Greg Sanders

Critique: The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis (Chapter 3)

Lewis is consistent in arguing that greater things build from lesser, so affection, the first of the four human loves he considers, is basic but no less important for that (for an introduction to this project, see the prior post).

Affection for Lewis is shaped by persistence, familiarity, and roles. Childhood friends, family members, pets, schoolmates, and beloved nurses or teachers are all listed as examples.

This warm comfortableness, this satisfaction in being together, takes in all sorts of objects. It is indeed the least discriminating of loves. . . But almost anyone can become an object of Affection; the ugly; the stupid; even the exasperating. . . It ignores barriers of age, sex, class, and education.

He then proceeds to cite the four animal friends in the Wind in the Willows as examples of “the amazing heterogeneity of possible between those bound by affection.” 

Co-reader Monica was charmed by one particular passage that notes how affection is enhanced by being different from the classic conception of soul mates or the like:

Made for us? Thank God, no. They are themselves, odder than you could have believed and worth far more than we guessed.

The familiarity that is its basis can also be its limitation. Affection can be tied to the person as we came to know them, good and ill, just as one’s sense of someone’s height may be set by how they stood out when we first met them and not their stature in maturity. Even a change for the better may be regretted. The gift-love of affection is what we can offer and not necessarily what the other person needs. In many cases, for parents and teachers in particular, “the proper aim of giving is to put the recipient in a state where he no longer needs our gift. . . Thus a heavy task is laid upon this Gift-Love. It must work towards its own abdication.”

Finally, the chapter makes an interesting distinction between spiritual health and mental health:

But, greed, ego-ism, self-deception, and self-pity are not unnatural or abnormal in the same sense as astigmatism or a floating kidney. For who, in Heaven's name, would describe as natural or normal the man from whom these failings were wholly absent?

So, how can affection grow into something more dynamic? The next love, friendship, will explore that, but its definitions are far thornier. Nonetheless, I was intrigued by Lewis’s strengths and failings and this next chapter is also the one that justifies the critique. 

Image Source: Nisa yeh on Flickr, used under a creative commons language.

Review: Rights of the Reader

Daniel Pennac's Rights of the Reader was recommended to me in part because I’ve been dissatisfied with the pace of my reading for some time. I found it an interesting exploration of why young people in particular may be alienated from reading and how they might be wooed back:

You can't make someone read. Just as you can't make them fall in love or dream. . . .
You can try of course. "Go on, love me!" "Dream!" "Read! Read! Read, goddamit I'm telling you to read!" 'Go to your room and read!"
What happens next?
Nothing

So, I'm the sort of weirdo that was not at all alienated by how we typically do English classes. I did sometimes run behind: I embarrassingly faked my way through To Kill a Mockingbird, not because I was blocked directly; I'd just fallen behind and lost track of the assignment.

But one of my fondest memories of English classes, I believe 9th grade, was to write a more critical book review. I'd initially suggested a Xanth book and my teacher, kindly but wisely, suggested I could find something more demanding. I went with the adaptation of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Film adaptation novels are hardly the highlight of sci fi canon but it was still a good moment for looking at some pulp more critically.

But while I don't even recall my line of argument in my essay, I remember my excitement at discovering compilations of critical reviews. People deeply engaging with texts, over thinking in their way, but in polished form.

Pennac’s focus is elsewhere. He convincingly argues that we should be reading aloud more when cultivating a love a reading. He argues said love can be lost when going from reading to kids to "and now you can read on your own, get on with it." He tells stories of engaging the words rather than making it an analytical assignment. He quotes Flannery O'Connor:

If teachers are in the habit of approaching a story as if it were a research problem for which any answer is believable so long as it is not obvious, then I think students will never learn to enjoy fiction.

I feel like the book is missing a typology of different and not mutually exclusive reasons people enjoy reading, though I think the book does well to focus on those most alienated, even if this limits the degree it speaks to my own reading rather than that of younger people I hope to encourage.

After the cut, I’ll cover his 10 rights and how I’d modify them for what I want for myself.

Review: Five Women who Loved Love, Ihara Saikaku

Five women Who Loved Love is written in a period of value transition in Japan. There is regular reference to ukiyo which the introduction notes can be translated as either the world of sadness (drawing on Buddhism) or the floating world. The later gets at both the glamor and the precariousness involved in the stories. The stories often felt like an intensification of chivalrous romances involved with breaking of the rules and death. But the chivalry analogy this is not quite right as the characters in the stories are largely townsfolk rather than samurai.  Moreover, the bustling and commercial seventeenth century Osaka is Ihara Saikaku’s home and townfolk are also thus a core audience.

I found the stories often frustrating, often with implicit social critiques that were quite funny but with an at times outright misogynist narrator adding unwelcome commentary on gender relations. As is my present habit I skipped the introductory essay, but in my case this had been a mistake. I’d been left wondering if there was a Tokugawa era version of the Hayes code: the characters can have their bawdy romances so long as they are punished. The end essay helpfully elaborated that the criminal code made affairs or running away with the daughter or sister, let alone wife, of someone of higher stature a capital crime. The five short stories in the book draw, to greatly varying degrees, on the names and sometimes highly dramatized stories of people who’d lived in the author’s era or a generation or two before. The transition to a new era was happening but strict social codes where very much a factor and the characters are often rebels who win some popular acclaim. Even without direct critique, Saikaku tells a story that criticizes these laws and may have skated the edge of what was safe to publish.

I found it most interesting as a cultural artifact, if an often troubling one. For all the death, there's not much graphic violence, though what the women feel forced to put up with is often deeply disturbing with two of the stories involving resigned "my reputation is ruined I may as well have an affair." As the introductory essay comments, the writing style is not novelistic and I found it difficult to get a strong sense of the characters of the leading women, especially at the moment of pivotal choices.

Some of the moralism from the narrator is fairly shocking to me, i.e. complaining about the disloyalty of widows who remarry rather than becoming nuns. That said, while this is a critique of women, he also notes it applies to the male lead in a story who accepts a new partner after tragically losing two pretty young men to sudden love interest death syndrome. The role of homosexuality in Japan in the book is not tied up with in moralism from Saikaku, and the stories show multiple instances including oaths of fidelity and a prominent role in the theater, which was often limited to males by regulation.

I think the audience that might most appreciate it would be those that are culturally curious about classical Japan and want to go deeper than the “oh, Japan” reaction and have a sense of cultural history in a light weight and fast paced set of alternatingly funny, tragic, and always somewhat problematic stories. I’ll close with a passage from the first passage of the first book that gets at the experience of reading these tales and their sometimes black humor. Content warning, blithe treatment of suicide:

Seijuro [just disowned] could only say, “It’s heart-rending,” and thought to himself that he would take his own life, if only Minakawa would not insist on joining him.

She guessed what he had in mind, and said: “You are thinking of taking your life. Alas, how foolish! For, however much I should like to say, ‘Take me with you,’ I still have attachments in this world and cannot. In my sort of work one’s heart belongs first to this man, then to that. Let us simply call our affair a thing of the past.” So saying, she rose and left him.

Crushed by theses unexpected words, Seijuro abandoned his plan of suicide, . “How fickle these whores are! Read any time to cast away old lovers.”

But as he rose in tears to leave, Minakawa came back clothed in garments of white, ready now to die, and clung desperately to him. “How can you live? Where will you go? Oh, now is the time to end it all!” she cried, pulling out a pair of knives.

Seijuro was almost speechless with delight to find his lover faithful after all…

Review: Sputnik Sweetheart

This is my third book by renowned Japanese author Haruki Murakami. It’s an intimate tale of three people. Sumire is a college dropout and aspiring writer whose first love is Miu. It’s “an intense love, a veritable torando sweeping across the plains.” Miu is seventeen years older, disconcertingly close to my own age, and a married woman. The tale is told by narrator K, Sumire’s closest friend who shares a love of reading with her, crushes on her, and has a habit of entanglements with somewhat older women that are not strictly speaking single themselves.

