One thing that my partner and I disagree on is cover songs. As often as not, her first exposure to an old song I love is through a cover version made popular much later. Again, as often as not, I find the cover version to be lacking any transformative soul. Often I find them to be desecrating a great old song.

I don?t know how many times we?ve started listening to a song, and she?s said, ?I know this song. Sarah Brightman sings it!?

To which my invariable response has been, ?Maybe she does, but she didn?t sing it first, and she certainly didn?t write it. How about we enjoy the original singer-songwriter??

Another example of this is Peter Frampton?s Baby I Love Your Way. The original live recording is to my ears almost perfect, whereas she prefers a cover with a female lead vocal that mixes lyrics from Lynyrd Skynyrd?s Freebird (?If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me??). I suppose mixing two songs should get points for transformation, but it just sounds so corporate, so focus-group driven.

It?s not that I?m against covering other artists? material. It?s just that I?ve always felt that if you can?t do some creative interpretation of the material, what are you really bringing to it other than fan service or a cheap attempt at fame?

It?s not that I?m against covering other artists? material. It?s just that I?ve always felt that if you can?t do some creative interpretation of the material, what are you really bringing to it other than fan service or a cheap attempt at fame? My friend?s blues band used to do a kick ass reggae version of Mustang Sally. Tom Jones joined The Art of Noise to make a dance version of Prince?s Kiss. They found something new to bring forward.

So anyway, there are some great, transformative cover versions out there, and I thought I?d mention some of them here.

One way to transform a song is to take a heavy prog rock song and re-imagine it as an acoustic song. Jacob Moon did that brilliantly with Rush?s Subdivisions.

Another way to make your mark on a cover song is by switching the genre radically, as PostModern Jukebox did with Radiohead?s Creep, turning it into a 1950s nightclub torch song.

One very unusual cover is Peponi by the Piano Guys and Alex Boye. Filtering Coldplay?s Paradise through another language and alternative musical influences made an interesting (and at the time, viral) hit.

While Manfred Mann?s cover of Ian Thomas? The Runner is an incredible uptempo version, the original isn?t really well-known enough to make this list. But Mann?s cover of Springsteen?s Blinded by the Light certainly fits. Although I have to admit that whenever I sing along (usually in the car) I still sing Springsteen?s original lyrics (?Cut loose like a deuce? not ?revved up like a deuce.?)

Another song that came to life as a cover version was Like a Hurricane a Neil Young song that Roxy Music often performed live, both de-cluttering it and giving it a sonic fulfilment.

Probably the ultimate example of a fan service cover is Heart?s version of Stairway to Heaven performed at the Kennedy Center in honour of and in front of Led Zeppelin. It?s amazing, it?s over the top, and it?s perfect for what it is. It’s easily the next best thing to seeing Led Zep do it themselves.

Let?s end this odd jaunt through memory lane with a bit of trivia. Tommy James and the Shondells had a number of minor hits that became much bigger hits when covered by others – Billy Idol broke big with Mony Mony, Tiffany had possibly her biggest hit with I Think We?re Alone Now, and Joan Jett had a minor hit with her version of Crimson and Clover. Here?s the trivia – Billy idol?s Mony Mony got knocked off the Billboard Pop #1 position by Tiffany?s I Think We?re Alone Now. A Tommy James cover usurped A Tommy James cover. I hope he made a lot of money off those royalties.

So what cover do you think is better than the original (or brings something new to it)?

A few things in the news lately have got me thinking about the first books I read by Isaac Asimov – Caves of Steel, and its sequel, The Naked Sun.

In those books, there are two distinct cultures, that of Earth and that of Earth?s former colonies and superiors. The Earther culture is a low-automation, hardworking culture where technology is feared. Earthers are dirty, poor, and live in domes because they?ve become afraid of the great outdoors.

The spacer culture is one of grand wealth, and a strong embrace of the benefits of technology. The population is sparse, it?s uncommon for two people to be in the same house, nevermind touching each other. As such, even reproduction is a controlled, scientific event.

