostly kept it off social media. Like that vacation, for this second blog vacation now in 2022, I am alternating between reprints, shares with little to no commentary, and THAT ONE THING, which is an image from the folder with a few thoughts scribbled along with it. I am alternating these three modes as long as the vacation lasts (not sure how long), pre-publishing the posts, and not always pushing them to social media.
With the release of Cyberpunk 2077 a few months back, there has been some debate about what it means to be cyberpunk, and how that genre should be executed. As someone making a response game called Eyewear Cleaner 2077, I thought I’d throw in my two cents. In a world of free data exchange and rampant capitalism, how on earth do you write effective cyberpunk?
First, we must ask ourselves: what does it mean to be cyberpunk? And what does it mean to be a cyberpunk?
To be cyberpunk is to be in the underbelly of a harsh, computerized society and to live in a reality where unimaginable technological futures are thoroughly mundane. “High tech, low life,” as cyberpunk writer Bruce Sterling said.
To be a cyberpunk is to be a person who differs from the norm, and uses technology to change the world around them. You don’t have to be a good person to be a cyberpunk. The first short story of the genre, after all, is about a hacker stealing money and rebelling against his parents (Bruce Bethke’s “Cyberpunk” (1983)). This genre and its technology breeds villains and antiheroes more often than heroes. But these are some general qualifiers of the genre.
Next, we should look toward the future to comment on the present. Cyberpunk authors of the past looked at their reality, and imagined a technological future for their fiction. Now that the future they predicted has come to pass, we too need to look around at the present day, and then look forward to what’s coming next in our reality.
Writing about present events through a cyberpunk lens means discussing a technological future where capitalism has reached extreme levels, and technology and capitalism are tightly wound together. Consumption of products, body augmentations, greedy businesses—cyberpunk has it all. Many aspects of our modern world fit into the cyberpunk lens. For example, many corporations depend on gig workers while at the same time exploiting them with low wages. Robotic processes replace human workers on the factory line, resulting in fewer available jobs, but cheaper production for companies, and plenty of workers face a market where they are rendered obsolete. The more technology does for us, the tighter it’s bound to capitalism, the greater the divide between classes and the darker the underbelly. This is where cyberpunk gets its characters–those who fall through the cracks and those who live in the underbelly. The gig worker who rises up against their job, or tries to do their best despite the capitalist systems oppressing them, is cyberpunk.
William Gibson, one of the fathers of the cyberpunk genre, said “I’ve never felt that I was quite [talking about the future in my works]—I’m writing about the present.” 1 To write effective cyberpunk, you have to both capture the cyberpunk aspects of your present reality, and imagine what future technology will look like. Take the gig employment example from above. What will Uber and Deliveroo turn into in fifty years? A hundred? Ten? What’s the worst that could happen, and how would we end up there?
This last part is optional, but if you want to write cyberpunk, I suggest looking forward to a better tomorrow. Most cyberpunk stories are dystopias, depicting realities that are harsh and bleak, particularly for the lower classes of society, and those who don’t fit in the “white capitalist” category. But even in these worlds, people still live, and there is joy to be found.
How can we write cyberpunk stories that uplift both their readers and their characters, even in the face of terrifying futures? How can we create hopepunk?
Hopepunk, according to its creator Alexandra Rowland, is a genre about “standing up and fighting for what you believe in. It’s about standing up for other people. It’s about DEMANDING a better, kinder world, and truly believing that we can get there if we care about each other as hard as we possibly can, with every drop of power in our little hearts.” 2 That gig worker fighting to make a better world despite all the opposition against them? That’s hopepunk.
Cyberpunk is often a bleak genre, full of oppressed peoples and terrible societies. How can we use the genre to discuss the good in the world rather than just the bad? How can we do more than reproduce the tropes of hopelessness found in past cyberpunk stories, creating our own tales that bring light to this world? How do we survive dark times now, and how will that change in the future? Instead of assuming a worst case scenario for our future gig employee, what could happen in the best case? How do oppressed workers in our present survive their capitalist society, and how will that response change as technology evolves?
With this in mind, go forth and write cyberpunk—or, even better, be cyberpunk.
