http:\/\/grahamstorrs.cantalibre.com<\/a><\/p>\nWhat music do they like?<\/h3>\n
Look, I don’t want to sound pretentious. If you’d asked me last week, I’d have been in my Bob Dylan phase and I’d have said The Times They Are A-Changin’<\/em> or some such. A couple of months before that, I’d have been into Bowie and you’d have got Teenage Wildlife<\/em> maybe. But this week, I just happened to hear a piece of music on the radio that I’d listened to dozens of times in my life yet never really heard before. It was Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in F minor, Op. 57<\/em>, the “Appassionata”. It just blew me away. It’s an astonishing piece, one of those works of art that leave you awestruck, not just because of the superhuman skill required to perform it, but because of the unbelievable intellect that created it.<\/p>\nAs a sci-fi writer, I sometimes try to imagine alien species with minds far more capable than our own. To be confronted with a piece of music as outrageously brilliant as the “Appassionata” is to find my feeble imaginings mocked. I couldn’t begin to understand the merely human intelligence behind such a composition, let alone anything greater. So, from one primitive ape to another, I offer you one of the finest works of art ever created. The YouTube link is to a performance from 1988 by one of my favourite pianists, Vladimir Ashkenazy.<\/p>\n
![\"Graham](\"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Graham-Storrs.jpg\")
<\/a>Graham Storrs is a science fiction writer living in rural Queensland. A former research scientist, IT consultant and award-winning software designer, he now lives and writes on a quiet mountain top, surrounded by forest, with his wife, Christine, an Airedale terrier and a Tonkinese cat. His published non-fiction includes three children’s science books, over a hundred magazine articles, and more than thirty academic papers and book chapters, in the fields of artificial intelligence, psychology, and human-computer interaction. Since he turned his attention to writing science fiction, he has published over twenty short stories in magazines and anthologies, and six novels. The novels include the three Timesplash <\/em>time-travel thrillers, published by Momentum, Heaven is a Place on Earth<\/em>, a near-future dystopia set in Brisbane, Cargo Cult<\/em>, a sci-fi comedy, and The Credulity Nexus<\/em>, the first in his new space opera series.<\/p>\n