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Quantum computing is operating at a higher and more commercially viable level in 2023. More than 91% of global CEOs

Quantum computing is operating at a higher and more commercially viable level in 2023. More than 91% of global CEOs say theyre steering cash toward quantum computing, and 70% say theyre generating real-life use cases for the technology, according to the OpenOceanIQM-Lakestar State of Quantum 2022 report.

Corporate decision makers are starting to see what computer engineers have seen for years: Quantum computing can resolve issues in a few seconds that take the fastest supercomputers weeks to solve.

Our research confirms that we are on a one-way journey to enter the quantum era, says Ekaterina Almasque, general partner at OpenOcean, which coauthored the State of Quantum 2022 Report released in November.

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The findings are a clear sign that the broader market is starting to buy into the potential of quantum computing, recognizing its emerging commercial potential and backing it with significant investment, she says. The report showed that private investment in quantum computing grew 500% from 2017 to 2021 alone.

A recent report from Precedence Research pegged the global quantum computing market at more than $10 billion for 2022 and predicted that it would surpass $125 billion by 2030, expanding at a compound annual growth rate, or CAGR, of 37%.

So, which quantum computing stocks are doing the best job of harnessing themselves to the quantum computing revolution? These eight stocks are in acceleration mode:

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)

Microsoft is at the leading edge of quantum computing innovation, with one of the industrys first full-stack, open-cloud quantum computing ecosystems, which enables data engineers to create quantum applications and run them on multiple systems.

In February, Microsoft rolled out its new Integrated Hybrid feature in Azure Quantum that enables quantum and classical (computing) to integrate seamlessly together in the cloud, a first for our industry and an important step forward on our path to quantum at scale, according to the companys website.

With quantum computing developments growing steadily, and its Azure cloud computing platform growing at a 27% clip in the last quarter, look for these efforts to start paying off in 2023.

The 34 Wall Street analysts who rated MSFT stock on TipRanks.com gave it a strong buy recommendation, on average, with a price target of $327.14 in mid-May. Thats 5.7% above its May 15 closing price of $309.46.

International Business Machines Corp. (IBM)

IBM is one of the few large quantum computing developers that owns its own computing chip and operating systems, both of which are tied to its Quantum System One quantum computer, introduced in 2019. IBM has made big strides commercially with its efforts, as 210 entities across a wide spectrum of industries, including Raytheon Technologies Corp. (RTX), Sony Group Corp. (SONY), Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and the U.S. government, are either currently using IBM quantum computing programs or are partnering with IBM to build more robust quantum computing systems.

IBM also routinely rates highly in business innovation rankings its rated third for technology innovation in Drucker Institutes latest Management Top 250 Report (Microsoft is first) providing investors with some reassurance that Big Blue knows what its doing on the quantum computing front.

IBM shares closed at $123.36 on May 15, and eight analysts on TipRanks give the stock an average price target of $147.38. Thats a 19.5% increase.

[READ: How This 25-Year-Old Makes $500k a Year With His Newsletter Business]

Nvidia Corp. (NVDA)

Nvidia plays a huge role in the quantum computing market, as its one of the main providers of graphics processing units, or GPUs, used to power faster computing performance. Now Nvidia is getting into the hardware end of the quantum computing market with its DGX Quantum, the first computing system to merge GPUs and quantum computing. The quantum computing architecture is powered by Nvidias Grace Hopper Superchip, thus allowing researchers to build extraordinarily powerful applications that combine quantum computing with state-of-the-art classical computing, enabling calibration, control, quantum error correction and hybrid algorithms, the company stated.

NVDA stock could be a solid long-term play for quantum computing investors, given its outsized role in the global semiconductor market and its emerging role in quantum architecture even if that role may not pay off for several years. NVDA traded at $289.53 per share on May 15, and 38 analysts on TipRanks rate the stock a consensus strong buy with a 12-month price target of $288.24.

Alphabet Inc. (GOOG, GOOGL)

Alphabet, the parent to web search engine giant Google, has already established a big footprint in the quantum computing market. In 2018, the company introduced Bristlecone, its 72-qubit quantum processor, and has since spun off its own quantum computing and artificial intelligence private company.

In February, Alphabet engineers announced a breakthrough development in the quantum computing market, reporting that its quantum processor could reduce quantum computing errors (which are fairly common in the sector) by boosting the number of qubits used in computing processes.

