Gadgetory

welcome to CNET book club the show where we talk about books of interest to see net readers I'm Dan Ackerman and with my co-host Scott Stein we're pleased to bring you this conversation with one of our favorite authors Walter Mosley best known for his hard-boiled detective fiction we also love his science fiction in spanked with a fiction but we're here also to talk about his new book down the river unto the sea the great Walter Mosley is here with us his new book down the river unto the sea maybe we can start and you can tell us just a little bit about this new book maybe the first in a new series it might be the person who's serious who knows I mean I wrote this book it's interesting last couple of years I've been really kind of concentrating on doing film work like I was gonna I was been working with John Singleton on this new show of his it's been out for a year uh snowfall and I've been doing you know trying to sell some stuff I have a deal with NBC trying to to create some series there and and so you know and and it's fun to do do film except for sometimes it gets a little like not boring but it's like I like I'm not enjoying this and so I started to write this novel night I wrote this novel for a very specific reason there are black men and some women are around the country who are being oppressed all the time by the police among that large group group of people there's a few people who actually push back they organize they become journalists they get other people to resist and the police really kind of hate it because it puts them in a bad position and so often there's a conflict between these guys and the police and sometimes people get killed and sometimes it's the place they get killed and sometimes it's self-defense on the part of these guys over here but if you kill a cop me you definitely gonna be sentenced to death if they can if the law can do it and so you know it happened in Philly with Mia it happened in Baltimore with Eddie Conway but it's all over the place and so I want to write a book about a guy a black guy who's used to be a detective but has been disgraced there and he's not and now and now he's a private active and he Fenny he's been hired to prove whether or not this guy another black guy has killed these two cops and he's on death row now he doesn't like the guy because you know he identifies as a policeman but he decides to look into it and at the end he proves a couple of things when he proves his innocence from previous time but nobody wants to listen and he also proves that this guy is innocent and they said that might very well be but we're still gonna kill him that's right us nobody cares and he's innocent it's the narrative that they set up those parallels with his own case what what drove you to turn this into a new series rather than let's say assigning it to one of your other characters was there something new you wanted some new angle you wanted the tackle that Lina and McGill or easy Rollins couldn't couldn't couldn't have done with this with this case well that is true but part of the situation was this ax I I wanted to write I was just writing a book I hadn't sold it I hadn't brought it to anybody I didn't know if I was gonna solve but I was just gonna write it and so if I had to do with one of my caret characters fearless Jonesy Rollins you know Lynn and McGill I would have to actually think about it like okay who is he what is okay what did the easy do in the last book okay what are the other characters doing and I don't want all that I and and I needed him to be a policeman because a policeman trying to proofs my who killed the policeman is innocent that's a hard that's a hard jump for him and when so it's so you can feel his resistance to a while he's moving along he's almost the only person who could do that having been a cop yeah well you know and once he's done it we really believe him because you know he said look I'm looking at the evidence here and do it and he still thinks himself as a cop all these years later yes you know even though the other cops may not yeah well some cops do sometimes do so it's an interesting thing yeah I I mean I love that it's at New York I always thought of you as a Los Angeles writer and you created such a vivid picture of Los Angeles for me as only an occasional visitor Scott actually used to live in LA yeah I wasn't a lifer Bella so it's Southern California for about eight years so it's a different energy look at sur la did you lose I lived in the valley I lived in Germany and I had friends who were in Los Feliz and then I was in San Diego for a bunch of years but I would always travel love-letter and used to work down in West Hollywood so would travel up through through Mahal and driver and mouth through their Coldwater Canyon but ya got to explore as much as I could and I would only be in Los Angeles now a couple of times a year but reading the first you know half dozen six or seven easy Rawlins books I really felt like this reflected even what I had seen during my you know a couple times a year trips it was such a great vivid portrait so when I started reading the lean in McGill books and they were set in New York I was very excited about that I love this is soon I'm a native New Yorker and it's very familiar to me and then when I saw this was set in Brooklyn where I now live not that far from from where I live I was like oh the guys offices on Montague Street this is great yeah and you start talking about the issues of gentrification and changing neighborhoods as someone who ended up in Brooklyn because I was gentrified out of my old neighborhood yeah III saw I saw all that and I was very interested in kind of New York as a character and how that feels to you compared to let's say Los Angeles as a character that's that's an interesting New Yorkers is much much much older and more conservative which is you know both good and bad Los Angeles is sprawling and and always growing it's kind of like a cancer that won't die you know and this is it's just you know all over the place and and that's and so you know you talk about it in different ways in New York they're very lot of things which you can believe like when you know when you know Joe Joe Oliver goes to to some you know apartment somewhere and there's a door and it leads underneath and