So what in the news brought this all to mind (books written in the 1950s, read in the 1970s)? There have been a few news stories recently that point towards the obsolescence of humans: McDonalds and Wendy?s are planning robotic stores; Amazon has discovered that replacing warehouse workers with robots saves time, space and money; an AI wrote a movie script; Truckers are worried what autonomous trucks will do to their livelihood, and the insurance industry can?t figure out how self-driving cars will impact your insurance premium (Who?s liable if there?s an accident, but no one is driving?)

Decades ago, I heard an old joke about how the computer industry compared itself to the car industry and GM?s rebuttal. It?s all urban myth, there never was such an exchange. But now we?re getting closer to cars made by software designers (google for one) maybe we should look at those two perspectives:

a) If Microsoft made cars, they?d get 1,000 mpg, and cost only $25.00 claims one side.
b) If Microsoft made cars, they?d crash twice a day, claims the other.

So there?s a couple of threads here, beyond the idea that computerized cars will be more self-sufficient. Apparently computerized transmissions are only now becoming as efficient as a well-trained manual transmission driver. So let?s set that aside.

So how do you insure self-driving cars? Can a passenger be liable for the car?s behaviour? Is the manufacturer liable? If the roads are safer, and accidents eliminated, how many insurance agents do we need? Or how much woud each make if they work on commission of policy sold?

Of course, Uber is one of the leading manufacturers working on self-driving cars, with its sites clearly on the taxi industry. It?s already testing cars in Pittsburgh.

Will self-driving trucks kill 3.5 milllion jobs n the US? The average truck driver makes $40,000 per annum. Retrofitting his truck to making it self-driving would take a one-off payment of $30,000. Human drivers are limited in the number of hours they can drive (the truck sits idle), so an autonomous truck could replace more than one driver and pay for itself in less than a year. According to the Guardian:

Mining giant Rio Tinto already uses 45 240-ton driverless trucks to move iron ore in two Australian mines, saying it is cheaper and safer than using human drivers.

in April, multiple convoys of trucks drove themselves from countries such as Sweden and Germany all the way to Rotterdam, Holland.

So what if each warehouse, distribution point, etc just needs to keep a few drivers around, to take over for the robots once the truck is in the yard. The modern-day ?Harbour pilots? would never have to go off property (and technically wouldn?t need a driver?s license, although insurance might demand that). That might spare a few thousand jobs, but not likely. Probably even that part of the trip could be automated.

Truck drivers are quickly becoming obsolete. I remember late night infomercials about how easy it was to attend Truck Driving School and get a lifelong career. Not any more.

Other workers are at risk too, McDonald?s and Wendy?s have reacted to new laws pushing the minimum wage to $15/hour by starting plans to convert restaurants to automated shops. In Wendy?s cases, it appears to only be the front-of-shop workers who are affected, not the cooks (yet). McDonald?s is going deeper into automation with the whole restaurant affected.

Amazon?s warehouses have been the subject of a number of journalists? exposés. Well, Amazon may have the perfect answer to the problem of their warehouse jobs not being fulfilling enough, or safe, in some cases). No more humans in the warehouse. Amazon has been leading the charge for delivery by drone (there goes the UPS jobs).

Now they?re starting to automate their warehouses, to great benefit for both the company and the consumer. With robots being four to five times faster than humans in fulfilling orders. Also, robots don?t need the aisles to be as wide, allowing for more rows of shelves.

?In theory self-driving cars would not create negligence liability for the passenger/non-driver/owner of the car.? Forbes quotes Marc Mayerson, a Georgetown professor and lawyer. ?One model would be to have the car manufacturer bear all the liability and impose that liability simply based on the autonomous car?s being a substantial cause of the injury,?

Where does this all lead, and why does it make me think of Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun? Those two books showed the eventual outcome of the two paths open to us. We could ban technology, preserve jobs for humans, or we could embrace technology as the great liberator.