No doubt, Alphabet is building a solid quantum computing platform that should place it in the top five technology companies in the quantum sector going forward. The stock should be another long-term pillar for sector investors, especially given its well-earned reputation as a highly profitable company.

GOOG had a closing price of $116.96 on May 15, and all six analysts who offer an average price target of $126.17 on TipRanks rate the stock a buy.

Honeywell International Inc. (HON)

Quantinuum, the quantum computing enterprise owned by Honeywell Quantum Solutions and Cambridge Quantum, recently tapped 30-year supercomputing veteran Raj Hazra as its new chief executive officer. That move underlines the industrys need for top leaders and visionaries who know how to push quantum computing from the realm of scientific theory to a mainstream commercial computing juggernaut.

The experienced Hazra leads a company thats planted deep roots in the quantum space, particularly in developing quantum computing products in the internet security, climate modeling and pharmaceutical drug sectors. Commenting on Quantinuum, which includes 350 scientists on its payroll, Hazra cited the state of the art engineering talent already on board at the enterprise.

Investors looking for exposure to all that generational talent can access it via Honeywells stock, which closed at $194.31 on May 15. Twelve TipRanks analysts set an average price target of $223.91, which represents 15.2% potential upside.

[SEE: 7 Space Stocks and ETFs to Watch]

Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN)

Amazon is rapidly expanding its presence in the quantum computing sector, primarily through its AWS Center for Quantum Networking for developing quantum network solutions and its Amazon Quantum Solutions Lab. Last year, Amazon also rolled out Amazon Braket, a cloud-based managed quantum computing service that researches and develops new quantum computing technologies.

Amazon is yet another deep-pocketed player that can take its time developing new products knowing that its massive revenue base $514 billion in 2022 can buy the companys quantum engineers all the time they need to master the market.

AMZN stock traded at $111.20 per share as of May 15, and 36 Wall Street analysts set a consensus price target of $134.24 with a strong buy rating. Thats upside potential of 20.7%.

Intel Corp. (INTC)

Intel is already widely recognized as the largest semiconductor company in the world. Now its taking significant steps to position itself as one of the rising stars in the quantum computing market.

In March, Intel introduced its Quantum software development kit, or SDK, to aid technology engineers in their ongoing research into quantum algorithms and applications. The SDK is already in use as a tool for researching fluid dynamics performance issues in the hydrodynamics and aerodynamics markets. Thats a path Intel is determined to follow to entrench itself in the quantum computing market.

The Intel Quantum SDK helps programmers get ready for future large-scale commercial quantum computers, says Anne Matsuura, director of quantum applications and architecture at Intel Labs. It will not only help developers learn how to create quantum algorithms and applications in simulation, but it will also advance the industry by creating a community of developers that will accelerate the development of applications, so they are ready when Intels quantum hardware becomes available.

INTC stock closed at $29.80 on May 15, and the price target consensus of 27 analysts on TipRanks is $30.98.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSM)

TSM has laid the groundwork for its quantum computing efforts with a five-year strategic partnership with Taiwans Ministry of Science and Technology. Thats the tentpole in TSMs plan to use its new cloud computing platform to develop quantum computing applications that will one day make it to the commercial marketplace.

Couple those efforts with TSMs standing as one of the top semiconductor companies in the world that generates 10% to 15% annual revenue growth rates, and its easy to see why Taiwan Semi could be a solid landing spot for new quantum computing investment dollars.

TSM stock closed at $85.66 per share on May 15. A small sample of Wall Street analysts on TipRanks rate the stock a strong buy and set a consensus price target of $118.67 for TSM shares, representing potential upside of 38.5%.

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8 Best Quantum Computing Stocks to Buy in 2023 originally appeared on usnews.com

Update 05/16/23: This story was previously published at an earlier date and has been updated with new information.

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8 Best Quantum Computing Stocks to Buy in 2023 - WTOP

Science and technology have always fascinated Joe Rogan. Rogan has hosted several guests from the science field on his podcast. The Joe Rogan Experience has a large repository of conversations on the subject with guests like Elon Musk and Brian Cox. The latest among such conversations was with Dr. Michio Kaku, Ph.D. Dr. Kaku is a theoretical physicist and host of a radio program called Science Fantastic.