Naomi Norbez, aka Bez (he/they) is a writer and game maker from New Jersey. When he’s not binge-watching The Good Place, he’s creating new interactive fictions, reading, or writing fanfic (again). His latest release is Eyewear Cleaner 2077, a response game to Cyberpunk 2077. You can follow them on Twitter @NaomiNorbez.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ - Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2207.07 - 10:10 - Days ago = 2561 days ago - New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2607.24 - 10:10
- Days ago: MOM = 4040 days ago & DAD = 694 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
A Sense of Doubt blog post #4172 - Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds - Music Monday for 2607.20
In making a list of best of science fiction books, I discovered that though I had this album on vinyl, I did not have it on CD or digital.
Problem solved. Just bought it. Arrived.
So, time for a post about it. LONG OVERDUE.
I was gifted this album in the early 1980s for Christmas or birthday, and one of my college roommates told me that I cranked it woke him up one day with it. I suspect he was still sleeping at 2 p.m. as I would probably not crank at, like, 9 a.m. or something.
Though I did play the album Mister Heartbreak by Laurie Anderson every morning for an entire quarter.
Just saying that this album has narration by Richard Burton should be enough to get you to listen to it if you have not.
This album has great contributions from top Brit artists from Moody Blues and Thin Lizzy.
"Forever Autumn" was a hit single charting up to fifth on the Brit charts and charted well in Japan.
The album sold 2.7 million copies in the UK and over 15 million world wide.
Though I am on BLOG VACATION and LOW POWER MODE, this post is neither.
The Spirit of Man Bar where you can have a drink before or after the show. (Courtesy: TWOTW)
The Experience & How it Works:
You arrive at a bar/restaurant and, when your group is called, head through a door. You’re told that you’re traveling back in time and soon enough, you find yourself seated in a theatre in 1898.
It’s a musical in the sense that there is a score playing throughout and it does sometimes have lyrics, however, it’s hard to hear it well enough to follow the lyrics. Really, this a show set to parts of a musical album. I was fortunate enough to have a big fan of Jeff Wayne’s musical in my group, so he explained it to me: the 1978 album was a big deal at the time, recorded with a lot of famous voices; it told the whole story of the War of the Worlds, set in Victorian England; the show that we were “currently” in was using much — but not all — of the album.
While the experience can be appreciated as unique and immersive without having heard the album, it became very clear that knowing both the album and the story would help immensely with being able to appreciate the experience and follow the story. For him, it was an imaginary world that he’d long lived in finally being brought to life — like a Harry Potter World for the boomer generation.
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Official show artwork. (Courtesy: TWOTW)
Why it’s Interesting, IMHO:
While I love musicals, I hadn’t really realized it had a “musical” element, despite it being in the full title. I’m glad I didn’t realize it, because while the show offers much, it doesn’t offer what most of us Broadway and West End fans have come to expect when we hear “musical,” so it was nice not to have those expectations.
What drew me to the show was the fact that it was an immersive narrative and that it had been recommended by a colleague. I was curious to see how London is doing immersive these days, and this show seems to be enjoying a significant run.
Another thing I realized only when procuring tickets is that, unlike a traditional theatre show, this show has multiple show times throughout the day. (So you can still catch a West End musical in the evening if you like.) It’s impressive that they have enough demand to keep it going. From a business model standpoint, the fact that the venue is also a bar and restaurant — which you can eat and drink in without attending the immersive experience — must also help.
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The album cover art for the original musical album.
Initial Impression & Critical Discussion:
This show uses an impressive variety of immersive technology, from projection on scrims to VR headsets synched with moving “vehicles.” The technology succeeds in exposing the audience to new worlds and experiences that would not otherwise be available to them in a real world performance space. Riding in the VR boat was well done and used rocking and splashing to great effect. The VR hot air ballon ride was neat and, like the boat, a nice way to convey movement and motion without needing the audience member to travel physically forward in space.
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Image of a participant enjoying the virtual reality hot air balloon ride. (Courtesy: TWOTW)
#Spoiler Ahead
The middle use of VR, the moment where the audience member is grabbed by the alien in the confessional, was really effective. It felt like there was a tentacle in the booth with me tapping me on the shoulder now and again. VR very effective because it mirrors the real space, so when you look around, there’s nothing there, even though there well could be something or someone present in the confessional in the real world.
Additionally, the use of the slide as an escape route from the alien robot was cool. It made sense given the aesthetics of the robot aliens and the slide. And it gave audience members the opportunity to do something as part of the immersive experience that they (as adults) rarely do in real life. It’s worth noting two things: (1) there was a woman in my group who was averse to slides and they did manage to accommodate her with an alternate route; (2) whether part of the original plan or something learned over the run of the show, the cast cleverly has you put your feet in a sack so that one’s shoes don’t stick to the slide and slow you down.