For the first to work, we need to rethink our laws, redefine our society to protect jobs. We didn?t do it for bank employees when ATMs came along. We didn?t do it for the autoworkers when robotic assembly lines came along. So we probably won?t do it now for the other working classes.

For the second to work, everyone needs to be able to live, even as jobs disappear, and economies re-align. This could mean a guaranteed minimum income – something that has been trialled in under-developed countries and is now being experimented with in Canada.

The problem with this is it only works if it isn?t sabotaged. A guaranteed income can?t mean a rise in basic food necessities, or rent. It can?t mean that corporations (who already don?t pay their share of taxes) can push pricing higher because they seen wealth to collect. It means that people who have had easy lives – middle class and up ? may have to face some self-less decisions or face the consequences of armed, angry, unemployed masses.

A year ago I would have told you that I can?t write short fiction, that I need to write stories in the 100,000 word range (about a 350 page novel).

That was then, this is now.

A year ago, I was in a bad place, psychologically. I?d torn a tendon in my shoulder. I could barely type. I had a novel sitting at 123,000 words, feeling so close to done, and yet so far. I didn?t type anything for two months. By the time I could type again the universe of that long story had slipped a bit from my grasp, and trying to write inside it felt awkward and embarrassing, like I was intruding. I?m still struggling to get back into that universe.

I needed a change. So I looked at a list of story ideas that I?d been hoarding; Things I?d get around to some day. One in particular bugged me. It should be a hard science fiction story, something that could almost actually happen, maybe even today (Not quite, but it does involve DragonX and the international Space Station, so really grounded in modern science and engineering). But I wasn?t technically literate enough to write the story, not and get all the facts down in a believable form. I had specs, layouts, technical info that i could find? It made the whole story an unenjoyable project.

Then, while I was laid up, i read a book called Red Shirts by John Scalzi. It mocks Star Trek greatly, is self-aware, and does something magical – it ignores all technical issues. It just excises them from the story. How do our heroes travel back in time to modern Earth to re-write the myth they?re trapped in? Who knows. That just gets ignored. One minute they?re living in their time, the next they?re here, with us.

Holy Shit! You can tell a good story without technical detail!

I sat down and wrote the story I wanted to tell. It didn?t come out in one sitting, it took about a week for three rounds of revisions before it was ready. At 4,000 words it was one of the shortest stories I?d ever written. So I sent it to Tor, the largest publisher of science fiction. They can take four to six months to reject your story (That?s how I thought about it, how long until they reject it. Not how long until they accept it). It took them seven months to reject it. However, the rejection letter was not a simple templated rejection. It contained advice about some edits, and it contained massive encouragement, ?this is a good story. Keep sending it out and it will find a good home.?

Somebody liked it. Apparently not enough somebodies for it to get published, but somebody at Tor liked it. I took that as a win, and submitted it to some other publishers. Form rejection (A ?dear john? for writers) and form rejection again.

I?ve got the story out to a fourth publisher, another one that I?d be proud to have as a writing credit. They?ve had the story for four months. I queried them to see if they?d read it yet. Nope. They need another two months before they?ll even read it. Sigh.

In the mean time, the praise in the Tor rejection letter gave me confidence to try my hand at a few other ideas that had been bouncing around in my head. I wrote six 100-word stories and sent them to SpeckLit. They bought four.

I started writing other short pieces, some drawn from my slush list, some new ideas. A couple of those are now out to publishers. Every time I finished a short story I had this sense of both amazement that i?ve told the story in the space that I have, and a fear that I might never write another short story again.

Lately I?ve been having a bit of a creative boost. I wrote three short stories recently that I?m very proud of*. I already know where I?ll try to get them published. Hopefully they?ll find good homes. But even better, I have eight story stems – the first thoughts for eight more stories.

Best of all, I?m back in my novel, making it tighter, and making the middle darker and more foreboding.

???
*I?ve also written two short stories that I?ll burn before anyone else ever reads them – bad, bad, bad!