Dr. Kaku has also recently written a book called Quantum Supremacy: How the Quantum Computer Revolution Will Change Everything. The pairs discussions were therefore pertaining to quantum computers and their potential to change the world.

via Getty

DALLAS, TEXAS JULY 29: Joe Rogan attends the UFC 277 ceremonial weigh-in at American Airlines Center on July 29, 2022 in Dallas, Texas. (Photo by Carmen Mandato/Getty Images)

This led Rogan to ask a typical Rogan-esque question- what if the government had these technologies and were hiding them?

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In episode #1980, Joe Rogan and Dr. Michio Kaku had a lengthy discussion about technology and quantum computers in particular. They discussed the technological race between countries like the United States and China. Toward the end of their chat, Rogan asked Kaku if he thought governments had already possessed this type of technology.

The 76-year-old told him an answer befitting a scientist. For Kaku, the proof was in the pudding. He had to see it to believe it. Then Rogan asked, Could you understand though how a government if they were in possession of something like that, would want to keep it a secret?

The BJJ black belt explained, Because the technology is so superior to anything that we have. Just like how were in this sort of quantum computer race with China and they have a different method than we do. What if they have a different method of back engineering these things?

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Kaku told Rogan that it was a conceivable theory but add there was no hard evidence to support any assumptions. He also analyzed other theories where people claim humans stole technology from aliens. The renowned physicist credited all such achievements to scientists who spent entire careers developing them.

What do you make of this conversation between Rogan and Kaku? Do you have any such theories regarding high-end technology?

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Were in This Sort of Quantum Computer Race With China Joe Rogan Questions Why Governments Hide Advanced Tech From the Masses - EssentiallySports

NEW YORK, May 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Insilico Medicine, a clinical stage generative artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery company, today announced that it groundbreakingly combines two rapidly developing technologies, quantum computing and generative AI to explore the lead candidate discovery in the drug development process and successfully demonstrated the potential advantages of quantum generative adversarial networks in generative chemistry.

The study published on May 13th in the American Chemical Society'sJournal of Chemical Information and Modeling, a leading journal in computational modeling, is led by Insilico Taiwan center and UAE center which focus on pioneering and constructing breakthrough methods and engines with rapidly developing technologies including generative AI and quantum computing to accelerate drug discovery and development, supported by the University of Toronto's Acceleration Consortium director Alan Aspuru-Guzik and Hon Hai (Foxconn) Research Institute.

"We are pleased to achieve the milestone in the collaboration with Insilico Medicine. Quantum computing can be used to solve complex computational problems. The application of quantum computing in drug discovery will potentially help reduce the time and lower the cost of research and development," said Min-Hsiu Hsieh, PhD, Director of the Quantum Computing Research Center of Hon Hai Technology Group (Foxconn)

Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) are one of the most successful generative models in drug discovery and design which has shown remarkable results for generating data that mimics a data distribution in different tasks. The classic GAN model consists of a generator and a discriminator. The generator takes random noises as input and tries to imitate the data distribution, and the discriminator tries to distinguish between the fake and real samples. A GAN is trained until the discriminator cannot distinguish the generated data from the real data.

In this paper, researchers have explored the quantum advantage in small molecule drug discovery by substituting each part of MolGAN, an implicit GAN for small molecular graphs, with a variational quantum circuit (VQC) step by step including as the noise generator, generator with the patch method and quantum discriminator, and comparing its performance and with the classical counterpart.

The study not only demonstrates that the trained quantum GANs can generate training-set-like molecules by using the VQC as the noise generator, but the quantum generator outperforms the classical GAN in the drug properties of generated compounds and the goal-directed benchmark. In addition, the study shows the quantum discriminator of GAN with only tens of learnable parameters can generate valid molecules and it outperforms the classical counterpart with tens of thousands of parameters in terms of generated molecule properties and KL-divergence score.

"Quantum computing is recognized as the next technology breakthrough which will make great impact to all communities, and the pharmaceutical industry is believed to be among the first wave of industries benefiting from the advancement. The paper demonstrates Insilico's first footprint in quantum computing with AI in molecular generation underlining our vision in the field," said Jimmy Yen-Chu Lin, PhD, GM of Insilico Medicine Taiwan, and corresponding author of the paper.

The promising result will further support Insilico's UAE team to integrate the hybrid Quantum GAN model into Chemistry42, Insilico's proprietary small molecule generation engine to obtain more efficient and accurate results in AI-driven drug discovery and development process. As one of the pioneers to leverage GANs in de novo molecular design Insilico published the first paper in this field in 2016 and the company has delivered 11 preclinical candidates with the support of its end-to-end platform Pharma.AI based on generative AI models since 2021, three of which have entered clinical trials.