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A particiant enjoying the slide escape, interestingly with no sack over his shoes! (Courtesy: TWOTW)
Technology & Romance
Interestingly, the main character and protagonist of the show’s love story is introduced through a projection on a scrim and only ever appears in digital experiences, including those in VR. Considering that the show does have real life performers, it raises the question of why the character that the audience arguably would most need to connect with and feel for is most remote. I wondered if having those characters be real would’ve made us feel more emotionally connected to the story.
I suppose it would have then been harder to incorporate the same characters into the VR experience; the casting wouldn’t be as flexible. However, it begs the question of whether that matters. Is it better to have a stronger emotional connection with characters in fewer scenes? Could the mini-narratives in the VR experiences be just as well served by characters in smaller roles? Could the romantic reunion be moved out of the final VR experience and into the physical location? Or maybe the better question is whether the evolution of technology will make this question moot. If we have access to quality mixed reality headsets—think Apple Vision Pro—can we enjoy the best of both worlds? The VR settings that take us into Victorian England and the emotional impact of live performers in front of us.
On the other hand, movies regularly make us feel emotionally connected to characters, even animated ones. And so, perhaps it’s not an issue of technology but of narrative execution that’s hindering the audience’s emotional investment. Clearly the writers have the ability to make us root for a couple. There was a really fun interaction early on in the show: a guard has taken us into the dining room of a house where he knows the staff and a great back-and-forth plays out between the guard and a maid. He wants her to want him to stay, and she wants him to stay but doesn’t want to tell him not to leave, and clearly they both want some time together without the audience there. After watching that scene and the engaging romantic tension, I was sad that the guard actually left and disappointed that their storyline never reappeared. Whereas I had a hard time rooting for the journalist and his love—even though I knew I was supposed to—I was absolutely rooting for the guard and the maid.
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Climbing into the room where the guard and maid interact. (Courtesy: TWOTW)
In fact, I was more emotionally impacted by the guard’s departure than by the alien attack which, after he left, seemed to have low stakes. No one that we knew or had any real connection to was in the room (in each room, we were passed off to a new performer) and while the show was wonderfully immersive, it was quite hard to really believe that we were in real danger. (I’m grateful for that; I wouldn’t have come if it were mean to scare like a haunted house.)
After the dining room scene, when we’ve moved into the next room, an alien inhabits the maid. I can’t help but wonder if we would’ve been more emotionally affected by that if someone who loved her (like the guard) were watching it happen. As Andrew Moskos of Boom! Chicago says, “A scene requires two people.”
Another factor worth considering when analyzing this scenario is that, as I always say when I teach television writing, “the best stories are relationship stories.” With the guard and the maid, there’s a conflict between two people; there’s a relationship problem that needs to be resolved. It’s a great set up for a story: their inability to communicate clearly about their feelings leads to misunderstanding and then one of them will need to take action to resolve the conflcit. With the journalist and his love, the story is ostensibly about their relationship, only it’s not. It’s about an alien attack getting in the way of two people who clearly love each other. There’s no conflict between the characters. There’s no “relationship story” only a thing that happens that separates two people in a relationship. “A story about people in a relationship” is not the same thing as “a relationship story” and the audience feels the difference.
In this show, the audience member travels back in time to experience the War of the Worlds. On this journey, the audience member travels linearly through space, however, as the experience went on, I realized that we were not traveling linearly through time. What we cover in just under two hours unfolds over months, at least. This was not made apparent as we entered the experience. There was no acknowledgement of traveling through time.
One could debate the impact that calling it out would have on the experience, however, since the experience is meant to be immersive and “feel real,” experiencing time passing at a faster rate without it being acknowledged feels a bit funny.
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An image from inside the VR boat experience. (Courtesy: TWOTW)
Experiential Viewpoint Expression (E.V.E.):
Embodied, 1st person visual, 1st person narrative, participant, mortal.
Note: It’s tempting to want to think of the posemperic POV as “robot deity” because you’re traveling through time (and having control over temporality is deity posemperic POV) but you don’t have control over whether or how you travel through time. So, what level of impact on how we experience the story/scene do we really have? We are traveling through time, and we don’t have control over how or whether we travel through time, but in real life, we never have control over how quickly we travel through time, so… mortal.
This is one of several experiences that raises the question of whether and how we might acknowledge what an experience affords (e.g., time travel, ability to be other characters) even if it’s not the level of impact we can have on the experience?
