Escape Artists
Escape Pod => Episode Comments => Topic started by: eytanz on September 13, 2015, 02:24:19 PM
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EP503: Undeleted (http://escapepod.org/2015/09/12/ep503-undeleted/)
by Aidan Doyle (http://www.aidandoyle.net/)
Read by Austin Learned (https://twitter.com/alearnedman00)
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(http://escapepod.org/wp-images/podcast-mini4.gif) Listen to this week’s Escape Pod! (http://traffic.libsyn.com/escapepod/EP503__Undeleted.mp3)
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I loved this. Maybe partly because I have almost 20 years in the software industry, and I can see the day coming when people will think that because I don't currently know the latest tech, I'm washed up. Hasn't happened yet, though.
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I could not get past the narrator's terrible attempts at a Japanese accent. Seriously just sounded like a racist caricature, varying from a Ken Watanabe impersonation to the yellow-face actor in the WII propaganda film "My Japan" (I would link it, but apparently I am not allowed to post links).
Seriously, this was so offensive it drew me out of 10 years of listening and lurking. Could not make it more than 3 minutes into the actual story before having to find some music to listen to.
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I was wondering about the accent. Would love to hear from Japanese speakers on that one.
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I liked this one! It felt like it could have happened in the background of Snow Crash or the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy, both of which I recently listened to (well, listened to again in the case of the first). It was classic cyberpunk, but very personal. I particularly liked the fact that we got to see a story of an older man - someone usually marginalized and cast out - getting one over on a young punk. Well done!
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I could not get past the narrator's terrible attempts at a Japanese accent. Seriously just sounded like a racist caricature, varying from a Ken Watanabe impersonation to the yellow-face actor in the WII propaganda film "My Japan" (I would link it, but apparently I am not allowed to post links).
Seriously, this was so offensive it drew me out of 10 years of listening and lurking. Could not make it more than 3 minutes into the actual story before having to find some music to listen to.
The narrator is half American, half Asian, though not Japanese. It was a lot less of a caricature than I could have mustered.
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The narrator is half American, half Asian, though not Japanese. It was a lot less of a caricature than I could have mustered.
By half American do you mean half white? They aren't the same thing.
I think the choice to have the narrator read the characters with Japanese accents was unfortunate. They were all speaking their native language so that's not the way they were hearing each other. The task of giving distinctive voices to a variety of characters while also giving them all the same accent (which is not your own) is almost unimaginatively difficult.
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The narrator is half American, half Asian, though not Japanese. It was a lot less of a caricature than I could have mustered.
By half American do you mean half white? They aren't the same thing.
I think the choice to have the narrator read the characters with Japanese accents was unfortunate. They were all speaking their native language so that's not the way they were hearing each other. The task of giving distinctive voices to a variety of characters while also giving them all the same accent (which is not your own) is almost unimaginatively difficult.
Woah,
Let's not jump to conclusions, and don't forget what happens when you make assumptions.
My children are half American, half European, that by no mean makes them white. That refers to nationality, not race. Half American, half Asian also refers to nationality, not race. As the comment was directed toward an accent which was language specific and not race specific.
They are two continents not two races and there are many races in America and in Asia.
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I could not get past the narrator's terrible attempts at a Japanese accent. Seriously just sounded like a racist caricature, varying from a Ken Watanabe impersonation to the yellow-face actor in the WII propaganda film "My Japan" (I would link it, but apparently I am not allowed to post links).
Seriously, this was so offensive it drew me out of 10 years of listening and lurking. Could not make it more than 3 minutes into the actual story before having to find some music to listen to.
Let's not jump to the conclusion that the reader was trying to be offensive. I live in Germany, do you know how many bad, fake German accents there are out there? Actually let's go one further, did you know that people in the North speak totally different than people in the South? Did you know that you can easily distinguish north German from Bavarian from Swiss From Austrian and that all of these regions sound different when speaking? They may even sound different when they speak English, I don't know. I've never studied it.
Let's cut the reader some slack, as I am sure he wasn't doing it on purpose to offend anyone.
P.S. I read Winnie the Pooh to my daughter all the time, slaughtering the English accents, but I don't deserve to be compared to anti-British propaganda from the American Revolution.
*sings Yankee-doodle.
P.P.S. The Disney version of Winnie the Pooh has US American accents, and I find that way more offensive to A.A. Milne.
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The narrator is half American, half Asian, though not Japanese. It was a lot less of a caricature than I could have mustered.
By half American do you mean half white? They aren't the same thing.