there's you know giant speakeasy underneath that's kind of understandable in New York it's not understandable in LA but in New York that's the kind of thing that you can do because they're people who've been there forever they've been people who've been there since before America you know it was the United States you know that that's that's the kind of thing that that you do but it's but the other part was just knowing it just you know walking streets taking the subway you know they're taking buses taxis talking to people you know and and you see that you know one of the things is LA is segregated by class and in New York all classes are kind of shoved together you know so there's something particularly interesting about Brooklyn which is sort of I guess over the last ten years become a brand and just become like one of these places that everyone on the in the world talks about well no I I just you know I listen at same thing happened with you nine years ago they when they raise my rent to $6,500 a month I said oh I had to move away so I went you know it's a Brooklyn and you know then I found myself in Brooklyn and I don't even know what the old Brooklyn was like because the new Brooklyn is just like like kind of appeared oh yeah you know spontaneously and but you know it's a lot of fun you know I can't even afford a new Brooklyn I went out to New Jersey no I can't either yeah and I can't even afford New Jersey really I feel like yeah you have to move to other part of New Jersey affordable Connecticut hey I do if I grew up in the Bronx I eventually achieve my dream of moving to Manhattan then I got bumped to Brooklyn but I feel like it's kind of caught up and it's everybody else yeah so Manhattan is evolved we've all gone there yeah I don't know anyone who still lives in Manhattan well my vector like what I discovered you use a writer was through science fiction and that that sim is what we talk about a lot here and and a book that I fell in love with was future land and I didn't read it when I first came out mm when I read it when I about six seven years ago and and it is still lingered with me I love it for the way that it was disruptive was disturbing and I saw things like black mirror later I kept thinking about future land you know I felt and it made me think about and that I start reading interviews and referring to Philip dick and I was thinking about that when I was reading in a really in a really good way i I just was fascinating about the existence a book what what drove you to write it and it's still so timely now because we're saying a lot of the a lot of the issues in a class and race that the technology some of the the surveillance issues you even get into things like like like like Nazism and and and different social groups through the feminist issues there's all sorts of things that I feel like we're talking about now at this moment more than when I read it six years ago and so I was curious where your thoughts on the book were now versus that and and it was very interesting you know it's so long ago you know that those nine stories that kind of try to encapsulate a future world one of the things that you know like it being black and coming to science fiction you do things like you're watching Star Wars which has a much larger influence than for instance Star Trek which is just wonderful but Star Wars and Star Wars there just aren't any people of color who aren't like aliens or stupid and and so and and because you know coming out of Jules Verne Jules Verne invented the next century he did in those books he just invented it so we're gonna have some submarines and we're gonna go to the moon and then we're gonna do flying things you just had all this stuff he's doing it and so I'm thinking god these movies are trying to create a future in which there are no black people there are no people of color but I'm gonna go into a future not like going to the future of Moby Dick where there are but but going into Hawthorne and you know Scarlet Letter where there aren't then we just don't we aren't there and so I wanted to write a book that that included us in a real and also in a political way that that there are people of all kinds of colors and races and also in gender who are like you know wonderful and powerful I actually I'm I'm working now with Forest Whitaker Forrest wants to play and the first if we do a television series of the first season of we want to play the electric guy would be great it would be fantastic incredible actor and you know he likes that kind of stuff and and and but that's it I'm trying to create a future that I that I see comes from a trajectory that I'm starting from rather than some other guy you know I like Harrison Ford and everything but you know please you know I have to be like him well I thought it was also it's very kaleidoscopic in the way it deals with I think race and culture in those nine stories that it's coming from a lot of different directions a lot of different positions and and then I keep and then the elements keep resurfacing it's not really separate stories at all it's a novel and nine whose data it all intertwine so I thought that was that was really exciting I mean the thing needs to get made because I made me think about anthology shows now and there's so many of those now and there's so many built in that former philip k dick Selectric dreams or again that feels are I could obviously black mirror feels a lot like it but this predated all of those and even so many that we were talking about private prisons there's a lot of issues about access to health care and health insurance megalomaniacal billionaires who want to send people to Mars and we actually have one of those now Elon Musk wanted to go to Mars and if anyone would buy their own Island and set up their own government it's probably him although we have plenty of other billionaires with similar delusions of grandeur and then some of the stuff about you know the the mechanical eye that feels like a wearable Scott is uh written extensively about things like the microsoft hololens which is a pair of glasses you put on that has its overlay with all this data on it or what's the other one that's like that Google's always yeah there's a promise of a magic leap is going to bring it for me you know cuz I really often I'm like giving