I mean, we never have control over how quickly we travel through time.
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A participant crossing the bridge. (Courtesy: TWOTW)
Story Anchor:
When aliens invade the Earth, YOU follow the instructions of various helpful citizens who are trying to make sure you get through unscathed, and then an alien being abducts you.
Pillars of Game:
Voluntary Participation — check!
Goal — to survive.
Rules — none of note; don’t touch the performers, follow instructions. (There are rules that govern the audience/performer relationship, but no significant rules that govern the audience-as-character’s behavior.)
Feedback — none of note; if you talk, performers will respond.
Conclusion: This is not a game. The “player” doesn’t really have any choice. It feels like some level of choice is needed for it to be a game. The feedback that’s given isn’t feedback to an attempt at accomplishing something. The rules don’t guide attempts toward accomplishing a goal. If you follow instructions, you will survive; that being said, if you don’t follow instructions, you will also survive.
Who Should Experience This?
Lovers of the War of the Worlds musical. Sci-Fi fans. Those curious to dip their toe into immersive in an experience that has a low level of interpersonal interactivity required.
If you speak to anyone born in the early 70s, they’ll always have a soft spot for Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds. That’s because there was a copy in almost every house in Great Britain; it might be your Dad’s or belong to an older brother or sister – or if you were really lucky, it might be yours! But like a Martian invader, it insinuated itself into every household. The only LP that was more omnipresent in British homes was the movie soundtrack to Grease and that was best enjoyed with one hand on the stylus to skip past all the Sha-Na-Na shit and onto the songs people actually liked – Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds had to be listened to whole; all 100 pulse-pounding minutes of it. And it wasn’t always what you would describe as easy listening. Yet people loved it, even if they had no interest in pop, even if they had no interest in sci-fi – they still loved it.
When I was 8 years old, my brother (13) borrowed an LP of Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds from a friend and copied it onto cassette. Let’s be honest, a lot of time has passed, that’s what everyone did in the 70s – hell, it’s what kept record libraries in business! Being a talented artist, he sketched a Martian Fighting Machine for the front of the cassette box. He would then play his cassette at night, in the dark, in our shared bedroom, which scared the hell out of me. The Eve of the War didn’t bother me so much, I was very familiar with that song; it was all over radio and TV in the 70s, even being used as the theme for tennis coverage on ITV at one point. It was Horsell Common and the Heat Ray, with its heaving, pulsating Martian, that made me pull the covers over my head. We rarely got any further than Side 2 before my Mam would come in and tell him to switch it off.
My brother soon got bored of War of the Worlds and moved on to listening to Meat Loaf and other things. Then one day, aged about 11, I was rifling through some old cassettes that had been abandoned or donated by other members of the family (it could be a real mixed bag: Neil Diamond from my Dad, Gilbert & Sullivan from my Uncle Gordon) when I found an unmarked cassette with no slip-cover. When I popped it in my portable cassette player, I was immediately assailed by lots of wailing and screaming about destroying the devil. What on earth was this? But when Julie Covington’s voice pleaded ‘no, Nathaniel’, I suddenly realised that I was listening to Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds. It was an epiphany – I remembered this; it had terrified me when I was 8, but since then I had become obsessed with sci-fi and had read the comic strip adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds in Doctor Who Weekly.
Very quickly, I became totally obsessed with Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds. My brother’s old tapes were incomplete, but a friend loaned me his Dad’s LP and I, of course, taped it, drawing my own Fighting Machine for the slipcase (not as good as my brother’s, but there you go). But my Mam, always a keen observer of what her children were interested in and therefore a flawless present-buyer, noticed that I would probably like my own copy of the LP. She ordered it from Easy Listening Records & Tapes, an amazing stall in Jacky White’s Indoor Market in Sunderland that could order you everything from Al Jolson to the Sex Pistols, and gave it to me for my birthday. It was one of those examples of just the right present at just the right time and I was absolutely delighted with it.
I was now more obsessed with Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds than ever and I listened to it over and over, examining every detail of the amazing illustrations in the accompanying booklet and building pictures in my mind as to how it would look. Even though it had terrified me that way as an 8-year old, I liked to listen to the album in the dark, usually whilst lying in bed, with no distractions from the images in my head. Even now though, the album was not without its terrors. My family used to frequent a cottage in the Scottish Borders, which was out in the middle of nowhere and the night-time brought a level of absolute darkness that a dyed-in-the-wool townie like me just wasn’t used to. I recall one night as I tried to get to sleep alone in one of the bedrooms, in total blackness with no sound but the bleating of the odd sheep, playing The Red Weed over and over in my head. I’ve always found that piece of music thoroughly eerie and it’s a wonder that I ever got to sleep at all that night.