Woah,
Let's not jump to conclusions, and don't forget what happens when you make assumptions.
I'm not jumping to conclusions. It's a question. The problem is that "half American" is completely meaningless in that context.
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I disagree with Alasdair's interpretation of the story. I think that as a result of misremembering what the wife said at the airport he significantly underrates her intelligence. The wife doesn't say "I'm so stupid," she says "I'm so useless." This is a direct reference to the snippet of conversation Kentaro overheard when he was in Saito's home.
“How many times have I told you not to forget to set the alarm?” Saito said. “I did set it,” a woman replied. “Then why is it off? You’re so useless!”
The wife knew she had set the alarm but Saito ignored what she said. Either at that time or later she realized there was a strange pair of shoes in the house but because Saito had been so rude to her she didn't tell him about them. There's no doubt in my mind that at the airport the wife realized from Kentaro's shoes that he was the man who had broken into their house. A useful wife would have alerted her husband. But because Saito called her useless she chose to be useless. She knew from the earlier incident that Kentaro wasn't going to do anything violent so her silence wouldn't put Saito in danger.
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To weigh in on the growing controversy, have two points:
1) I know that Escape Artists has the best of intentions. They have clearly put forth huge effort to find native speakers for languages and dialects and create an inclusive environment in their stories.
2) In this case, the accent was probably a mistake, both because the characters were speaking their own language (personally, I think the "if they are speaking whatever, but it's for an English-speaking audience, we'll just have them speaking English with a whatever accent" trope is pretty dumb - I'd rather they just speak English so that their words will be available to the audience in the same way that they are available to the other characters) and because the narrator's attempt at an accent seems to have ticked some folks off.
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The narrator is half American, half Asian, though not Japanese. It was a lot less of a caricature than I could have mustered.
By half American do you mean half white? They aren't the same thing.
Woah,
Let's not jump to conclusions, and don't forget what happens when you make assumptions.
I'm not jumping to conclusions. It's a question. The problem is that "half American" is completely meaningless in that context.
First, I actually think it's only meaningful in this context since Americans of any lineage have a significant chance of speaking the same standard American English. Where as "white", "red" and "brown" mean nothing in terms of natural accent.
Second, I don't know the narrator's flavor of American, "half American, half Asian, though not Japanese" is actually a direct quote from an email from the narrator because I asked, knowing that no matter if it was done in Japanese by someone in Japan some anime fanatic was going to freak out. Unfortunately, I know I'm not a good judge of the quality of an Asian accent unless it's so over the top as to be audio blackface, which this isn't by a long shot.
I made an honest attempt to be authentic enough to add something to the story. Now I know not to expect a call from a reporter at Asian Accent Aficionado Magazine. Thanks for saving me the time of waiting by the phone. :D
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I disagree with Alasdair's interpretation of the story. I think that as a result of misremembering what the wife said at the airport he significantly underrates her intelligence. The wife doesn't say "I'm so stupid," she says "I'm so useless." This is a direct reference to the snippet of conversation Kentaro overheard when he was in Saito's home.
“How many times have I told you not to forget to set the alarm?” Saito said. “I did set it,” a woman replied. “Then why is it off? You’re so useless!”
The wife knew she had set the alarm but Saito ignored what she said. Either at that time or later she realized there was a strange pair of shoes in the house but because Saito had been so rude to her she didn't tell him about them. There's no doubt in my mind that at the airport the wife realized from Kentaro's shoes that he was the man who had broken into their house. A useful wife would have alerted her husband. But because Saito called her useless she chose to be useless. She knew from the earlier incident that Kentaro wasn't going to do anything violent so her silence wouldn't put Saito in danger.
This is how I understood it, too.
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Hi everyone,
I'm the author of the story. (This is my first post on the forums). Thank you very much the comments!
I thought for the most part the narrator did a good job with what could be a difficult story to read, but I would have preferred it if the characters weren't given exaggerated accents (even though it does make it easier to distinguish who is speaking). Since they're speaking Japanese and we're getting an English translation, a "neutral" accent would have probably worked better in this case.
I loved this. Maybe partly because I have almost 20 years in the software industry, and I can see the day coming when people will think that because I don't currently know the latest tech, I'm washed up. Hasn't happened yet, though.
I'm in a similar position career wise. I like to think of Undeleted as a computer programmer reimagining of Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven. :)
I remember overhearing a conversation on a train between boys that looked around 10 years old. One was complaining that it was so difficult to teach his grandparents to do something as "simple as using a smartphone".