readings people say you know who influenced you and they want me to say though she has skin Shakespeare and Ralph Ellison you know instead of the people you know who really like influenced me like Jack Kirby you know who's you know when he does the New Gods in the mother box that mother box it's just like it's outrageous like I like the you know the the Justice League you know that movie has the mother box in it but it's not you know you wore it on your shoulder it talked to you it took care of you it fixed you in your bed it was actually some something in the future that people would want you know and but maybe shouldn't have and and and that's you know that's you know the electric guy was certainly that I talked about Farrah Jones the first legitimate female inter-gender heavyweight champion of the world you know I mean you really have that kind of stuff you know it sounds so crazy right now but it's not gonna be you know when you you talk about you know the radical lesbian feminist separatist you know that you know that you know that are part of creating her life you know and and you just kind of like wow this is this is such a this is such a kind of a crazy and end it it's it there's a there's a sense to it you know it's not it's not science fiction like you know like you know 2001 I love 2001 but you know it's not like oh it's just neat halls and no dust and everything is nice you know there's there's bodily fluids on the floor that you're walking there's a lot of sexuality and I think that's what that's also it's it's exciting it's surprising it's it's a source of I remember you know stories I like after I was a kid later on again like Philip dick comes to mind yeah it's it's it's rattling and I thought that politically the landscape is you mentioned somebody there are so many different political groups and factions and it's a very like living with this technology and political groups very I'm not separate now I like together and that's what's like so worrisome right you know that's what I mean that's what comic books did so well I mean Jack Kirby specifically but other people too and it seems even now I mean we're much more politically active and things are a lot crazier it feels all the time crazier so that fell more even more written to the moment and that I thought that was interesting you know if you felt it somehow now it's coming or did you feel like it was the path from celebrity to politics also yeah yeah I just went you know I'm yeah I'm just always thinking about it I think there's a group people who are always thinking about well what's happening next it's not that we're right or any any person is right so I'm like that but saying well what happens what naturally comes out of this and that's what comes you know and really that the brilliance of dick I don't like dicks writing like I don't like how he writes words but his ideas are extraordinary and his characters are real people rather than people who were you know Flash Gordon you know what I mean that that kind of thing that or the you know the the captain of you know the enterprise you know this it's like yeah yeah yeah but you know the real guy who's gonna make a difference is like you know with Camus and the plague it's just a normal everyday guy who's gonna just gonna sit there and he's gonna gird himself and he's gonna fight for what's right that's that's the world that's the world we live in you know and has always been you know these heroes I mean John Wayne is fine but he's not you know he's an actor he's not a person you know what I mean and and then so it's fun to write about those characters and to see where they go and and how they get there and how they represent us getting there do you feel like now I mean right now we're in a period of time were there a lot of lot of superhero movies a lot of cyberpunk stuff set in that genre I used to read a lot of cyberpunk before do you feel like now you do any thoughts about like that at landscape is it is it has it drifted to becoming too much of a genre in and of itself work you mentioned like the the the grittiness and the reality of some of those ideas like that yeah well that's that's the thing right I mean that you know the I keep on telling people they say what are you gonna make another movie you know I'm always trying to make a movie but but the thing is I said well you know they just made Black Panther so that means I have a six to nine month window and they and they go what are you talking about now that everything is different I said well they said that with the Emancipation Proclamation it's not being completely work out that way and and then then they'll say but but everything is different now look at all that money that was made and I said yes and who made the money Disney made the money and I can promise you the Black Panther doesn't work at this name you know where Ford isn't it but now I had Disney and certainly is not collecting the big money on top and that ends and that alone to say I'm identifying my politics with this movie that made all this money for these white people over here it's like well that's um that's that's really like when you've been bamboozled that's when you know Spike Lee's movie comes into play right it's all you've been bamboozled mad this isn't your you're paying them a Mary Baraka once it was he was giving a talk and he said he said I used to go down to the corner and listen to jazz is now I got to go to another man's neighborhood and pay him to find out what I got on my own mind and that's that's what I think is happening now that's when the you know everything happens at a at a predict time I was excited when I you know I bought the Fantastic Four comic book where it was for the first Black Panther you know I mean that that's the moment it's not all you know fifty years later you know do you think science fiction is a is an area you'll you're going to keep wanting to return to as an area that's always on your mind or do you feel like it it comes at certain points or how do you relate to it with the rest you're right it depends on what you're trying to say you know it's like if I'm really trying to understand the structure of the fabric of the universe I'm not gonna write a mystery because that doesn't make sense you know if I'm gonna try to figure out what the only spiritual