"To our knowledge, it is the first time in the industry to systematically replace every component of GAN with VCQ and successfully generate molecules. I believe this is also the first small step in our journey," said Alex Zhavoronkov, founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine. "We are committed to accelerate high-quality effective therapeutics to patients to extend healthy productive life for everyone on the planet with the support of cutting-edge technologies. Insilico's UAE center is currently working on a breakthrough experiment with a real quantum computer for chemistry and look forward to sharing Insilico's best practices with industry and academia."

About Insilico Medicine

Insilico Medicine, a clinical-stage end-to-end artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery company, connects biology, chemistry, and clinical trials analysis using next-generation AI systems. The company has developed AI platforms that utilize deep generative models, reinforcement learning, transformers, and other modern machine learning techniques to discover novel targets and to design novel molecular structures with desired properties. Insilico Medicine delivers breakthrough solutions to discover and develop innovative drugs for cancer, fibrosis, immunity, central nervous system (CNS), and aging-related diseases. For more information, visit http://www.insilico.com

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Insilico Medicine Successfully Explores the Advantages of Quantum ... - PR Newswire

Shoppers like flawless diamonds, but for quantum physicists, the flaws are the best part.

Senior Elisabeth Rlke has spent the past year using lasers and flawed diamonds tiny wafers of diamond with flaws the size of a single atom to develop a quantum sensor.

The clear wafer at the center of the equipment is a diamond plate, precisely manufactured to be 2 mm on a side and .3 mm thick, with atomic-sized flaws at which Rlke and her adviser Nathalie de Leon shine green and orange lasers.

Photo by

David Kelly Crow for the Office of Engineering Communications

Unlike quantum computers, which are still more theoretical than practical, quantum sensors are already in use. Rlke and her adviser, quantum physicist Nathalie de Leon, are working on a new approach to quantum sensing that depends on using two of these single-atom defects simultaneously.

Because they are so, so small, you could begin to map and sense things on a scale that has never been feasible before, said Rlke, a physics concentrator pursuing a certificate in applied and computational mathematics. It would be revolutionary to chemistry, biology and especially medical devices.

Working with very bright students like Elisabeth is always just a privilege, said de Leon, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering who is associated faculty in the physics department. She brings a fresh perspective and a different take on things, and that brought a little more creativity on the project than I think would have happened otherwise. Im lucky to be at Princeton and get these really great students knocking on my door.

Rlke knew before she came to Princeton that she wanted to study physics and astronomy, but she also knew that she wanted to take full advantage of the liberal arts. I have taken courses in history, philosophy, religion, entrepreneurship, film, art and others, and I believe it has been a cornerstone of my Princeton experience. The wonderful part about Princetons liberal arts education is that it allows you to take classes in a range of subjects, meaning that what you choose to major in isnt the only focus of your education, as is the case with most British universities and a strong reason why I wanted to study in the U.S., said Rlke, who was born and raised in London.

I do think that there is overlap in the critical and creative thinking used in both higher-level physics and mathematics courses and the humanities subjects, she added.

When Princeton closed its campus to in-person instruction in March of Rlkes first year, she went home to London for Zoom classes. That summer, when travel restrictions eased, she and a Princeton classmate moved into an apartment in Rome. I took an art history class that fall, and it was amazing, Rlke said. I remember one assignment asked us to go find art wherever you are. Most of my classmates looked at, like, a teapot from their house, and I chose a Bernini sculpture.

After she returned to campus, she decided to focus her first junior paper on a truly enormous question: the nature of dark energy in the universe.

She hadnt had a course in general relativity, she hadnt had a course in cosmology, and she wasnt daunted at all, said Paul Steinhardt, Princetons Albert Einstein Professor in Science and a professor of physics who was her adviser on that paper. It was clearly a stretch for her, but she was just full of energy and enthusiasm. I really enjoy seeing a student stretching and learning, and that certainly characterized Elisabeth. She broke her leg that semester, but she still always came to our weekly meetings with enthusiasm and cheer and lots of great research questions.

After they worked together on that paper, Steinhardt served as the second reader on Rlkes second junior paper, then reprised that role for her senior thesis. Ill have read all her theses by the time were through, he said.