That premise could easily go quite soapy, but that is not Murakami’s way.  Instead this is a character study of those three. The otherworldly aspects of this tale are not quick to arrive in a way that might surprise some readers of his other tales. Sumire is the one that stuck with most of us, both in her story and character and the poritons we read of her writing. Yes, this is a book about a writer that suffers from some writer’s block, but not one that bogs down in navel gazing or self-pity. All three characters land for me and the way Sumire grapples with a newfound queer identity and all three manage their role in society and the physical aspects of loves they cannot fully reciprocate proved fertile thematic ground.

At a well-paced 211 pages, I would recommend it to those who find the above appealing, but with three caveats. First, some male gaze is the price of entry. That could be written off to the narrator, but some of my fellow Argo Japan book club members did note that this comes up too when we’re hearing the tale of Sumire in a way that rang untrue. That part might not have bothered me - I’m part of the target audience for much of it - but YMMV and I think it muddies some of the thematic waters. Second, content warning for some sexually related trauma. I think it has a valuable role in the story, but combined with the first point may be off putting. And third, while the core plot resolves as much as one might reasonably expect for weird Japanese fiction, I think I would have been left unsatisfied without someone to talk about it with. To desire such is my default position, but my favorite of his tales I’ve read, Hard Boiled Wonderland, did not require company in chewing over the book to make it a fully satisfying meal for me.

Spoilers after the cut.

The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe

A classic in Japan that is remarkably popular for its bleakness. The protagonist, we learn in the first chapter, has gone missing. We then pick up on his travels to an isolated village, driven by his hypothesis that it is a prime spot to make his name in his hobby by finding a new species of insect. He has a lot of thoughts about sand, its physical properties, its larger meaning, how we can live around its shifting destructive power. These discussions were the highlight of the book for me as was the physicality of the language, the feel of sand on the skin, the dryness of throat, and separately knowing what it is to be betrayed by sleep.

One early passage gets at the musings:

Certainly sand was not suitable for life. Yet, was a stationary condition absolutely indispensable for existence? Didn’t unpleasant competition arise precisely because one tried to cling to a fixed position? If one were to give up a  fixed position and abandon oneself to the movement of the sands, competition would stop. Actually in the desert flowers blood and insects and other animals lived their lives. These creatures were able to escape competition through their great ability to adjust. . .

The book quickly takes a turn for the surreal as we see that the outer edge of village involves trekking above huts that exist at the base of sand pits as if an ant lion made an arrangement with a literal carpenter ant. Without giving too much away the story focuses on the man and the title woman in the dunes. She has some depth of character, in what she endures, what what she resists, and how she tries to reach out. However, she ultimately remained a cipher to me in ways that made the novels bleakness harder to bear. More on that after the cut.

Review: Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks

From my youth I’ve been a Star Trek fan. Core to the appeal to me is the vision of a hopeful future, one with dilemmas and danger but no longer a prisoner to scarcity. The appeal has not faded since I’ve become an adult (happy belated 100th to Gene Roddenberry), and while I do enjoy Deep Space Nine and some nuance in my Trek, I think many attempts to make it dark or mature can miss the point. I was drawn to the Iain M. Banks’ Culture series, because Culture itself is a variation of a utopian Federation-adjacent civilization that explores a range of themes while still believing in the possibility of a diverse and abundant future.

The story starts with the tale of a ship’s computer, a Mind, seeking escape and refuge and only partially finding it. In Culture, the question of whether the Enterprise’s computer is alive is unambiguously yes. Indeed the hyper-intelligent life forms captain their own vessels which display their personality with  ship names like “No More Mr. Nice Guy” or “Prosthetic Conscience.”

However, while the quest to rescue or capture that Mind is the core quest of the book, its protagonist is not just a sort of human, but an ideological enemy of the Culture: Bora Horza Gobuchul. Horza is a skilled infiltrator capable of slowly changing his shape and more to impersonate another. He works for the Iridians, a tri-legged, potentially immortal species both smarter and stronger than most humans but also typically devout, giving rising to ship names like “The Hand of God 137.” There’s no place for other species in the Iridian religion, but he supports them anyways for reasons he explains when competing to win the loyalty of a planet while opposed by  Culture Special Circumstances Agent Perosteck Belveda.

“At least [the Iridians] have a God, Frolk. The Culture doesn’t. . .They at least think the same way way you do. The Culture doesn’t. . .”

“You want to know who the real representative of the Culture is on this planet? It’s not her,” he nodded at the woman [his opposite number], “It’s that powered flesh-slicer she has following her everywhere, her knife missile. She might make the decisions, it might do what she tells it, but it’s the real emissary. That’s what the Culture’s about: machines. You think because Belveda’s got two legs and soft skin you should be on her side, but its’ the Iridians who are on the side of life in this war.”

The novel is not directly about this debate; instead it is full of adventure, often set in epic speculative locations like the a massive ring station that sustains its own ocean and gravity with centrifugal force, or concepts like the absurd game of Danger where players can blast complex emotions at one another and fans will tune into to what players are feeling or be caught in the splash themselves. Whether or not you root for Horza, he is a capable charmer, and he needs to be as he and his rag-tag group of companions face a series of challenges that - despite a captain’s words to the contrary - are anything but “easy in, easy out.”

The tone of this first book is not Star Trek. It’s often satirical, regularly tragic, and frequently more focused on survival than exploration. The start of the story often left me discombobulated, intentionally so I think. One chapter after the one-third mark just put me off, testing boundaries without offering much to hold my interests. For me, the novel truly hits its stride as an ensemble comes together with relationships and competing loyalties shaped in adversity. Indeed, the perspective of the story broadens in the finale as suspense steadily builds and the casualties mount.

Consider Phlebas has its rough patches; at times I had trouble grasping the visuals of some of the settings and wonders, and it took time (and a handy list of names) for me to really come to care about some of the supporting cast. Similarly, as the epigram from the Waste Land that gives the book its title indicates, it helps to have some taste for the outré and the tragic. But for me the story is a triumph that kicks off the Culture series in a such a fitting way, by exploring the perspective of one of its enemies. (For a more critical take, see Abigail Nussbaum). I eagerly look forward to the next book in the series.

After the cut, some light spoilers and a bit of international relations.

The Ballad of the Whiskey Robber by Julian Rubinstein: Review

A Transylvanian named Attila Ambrus makes a daring escape from Ceaușescu's totalitarian Romania to try to make his luck in Hungary. Unfortunately, being a third rank goalie for a middling hockey club doesn't really pay the bills, especially as the Soviet Union falls apart and the nation begins a rough transition to a capitalist system. Fortunately, Attila is a charming and resourceful gentlemen and quickly finds ways to make end meet through pelt smuggling and a bit of bank robbery.

Rubinstein has found an amazing true story to anchor this non-fiction tale. Attila himself is fascinating and despite a variety of poor life choices has the pathos to provide this story its core. Critically, while no doubt a criminal, the man is a robber, not a gangster, which is why he became a widely adored Robin Hood-esque figure in his adopted land over the course of more than a score of often whiskey-fueled heists.

However, the book is more than just the superbly reported slice-life tale of a strangely compelling criminal. The book also follows the adventures of the police officers chasing him, but in a larger sense it tells of the triumphs and more often travails of Hungary and, to a lesser extent, Romania, as they chart a post-Soviet path. Suffice to say, Atilla is hardly the biggest crook in the country. This is a great story and an important one, as Prime Minster Viktor Orbán has been in the news in recent months for all the wrong reasons.

I would recommend the book for anyone with an interest in heists or contemporary Eastern Europe. But first and foremost, it is a character study of a fascinating man, by turns extravagant and self-effacing, who does extraordinary things in interesting times.

Source: Present from Moti, thanks Moti!

Book review: Nothing Left to Wish For

Nothing Left to Wish For is a swashbuckling tale in an unforgiving desert world. The story starts with sky pirate Esmeralda, Esme for short, leading a raid of a local potentate’s ship seeking a rumored treasure of immeasurable value. Protagonist as pirate isn’t that unusual, particularly nowadays, but the real reversal comes when she discovers the nature of the cargo, an effete young man who declares himself Sasha, the governor’s son and worth a prince’s ransom. Esme and Sasha face a range of dangers (which notably includes each other) as they both seek their freedom in a harsh world.

