This book is a diptych. Technology, thermodynamics, personal and cosmic histories appear in both panels. The Book of Airs wanders into science fiction where Liker, MO stays, for the most part, in Missouri.
The Book of Airs begins with Sweet π Old Space–The first section is the opening number for a musical set in a planetarium. The second section has a score for six voices and ends with a solo number. The third section takes a hike and returns.
The Second law of Thermodynamics dictates that entropy will increase in an isolated system (acknowledging the Fluctuation Theorem which applies to few particles and short durations).
In the 19th century Josef Loeschmidt pointed out that there is no reason why we shouldn’t witness entropy running in both directions. Yet, we never see a broken glass reassemble itself. The Book of Airs includes “Lou Schmidt’s Paradox” which invents on reversibility in narrative.
A Sumerian scribe enters Liker, MO in two ways. First as a version of the “natural man” who has learned to write. Second as a glyph or ideogram that appears frequently in Liker. I borrowed the idea from the as-yet undeciphered Indus script. The glyphs are polysemic because they share both pictogrammatic and phonemic functions. The glyphs also serve as tags for a field in a database.
“The Phenomenology of Natural Man” includes the glyphs mentioned above.
Mike Barrett Archive 