Rlke came to Princeton knowing she wanted to immerse herself in STEM science, technology, engineering and mathematics and specifically in physics and astronomy.

The Princeton astrophysics and physics departments are absolutely amazing, she said. I feel so lucky. When I visited Princeton after I got in, I went to go see Einsteins old classroom and walked to his house, which is near campus.

In the lab, Rlkeperforms a confocal scan to locate NV centers in a diamond lattice.

Photo by

Denise Applewhite, Office of Communications

After tackling theoretical cosmology for her first independent research project, she wanted to try something more hands-on, so she did her second junior paper on plasma propulsion. Both were very, very interesting. The first one was very theoretical, and the second was almost too experimental, she said. I was actually climbing into a thrust tank with tools and tinkering with stuff in there. So for my thesis, I wanted something in the middle.

Her broad perspective has served Rlke well as she tackles quantum sensing, a problem that has brought together professors from physics, chemistry and engineering with the goal of tackling a large range of problems, from biophysics and biomedical applications to condensed matter physics and designing new navigational sensors.

The general ethos of my research group is to try to see problems without any borders as much as possible, said de Leon. Our approach to problems tends to start with, What does it take to solve this? We have all of physics and all of chemistry and all of materials engineering all the tools of humanity so lets see if we can MacGyver our way to a solution. Elisabeth definitely fit in like a fish in water.

Diamonds are made of pure carbon, as are charcoal and the graphite in pencils. But you can write with pencils (and charcoal) because those carbon atoms are organized in sheets that slide apart with the barest pressure, leaving marks behind.

The carbon atoms in a diamond, by contrast, have been forced together with tremendous pressure, crowding the atoms together in a perfect and complex web. This allows for another unique property: when a nitrogen atom pushes in and displaces two carbon atoms, it creates a tiny defect called a nitrogen vacancy center or NV center.

NV centers behave like tiny compass needles and have been used in quantum sensors that can measure magnetic fields. While quarantining at home during the COVID pandemic, de Leon began wondering what would happen if there were two NV centers, precisely separated within a diamond chip.

It turns out that while its much, much harder to measure two nitrogen vacancies simultaneously, once you do, you can measure new physical quantities, namely correlations in the magnetic field in space and time. With simultaneous measurements of two NV centers, a whole new world of nanoscale measurements is possible, de Leon said.

This is a fundamentally new thing, she said. The world is our oyster. We can use this new technique that measures a completely new physical quantity. So lets clean up! Lets go look at everything that people were trying to do in the 80s and then just got stuck because they didnt have the right tool. Maybe theres some really cool physics that we can learn. That's where Elisabeth comes in.

The voyage from pandemic inspiration to simultaneously measuring two NV centers took years. De Leon and a postdoc in her lab, Jared Rovny, spent 18 months working out the math and longer than that to figure out how to build a tool that lets you shine lasers at two atomic-sized objects and then count the photons flying out. They first demonstrated this technique with a resolution of 500 nanometers. (For comparisons sake, the period at the end of this sentence is about a million nanometers across.) Rlkes senior thesis has focused on improving this resolution from 500 nanometers down to 10 nm or maybe even a single nanometer.

Rlke credits her coursework and her independent research projects at the University with developing her ability to navigate uncertainty and face challenges head-on.

I remember a three-hour physics exam that only had two questions. You have to spend so much time grasping around in the darkness, trying to think of how to do this, which method to start with and building the skills to do that makes you a person with the ability to think really critically and not be afraid if youre going head-on to a problem where you cant really see the end or you dont really know how to solve it.

In high school, I hated those sorts of problems, she said. I liked getting to the answer and getting it right. That growth happened at Princeton.

She and de Leon both enjoyed their weekly thesis advising sessions.

I have enough autonomy to decide what exactly I want to do, Rlke said. But de Leon also provides enough help to make sure that I have the right background knowledge.

She always shows up at my office extremely sunny and very enthusiastic, de Leon said of Rlke. I dont know where she gets all that energy. Even if its the middle of midterm season or application season, she still just shows up and is like, Okay, heres what Ive done. Look at all my data. Lets discuss it. Heres my plan. I think this thing is really interesting.

1

Rlke and her thesis adviser, quantum physicist Nathalie de Leon (right), are measuring two nitrogen vacancy centers simultaneously. De Leon and her postdoc Jared Rovny first demonstrated this technique with a resolution of 500 nanometers, and Rlkes senior thesis has focused on improving this resolution down to 10 nm or maybe even a single nanometer.