The world Andrew Schneider crafts is fantastical, but with a consistency that will appeal to fans of steampunk, space opera, and genres in between. The runes that power the flying ships are also used in weapons and enable the grafted arm Esme uses to captain ships and flying carpets and to give her an edge over her opposition. However, this shortcut often comes with a cost, as attested to by the lower level denizens of the flying cities, suffering from rune rot and ignored by the masses barely getting by in their own right.

How does nothing Left to Wish For stand out from the pack? The author is a friend, but even so I’d say there’s something more remarkable about it even in a genre where heroines and dying worlds are not uncommon. Esme isn’t coming of age; the dark story is suitable for young adults but stars a woman with some questionable choices, a broken engagement, and a few years already behind her. Such women may be common in comedies and romances, but are less frequently seen in adventures.

Nothing Left to Wish For is by turns exciting combat, treacherous ruins and adversaries, and exhilarating piloting. Esmeralda, and her interactions with those that she works with and against - often simultaneously - are quite memorable. She occupies a space between the rare archetypes of female hotshot and anti-heroine. If that appeals, but you want more of a sample of the writing and the world, check out the Noir prequel story: Cool with plenty of water. However, no pre-reading is necessary before taking the $3 plunge for at Apple, Barnes & Noble, Diesel, Kobo, or Smashwords.

Image of cover from AndrewGSchneider.com. Cover by Sarah Schanze.

Review: Charles Stross: The Bloodline Feud

There’s a trope in speculative fiction where a comparatively normal person from our world can travel to another place or time where they typically become a hero using the skills, knowledge, and values they picked up at home. It’s a storyline that dates at least back to Mark Twain and a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.  There’s a sub-genre where our hero, rather than being stuck in this other world, actually travels back and forth a few times and may pick up supplies from home. Think Inu Yasha, Adam Strange, or to a lesser extent Escaflowne.

Take that setup, and imagine it were written by John le Carré. In the Bloodline Feud, the alternate dimension has largely medieval technology but is a realistic alternate timeline for Earth with no magic beyond the dimension-hopping conceit. Intervening in this world is prone to draw pushback and other people with this power have had generations to think through how to use it. The result can read like a cross between a primer on developmental economics, a venture capital history, and a crime family drama.

I’m a fan of Charles Stross and in this series, he gives me what I want, good and hard. The world is well thought out, the rules consistent and easy to understand, and the characters act in ways that incorporate the second-order implications of the premises.

Sadly, while I enjoyed the book and read it with increased fervency, I can’t broadly recommend it. The story fascinated me whenever the characters went exploring different worlds, but the parts on intra-family intrigue did not draw me in to the same degree. Similarly, there were a few reveals that were plausible and worked to further the political thriller plotlines, but reduced my interest in a few characters. While the protagonist is not an anti-hero, I wonder if my problem here might be the same reason I’m not as interested in, say, the Sopranos or Breaking Bad: the travails of criminal families only hold so much interest to me. Ironically, the inclusion of this tradecraft is part and parcel of the realism I like.

This won’t be enough to dissuade me, but I’m going to limit my recommendation to those that are actively intrigued by the idea of a thought through tale of an independently acting modern developed world citizen put in a less developed environment with the resources to make a difference. If that does appeal, I’d recommend picking up the omnibus editions if you can get them, as while this was first put out as two separate books, they work better together. I intend to keep up with the series.

Image source: Promotional image from Tor books.

Book source: Merchant Princes picked up by Kate and Omnibus editions picked up by my mother in London. Thanks Kate and extra thanks Mom!

Review: The Revisionists by Thomas Mullen

"You know what a president actually is?" he asked. "An unreliable narrator."
"Really." She sensed a speech coming.
"He's the one who tells us how it is, right? And we fall for it, we read along with his story and let him construct the reality around us. We want to be entertained, soothed. Until one day, we hit that certain chapter, right, an suddenly we see the light and realize, Holy s***, we've been lied to the whole time. Reality ain't like that all. His story was bulls***. But by then, it's too late. We've all been suckered, and we just have to follow along with his little plot."

The Revisionists is a quintessential D.C. novel, from the setting to the fact that whole acts' titles refer to jargon such as 'green badges' in reference to contractors. This fact may be remarkable, given the sci-fi framing of a story about a man sent back in time to ensure that the right calamities happen in order to ensure his future. However, as Moti notes in his review, they don't really clash. I suppose D.C. takes all sorts from all places, so why should the future be any different?

The book tells the story of four characters, the aforementioned time traveler, an Indonesian maid, a lawyer who recently lost her brother in the wars, and a former spook now working for the aforementioned contractors. The first act, before they really become enmeshed in one another's stories, is somewhat slow going, leavened by the sci-fi storyline. Once they start interacting and complicating one another's lives by trying to do the right thing in a compromised way, the story kicks into gear. The characters all face alienation and come to realize that they aren't quite as clever as they think they are, but the book doesn't counsel despair so much as the realization that hard choices are not so easily dodged.

I think a real strength of the book is that it actually grapples with last decade as lived by many middle-class D.C. types. This isn't a war novel so much as a homefront novel, as the lawyer's loss of her brother draws her into becoming a whistleblower and the former intelligence agent recounts the story of how he was drawn into the national security apparatus because he found the world common to many literary novels to be unreal. This is a world of moderates making questionable decisions and leftists that are so far out of the system to be ineffective, with little middle ground. While the prose didn't always have me enraptured, I enjoyed the match between the conflicting viewpoints and think the story managed to be unblinking without being merely cynical.

I liked the ending more than Moti, although we both interpret a key ambiguity of the book in the same way. My only notable critique is that I think the decision to go with a possible tech transfer to North Korea as a key plot element was a mistake. The DPRK model is one with no appeal outside their borders; they offer neither freedom, nor growth, nor an appealing market for sales. I could see going with the PRC in the relevant role or an authoritarian ally of the U.S.  Not every element of the North Korean plotline was bad; one dark chapter told a story coming out of the DPRK that definitely added to the book. But I think their involvement undermined the believability of the villains as it makes them not just evil but also quite foolish.

Source: Moti, thanks Moti!

Review: Twilight of the Elites by Chris Hayes

The book has already been ably summarized by Aaron Swartz over at Crooked Timber (worth reading the whole thing):

Our nation’s institutions have crumbled, Hayes argues. From 2000–2010 (the “Fail Decade”), every major societal institution failed…

Hayes pins the blame on an unlikely suspect: meritocracy. We thought we would just simply pick out the best and raise them to the top, but once they got there they inevitably used their privilege to entrench themselves and their kids (inequality is, Hayes says, “autocatalytic”). Opening up the elite to more efficient competition didn’t make things more fair, it just legitimated a more intense scramble. The result was an arms race among the elite, pushing all of them to embrace the most unscrupulous forms of cheating and fraud to secure their coveted positions. As competition takes over at the high end, personal worth resolves into exchange value, and the elite power accumulated in one sector can be traded for elite power in another: a regulator can become a bank VP, a modern TV host can use their stardom to become a bestselling author (try to imagine Edward R. Murrow using the nightly news to flog his books the way Bill O’Reilly does). This creates a unitary elite, detached from the bulk of society, yet at the same time even more insecure. You can never reach the pinnacle of the elite in this new world; even if you have the most successful TV show, are you also making blockbuster movies? bestselling books? winning Nobel Prizes? When your peers are the elite at large, you can never clearly best them.

The result is that our elites are trapped in a bubble, where the usual pointers toward accuracy (unanimity, proximity, good faith) only lead them astray. And their distance from the way the rest of the country really lives makes it impossible for them to do their jobs justly—they just don’t get the necessary feedback. The only cure is to reduce economic inequality, a view that has surprising support among the population (clear majorities want to close the deficit by raising taxes on the rich, which is more than can be said for any other plan). And while Hayes is not a fan of heightening the contradictions, it is possible that the next crisis will bring with it the opportunity to win this change.