The wife knew she had set the alarm but Saito ignored what she said. Either at that time or later she realized there was a strange pair of shoes in the house but because Saito had been so rude to her she didn't tell him about them. There's no doubt in my mind that at the airport the wife realized from Kentaro's shoes that he was the man who had broken into their house. A useful wife would have alerted her husband. But because Saito called her useless she chose to be useless.
Yes. :)
One of my friends in Japan had the situation where ambulance officers came to his friend's apartment when he was there. The officers took off their shoes before entering and this detail stuck with me.
I liked this one! It felt like it could have happened in the background of Snow Crash or the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy, both of which I recently listened to (well, listened to again in the case of the first). It was classic cyberpunk, but very personal. I particularly liked the fact that we got to see a story of an older man - someone usually marginalized and cast out - getting one over on a young punk. Well done!
Snow Crash is one of my favorite novels. :)
The idea of a yakuza mob boss retiring to become a Buddhist priest was inspired by a real world example.
I can't post links but if you google "Japanese underworld boss quits crime to turn Buddhist" there's a Guardian article about "Tadamasa Goto, one of Japan's most notorious underworld bosses, is to enter the Buddhist priesthood less than a year after his volatile behaviour caused a rift in the country's biggest crime syndicate."
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Mildly enjoyed it, but I lost my suspension of disbelief a few times. The biggest issue for me was the transition from the underdog to conquering hero seemed a little bit too quick and simple. Kentaro's search-engine-training-montage didn't really convince.
The other big thing was that Kentaro's internal model of his own competence seems out-of-whack.
If he was a "superhacker" then he would know that, without having spent significant time and effort in-prison (somehow), or since his release, he would be massively out of date. I used to be pretty good at that security side fifteen years back, but I've been focused on other stuff since. I would never in a million years think I would be competent to jump back into that arena without some remedial learning first. The technology and communities around the field evolve too fast. And I'm still "in" software development on a daily basis and haven't been locked up for thirty years.
So if Kentaro was a superhacker, he would never have gone into that initial meeting so unprepared and with such a poor understanding of his own skill level. If he wasn't a superhacker he wouldn't have been able to get "good" fast.
He might have gone in to that meeting desperate, not having an alternative, knowing he would likely fail, and hoping for loyalty from the old firm… but that wasn't the vibe I got from that initial meeting.
Other things that niggled for me.
* The SFnal elements felt tacked on to me. You could take a few years off the setting, change mom's illness, and the story would work just as well. Better even, because…
* Even with just the few extra years in the future the story is set in, it seems unlikely to me that the phone wouldn't have some kind of biometric security on the 2FA. Several of the devices in my home have fingerprint recognition right now. Why does the status conscious mob-boss have a retro phone? :–)
* In the same way it seems really unlikely that any sensible mob boss would be doing stuff on their home desktop. Criminals are already getting wise to things like key loggers — and this is another five/ten years in the future. The level of opsec for a major crime lord seems… poor ;-)
* I can't think of any international airport I've been in where I could have a reasonable chance of inserting myself into a specific part of the security queue. The plan relies on luck far too much.
* In the timeline, if Kentaro was in computer security, he would have been familiar with rainbow tables. They've been talked about since the 1980s. SQL injection attack since the 1990s. Again, Kentaro's level of competence and knowledge seems off.
None of these things completely ruined the story for me, but they kept popping me out of it so I could see the machinery (as it were).
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There was never any question in my mind of whether the wife recognized the shoes. Her choosing to ignore them, and what was going on, and her quiet mockery of her husband (and of her own resignation to her denigrated situation) when she said, "I'm so useless," was my favorite part of the story.
I liked that the protagonist was older, trying to fit into a culture where he'd lost touch. Although I was mildly bothered by the issues that jarred adrianh, I was able to forgive the training-montage aspect because as it turned out, Kintaro had to use physical means to accomplish his ends. Presumably the young boss is so cutting-edge with Internet crime that he has forgotten the importance of on-the-ground security (aside from the easily sidestepped alarm system).
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There was never any question in my mind of whether the wife recognized the shoes. Her choosing to ignore them, and what was going on, and her quiet mockery of her husband (and of her own resignation to her denigrated situation) when she said, "I'm so useless," was my favorite part of the story.
I liked that the protagonist was older, trying to fit into a culture where he'd lost touch. Although I was mildly bothered by the issues that jarred adrianh, I was able to forgive the training-montage aspect because as it turned out, Kintaro had to use physical means to accomplish his ends. Presumably the young boss is so cutting-edge with Internet crime that he has forgotten the importance of on-the-ground security (aside from the easily sidestepped alarm system).