Photo by

Denise Applewhite, Office of Communications

2

Rlke gives her parents a tour of Cottage Club in Fall 2022.

Courtesy of Elisabeth Rlke

Outside of her coursework, Rlke is a member of Mathey College and she serves as the diversity, equity and inclusion chair of University Cottage Club. She got involved in entrepreneurship through the Keller Center and the Entrepreneurship Club, and she traveled to California with the Silicon Valley Tiger Track to meet with entrepreneurs, venture capital firms and space related companies.

She received the Manfred Pyka Memorial Prize in Physics, given to outstanding physics undergraduates who have shown excellence in course work and promise in independent research; the Jocelyn Bell Burnell fellowship, aimed at encouraging women to pursue physics; and the Schwarzman Scholarship, which covers the cost of one-year masters program at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Rlke says she feels a pull towards being a global citizen, having been born in the United Kingdom to a German dad and a Chinese mom.

My cultural identity is complicated, she said. I have family in different parts of the world, and sometimes being mixed race means you dont feel that you fully fit in anywhere. Visiting family in Germany or in China, I never looked like anybody else.

As a kid, that made me feel out of place sometimes, but as Ive grown up, Ive started to enjoy it, Rlke said. I think standing out is much better than disappearing into a crowd.

This elaborate array of mirrors, lenses, and scanning galvonometers route and collect light in this home-built microscope for quantum sensing.

Photo by

Denise Applewhite, Office of Communications

Rlke dons safety safety goggles before firing lasers into single-atom sized defects that are closer together than the wavelength of light.

Photo by

Denise Applewhite, Office of Communications

Rlke (left) visits Cairo with her family in 2009.

Photo by

Courtesy of Elisabeth Rlke

Elisabeth Rlke is a Class of 2023 physics major with a minor inappliedand computational mathematics.

Photo by

Denise Applewhite, Office of Communications

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That flawed diamond could be a quantum physicist's best friend - Princeton University

What does it mean to illustrate Steely Dan? Illustrations by Joan LeMay/Courtesy of the University of Texas Press hide caption

What does it mean to illustrate Steely Dan?

This interview originally appeared in NPR Music's weekly newsletter. Subscribe to the newsletter here.

Steely Dan is a paradox. As writer Alex Pappademas puts it, it's a "cult band whose catalog ... includes at least a dozen enduring radio hits" two guys who continually found a way to "embed blue-ribbon misanthropy in music designed to go down as smooth as creme de menthe." And like many great paradoxes, there's more to learn about the band the longer you spend considering it. This is true even if you only know a few of those enduring hits. You might recognize the chorus of "Dirty Work," for example but did you know that the man singing lead vocals on that track, David Palmer, once played a high school show alongside The Velvet Underground its first under that name? Did you know that "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" was written for the wife of a faculty member at Bard College, where Steely Dan's Walter Becker and Donald Fagen studied? Or that one of MF Doom's earliest solo tracks samples the opening song on Aja?

In the new book Quantum Criminals, Pappademas and artist Joan LeMay give a roadmap to the Steely Dan extended universe through the lens of the characters at the heart of the band's songs. Alongside Pappademas' explorations, LeMay's paintings render touching portraits of Steely Dan's influences and inheritors, and speculative illustrations of the personalities who populate its world. Their book uncovers the vast constellation of lyrical references, artistic influences and social and political contexts surrounding the band and its music. In this interview, Pappademas and LeMay answered a few questions about their personal histories with Steely Dan and how Quantum Criminals came to be.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Marissa Lorusso: In one of the book's opening chapters, Alex details his evolving relationship with Steely Dan's music, from mild distaste to somewhat ironic engagement to sincere appreciation a path he says has been followed by many Millennial and Gen Z fans. Joan, what's the story of your relationship with Steely Dan did your fandom follow a similar road?

Joan LeMay: Listening to Steely Dan is, honest to God, my first musical memory. Growing up, my parents had a very limited record collection a stack about five inches wide or so. In it was the entire Steely Dan discography (later to include [Donald Fagen's solo debut] The Nightfly; no other Fagen solo records nor any Becker records made the cut), plus lots of Linda Ronstadt, a couple of James Taylor records, The Best of the Doobie Brothers Vol. II, Carole King's Tapestry and Jethro Tull's Thick as a Brick. At 2 years old, I was what one would call a tall baby. I would reach for things. And I'd get 'em, too. I clearly remember the day I was able to reach the turntable, my tiny arms at full stretch above my head, and heft an LP upon it until the peg snapped into the hole. That LP was Can't Buy A Thrill. I liked it the most out of all of my parents' records because of the colors on the cover. I plopped down on our diarrhea-brown shag carpet and was pleased. It seems unlikely that I would remember this so clearly, but I was reading the newspaper at that age I peaked early.