My favorite points:

Meritocracy and Equality of Opportunity do not deserve the moral weight we give them:

Hayes draws on Robert Michel's iron law of oligarchy as an inspiration for his theory as to  why meritocracy fails:

"The Iron Law of Meritocracy states that eventually the inequality produced by a meritocratic system will grow large enough to subvert the mechanisms of mobility. Unequal outcomes make equal opportunity impossible. The Principle of Difference will come to overwhelm the Principle of Mobility. Those who are able to climb up the ladder will find ways to pull it up after them, or to selectively lower it down to allow their friends, allies, and kin to scramble up. In other words: 'Whoever says meritocracy says oligarchy.'" p. 57.

In comments, people often say that the American system is not genuinely meritocratic. I put as much weight on that as those that say the Soviet Union wasn't really communist.

Meritocracy gives the education system an impossible task:

Freddie DeBoer further develops the interaction of meritocracy and education (note that I disagree with his conclusion in the piece on the grounds of practicality and desirability):

Because our system now depends on the idea that children are universally capable of being educated to certain necessary levels to benefit our economy. Globalization and neoliberalism — the basic economic consensus of policy elites — destroyed working-class jobs and incomes and sparked a furious attack on labor’s ability to unionize and collectively bargain for better conditions. Yet the neoliberal policy apparatus still needs a mechanism to improve wages for those at the bottom, in part to improve their living conditions and in part because the economy requires them to be consumers as well as producers. Having cut the legs out from underneath the traditional mechanisms of social mobility for uneducated Americans, the necessary step becomes plain: educate all of them. Questions about whether everyone can be educated to the necessary level cannot be countenanced, to say nothing of whether this system breeds zero-sum competition for limited “skilled” jobs.

Our vexed arguments about education reform stem from our refusal to acknowledge that we are constrained by reality, regardless of the needs of our economic system.

Matt Yglesias regularly notes the incongruity of teachers arguing that students' socioeconomic traits are the main factors determining their success. However, that is not primarily an argument that teachers don't matter; it is just an explanation as to why even good teachers cannot boost up their students sufficiently that education can get the median wage going again. Good teachers might be a jet engine lifting up students, but that doesn't mean they have the power to get them into orbit. This does not mean that money spent getting better teachers is wasted. I believe the marginal returns on education to be quite high; it just means that even valuable education reforms won't do for workers what strong unions once managed. I do think that DeBoer overstates the "zero-sum" nature of competition for skilled jobs. There are a fair number of skills still in fairly great demand that may not be able to replace the unskilled work of yesteryear, but are still at a point where adding a worker increases the demand for other workers. However, there are also fields like law, where the education system at large is rooking people into accumulating great debt for often dubious job prospects. I think that situation has persisted as long as it has because LSAT-ing your way to success is entirely in line with the myths of meritocracy.

Look for fraud, not bubbles:

Eager to avoid repeating their mistakes, many pundits constantly ponder whether this or that is the next bubble. Chris Hayes shows that why this is mistaken. The problem with the housing boom wasn't excessive enthusiasm, it was widespread fraud. The basis of the problem has been understood for centuries:

Thomas Gresham: "In this wild, unregulated monetary world, you had two different type of coins floating in circulation: "good" money, which was pure and properly weighted, and "bad" money, which was debased and did not contain the amount of it purported to contain. In such a situation people got pretty good at identifying what was good money and what was bad;  what they'd do was use bad money for exchange while having the good money. Eventually bad money became the only money in circulation… fraudulent actors drive out the honest if fraudulent actors receive no sanction for their action." p. 92-93

Hayes also notes this pattern in the steroid scandal in Enron, Major League Baseball and cheating under Michelle Rhee's education reforms in Washington D.C. (He contrasts that with Chicago where Steven Levitt was hired to monitor for cheating and managed to prevent widespread scandals.) Hayes cites William Black's description of these cases as "Criminogenic environments" where corruption became endemic. To me, the connection to bubbles is obvious, as providing an easy path to success feeds on itself and in business or financial sectors may redirect resources from legitimate enterprises.

The term Fractal Inequality:

It's a lovely term that updates what Lewis Carroll called the inner ring phenomenon. Status competition is like an onion: as you manage to break into one layer there's always another inner ring. What's changed in my view is globalization: elites now compare themselves to others at events like the World Economic Forum at Davos, not just those in the same town, state, or even country.

The book left me with three questions:

How important was globalization to this phenomenon? I think there is a cosmopolitan global elite in a way there really wasn't in prior eras. But even if I'm right, how big of a driver of inequality is this phenomenon? Similarly, what's the relationship between trade and inequality, and can trade deals be fashioned such that all the gains don't accrue to the top?

Do civil service barriers help? In the think tank where I work, the difficulty of corporate-government cooperation and of hiring government workers from the outside is regularly decried. This may lead to you correctly pegging most think tank as meritocratic (note: I'm speaking for myself here as always on this blog). But this leaves me curious: to what extent do civil service rules actually manage to put a break on the emergence of a meritocratic elite? Or have they been made obsolete by a churn of employees departing for better-paying corporate work and an increased reliance on contractors?

How does our present situation compare to pre-WWII history? I'd take meritocracy, with all its faults, over aristocracy in a heartbeat, although I suppose there's something to be said for competing sets of elites. Hayes does note that the meritocracy manages greater diversity than older forms of elite governance, but I'd be interested in a bit more history which might reveal to what extent the vaunted American 1950s were a postwar aberration or a phenomenon that had been replicated in other times and places.

The Magician King by Lev Grossman: Review

I enjoyed the language and the world of the Magicians, but I was left cold by the lead. Quentin was a privileged git who was realistically sketched, but who angered me with his judgmental moping. He's still the lead, but now that he's become one of the four rulers of the magical alternate dimension of Fillory he's actually grappling with how he should live his life rather than bemoaning his failure to find happiness. He also shares this story with the extended flashbacks of Julia, a childhood friend he left behind when he was accepted into the arcane boardinghouse Brakebills. She is now also a Queen of Fillory, but hers was a black market education, attained through hustling and without the safeguards of the academy. While her story is not without happy moments, the end of the flashback is enormously dark. The end to the book I will not spoil, but I found it far more satisfying than the ending to the Magicians which notably suffered in its final chapter.

In enjoying the end, I disagree with Alyssa Rosenberg (important spoilers abound) who has an excellent suggestion for a narrative change to the final chapter, but finds that Quentin's changes are largely derived from Julia's suffering in an old and unfortunate trope. I think multiple reasons are established, but I don't have much to add beyond what I put in the comments on her blog.

I would recommend the book to anyone who enjoys Grossman's writing and characterization, even if they weren't fond of some of the characters in the Magicians. The thornier question is do I recommend the pair of books to someone who has read neither? While my endorsement isn't as strong as Moti's, I'm going to go with a hesitant yes for fans of modern world fantasy and stories that lean heavily on the interior lives of their characters. On the latter point, it may be simplest to just check out the first book and read a chapter or three. If you don't get the urge to quote lines to other people in the room, then put it down and don't look back.

Source: Recommended by Moti and checked out by Kate from Howard County Libraries, thanks to all three.

Quick Review: Hamlet's Hit Points

Hamlet's Hit Points by Robin Laws is a book that proposes a system for analyzing fictional works as if they were story-oriented role-playing games. The core system is breaking the story down into beats which involve procedural and dramatic ups and downs for the protagonists. There's more breadth than that summary implies, but on the whole it's a fairly simple system and along with the commentary is definitely inspirational. The phrase 'hit points is more there for alliteration, the system does not examine any such values for characters but instead looks at the ebb and flow of their fortunes.

Are you interested in the theory of RPGs? If so, do you think of the system as primarily a conflict resolution mechanism in a cooperative game? Are you unsatisfied with your ability to emulate some of your favorite stories using present tools and want to understand the why (if not necessarily the how)? Then I'd say buy Hamlet's Hit Points. It's a fairly swift read, available in print or a variety of electronic forms, and a fairly unique form of criticism to boot.

For more, including applicability to running RPGs, check out the Hamlet's Hit Points entry on the Inherent in the System wiki.

[Updated: Grammar fixes.]

