power chords and gnarliness

There's a fantastic podcast/interview here with top science fiction author Rudy Rucker. Two bits of language appropriation stuck out for me.

He talks about gnarly computation, using gnarly to  "suggest a kind of pattern characteristic of living beings, somewhere between simple symmetry and total chaos". That might be what I'm trying to get at when I talk about the complexity brands should have. (Quote from here.)

And he talks about SF power chords, based on those riffy, powerful chords heavy metal bands use. He's getting at the really big hitting, genre-defining ideas that sometimes seem a bit cheesy but actually always work. For SF he lists them as:

blaster guns, spaceships, time machines, aliens, telepathy, flying saucers, warped space, faster-than-light travel, holograms, immersive virtual reality, robots, teleportation, endless shrinking, levitation, antigravity, generation starships, ecodisaster, blowing up Earth, pleasure-center zappers, mind viruses, the attack of the giant ants, and the fourth dimension

It'd be worth thinking about what the power chords are in whatever you're working on - and are you just avoiding them because it's unfashionable?

Comments

[Dino]

Avoiding "power chords" can be fashionable, but the really hard part is using them in a way that is unique, not cliche and interesting.

Seeing (or hearing)a power chord in a new way or in a different context can be really difficult. In music it's one thing that separates true talent from the pretenders, in my opinion.

[Phil]

Power chords is an interesting idea. It got me thinking about Michael Crichton. A lot of his books are based on big, zeitgeisty power chords and he sells millions. But he's not the first author you'd mention when asked for your list of favourites. You see that "it's not fashionable" attitude in a lot of client organisations, more so in my experience than you do in agencies. Insight departments in particular often value intellectual satisfaction over simplicity and blinding obviousness, then give you their "you just don't get it" look to win the debate.