Actually, my impression is that real-life infocrime often involves this kind of real world work. In a cost/risk/benefit analysis, it's often a lot easier to use some real world manipulations, when practical, to give you the access you need for the cyberattack to come.
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I'm one of those who couldn't get past the accented speech, either. Agree with the above comments that since they're all speaking Japanese to each other, they all hear each other's accents as "not foreign," so the accents are superfluous. Foreignizing the accents of people who all speak and understand a language fluently is a big peeve of mine in audiobooks and podcasts. If the story had been about Japanese characters all speaking English, there would be a reason to have the accent. Add onto this the issue that I didn't even recognize the accents were supposed to be Japanese until the yazuka was mentioned.
That said, I didn't take it as anyone trying to be intentionally offensive or trying to make fun of Japanese people. But things can offend whether the offense is intentional or not.
I took a break because I was so distracted by the accent. This was my first listen to Escapepod and it didn't leave a good impression (mostly because of the accent). I'll try to finish the ep later and download some random ones to see if the show's for me, as I've gotten strong recommendations from others.
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Mildly enjoyed it, but I lost my suspension of disbelief a few times. The biggest issue for me was the transition from the underdog to conquering hero seemed a little bit too quick and simple. Kentaro's search-engine-training-montage didn't really convince.
To be fair, his "hack" involved exactly zero programming. He plugged in an off-the-shelf hardware component to capture passwords, and he stole a phone to be able to authenticate his transaction. There's no reason to assume that a smart 15-year-old with no hacking experience couldn't have come up with this and had a fair chance of pulling it off.
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"There's no reason to assume that a smart 15-year-old with no hacking experience couldn't have come up with this and had a fair chance of pulling it off."
I can think of a LOT of reasons a 15 year old would not be able to pull this off.
For what it's worth, I have never met a 15 year old, especially one who might have the technical prowess to pull this off, who ever bothered to take their shoes off when they went into a house. Before your say, "But wait! That's a good thing! Then the shoes would not have been found by the wife!"
Yeees, but the 15 year old with shoes would have tracked mud all over the very clean interior, making it look like the gardener spilled loam out of the potted plant the gardener dragged throughout the house. Hardly inconspicuous.
I know this is how it works, as I have one of these 15 year old things in my house right now.
Other things a 15 year old would have done which would not have gone well in the breaking and entering scene:
1. They would have tripped over their shoelaces and fallen.
2. They would have brought their cat/gerbil/dog with them.
3. Their phone would have been continually beeping with incessant text messages as they tried to hide in the closet.
4. 5 "best friends" would have been waiting for them outside, trying to hide in the bushes but giggling too loudly not to be caught.
5. They would have found the X-box/Nintendo in the back room and would be playing "Call of Duty" as Saito came home.
I could go on...
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For what it's worth, I have never met a 15 year old, especially one who might have the technical prowess to pull this off, who ever bothered to take their shoes off when they went into a house.
Well, that's a cultural thing. I'm pretty sure most Japanese 15-year-olds would reflexively remove their shoes on entering a house.
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I did notice the accents, but don't want to pile on.
Overall I enjoyed the story. There were a few parts where I had trouble suspending disbelief.
1. That he came so unprepared for the interview with the crime boss. Anyone who has expertise in computers (and most people who don't) is going to understand that a few years away is going to give you a major handicap. Thirty years of time gap is the difference in the gaming world between the technology for Super Mario Bros and the tech for Halo 5. Or in movie special effects the difference between Tron and Avatar.
2. That he took his shoes off during the robbery. I know it's a cultural thing. I hear the thing about paramedics removing shoes, but paramedics also aren't concerned with being unnoticed when they enter someone's home. Maybe this makes sense for someone in the culture, but I had trouble believing it.
3. That he bought the exact same brand and style of shoes and then wore those exact same shoes while he was going through the security line where he had to remove his shoes and put them on the rollers next to the people who might have seen the shoes.
That being said, #2 and #3 were necessary for the really pivotal moment of the story for me, when the crime boss's wife sees the shoes. I didn't think there was any ambiguity about that moment. She apparently had thrown away the original shoes, and recognized this new set here. She apparently feels, in general, like she is in a position of no power, beholden to a man that has immense power and unable to have any effect on her own life or the lives of others. But here she recognizes an opportunity. She has the power to bring consequences down on this man who broke into her house or to have a quiet effect blocking her husband's effectiveness at always getting what he wants and in the course of that allow this stranger to go free. She takes the opportunity to have some control over her own life and both she and this complete stranger are happier for it.