The Magicians by Lev Grossman: Critique

[Updated with valuable comment] The Magicians is a literary novel about a boy who discovers that he's a wizard and goes off to an exclusive magical academy instead of college. Capfox gets at what's best about the book (read the whole thing):

If you've heard about this book, you've probably heard that it's like Harry Potter or Narnia but more grown-up, where grown-up is generally taken to mean it has more drinking and sex. And to a certain extent, that's true: our hero, Quentin Coldwater, finds his way out of a normal, humdrum life he's unsatisfied by, and into Brakebills, a magical university where he makes new friends, masters a lot of magic through lots of discipline and hard work, and has a variety of adventures. And yes, there is drinking and sex. You can see where the comparisons came from…

The writing is fluid and evocative, and there are definite deconstructions and take-offs from Narnia and the Harry Potter books. The characters are well-sketched, for the main ones, and are complex enough to feel both likable and not likable at the same time. The choice of themes and the building of the relationships really resonated with me. It took a bit for me to get set up in the story and feel attached to everyone, but I ripped through it afterwards. The very end part of it was a bit odd, as it didn't feel as earned as the rest of the story, feeling more like a sequel hook, but I'm very much looking forward to reading the sequel, so I can't punish it too much. In fact, I think I will go start that now.

For me, the end of the novel was actually an anti-sequel hook. The main character, Quentin, was often pretty unsympathetic and while that turned around some during the finale the last chapter settled my opinion that he was an entitled prig and the chapter before that wasn't so much better. That said, I do agree on the writing; I found the characters plausible and the world well-thought through, although your mileage may vary there as it left a writer friend of mine cold.

In any event, my big problem with dear Quentin is that he wasn't ambitious enough to be a failure. Life keeps handing him prize after prize and he makes no real effort at contentment nor chasing a greater good. Alyssa Rosenberg points to the lack of career counseling, and I suppose that's true enough, but it seems to me that by the time you get to college you should have picked up that once your subsistence and higher needs are covered you should make some effort to help people or otherwise make the world a better place even if it doesn't get you the crown of a magician king. I know lots of bright people that I see parts of in the book, including myself, but they all managed to at least make a good faith attempt at enjoying their circumstances and/or pursuing a vocation. As for Quentin, I feel like those ridiculous schools that try to ban the Potter books should instead substitute The Magicians; it might be a far better way of convincing children that magic is a tool of an entitled elite that's everything that's wrong with America.

I'm somewhat curious about The Magician King. I liked some of the ensemble - admittedly most of all those who came to bad ends [with one notable exception] - and I found the portrayals empathetic and the language alluring. But unless the proletariat of the Narnia-analogue have a chance at revolution against these privileged bright young things, I will come away most dissatisfied.

[Comment from Mai-Anh on my Google Plus feed: "In the end, I liked it better once I reframed it to look at Quentin not as a hero or even a protagonist, but as the "representative symptom", almost." I completely agree. I'm not sure to what extent that was what Grossman intended but he did reveal just how entitled Quentin was in a variety of ways, most notably the reappearance of a character who wasn't so lucky/skilled as to make it into Brakebills.]

Death Note Manga: Critique

Death Note's core starts with a fairly simple premise: A top high school student named Light comes into possession of a notebook with the power to kill anyone he wants, as long as he knows their name and face. He uses that ability to kill those he deems criminals, choosing most of his targets based on the television news. He is soon opposed by L, a mysterious master detective facing a particularly daunting challenge as Light's supernatural methods are exceedingly difficult to trace back to him and have an initially unknown methodology. This challenge is compounded by the fact that Light is quite willing to kill anyone who gets in his way, a murderousness limited only by his desire to avoid raising suspicion to himself.

This is a rather well known series, which is part of the reason I read it. I worked through books 1-7 (of 13) because Kate was going to donate them to the library and I was curious. The writing does make for an effective cat and mouse thriller, there's a nice ensemble of supporting male police officers, and the character design is quite effective at differentiating the players, which is vital when dealing with a more realistic setting. That said, I was content to skim at points and to stop reading after a logical breakpoint in book seven. See subdee over at Hooded Utilitarian for a trenchant critique that does reveal the ending.

The key excerpt:

There was so much bad faith moralizing in that series. A single sociopath high school student was going to make the world a better place by killing already-apprehended criminals, who were waiting in jail for their sentences to be decided, using a magic notebook. This would deter other criminals from committing crimes, leading to a better, crime-free world. Because it’s the countries that have a transparent, (semi-)functioning justice systems and active, (semi-)free cultures of journalism, that report on crime and imprison criminals according to the rules of law, that are the worst off, am I right?

The thing is, while Death Note did a pretty good job of painting Light, the [megalomaniacal] serial killer high school honors student who lucks into the possession of an instrument of mass murder, in a negative light (because power corrupts and only the corrupt seek power), it didn’t really have many characters who were much better – who were morally upright and competent.

Light's plan was incredibly simple-minded while surrounded by incredibly sophisticated measures to save his own neck. I think the book failed to address, in even the most general way, the second-order effects of such a campaign on criminals and the issue of wrongful accusation. Nonetheless, like subdee I think the series has its points. It does a fairly effective job of being a thought experiment on the dark instinct that 'we just need to kill criminals'. The series answer seems to be "I'll do you one better, let's have one of the smartest guys around implement your clever plan and see how it works out." Turns out wielding that sort of power unchecked makes you a monster even if you stay somewhat sane and that when ideological allies gets involved things get very messy very fast. Similarly, the characters with consciences will line up against that plan and be willing to risk their lives to stop it. I think this may be diluted by later manga - from what I understand of the actual ending it probably could have played out with serious time skips in the back half of book seven - but there's no real point commenting on books I haven't read.

That said, I have largely lost my patience for characters that are extremely clever about manipulating convoluted rules that are specific to the novel or series. The final Harry Potter novel was particularly bad about this when it came to wand rules. Death Note isn't quite as bad; it sets up new rules every chapter with key ones coming in place well before they get used, but I still just stopped caring about the new rules and Light's elaborate explanations of how effectively he exploited them. No doubt he's a terrific rules lawyer, but I only give big points for cleverness when there's a simple set of starting rules or the rules have some metaphorical or literal basis in the real world. To be fair Death Note actually pulls off most of its cleverness without relying on rules of transfer and its use of memory loss led to a great plotline with a sympathetic Light.

In the end, I think Death Note 1-7 delivers on its cat and mouse thriller promises. That said, if you already get that it's wrong as a general rule to go around killing criminals, then I'm not sure there's much to learn from it.

Source: Kate, thanks Kate!

Review: Harold Goldberg's All Your Base are Belong to Us

All Your Base are Belong to Us is an interview driven account of the rise of videogames. Each chapter focuses on a small set of key figures or companies and tells their story in a manner that reminds me of long form pieces in the Washington Post's Business section. I don't think it breaks new ground when it comes to well known feature such as Nintendo's Miyamoto, but most of the industry does not hold such a celebrity status so I learned more even about companies and designers I'm quite familiar with. For those that aren't newcomers to games journalism, I'd recommend skimming the selected notes chapter in the back to determine which chapters are most likely to be of interest based on who is interviewed.

On the downside, the prose of the book was more likely to push me away than draw me in. It often has an overly-familiar style that can be tricky to pull off, particularly when the videogame invoked emotions and sentiments described in first persons passages didn't tend to match my experience with the games in question. Similarly, while I think Goldberg is probably dead on when he emphasizes the importance of salesmanship by indie game designers, I didn't come away from the book bustling with new ideas or with a notably different take on videogames. He also sometimes falls into the trap up game triumphalism, while he willing to critique the widely acknowledged failures of those he interviews, his description of the strong points of their successes tends to be unalloyed. Picking an example from near the end of the book, his write-up of Shadow Complex makes no mention of the controversy regarding Orson Scott Card. A long discussion was not necessary, but the subtitle of the book is "How Fifty Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture," the boycott attempt driven by a reaction to Card's social conservative activism seems well within its purview.

So in short, I think this book is a best fit for those curious about the corporate and entrepreneurship side of things; that have a lot of interest but a little information about some of the games and companies profiled; or that enjoy Harold Goldberg's prose in his online game journalism. Those primarily interested in games criticism should probably look elsewhere, although I'm grateful to Goldberg for mentioning Ian Bogost's persuasive games which apparently argues that games have a procedural rhetoric that can be convincing in a different way than other forms oratory rhetoric. That's a concept I'm quite interested in and a book I'll have to add to my wish list.

