EPBOT Readers discussion

This is the area to post your thoughts on the book as a whole

Did you like it? Hate it?

How did it change or confirm your views on what makes something sentient?

Do you think it's fair that the contest was based on music? Does this disrespect other art forms? is there something about music that makes it more suited to being the basis for a contest like this?

Ultimately do you think the grand prix is a fair way to prove sentience and distribute resources?

How does personal taste factor into this type of competition, considering how much it can vary within just humanity, much less across species?

Do you feel humanity came across better than, worse than, or equal to the other species presented within the book?

What other thoughts do you have about it as a whole?

I didn't particularly care for this one. It wasn't bad, but it came across as more arch than funny to me. The author mentioned in the acknowledgements that it arose from a "haha do sci-fi Eurovision" tweet, and that made sense in that the story was built around trying to get to that, rather than a narrative idea or message as the driver.

I was surprised at how many of the references I actually got; I was expecting to feel tragically un-hip. I'm sure I did miss some, but I felt like I had at least heard of most of the artists and got most of the altered song titles and such. (The Eurovision song quotes in the headers, not so much. All I know of Eurovision is Abba, because obviously, and "Satellite", because it was playable on Dance Central 2.)

I guess this book confirmed my view that there isn't a good way to draw a line defining sentience. That's true without even having to resort to science fiction; you can just read studies of animal (and even plant, fungus, or bacteria) behavior and watch our bastions of human specialness dissolve.

I think music was selected for this because it is the human art most suited to live spectacle. It wouldn't be as exciting to watch a bunch of people walk around an art gallery, and generally one isn't supposed to scream during a play. Popular music concerts and sporting events are our venues for frenzied crowds. Perhaps alien societies would get together and simultaneously read novels while jumping around an arena, but that's not how we roll.

The Grand Prix is horribly unfair. I'm not convinced that sentience necessarily implies the creation of art, but in any case a primarily visual species that creates amazing sculpture should certainly not be less worthy of resources than one that creates better music.

I do think it's implausible that the rest of the galaxy would agree more in musical taste than humanity does. All the people depicted in the book are dismissive of the aliens' list of artists, but if you polled all of humanity you'd surely find some Yoko Ono fans. It could have been fun to see more about the influence of contact between species on their mutual tastes, interspecies factions popping up for and against different styles, the spread of fads, that sort of thing.

I think humanity came across about the same as the other species. We're just a little behind on our technology as well as on transferring our belligerence from each other to alien species. (Some fascism thrown in for us near the end to make that point.)

I was glad to see the acknowledgement of Hitchhiker's Guide, but I don't think the similarities are just because it's a funny science fiction novel. I don't read a lot of sci-fi, but something like Redshirts is a different sort of humor.

I liked it - I didn't love it quite as much as I thought I would, I think because it lacked that warmth of author having a genuine affection for their characters. As Rebecca noted, this was inspired by a premise, rather than a character or event, so I think that kept it a bit higher level and less intimate feeling than it could have been.

I don't know that it changed or confirmed my views on much of anything, including sentience - it wasn't that kind of book, at least for me. This was a cocktail party of a book, not a philosophy seminar - and I don't mean that in a bad way! There are some excellent observations about society, relativism, etc. - but I don't know that it's meant to alter anyone's world view.

Of course it's unfair to judge a species based solely on a musical performance - that's the whole point! The utter randomess of Eurovision (or _____'s got Talent, or The Voice, or the X Factor, or _____ Idol) is what we all have in common - but given Eurovision's origins, it's obviously the most appropriate model for this story.

All musical taste ultimately comes down to preference - again, that's why it's so arbitrary. In the galactic sense, even pitch, rhythm, etc. are subjective - but so is almost everything else. Can you think of any point of decision that doesn't come down to preference? Even things that we may see as completely black and white seem that way because of the lens we're looking through. Music is such an obvious example, though, that it was perfect for the story the author wanted to tell.

Being nominally human, I'm not unbiased - so of course I think humanity came out just fine and demonstrated our sentience. If you asked a member of any other species, they'd say the same about their own representatives. :)

It was a fun read, and I'll definitely check out the sequel when it arrives, but I wish there had been just a little more three dimensionality to the characters. That's what kept it from fully living up to the Hitchhiker's Guide comparisons for me.

This was really not a book that I would have picked up on my own, being that classic rock is not really my cup of tea, and I had to Google what Eurovision was, just to understand the reference. I wound up not being crazy about it, but still appreciated the excuse to read something that went in a different direction for me.

As far as culture, I circle back around to my point in week 1: what it it with so many stories that elevate American/British classic rock music to being the pinnacle of culture???? Although I admittedly say that from the perspective of not really being a music buff, and my college degree having been in fine art. And to be fair, this story would NOT have worked if the universal obsession had been opera, or architecture, or painting. As Rebecca pointed out, it needed a performance art that allowed the audience to get worked into a frenzy. Sports also likely could have worked to carry this story, or perhaps some sort of sports/entertainment hybrid like professional wrestling that introduces elements of storytelling and theater.

It did leave a lingering question about what makes culture, and how we define and compare it across the world and throughout history. What qualifies as culture, and what does not? As Wash points out in one episode of Firefly, there is a whole planet in that universe where the chief pastime is juggling baby geese. Who are we to judge? Or anyone really?

Sarah, my take on why "classic rock" is used so often as a default/representative musical style in books (and movies, and TV shows) is:

1. The white American/British authors that are most heavily promoted grew up listening to that kind of music, so it's their "default".

2. The 1960's-1980's "classic rock" era was a time when global communication technology first made it possible for almost everyone on earth to hear the same song around the same time, and since that technology was mostly controlled by white American/British people, that's the music that got beamed around the world first.

3. The pop/rock songs that have been the most enduring tend to have repetitive, memorable melodies and choruses that are short and can be screamed phonetically without requiring knowledge of English. Most of us here are probably native English speakers, but we would be hard pressed to tell anyone what Sweet Caroline, We Will Rock You, Gloria, Heroes, etc. are about beyond the choruses.

4. Because of that easy screamability, playing these songs is an easy way to get people engaged at sporting events, political rallies, sales conventions, etc., so people associate these songs with the strong feelings they had at these events, so they tend to cite the as their "favorite" songs more because of those associated memories than actual appreciation of the song itself.

5. Therefore, if you had to pick a song that isn't religious or themed to a specific occasion (Happy Birthday, Jingle Bells, etc.) that everyone on earth could kind of agree upon, "classic rock" would probably be well represented in the nominations.