How did you decide to approach a book about Steely Dan this way? Why tell the story of the band through the lens of these characters and what inspired both of you to approach this project as an illustrated/written collaboration?

LeMay: In 2020, I got back into the practice of making fanzines. I made two issues of a zine called Mug Club I asked people in the arts to send me a photo of their favorite mug and tell me a story about it, and I'd paint the mug. The paintings and stories were a way to explode the banal/micro into the sublime/macro and serve as a connective creative project in the midst of lockdown. After those, I started making a fanzine called Danzine wherein I planned to paint all 240-something characters in the Steely Dan universe. I got as far as drawing the cover, making a character spreadsheet, doing a few sketches and posting about it on Instagram, partially as a way to keep myself accountable for making the thing.

Aja. Joan LeMay/Courtesy of the University of Texas Press hide caption

Esteemed writer/director Jessica Hopper, one of the editors of the University of Texas Press American Music Series and this book's doula, texted me and said "Joanie? That's not a fanzine. That's a book." Before I posted my thing, she had been talking with Alex about what kind of book he might like to write for the press and he'd responded by pitching a book that was "Bluets, but Steely Dan" ... and she put us together.

Alex Pappademas: Bluets is a collection of short pieces by the incredible poet and nonfiction writer Maggie Nelson that walk the line between autobiography and criticism and prose poetry. I had been reading a lot of Nelson and other nonfiction writers who work in a really pared-down, aphoristic mode and when Jessica and I started talking about me doing a Steely Dan book for UT, I said I wanted to do something really piece-y and fragmentary like that. I don't know that there was any specific Steely Dan-related reason I wanted to do it that way; I just liked the idea of writing these micro-essays where each one would be its own thought about Steely Dan and their music and their place in pop culture/American culture, and themes would build and accumulate the way they do in Nelson's work, or Jenny Offill's or some of David Shields's stuff. By the time Jessica roped Joan into this project, I had an outline for what would have been a Bluets version of this book, but a lot of it was pretty sketchy like, "Chevy Chase" would be a line item on the outline, or "Dan and Race" or "Perfectionism." I mulched on this for just over a year, on and off, before Joan even engaged. And then we didn't get to the proposal until September 2020 deep COVID times. Book was done almost exactly one year from that date, but I'd say most of the writing took about seven months.

Once we merged the idea for Bluets-but-Steely Dan with Joan's idea to paint all the characters, it necessitated a change in my approach; instead of making a deck of cards and trying to assemble them into a narrative it was about seeing how much you could hang on the idea of an individual Steely Dan character and how to use those characters to frame stories that illuminated Steely Dan's legacy in some interesting way.

The chapters in this book give such deep studies of the personalities who populate Steely Dan's songs (and, by extension, of the musicians who brought them to life). Did your relationship with any of these songs change while writing about them, illustrating them, or otherwise getting inside the heads of these characters? Did you learn anything about the songs that genuinely surprised you while working on this project?

LeMay: I learned so much. On our weekly calls, Alex always excitedly ushered me into the entrance of several wormholes he'd been traversing, and it was a constant delight. Thinking deeply about what these characters were wearing, what they might've been doing in the narrative beyond the narrative, thinking about their environment, how they held their faces, how they held their bodies it was an immersive way to listen. I'd had ideas in my head about so many of the characters because I tend to think visually, but there were lots of fantastic surprises, like when we dug into Cathy Berberian, for instance. I'd never looked up what she looked like before.

Cathy Berberian. Joan LeMay/Courtesy of the University of Texas Press hide caption

Pappademas: I think what surprised me the most as I dug deeper into these songs was how much empathy Donald and Walter seemed to have for their characters. It's not something they're usually given credit for the idea people have about them is that they're always snickering amongst themselves, making fun of the people they write about, but I think that's actually more true of somebody like Randy Newman than it is of Becker/Fagen. I think there's always a real sense of humanity's plight underneath whatever coldness or archness is more easily detectable in their work on first blush even when the people they're writing about are doomed or deluded or depraved, you don't get the sense that they're judging these characters, most of the time. There's an attention paid to the human longing that motivates people to these weird actions and they don't judge the longing, of, say, the guy who's hung up on a sex worker in "Pearl of the Quarter" whereas Frank Zappa, given the same storyline, would absolutely write about what a moron that guy is.