I thought that was a really interesting element of power she had in that pivotal moment, and I can see why she made the decision she did. Her husband tells her she is useless, no matter what she does, and so in this moment she makes a choice to be less useful to him than she would otherwise be, and in that quiet and unnoticed decision, she has control. That moment made the story, for me.
I thought the memory restore thing felt kind of tacked on--a justification to need the money but the idea itself was interesting enough I wondered why more wasn't done with it or cut entirely.
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To be fair, his "hack" involved exactly zero programming.
The best hacking is social hacking.
I enjoyed the story. I have a soft spot for cyberpunk stories featuring underdogs forced out of retirement. Many years of Shadowrun is probably to blame.
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As much as I liked the concept of the story and enjoyed hearing it there were a few things that kept it from being great. Sure, the accent was not necessary but didn't take away too much of my enjoyment (perhaps because I'm not native english nor japanese). However the storytelling honestly felt a bit forced. The foreshadowing with the shoes were a bit too obvious and the scam went a little too smoothly and conveniently.
Also, even if you have been in prison, I would expect that you would know what a smartphone is and seen someone operate one - I would even guess that a hacker would have more opportunity than most to keep his crime skills up to date - at least on a theoretical level. That being said, I wasn't surprised that he went to the interview non-prepared, since he counted on being hired on reputation rather than skill. Also, the final moment with the wife was well done and made me smile. The story could (maybe should) have ended there, really.
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As much as I liked the concept of the story and enjoyed hearing it there were a few things that kept it from being great. Sure, the accent was not necessary but didn't take away too much of my enjoyment (perhaps because I'm not native english nor japanese). However the storytelling honestly felt a bit forced. The foreshadowing with the shoes were a bit too obvious and the scam went a little too smoothly and conveniently.
Also, even if you have been in prison, I would expect that you would know what a smartphone is and seen someone operate one - I would even guess that a hacker would have more opportunity than most to keep his crime skills up to date - at least on a theoretical level. That being said, I wasn't surprised that he went to the interview non-prepared, since he counted on being hired on reputation rather than skill. Also, the final moment with the wife was well done and made me smile. The story could (maybe should) have ended there, really.
People convicted of hacking (cracking) are often not allowed to use computers as part of the punishment. I could easily see that applying to smart phones.
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People convicted of hacking (cracking) are often not allowed to use computers as part of the punishment. I could easily see that applying to smart phones.
I assumed that to be the case, yeah.
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Anyone who has issues with the narration here should never listen to the audiobook of Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami. I'm listening to it right now and I don't find this mainstream big dollar production significantly different from the one presented here for this story. The narrator for this NYT Bestseller is also an american of Asian descent with a long list on IMDB and the character accents are much the same.
I think this EA volunteer delivered an entertaining narration, and I enjoyed the story.
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Let's not jump to the conclusion that the reader was trying to be offensive. I live in Germany, do you know how many bad, fake German accents there are out there? Actually let's go one further, did you know that people in the North speak totally different than people in the South? Did you know that you can easily distinguish north German from Bavarian from Swiss From Austrian and that all of these regions sound different when speaking? They may even sound different when they speak English, I don't know. I've never studied it.
Let's cut the reader some slack, as I am sure he wasn't doing it on purpose to offend anyone.
This deserves to get noted again. It's a shame that this thread became so derailed by the 'that's racist' crowd. What if the narrator were trying to do a German accent? Or Scandinavian, or Slavic? Or somewhere where white people make up the vast majority of the population? Would there be a similar pile-on of racist or anti-ethnic accusations? Of course not.
I was going to compliment the narrator for his pronunciation of Japanese words. I speak a fair bit of Japanese, and some of the Japanese on Escape Pod has been... not good. Example: Episode 407, Mono no Aware. That's AH-WA-RAY. Not like how it was pronounced in the episode by host and narrator, like the English word in the sentence, "I'm aware of the situation." Gaaaah... That was fingernails on chalkboard level right there.
But here the narrator has a solid pronunciation of Japanese names and placenames where they appear in the story, and I was very satisfied that I didn't beat on my steering wheel on my commute to work, shouting, "NO! That's WRONG! You're making my EARS BLEED!"