thing I have in my head which is that I believe there is a soul I'm not gonna write you know a kind of a literary novel of a philosopher thinking about the song but you know I want to get to it and so then in those kinds of questions that's definitely you know alternative fiction speculative fiction and you know when I'm talking more politically mysteries work very well for politics you know and then sort of you know literary not when I have you know intellectual ideas well literary fiction fits that for a while and sometimes I just write nonfiction yeah I believe this there's kind of a little bit of a technology crossover between the science fiction and some of the some of the detective books that we're always looking for for that in the leaning McGill books he's got a hacker friend and you start to have some of this interaction with databases and technology and tracking people that you don't get in easy rawls books because it's before or any of that any of that stuff happened and you see a little bit of it in in in down the river where there's a lot of you know you know you have to take the battery out of the cell phone and ditch it because they're because they're because they're tracking you I'm always struck that these characters are of other generation where they kind of have one foot on either side they're they're comfortable enough engaging with the technology sometimes with some help in some way but they're also still in your face I'm gonna go do it in person kind of people and I feel like we don't see that as often I feel we're all sort of behind our screens all day long I that person-to-person communication even making a phone call as head has gotten lost and so interesting to see there's people who can call their hacker friend or do something that that's kind of high-tech but then also just bust through the door or bust into an office and I think I know shocking people now who are so anti confrontational an anti inter-relational they're happy to confront you in Arminius from the hierarchy right but I I sign up a sort of justified where a guy had had used like the Marshalls logo to steal this guy's business online the guy goes to the Marshall Marshall says that's not us they misspelled Marshalls so obviously it's wrong and so then the but then the the people who did it that guy find somebody and they go to people who did it and and he said listen man you know it's all on the net I can't and then the guy pulls out a gun and points it at his head okay that's the moment right there's a moment and when somebody is like a pointing gun at your head or is going into in the future point a gun in your head you can say I really am not trusting this keyboard to protect me I actually need a living body that's gonna help me you know you know make sure that I don't die because the computer is not a mother box it's not gonna help you not die it's kind of just sit there and and you know when you're dead and won't even miss you and so I think that that even for those people you know the things that they're doing online haven't become completely technological it's not that people are talking about binary I used to be a computer programmer i coded programs in assembler language in in in binary language or hexadecimal and that like that's a that was like an amazing thing and it's still true those things still run computers today nobody talks about that so all the things they're talking about is sex and violence and anger at something and how you can get away and Bitcoin or all of it is real it's real things it's just people who are have become a bit more effete in their dealing with the world you know but it's the same stuff it'll keep you in there yeah - you know and that it's it's an interesting thing you know you try to make people try to make enemies out of technology but now technology isn't the end it isn't an enemy and it's not also something you can't get away from okay that was gonna be a question I was gonna ask you do you feel it's a seeing seeing it put to good and bad in future land in other books is it is it a force for positive change is it a force for democratization or is it a force to you know keep people keep people tied up keep people down well the answer the question that I would come back with from that is what is the most sophisticated culture in the world is a good friend of mine once I said what is good evening he's all the West you know they have technology and they've there's nothing domination so like that and he said what are you thinking I said well I'm kind of partial to the Aborigines in Australia you know cuz an Aborigine you know wearing nothing can walk across like a river with thousands of crocodiles in it and not get eaten because he or she understands that at a certain temperature pocket else go to sleep so if you get into the hottest part of the water they won't they won't be able to get at you because they'll fall asleep along the way and you know to be able to be able to live in a world like that to be able to live under the stars to be able to live naturally in the world we can't and on top of that we don't understand what we do have like air conditioners I mean nobody understands air conditioners those people again they don't what they might talk about air conditioner but they don't understand them you know they understand like the meta they understand the the software that runs the system they get you to those sexual pictures or or they they understand all kinds of stuff that that is is not there like an in an air conditioner so how do you how does an air conditioner work you so what you just flip the switch and it comes on that's a meta an ocean right that's why in every post-apocalyptic book in TV series and movie the world falls apart completely because no one knows even you know if they're lucky they can get some crops going if they get lucky but they can't figure out how to hook up even like a windmill and power a light bulb yeah and it reminds me to when you talk about technology in those in future land there are these industries and products that again sneak through all the stories that are referred to as almost their own brand names in and of themselves like a sense steal or something and it makes me think of that it's like you oh it's that thing because we know what that thing is in that world