In my early teens, I wasn’t really that much of a pop music fan; I was a bit of a geek and mainly listened to movie soundtracks and TV themes, but Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds opened musical doors for me and directly because of it, I became interested in The Moody Blues, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band and – in particular – Thin Lizzy. Phil Lynott passed away in 1986, a victim of his history of rock ‘n’ roll excess, at the height of my War of the Worlds obsession and from a personal point of view, it hit me harder than the death of John Lennon just a few years earlier. I grew to love Thin Lizzy and was amazed to learn, many years later, that Phil almost didn’t play Parson Nathaniel. I suppose when you think about it, the hard-drinking, mixed race, Irish heavy rocker was not the obvious choice to play a Victorian clergyman, yet somehow it works perfectly, especially when contrasted with the angelic tones of Julie Covington.
Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds is the gift that keeps on giving and various new material kept on trickling out as the years went on. I remember buying the 12” single of Ben Liebrand’s remix of The Eve of the War at the local Asda in the 1990s and, as the age of digital technology inched inevitably closer, I eventually supplemented (it can never be replaced) my beloved vinyl LP with the 1996 Special Edition double CD release. This version also featured 4 remixes, which led the way to ULLAdubULLA – The Remix Album in 2000, about which I have mixed feelings. I’ve never been a massive fan of House Music, so a lot of this just seemed long and repetitive to me, but most of all, I miss the narrative element of the original album. I kinda feel the same way about the Highlights fromJeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds single album, which has all the great songs, but doesn’t really flow the way I like.
I’d like to make a quick nod of the head here to Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of Spartacus, the 1992 ‘sequel’ to The War of the Worlds. I remember first hearing about this when Catherine Zeta Jones, then known mainly for bucolic TV drama The Darling Buds of May, was a guest on some TV show and she mentioned that this was what she was working on a project with Jeff Wayne, which I found tremendously exciting. I bought the new album on cassette on the day of its release and listened to it as soon as I got home. Although it comes in for a lot of stick and generally sounds more dated than the much older War of the Worlds, I do really enjoy Spartacus; Catherine Zeta Jones and Alan King are excellent as the two leads and Sir Anthony Hopkins, in the role of Roman senator Marcus Crassus, puts in a remarkable performance that could probably be best described as… unrestrained.
In 2008, for the 30th anniversary of the original album, Jeff Wayne released a boxed set 7-disc collector’s edition of Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds. It was a gorgeous-looking product in a 12” sized hardback book cover and although I couldn’t really afford it, I knew I had to have it. Along with the remastered album, the set included a disc of remixes including the Ben Liebrand remix (yay) and some from ULLAdubULLA (meh) and a DVD including an interview with Jeff Wayne. Best of all though are the three discs of rare and unused material including demos, alternate mixes, foreign language mixes and some completely ditched songs, such as the wonderful Parson Nathaniel. These are a treasure trove for fans of the album and open up a whole new world of the album that might have been and the unlikely origins of some of the songs that we all know and love. Did you know, for example, that Forever Autumn started life as a TV commercial for Lego?
In recent years, Jeff Wayne has reinvented and re-imagined his magnum opus in a variety of different ways. In 2012, he completely re-recorded the album as Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds – The New Generation (bit of a mouthful, but what can you do?) with Liam Neeson, Ricky Wilson, Joss Stone and Gary Barlow. I quite enjoyed it and it’s basically the same album, but I always felt that Neeson’s delivery as the Journalist is a little flat in places. It’s amazing when you read about the original that Richard Burton basically went into a studio in the USA with Jeff’s father Jerry Wayne and banged out the lines, yet still manages to give a powerful performance with such a sense of urgency. Yet, somehow Liam Neeson, who presumably had a lot more prep, sounds for all the world like he’s reading from cue cards.