Source: Borrowed from my mother-in-law. Thanks!

Review: The Whiskey Rebels by David Liss

Post-Revolutionary War America isn't a setting I've read much about before, let alone as the basis for a novel that is in part a financial thriller. The Whiskey Rebels trades off between a disgraced Revolutionary War spy and an upcoming would-be novelist.  The former primarily stays in the great-ish east coast cities of the day while the latter travels with her husband into the wilds past Pittsburgh. The actual Whiskey Rebellion itself doesn't play that big a role, as the period is wrong, but that's no demerit to the story.

Both the leads are good characters, with a plausible mix of flaws that I felt the novel sometimes forgave but rarely whitewashed. The prominent supporting characters include a slave whose promised freedom was wrongly delayed, a lady whose high stature provides her little protection against her husband, and a vicious Jewish special agent working for Alexander Hamilton. As that list should show, the characters come from a variety of backgrounds which enriches the historical setting of the novel.

The story is a mix of conspiracy thriller and frontier adventure with the rise of the Bank of the United States, hated by the eventual Whiskey Rebels, being a core plot element. I rather liked this as it was a part of history I knew a bit about but was on the balance more ignorant than informed. At the same time, it was quite relevant to our modern era.

Almost to my surprise, the ending was particularly solid. I don't want to give anything away, but I'd say it managed to stay true to the values and cleverness common to the rest of the book. That can be particularly hard to pull when the main characters can be tricksters in their own right, which makes the successful implementation all the more satisfying.

Source: Moti, thanks Moti!

Review: Code of the Woosters, P.G. Wodehouse

This was my first Wodehouse book and it was a reasonable starting point to the Jeeves and Wooster stories. It was a fairly quick read and in my view really got going around page 100 as the action came to a head, specifically as a painting was used for some fairly ineffective head-cracking. The zaniness continued largely unabated from that point onward, which did heighten my enjoyment as the relentlessness of the plotting meant that the underlying absurdity of the problems was overwhelmed by the urgency of dealing with them.  I enjoyed the whole thing, although I fear my comparatively weak background in the western canon meant that I was missing how some of the classical quotes were being tweaked. My only real takeaway about the culture being described was a curiosity about whether the characters' willingness to prank the police was primarily an upper-class thing or whether it reflects differences between British and American culture. Cops are often buffoons in American comedies, but characters don't go around stealing their hats or the like unless avenging a particular slight. Come to think of it, more than anything else the attitude reminds me of that of the Phoenix Wright games.

I'll run down the rest of my book backlog  before returning to the series, but I do have definite hopes that the humor of the series will be cumulative as I get to know the characters better. I often end up turned off by series that revolve around the suffering of a foolish main character, but Wooster is shown to have a healthy dose of humanity and wit if not wisdom.

Source: Recommended by Andrew and Monica, loaned to me by my father-in-law; thanks all.

Quickie review: Indie RPG buying

Both Indie Press Revolution (IPR) and Evil Hat are good places to get a variety of Indie RPGs and unlike many other sources will often include a PDF at the same cost as a print purchase. In both cases I went with the low end shipping option.

With Indie Press Revolution I placed the order on 12/16, got the PDFs nigh instantly, shipping notification email received 12/20, and it arrived via media mail on 1/4. 

With Evil Hat I placed the order on 12/16 as well, got the PDFs nigh instantly, I got the shipping notification email on 12/20, but the package arrived on 12/21.

When I checked in with the Indie Press Revolution guys, they were fairly responsive and apparently it had accidentally been sent media mail by USPS rather than UPS (or priority mail with USPS). So apparently the length of the delay was a fluke, although in any event they didn't send tracking info which has been sadly reminiscent of the bad old days of having no idea when a package would arrive.

I'm up for using IPR again, but for now I'm definitely going to err towards Evil Hat on future orders if time is at all sensitive. Particularly since the interface is a bit less glitchy in the later case.

Amazon and sales tax

I had occasion to order something today from Amazon.ca and I noticed that they charged sales tax. This isn't that much of a surprise, Amazon.com has long claimed they'd be happy to charge tax, they just want a consistent national standard first. Unfortunately, developing such a standard would require legislation and at present our  system seems to barely be capable of delivering a handful of complex bills a year so no national solution is likely to happen.

That's all old news, but that leaves consumers with a predicament. The argument that internet commerce needs protection is as outdated as our Borders Reward cards. I think my solution will be that when I'm doing price comparison I'll look at pre-tax prices. That's probably not enough, perhaps I should preferentially buy things from brook and mortar chains or indies. I don't think I'm willing to go full boycott, Amazon's still my go to source for electronic music and stuff not easily available in stores and some of those are good ways to support smaller scale creators.

Maybe rather than making the odd impulse buy of books or more common CDs, I should just keep a shortlist version of my wishlist and try to pick something up at those times when I'm hanging out in bookstores. Given my commute, that isn't as often as it once one, but may still be a way to do my part. Bibliophiles will ultimately need to pay to keep our social spaces, although I'd also gladly by snacks from a library store and am happy that my tax dollars go to that cause.

Review: Feed by Mira Grant

Feed is a story about what happens after a zombie apocalypse, but it isn't post-apocalyptic as such. Instead humanity has retrenched behind sealed doors, protected by blood tests and automated systems. It's a world where many of our current issues have lost their salience but security threats and perhaps security theater are everywhere. It's a tale told to us by the bloggers that venture out into this world and thus has an innate appeal to those of that send our thoughts out into the net.

The story focuses on siblings Georgia and Shaun Mason, respectively a reporter ("newsie") and a daredevil ("irwin"). Together with their tech genius story writer, a "fictional" nicknamed Buffy, they get the story of their lives when they imbed with a Republican candidate seeking his party's nomination for the 2034 election. On the whole it's a good premise and a neat world. The writing was reasonable, the characters could be fun, the plotting a bit predictable at times, and the politics perhaps a trifle naïve. If the premise appeals, I think you'll be satisfied if not necessarily blown away.

Starting with the parts I found a bit less satisfying, I'm not quite sure I see media evolving into collections of "newsies", "irwins" and "fictionals". Print and television journalism now has any number of people willing to risk extreme danger to bring home stories and who too often die in the pursuit. The lack of risk aversion of the bloggers and the licensing process were all interesting but didn't quite work for me as media critique. The overall media environment had elements that rang true - an obsession with ratings, the management of support staff, the jump from an existing website to independent operation - all of which gave the characters' jobs more solidity although I'm not quite remembering how the business model was detailed.

Slightly less plausible was Sen. Ryman's campaign. He had some good speeches and a strong staff support but I don't quite buy his rocketing to political prominence. The bloggers were accurate enough in seeing through much of the artifice of the campaign, but with one notable exception I didn't really see the horse trading or rhetorical tradeoffs that seem as relevant to the world of 2034 as the world of 2014.  Amusingly, though, one of Ryman's opponents appears to be a version of Texas Gov. Perry, which has made his official announcement for President all the more frightening.

I think the strongest of the political elements was the focus on security measures. The bloggers were a bit more necessary for investigations than seemed plausible to me, but the range of security measures, often redundant and obnoxious, all rang true. To a fair extent the zombie-terrorized world does work as our present day fears taken to a logical extreme. The best political issues of the book, like the question of how to handle animals that were large enough to zombie, stemmed from these issues. I don't think the first novel of the series full explores that theme, but it's a good start and at some point I think I'll pick up the sequel.

Origin: Gift from Kate, a particularly well-targeted one.

Image from Mira Grant's website.

Epic[-length novel] farewell

[Update: Epics actually are a term of art, and not in the way I was using it here. Instead, most classically, think the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid. While I try to avoid jargon, I think that proper use of terms of art facilitates conversation, so I corrected the post below.]