but you you sometimes follow it up to who's making it but even then it's it's it's like another character in the story that that people have become dependent on there's a lot of dependence at all though of all the levels yeah I get dependent on and and really and this has been true for ever like Allegra there was a moment along the Nile where the the the Egyptians started growing grain before they were just gathering it then they started growing it and when you follow the graves from before that and after before everybody lived to 80 years old if they didn't die in childbirth everybody you know that they were in younger healthy there was all these there was no arthritis there's no this not that but as soon as they started eating that grain average age death is 35 years old everybody is obese everybody has arthritis because they could just eat you know and and and those people had to be winnowed out so that you could eat you need not get so fat but like that's the that's the the notion technology is always weighing on us always weighing on us and and and and we're kind of stuck with it we're stuck with being part of that thing and of course you you run systems okay if if everything runs itself in the future everything is made by factories cars drive themselves everything is worked like that then you have a trouble you have a conflict between capitalism which has been mastered technology and and and people working and making money to pay the capitalist the money to make the technology you know and you know we're we haven't talked about it that much yet but that's that's the big problem next 50 years and the enforced escapism that constant blaring it you watch this experience this plug into this play this game watch this movie watch this to you it's on your it's on your phone now to everywhere you go stream everything the the the pole strug in future land reminded me and I think Scott too of we less couple years we've done a lot with virtual reality it's gotten to the hardware's gotten to a point where it's a similar experience in that it's putting you in a completely realistic fantasy land where you move and experience it in the same way and it's very disconcerting have you even died and that feels extra current have you tried any of the conscious was to one place where there they had rides mmm-hmm that so instead of being and you didn't wear anything actually it was like there's a whole it was just a whole room and you felt like you were moving so bright you felt like you're going back and forth and I would get dizzy but like but the thing was yeah I've seen that that's one thing you know that's like that pure entertainment mountain ocean but the other things like in the prisons in future land where you have a thing that you wear that no matter that no matter what you know if you get too excited to calms you down if you if she's honestly but wait wakes you up if you you know whatever it is it's gonna fix you and you understand I my understanding of that is once you haven't working in the prisons then you can give it to everybody give it to students in school because we know you know because we have you know standardized education and you know you give it to people at work so they can work at their that their best you know it doesn't matter that they don't have offices and everybody's sitting right next to each other all of this stuff you know like becomes a part of the future and the thing is if it makes money it's hard to get rid of it because because our system is not technological it's capitalism and capitalism is the person who makes the most profit for the least effort is the person who's going to be in charge you know and so that that I you know that that's what you have to wonder about and I guess you could worry about it worry about something's gonna happen I think I'm gonna die one day well yeah you are you know there's a sense draft your wrists one day and it'll you have it now nowhere was hacks I mean who has a fitness tracker or a SmartWatch basically has a it has a heart sensor connected to them in the version again for seven should be thankful that's not his deeply imagine he can monitor your heart rate and the new version is an apple working on something great can tell you if in North today if you've an elevated sedentary heart rate it'll ping you about that but the question then is where the data gets collected into your insurance companies sent ashore like the engines of that but I think the continual observation that is in some of my in my favorite nightmare scenarios in science fiction shows up a lot in future land of like you were mentioning the the ability to always administer checks and balances to your body control you continuously in what you can do by that that's that's a yeah it's very pharmaceutical and the thing don't think about is when does it happen that you need that band to go to work that becomes the thing when you need the band to go to work you can't get in the front door you don't have your band on I mean it has to be on can't be just holding it has to be on you know and and and it's following you every time and if you disappear that's a problem security is war so all of a sudden because of one thing your life becomes completely controlled because the one thing that doesn't seem to be about controlling you you become controlled and that becomes the issue and it is the issue it is the issue because the of domination people get upset people get upset with me I never when I leave my home and I'm just going out somewhere to you know do things I always leave my phone at home a I'm gonna leave my phone at home oh my god normal people call sir where were you guys I was out and so what did you have your phone isn't no I leave my phone at home when I go out I have a tremendously hard time when you do that my kids love to my kid guilts me all the time about it he'll notice but it's something you know I guess it's to some degree drinking the the water here and testing tech and decide and you started using it all the time and you have to disconnect from and develop a routine where you don't fall too deep into yourself but that continual but the problem the problem with that is this you two work together for the same person let's say and you know your chore home is two o'clock in the morning that person needs something