The Fredösphere

I went to the Borders website to find out when Alex Ross' new book The Rest Is Noise will be available.  I noticed it will be released in several formats:  hardcover (of course)... audio cassette (retrograde, but some will want it)... audio CD (tempting)... CD-ROM...

CD-ROM?  What the heck?

At first I was stunned, but then, realization came.  Of course, Alex Ross wouldn't be so dumb as to miss an opportunity to create spin-offs.  What were seeing here is the first hint of The Rest Is Noise as a computer game!  Brilliant, positively brilliant.

Alex Ross (aided by his marketing team) certainly kept his cards close to his chest.  His website contains not one hint about this.  I wonder if Borders goofed by releasing the information ahead of the big, inevitable announcement.

So, what's it going to be, Alex?  RPG?  MMORPG?  Real-time strategy?  I think I know the answer already.  I know Alex fairly well (heck, I once talked to the guy face to face for two whole minutes).  He's a lover of form, order, and restraint.  I know he won't be able to resist the classical simplicity of a good first person shooter.  Here's an excerpt from the announcement Alex will be making any day now:

Gameplay consists of exploring the now-derelict music conservatory, and piecing together the incredible events of the previous months through the discovery of audio logs left by dead white European male composers. Slowly, a horrifying picture begins to emerge from this patchwork of narratives, one of an immense ideology of atonality run amok, and the terrible toll exacted on conservatory's luckless inhabitants. But you soon realize that the stakes are much higher than was thought -- it seems that N.E.A. plans to wipe out or mutate the entire population of the music establishment, and remake classical music in its own self-delusional, atonal image.

Thusly, your goals will shift from simple survival to the preservation of Common Practice Harmony, which of course can only be accomplished through the complete and utter destruction of N.E.A. To achieve this goal, you must gain access to Citadel's music library, located on level 9 of the vast station. Along the way N.E.A. will use every trick in the network to stop your progress, and you have to be clever, as well as good with a baton, if you hope to make it out alive. Conducting is a large part of the game -- you'll have to match wits with everything from once-human cyborgs to converted maintenance droids to newly graduated music performance majors.

Labels: Composition, Culture