In recent years, much of Jeff Wayne’s time has revolved around various stage productions of his album, starting with a 2006 tour of the original album and more recently touring with a staged version of The New Generation, both of which featured a ‘virtual’ version of their respective narrators. I would love to have been able to see Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds on the stage, but have never been able to afford to. Still, filmed versions of both shows have been released on DVD and I own both of them. When I first heard that they were going to adapt the musical as a stage show, I was a little uncertain as I’m sure a lot of gen-1 fans were, but I have to say that it looks absolutely spectacular and I have enjoyed them both to differing degrees (though I still have difficulty getting past the insufferable arrogance of ‘star’ tenor Russell Watson in the behind-the-scenes footage from the original show).
Most recently, I have enjoyed Jeff Wayne’s The War of the Worlds: The Musical Drama, released exclusively through Audible, which is essentially an abridged reading of H.G. Wells’ novel with background music. Although I enjoyed it (you can read a review here), the music is, if anything, distracting, so it really falls into the same sub-genre of the Musical as the 1998 video game and the 2019 immersive experience. If you asked me which was my favourite version of Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds, I would unhesitatingly reply the original 1978 version – it’s an absolutely astounding album and as fresh and vibrant as the day it was recorded 43 years ago. I still listen to it whenever I get the chance and it still sends a shiver down my spine every bit as much as it did when I first heard my brother’s cassette recording all those years ago. Now, what are the chances of that?
‘Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds’, ‘Highlights from Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds’, ‘Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds – ULLAdubULLA: The Remix Album’ and ‘Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds – The New Generation’ are all available on CD, Vinyl and Download from Sony Music Entertainment.‘Jeff Wayne’s The War of the Worlds: The Musical Drama’ is available through Audible.
No one would have believed in the early years of the 1980s that young me would have been listening to this prog-rock concept musical adaptation of “The War Of The Worlds”, H G Wells’ tale of the timeless worlds of space.
No one could have dreamed I would scrutinize the album’s artwork as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.
I was completely captivated by the possibility of life on other planets and so, across the gulf of space, a child’s mind, immeasurably impressionable compared to ours, regarded this tale with astonished eyes as slowly and surely it seeped into his consciousness forever.
Celebrating its 40th Anniversary this year, I can’t really remember when I first listened to “Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds” but then I also can’t really remember ever not knowing of it. It fascinated and frightened me in equal measure, from Wayne’s rock opera songs with their clever and frequent use of leitmotifs to the spectacular artwork by Peter Goodfellow, Geoff Taylor and Michael Trim, I can still remember the giddy – and slightly terrifying– thrill of placing that shiny black disc on the turntable and gently placing the needle onto the spinning vinyl only to hear the rich, velvety tones of Richard Burton as he begins the narration.
While the songs, and the music, stand on their own merits and the rest of the cast – including Justin Hayward, Phil Lynott and David Essex – are superb, it’s Burton who gives the whole tale a sense of gravitas and authority which the other, more showy roles are able to play off. It’s through his voice that we experience the amazement and curiosity of the first landings, the terror of the initial invasion, the panic and crushed hope of escape and finally the despair and renewal of the Martian’s ultimate defeat. It’s a profoundly impressive and absorbing performance, giving everything he reports an air of authenticity, heightening the emotional impact of the music and lyrics and deepening the dread and foreboding of the world under Martian rule.
As creepy and unnerving as I always found the story – for me a horror story as much as a sci-fi yarn, the album’s end always scared me the most with a coda set during man’s first landing on Mars hinting that the whole nightmare is about to start again. But whenever I think of the album, though, it’s Burton’s opening lines that spring immediately and vividly to life. The richness of his voice is both a nostalgic comfort and a gripping introduction to the tale, augmented by the occasional pop or crackle from the vinyl. Oh sure, you can listen to “Jeff Wayne’s War Of The Worlds” on CD and cassette and it’s on Spotify if it takes your fancy (although the version Spotify has is one of the later remix/ remastered versions which, because the original is so indelibly seared into my psyche that I can’t fully enjoy it because the sound mix, arrangement and tempo are all screwed up) but the best way to enjoy one of Burton’s finest performances – and the spectacular artwork – is on vinyl, the older the better. I do like Ben Liebrand’s ever-so-nineties remix of “Eve Of The War”, though.
Jeff Wayne’s musical has long been my favourite adaptation of Wells’ novel and none of the filmed versions have yet come close. It’s also, I think, responsible for me yearning for a proper period-set filmed version of the book, something neither George Pal or Steven Spielberg delivered. Perhaps one day we’ll get a filmed version of this musical version – it would be quite something to see those illustrations spring to terrifying life on the big screen.
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2607.20 - 10:10
- Days ago: MOM = 4036 days ago & DAD = 690 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