As for the accent, I didn't think it was perfect, but accents are difficult to get exact. I thought it was a fairly good attempt, and I have experience with hearing Japanese people speaking English. Giving characters accents of their own language is important to setting the feel of a story, especially in audio dramas, where audio cues are all the audience has to go create the scene. Imagine the dialog in this story being done by the author in a standard Midwestern American English accent. Tell me that the sense of scene wouldn't be diminished by this. Tell me that it wasn't enhanced by trying.
Make sure to think things thru before throwing around cheap accusations at talented people who've worked very hard on a project.
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Let's not jump to the conclusion that the reader was trying to be offensive. I live in Germany, do you know how many bad, fake German accents there are out there? Actually let's go one further, did you know that people in the North speak totally different than people in the South? Did you know that you can easily distinguish north German from Bavarian from Swiss From Austrian and that all of these regions sound different when speaking? They may even sound different when they speak English, I don't know. I've never studied it.
Let's cut the reader some slack, as I am sure he wasn't doing it on purpose to offend anyone.
This deserves to get noted again. It's a shame that this thread became so derailed by the 'that's racist' crowd. What if the narrator were trying to do a German accent? Or Scandinavian, or Slavic? Or somewhere where white people make up the vast majority of the population? Would there be a similar pile-on of racist or anti-ethnic accusations? Of course not.
I was going to compliment the narrator for his pronunciation of Japanese words. I speak a fair bit of Japanese, and some of the Japanese on Escape Pod has been... not good. Example: Episode 407, Mono no Aware. That's AH-WA-RAY. Not like how it was pronounced in the episode by host and narrator, like the English word in the sentence, "I'm aware of the situation." Gaaaah... That was fingernails on chalkboard level right there.
But here the narrator has a solid pronunciation of Japanese names and placenames where they appear in the story, and I was very satisfied that I didn't beat on my steering wheel on my commute to work, shouting, "NO! That's WRONG! You're making my EARS BLEED!"
As for the accent, I didn't think it was perfect, but accents are difficult to get exact. I thought it was a fairly good attempt, and I have experience with hearing Japanese people speaking English. Giving characters accents of their own language is important to setting the feel of a story, especially in audio dramas, where audio cues are all the audience has to go create the scene. Imagine the dialog in this story being done by the author in a standard Midwestern American English accent. Tell me that the sense of scene wouldn't be diminished by this. Tell me that it wasn't enhanced by trying.
Make sure to think things thru before throwing around cheap accusations at talented people who've worked very hard on a project.
For what it's worth, I didn't think the attempt was racist, nor intended to be offensive, nor (to me personally) actually offensive. At the same time, I think it would've been better without. I was still able to listen to the story and enjoy it. I expect there's probably a spectrum of opinions on the subject, not just one extreme or the other.
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For what it's worth, I didn't think the attempt was racist, nor intended to be offensive, nor (to me personally) actually offensive. At the same time, I think it would've been better without. I was still able to listen to the story and enjoy it. I expect there's probably a spectrum of opinions on the subject, not just one extreme or the other.
You have a different opinion on the accent than I do, and that's fine. It's just the racism accusations that bothered me.
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I'd like to discuss the story itself. I thought it was fantastic, and one of the better episodes I've listened to in a long while. A very layered, deep episode, and it really hit home for me.
Alasdair weighed in on his favorite parts of the story. Here's mine: Kentaro, a used-up computer hacker in his mid-sixties, standing on the sky deck of Tokyo Skytree and quoting Neuromancer. Just think about that juxtaposition. The cyberpunk future of the 80s, where the sky is the color of a television turned to a dead channel, everyone is jacked in to cyberspace, snorting designer drugs, and showing their off their hacking skills in an underground club at 3 A.M. The cyberpunk future of the present: a lonely, single man well past his prime living at an internet cafe, scheming to steal a cell phone so he can afford nursing care for his elderly mother. And he's standing on one of the tallest, most futuristic structures on Earth, in Tokyo, Japan, used for high-speed data transmission across all of central Japan, accessible via high-speed subway station about three stories under the island where it stands. Gibson could have written about this. Except when you get out of the subway car, there's 7-11 staring you in the face and after you take the escalators up to ground level the whole place is a family-friendly tourist trap and shopping mall with overpriced gift shops and cafes. And how could it be anything different?
We're all jacked into cyberspace, just like Gibson prophesied. Only we use it for Facebook and videos of cats and porn, and maybe not in that order. I'm such a cyber-criminal, I have a copy of uTorrent on my computer that I use to jack into Game of Thrones episodes. Despite this, I still haven't gotten a nose piercing or dyed my hair purple. We're all walking around with supercomputers in our back pockets, and we use them for playing Flappy Birds.