Steely Dan's lyrics are famously somewhat cryptic, and Walter Becker and Donald Fagen were quite averse to having their lyrics read as straightforward personal narratives. It's clear that so much research went into illuminating these songs, but there's also a healthy dose of creative speculation, too, both in how the subjects of the songs are described and how they're depicted.

LeMay: The only characters I painted that weren't 100% creative speculation (and really, less speculation and more my personal interpretation) were those having to do with actual, living people, like Cathy Berberian, Jill St. John and G. Gordon Liddy. I had a folder on my computer called "DAN CASTING GALLERY" full of images of people in my life, found photos, '60s and '70s fashion catalogs, advertisements and sewing pattern packaging. I painted from a melange of those images mixed with things that had been in my head forever, as well as from a ton of photos of my own body posing in different ways for reference. The most important thing to me was getting the humanity the profoundly flawed humanity of these characters right.

Pappademas: And it works I try to get across that humanity in the text, but having Joan populate this world with real human faces made the finished product into something greater than I could have gotten to on my own.

The Gaucho. Joan LeMay/Courtesy of the University of Texas Press hide caption

Anyway, my answer to the question above is that when I'm writing criticism, for sure, but also when I'm writing reported pieces, I feel like there's always an element of creative speculation in what I do. It's just more or less constrained by facts depending on what kind of piece it is. Even if you've sat in a room with somebody for hours you're ultimately imagining their inner life based on what they've told you, and sometimes on what they haven't told you. In terms of Quantum Criminals, yeah, Steely Dan definitely tried to discourage any attempt to read these lyrics autobiographically and the fact that all their lyrics were composed by (or at least credited to) two writers was their first line of defense against that kind of reading, because even when they're writing in the first person you're conscious that the "I" in every Dan song is to whatever degree a fictional character and therefore a distancing device. But I think it's human nature or at least it's my human nature to intuit the opposite and look for places where the art seems to correspond to what we know to be the contours of an artist's life. Because the other thing about Steely Dan is they liked to obfuscate; the fact that they rarely owned up to their music having an autobiographical component (with certain exceptions, notably "Deacon Blues," which they admitted was pretty personal) doesn't mean it wasn't autobiographical. And at times as with "Gaucho," a song about a duo torn apart by a third party who might be the personification of drugs or other forms of hedonism, recorded for the album Donald made mostly without Walter because Walter's addiction issues had pulled him away from the band the correspondences became too tempting to not explore. Which is what happens when you write cryptically; it's human nature to decrypt.

I don't know; I guess I'm doing the same thing Taylor Swift's fans do when they decide that some opaque lyric is an Easter egg about this or that relationship of hers, or what A.J. Weberman was doing when he decided "The sun isn't yellow, it's chicken" was Bob Dylan confessing to faking his own death, or what the people who think The Shining was Stanley Kubrick exorcizing his guilt over faking the moon landing. The difference is that I think I'm right and I think those other people are all nuts, because I'm in my bubble and can't imagine the view from theirs.

Finally, what do you hope readers be they longtime devotees, newly converted fans or Steely Dan skeptics take away from Quantum Criminals?

LeMay: I think that in a lot of ways, this book can be read as something that's about the ridiculous cacophony of what it is to be a person in the world, striving to do something you're happy with. In a lot of other ways, it is a real invitation to truly dive into what you love with reckless abandon to dream about it hard, to see and hear and appreciate the small details and the big ways you feel as a result of giving yourself the gift of paying attention. I hope that readers come away from the book thinking about all the ways they have yet to enjoy not just Steely Dan, but anything that moves them.

Pappademas: I hope people come away from this book thinking about how, even though perfectionism can undo you as an artist and any book about how to make your art will tell you that over and over, there's still something noble and useful about aspiring to perfection that there's magic in the falling-short but also in the reaching-for. I also hope these stories inspire young people to say no to drugs.

See the rest here:
Steely Dan authors reveal the pretzel logic behind 'Quantum Criminals' - NPR