Just in time for a Dance with Dragons, I've been reconsidering my relationship with epic[-length books]. Over the span of three months I got through the one of Steven Erickson's 1,000+ page tomes, Toll the Hounds. If you do the math, my pace wasn't that impressive which is more a consequence of the time I set aside than my speed. I enjoyed the book; one of the main villains was slowly humanized and much of the book was based in Darujistan which in the past has been one of Erickson's least depressing locales. However, I took a break or two while reading and breezed through His Majesty's Dragon and Halting State. Those breaks made clear the opportunity cost of [weight tomes]: so long as one has a reading backlog an epic must be as good as three other books and not merely enjoyable in its own right. By that standard, I'd say the first three Erickson books probably qualify, particularly The Gardens of the Moon and Memories of Ice (Deadhouse Gates is marred by a subplot that's too conventional adventure fantasy for my tastes).

Of course, books are not fungible. The stories one can tell in three quality novels tend to be different than the stories one can tell in an [grimoire-sized tale]. Bigger books can sustain more complexity and a larger cast. Neither point is necessarily a virtue in its own right. Instead, stories with grand scope or that incorporate a multitude of sometimes opposing viewpoints both can benefit from having space to develop. However, while I still disagree with some of the things Alan Jacobs says in this post I think there is a real risk that epics are becoming surprisingly limited. Certain stories, such as clashes between gods, continent sprawling wars, and tales of intrigue can all fit well within the epic[-length] genre but can crowd out everything else. This crowding out is worst when it leads to the undoing the outcomes of previous books or plotlines that feel like they're just filling space between more interesting viewpoints. There seems to be a rule that sequels to epics must also be enormous even when the best parts of the story would be better served by carrying their own 300 page novel.

Perhaps ironically, serials are another means that can support large-cast complex stories. I think by ensuring that each segment has a small self-contained story they buy time to tell longer arcs that couldn't be contained in an average novel. The Full Metal Alchemist manga is perhaps my favorite instance of this, although I've enjoyed some Dumas before and should try Dickens at some point. Of course serials, as with [giant novels], are notorious for not knowing when to end.

I suspect I will finish the last two Malazan books some day, if only because I do still on the balance enjoy them and know that they are the last two. But despite the risk of spoilers I don't think I'm going to rush to the new Song of Ice and Fire book. I actually have a bit of space on my nightstand for once and I intend to exploit that opportunity.

Quick review: His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik

The novel tells the tale of a British naval officer in the Napoleonic wars who through skill and circumstance ends up as an aviator in the royal dragon corps. The book successfully executes its premise. Despite some oddities, like language skills out of the shell, the dragons seem plausible enough and are well integrated into the larger world. I don't know my WWI history that well, but I'd say the dragoneers have the feel of pilots of that era, albeit with larger crews.

The book is the first of a larger series, although I'll probably stop here on recommendation of friends. I enjoyed the story, but I'm not so attached to the characters that I feel the need to stay with them as the story moves away from its ingenious twist on the naval tale.

Still, it was a good read and I'm glad my wife lent it too me. Thanks Kate!

Abortive review: Chasm City

I feel quite the slacker. Not only was I running behind in Alyssa Rosenberg's book club, I'm bailing out before finishing.  [I feel particularly bad, as I voted for it in the tiebreaker. I should have listened to my wife.] Chasm City is a reasonable noir/science fiction tale about a hard-bitten security expert out for revenge and a megalomaniac that had colonized the protagonist's world ages before. I think it manages to be fairly solid on the science; foe example, there's no faster than light drives. The novel has some interesting ideas, such as a cultist virus that can implant flashbacks and stigmata, and a city whose upper reaches have gone mad due to the combination of programmable growing buildings and a form of computer virus. The pacing, at least outside of the flashbacks, is fairly quick which kept me turning pages even when the content did not grab me.

However, while I could sense [Alastair Reynold's] creative, hard-working mind behind the book, I've chosen to put it down. As I mentioned in my review of Blacksad, I don't tend to enjoy straight noir and in this case science fiction wasn't enough of a twist. I didn't really care about the main character's underwhelming revenge motive and while I got attached to ancillary characters, they didn't stick around for long. Moreover, the wars and apocalypses of this universe distance us from the speculative future that undergirds it. Chasm City before the crash sounds like it would be something to see, although from what I've read of Rosenberg's posts on the book the life-extended aristocracy is consistently hateful so even then we'd be at a loss for interesting characters.

I like noir adaptations like Brick, Veronica Mars, Blacksad, and Cowboy Bebop because it is fun to see styles breed. There's nothing wrong with a hard-bitten hero, but that alone can't carry the story for me. Moreover, noir's love of pushing away or killing secondary characters and penchant for misogyny are both weak points of the genre that weren't overcome in the first sixteen chapters. On the upside, I was reminded of my love of Cowboy Bebop by comparison: the supporting cast that noir-émigré Spike can't get rid of, the vibrant world that stays grounded without being constantly run down, and of course the vibrant soundtrack that requires exceptional writing to match. Bebop's ending is pure noir and that's okay; in film-sized doses, as with L.A. Confidential, noir works for me. However, I don't think I'll be picking up another long form noir unless I'm confident that it transcends the genre.

Metaphor duel: Zombies versus Robots/Cyborgs

In a clash of professors Charli Carpenter has been making a humorous but genuine critique of Dan Drezner's International Politics and Zombies. She gave a video presentation at the International Studies Association that's well worth watching if you have any interest at all in international relations and or the pop culture topics. If your interest runs deeper, check out their bloggingheads.

Quick review: Blacksad

Blacksad is a graphic novel that takes familiar film noir story and character tropes and but presents them using a skillfully depicted mix of humanoid animals. Think Disney's Talespin but grittier, more nudity, less wackiness, and more death. I've seen the plot knocked for lack of ambition and that may be fair, but the real pleasure of the book is the rich visuals. Thus, if you're considering getting it, glance through a few pages and you should quickly have an idea of whether you like the art style enough for it to be worth it.

In some ways it reminded for being a genre piece with a critical twist in setting. I think that's a trick that's easiest to pull off with well developed and somewhat formulaic stories. I'm not sure to what extent such crossovers are on the rise, I suspect they've met with some commercial success and it's an easy concept to pitch if not to implement.

I think I will check out whether the artist has done anything else of note.

Origin: Moti. Thanks once again Moti.

Armed Humanitarians by Nathan Hodge (Book event)

Hodge takes a skeptical look at the armed humanitarian work of the last decade. I've picked up a copy of his book, but for this write-up I'm just going off the event. He found that much of what we were doing in Afghanistan and Pakistan was similar to the nation building we did in the 1990s. However the money spigot got turned on in a big way which went well beyond the absorption rate of local communities. As an example, we're spending many times building up the Afghan military and police than the Afghan government is taking in as revenue. The military is a can do organization and it stepped in but with the exception of civil affairs and special forces it's not really that skilled at it. The sheer funding is also a problem in its own right, if 5% of convoy spending is misdirected that's enough to fund an insurgency.

On the whole, he thought that we should get leaner and go with a more 1990s approach and lower budgets. He did think we'd have to put in diplomatic and development people in hostile situations, but only at a small scale. A key success story was getting 2-3 people to setup operations in Darfur with the help of satellite technology. Ultimately, he argued that Armed Humanitarianism is an oxymoron which implies to me that we're going to need to substantially curtail our ambitions.

The question I didn't get a chance to ask was, if we need to work at a small scale, what missions are we going to have to give up? From what he said, I'd say Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as hostile occupations in general, obviously aren't on the table. The question I didn't get to ask is where should the line get drawn now? We'll see if the book can answer that one.

Theories of International Politics and Zombies: The Q&A

I greatly recommend buying the book or seeing an event with Dan Drezner in person. Here's a bloggingheads he did with Adam Weinstein that gives a good idea of the in person experience [note the chance to win a book as a prize via zombie trivia]. He had a terrific power point (a contradiction in terms I know) and in general is quite the dynamic speaker. As I said after the event he's easily the funniest of the foreign policy bloggers and while he notes that it's a faint compliment I'd say he's the funnier than my domestic policy bloggers as well. Since the Q&A will vary from event to event, I thought that would be the best way to blog the undead and to ensure a steady mix of new questions. [This is a paraphrase, any lack of humor should be be imputed to my transcription.]