The future has come. And the sky isn't the color of a television turned to a dead channel. It's just cloudy today.
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The future has come. And the sky isn't the color of a television turned to a dead channel.
It's worth noting that in 1982, when that was written, it referred to a grey static. Today, a TV tuned to a dead channel will just show solid blue.
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I loved that the hero inhabited that time honored tradition of the plucky thief just trying to support his mother. But this was a lot less Oliver Twist and more firmly pointed at aging. That was really great. Characters in cyberpunk are usually leave a young, beautiful corpse. Retirement is often not part of that package. Hell, Dixie Flatline's retirement was to an external hard drive.
The future has come. And the sky isn't the color of a television turned to a dead channel.
It's worth noting that in 1982, when that was written, it referred to a grey static. Today, a TV tuned to a dead channel will just show solid blue.
I've actually seen commentary that the bright unnatural blue was what Gibson was aiming for. I might have to dig that up again. I always pictured it as static.
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The future has come. And the sky isn't the color of a television turned to a dead channel.
It's worth noting that in 1982, when that was written, it referred to a grey static. Today, a TV tuned to a dead channel will just show solid blue.
Just a nitpick, but today what happens when you tune to a dead channel really depends on the model of the TV and on the TV provider - people with cable may see something different than people who don't, for example. On my TV, if I tune to a dead channel, I get a black screen with a grey box telling me that it's a dead channel.
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The future has come. And the sky isn't the color of a television turned to a dead channel.
It's worth noting that in 1982, when that was written, it referred to a grey static. Today, a TV tuned to a dead channel will just show solid blue.
Just a nitpick, but today what happens when you tune to a dead channel really depends on the model of the TV and on the TV provider - people with cable may see something different than people who don't, for example. On my TV, if I tune to a dead channel, I get a black screen with a grey box telling me that it's a dead channel.
True! One of my TVs that has no cable shows blue, the other one shows black with a grey box.
It is interesting that the "color of a dead channel" is not only different now than it was when that story was written, it's pretty ambiguous looked at based on only today's technology rather than being the universal element of random noise shown visually.
Honestly I miss the ability of analog TV to fail more gracefully in low signal conditions. With analog TV you could watch/hear something with a fairly low signal and still get something out of it. With digital TV it's perfect signal right down to the point where it's completely incomprehensible for audio/video scrambling or complete lack of signal recognition. Especially annoying when it storms because storms cause interference and also present the most urgent time to watch TV (for storm warnings on local news channels)
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If he was a "superhacker" then he would know that, without having spent significant time and effort in-prison (somehow), or since his release, he would be massively out of date.
Kentaro knew he wasn't prepared. His mistake was that he assumed he would be given back his previous position without challenge.
That he bought the exact same brand and style of shoes and then wore those exact same shoes while he was going through the security line where he had to remove his shoes and put them on the rollers next to the people who might have seen the shoes.
Ha! Just last week I bought two pairs of the exact same shoes (anything that cuts down on shopping time is good!)
I was going to compliment the narrator for his pronunciation of Japanese words.
Yes. I had another of my stories with some Japanese words in it read (not on Escape Pod) and that reader managed to mispronounce almost every word.
Kentaro, a used-up computer hacker in his mid-sixties, standing on the sky deck of Tokyo Skytree and quoting Neuromancer. Just think about that juxtaposition. The cyberpunk future of the 80s, where the sky is the color of a television turned to a dead channel, everyone is jacked in to cyberspace, snorting designer drugs, and showing their off their hacking skills in an underground club at 3 A.M. The cyberpunk future of the present: a lonely, single man well past his prime living at an internet cafe, scheming to steal a cell phone so he can afford nursing care for his elderly mother. And he's standing on one of the tallest, most futuristic structures on Earth, in Tokyo, Japan, used for high-speed data transmission across all of central Japan, accessible via high-speed subway station about three stories under the island where it stands. Gibson could have written about this. Except when you get out of the subway car, there's 7-11 staring you in the face and after you take the escalators up to ground level the whole place is a family-friendly tourist trap and shopping mall with overpriced gift shops and cafes. And how could it be anything different?
Thank you! This is exactly the effect I was going for. It's also true that Japan was promised the future (especially in the 80s) and has now been overtaken by China is economic terms and world focus.
It's a cliche that so many travel articles about Japan start off with: "Japan is a land of contrasts....High-tech wonders... Women in kimonos", but I haven't found anywhere else in the world where the ancient and the modern collide in such a fascinating way.