at two o'clock in the morning he's gonna call both of you and dice the person and if you answer and he doesn't yeah you're ahead you know and if you keep answering and he doesn't and you keep on you're gonna move ahead and so you're gonna have to listen I got to keep my phone like right next to my the difference of early morning TV run into that all the TV appears at six o'clock in the morning sure send the car TV but you know it's true and then and there's a degree to which you want it you want to disconnect but it travels home with you it's already lights that immersiveness you can yeah you can't I mean really I mean Chris and it's again like but okay that's one thing to think about and how it's going to impact people's lives the other thing is the Industrial Revolution 12 hours a day six and a half days a week you get a half day off on Sunday to go to church you know that's because people working for the company stores Tennessee Ernie Ford says you know you're there working for the company so it doesn't matter who you are what you are what you feel you know and that becomes the moment where the interface with technology is you know and it's in that moment has always existed since the ancient Egyptians it's all we're always running up against that wall the thing is that people you know people always think they're different now all is they just think they're different and I really I just to say and and the other thing that I the next thing I would write about if I if I can figure it out in in science fiction you know up until World War one knowledge doubled every century all the way back knowledge doubles so you have three four generations in the same culture technological culture which means which is our culture and then all of a sudden World War one a doubled and then it moved up a little faster than World War two happening faster now knowledge doubles every ten months right and that means you know it used to be that kids would say to their parents you don't know what you're talking about and then they were got in the world ten years later they come back so you know you were right I found out that what you said is the right thing now they say you don't know what you're talking about they got in the world and ten years later the parent says you know no but they were right because knowledge is changing so fast that you can't keep up nobody can keep up and that that is really it's like any credit second insidious enemy it's it's like you know the economic infrastructure or the unconscious or evolution you know it's like all of those things they're there and they're changing you and you don't know it as two people getting up industry I think we totally feel the burden of that all the time with kids yeah where I already filled up at this point or watching what he does on his own he'll accelerate past even though I follow tech all the time or think I do and then all of a sudden he'll be ahead in some area like programming for instance where he'll just sort of teach himself and and play around with things I mean to some degree it does feel like an acceleration through the technology that we use and that's what's always so it's always it always is and that that's the thing it's like the thing too if I if you can connect this with ancient Egyptian then then you begin to understand what it is to be human you know if you always think and of course it's hard to look at the past because you look through the lens of the current technology so it's really hard to understand other technologies that people are living under but so that way they're different in that way but they're the same as far as impacting how your life is organized how your your relationship to children your your relationship to to gender your relationship to everything gets changed by how your technology works and that that's really and it's always been true have you wanted to write anything that dives even further back in history to look like it again with that lens of the present on a period of time we know I have this book coming out in a September called John woman and it's it's a it's a novel about a deconstructionist historian I believe that history is the only true deconstruction to start because you can never know history it's always it's always gonna change it's gonna damage I was even in future land I feel like that was that yeah that's exactly their father had brought up yeah well you can't no you can so like and and right now that that and that's a technologic no logical thing you know though it's all all in your head and you know cuz that's the other like like really like the thing about Einstein I mean he just made that up I mean he just made it up I mean he's just like well you know I was thinking that space might be different here and and you know and in the upper atmosphere so I'm gonna have to refute Newton and just say but literally he didn't do any calculations he didn't have a laboratory and he just did all of the gorgeous thing about the human mind is that moment you know lack of just of sudden awareness you know which usually comes I think from some kind of mental illness mental illness is always helps us to do better often helps us do better in society you know and and at the same time it doesn't help us do better in human relation but here that seems like a great place to get spot to wrap up yes yes I'm I'm fascinated by all of us like I and I actually want to read a lot more of your crime and mystery novels which is an area that I've never been a reader of a lot of like mystery stories but I did I know I've torn through so many of them so quickly I started with Elmore Leonard and then I got it to you and I start reading Richard price and that's kind of like my triumvirate of crime novels that's the area it's a gray area for me like I don't I don't know in terms of writers and the genre I need to catch up you know and and i highly recommend of course down the river unto the sea which i just finished and is also great a great new york detective novel thank you thanks for joining us on scene at book club if you've liked today's book or any of Walter Mosley's books leave us a comment or a note or a tweet or if you have a book you'd like us to talk about or an author you'd like us to talk to let us know I'm Dan Ackerman for Scott Stein thanks for joining us