The other thing is that there are parts of Japan - especially the banks and offices - that aren't as modern as some people think. My workplace still used punch time cards and faxes. Faxes are important because people want to put their personal stamp on them. And even in 2008 we were still using cassette tapes (rather than CDs, let alone mp3s!) in the classroom.
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I had a totally different take on the wife at the end. I think she was having an affair and had been terrified that her lover somehow left his shoes at their house and then realized it was the old man who was actually doing something to take on her jerk of a husband.
For what it is worth, I liked the accents, they gave the story more character than just having them read in normal boring English. Sorry to hear that some people found it grating or offensive.
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I am not Japanese, but I speak Japanese, and lived there for a couple of years. The narration grated. It wasn't just the incorrectly stereotyped accents, he didn't even get the pronunciation of the protagonist's name right. I tolerated it hoping the story would be worth it. I liked the protagonist enough that I don't want that half hour back, I guess; but the ending didn't do it for me.
I think I was hoping for a more spectacular resolution. I'm not sure if the techno-jargon was the limit of the author's knowledge on the subject, or the presumed limit of the audience's combined with the limitations of a short story re: explanation. I guess that kind of precludes what I was hoping for: some SF speculation on the future of mobile security. I'd have settled for something a little more complex than the same problem that's been preventing me recovering my damned Weixin account.
The narrator is half American, half Asian, though not Japanese. It was a lot less of a caricature than I could have mustered.
By this logic if I attempted to do a German accent based entirely on the Medic from Team Fortress 2, that would be entirely unoffensive.
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The narrator is half American, half Asian, though not Japanese. It was a lot less of a caricature than I could have mustered.
By this logic if I attempted to do a German accent based entirely on the Medic from Team Fortress 2, that would be entirely unoffensive.
Would you be intending to be offensive? If not, I promise I wouldn't be picky about it. I certainly wouldn't accuse you of being malicious without knowing anything about you.
I think a fairer comparison would be to say that, as an American, just by merit of proximity my imitation of a New Yorker, a Chicagoan, a Pittsburgher, or even a Mexican or Canadian would be several shades better than someone from Israel or Malaysia. Would a Chicagoan know I wasn't authentic? Very likely. Would the Israeli? Probably not.
Would I have preferred a Japanese narrator? Absolutely. Were any available when I put the call out? Nope. Would it have been better if I or anyone else on staff had done the reading? Most assuredly not. We took the best option from what was available at the moment. If that offends, so be it. We're not so far ahead that we could afford to table it and wait for better options. We're working on getting there, though.
Here's to better next time!
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Just read it in your own accent, guys. The setting and characters are established sufficiently by the text, and if you want to get creative you've got plenty of room to do it in your own voice. It's okay, we can suspend disbelief for that.
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I thought the narration was great. The accents weren't even a concern for me, the real joy of the narration was the amazingly distinct voice that each character was given.
If you had a problem with the accents, grow up and just read the text. Good job Mr. Learned!
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Ha! Just last week I bought two pairs of the exact same shoes (anything that cuts down on shopping time is good!)
I don't find it implausible to rebuy the same pair of shoes. I find it to be a rather stupid character moment to buy the same shoes and then wear those same shoes while trying to pull a sneaky switch at an airport next to a person for whom that specific size and brand of shoes would be the only possible way for them to recognize you... I thought it worked well enough for the sake of the narrative, but it did strike me as a big stupid moment for the character who otherwise was not stupid. :)
but I haven't found anywhere else in the world where the ancient and the modern collide in such a fascinating way.
I think the only place I've been to that might fit the bill would be Rome.
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I really enjoyed this story, but I also found the "Japanese" accent distracting and silly.
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I liked this episode well enough, though many of the mentioned implausibility problems did stick out at me. It was the interaction at the security line with the wife that really clinched it for me, though. Her sarcastic "I'm so useless" was spot on, as she took back a small measure of control in her life. The whole listen was worth it for that one element.
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While I enjoyed the story (the accent wasn't my favourite, but also didn't bug me), my biggest problem was what adrianh said:
* The SFnal elements felt tacked on to me. You could take a few years off the setting, change mom's illness, and the story would work just as well.
In fact, I was expecting a whole "this isn't science fiction" debate on the forums, because I firmly thought this story *was* contemporary, having somehow forgotten about the mother's memory reboot.
It didn't detract from my enjoyment of the story, though. Like others have mentioned, I really liked the wife's act of defiance at the airport when she chose to do nothing about the shoes.