My question: How does the EU fare, rally around the flag or would they fear an infected Polish plumber? EU does not cope well, first response is inevtitably wrong, they only get it right by the fourth and the fith iteration. French would call for an international zombie council [that everyone else would ignore], Germans would keep interest rates high, rest of the Union would ban British beef. He thinks the EU would  adapt, but only at the periphery once Berlusconi was eaten.

Effect of twitter, social networking? Some would argue that it would let humans defeat zombies quickly while others think zombies would just adapt them to their own end. Think that the internet wouldn't solve things but would help.

Zombie outbreak in Abkhazia, what happens? Depends on the theory. Also, World War Z is outstanding for addressing this and has a credible idea of the expansionist Holy Russian empire. Realists would be anti-interventionist.

Does the location of a breakout matter? You can't anticipate all causes, they're heterogeneous. With fast zombies, location matters more but they can walk under water. It would matter most for what great powers if any would be felled.

If zombies can be socialized, couldn't they be weaponized? Would there be a global anti-zombie profileration regime? Secret government lab, private government contractor lab are the most common proposals. Could a rogue state use one as a weapon. Unlikely, the most powerful corporations can't control them, it would probably cause more internal harm rather than external harm.

Could America respond with a zero percent real growth defense budget? The intelligence budget matters more than the defense budget. The question is how quickly can you respond. Also, nuking the zombies would be a catastrophic mistake. Think about it.

What about aliens? Independence day is your classic realist scenario with counter hegemon coalitions forming. Read Alex Whendt and Raymond Duval on sovereignty and the UFO states wouldn't acknowledge them due to existential dread. That doesn't apply to technologically inferior zombies. His next book may be 'After Aliens.'

Drezner suggested that New Zealand was the best place to hide out, someone from the embassy asked what about refugee flows. New Zealand would be better off since they aren't the closest great power, until everyone recognizes from Facebook and twitter. Continually insist that you have serious problems with zombie sheep, bar nuclear ships from coming.

NATO: zombie attack on one, zombie attack on all? Yes, their integrated command structure is part of why they've persisted despite realist prediction. They'd argue they'd be well prepared.

Shouldn't zombies be treated as a disease and not a rational actor? The liberal model does treat zombies as a pathogen. Thinks that zombies canon does show that they can be rational.

What about nuking people to cut off the supply? You're sick. Resolutely oppose that.

How does it change our defense posture? Nukes are no longer the trump card? Well zombies are not the only threat, other nations can still be deterred. America does pretty well when it comes to small arms. Again, World War Z does an excellent job. Navy and Air Force gets screwed.

From a fellow CSISer, have we consider allying with other animals? They traditionally also are strongly anti-zombie. Should we reintroduce wolves? Excellent question! Good idea if only humans are infected but terrible idea under a Resident Evil scenario.

What about the global economy? Collapse of trade wouldn't that cause lots of problems? Yes, trade wouldn't stop, it would slow and be more regulated. Capital can still move as can certain categories of goods. You'd presumably see the development of new regulations to prevent the trade of the undead. Customs form would get a lot more complicated.

Effects of frozen Nazi zombies on German society? There's a great college humor video on whether Nazi zombies are still Nazis. Same answer on how zombie jews would deal with zombie nazis. Regardless, German shame spiral but then aggressive action.

Effects on Mid-East peace? If it happened in the  Middle East, no as the Israelis would take heavy handed preventative measures. If else where, maybe yes as the Israeli military would be a valuable ally.

Zombies seem to be a moving metaphor, are they just our present fear? Yes, zombies provide a way to address the issues that are on

What does it take to get people cooperating? People did cooperate on intel after 9/11. But a bigger crisis does not necessarily increase cooperation. You'd see a rise in religious movement, particularly the really crazy religious movement. Look at the Boxer rebellion in China, through strong meditation you could stop bullets. That sort of thing. Cooperation possible but not guaranteed.

What about Reavers in Firefly? They don't quite make the definition, despite that one turning episode. But doesn't think that going interplanetary versus nations really changes things.

As young professionals, what should we do to best prepare? Book does deal with bureaucratic politics, domestic politics, individual psychology. You're main strength is that you can think outside of standard operating procedures which are not meant to deal with zombies. Watch as many movies as possible, know all the theories, watch what emerges. The more scripts you know, the better you can predict what will happen. Also learn how to shoot.

[Update: Small grammar fixes.]

Theories of International Politics and Zombies: The event

I saw Professor Dan Drezner speaking tonight on his new book: Theories of International Politics and Zombies.

[Update: I initially posted an event summary, but I worry on stepping too much on his material. So instead here's a blogging heads TV to watch. I did get explicit permission to post the Q&A, so that will be up shortly.]

Quickie review: Demon’s Lexicon

Modern urban fantasy book with an interesting variant on an old staple that I won’t reveal in this review.  There will be an upcoming blog post describing how we got the book signed, but I’ll save that for my wife.

Basic universe setup: there’s a parallel demon universe and people with magical aptitude need to make deals with them if they want real power.  The deals involve sacrificing people to let the demons experience our world, which means the mages are pretty uniformly evil. 

Points of note: it’s a fairly dark book, not so much because of the fair number of evil magicians, but because the protagonists were willing to take fairly extreme measures.  Some of them I wasn’t comfortable with, but I don’t think we’re necessarily supposed to be. 

The magical sub-world was fairly well defined and made a good amount of sense, although the integration with the larger world wasn’t particularly covered.  That said, the failure to work out real world implications of magic tends to be a given in urban fantasy, so I’ll accept that. One oddity though, possession was fairly big in the book and caused rapid deterioration in the subject; however, the fairly logical albeit evil solution of chain possession to save the original victim was never discussed.  Maybe in the sequel.

Doctrine and the Zombie Wars

Pallab Ghosh of the BBC reports that researchers in Canada have done a mathematical model of a widespread zombie outbreak and evaluated possible counter-strategies.  Dan Drezner has done excellent work in postulating what various systemic international relations theories would predict about the outcome of such an undead crisis [Update: link fixed].  Inspired by his analysis, below is my attempt at providing an in character explanation of how advocates of different U.S. military doctrines would suggest we face the zombie peril.  This analysis is in good part a response to the work of premier writer on this topic, Max Brooks, with particularly attention paid to the excellent fictional social history World War Z. 

Conventional warfare: Some elements of conventional warfare have been widely derided even before facing a threat that can neither shocked nor awed.  Similarly, against zombies decapitation strikes are no longer in any sense a game-changing euphemism but are instead a constant operation requirement.  However, while weapons and munitions must be modified, the solution to a zombie outbreak falls is still a matter of properly applying force on a massive scale.  Proper use of the Weinberger-Powell doctrine would ensure that the zombie menace is met with overwhelming force rather than the sort of half measures that could get U.S. soldiers killed or worse zombified, 

It is the job of the military to secure borders and when going abroad clear territory of zombies and then implementing an exit strategy rather than getting sucked into a quagmire of nation building.  As a side note, while the A-10 and AC-130s may be the most useful platform against the zombie, it is vital that we restore funding to the F-22 to deter hostile nations from exploiting the outbreak and U.S. distraction to expand their territory.

Counter-Insurgency: Critics of COIN doctrine argue that zombies lack hearts and minds, they only possess brains that must be splattered.  However, this facile argument overlooks the fact that counter-insurgency has always understood that zombies; the ultimate irreconcilables, cannot be won over.  What conventional warfare advocates fail to understand is that zombies, much like violent extremism, cannot simply be cleared via overwhelming force. 

Vectors for reemergence will always be prevalent, the undead are nothing if not patient, and long-term defeat of ghouls requires the cooperation of local populations abroad or heaven-forbid at home.  If a local has seen the military apply indiscriminate force they will be unwilling to report if their neighbors, let alone friends or family, have shown signs of infection.  We may have to occupy failed states that have become persistent sources of zombies, but we will largely act in a supportive role by training and equipping local anti-zombie forces.   Ultimately, resources must be put towards putting skull-crushing boots on the ground although there is a also a role for national guard troops and civilian agencies rebuilding communities ravaged by the zombie plague.

Net-Centric Warfare: World War Z was pointedly skeptical about the use of technology deeming the Landwarrior system as good for little more than watching the death of comrades from their point of view.  The book’s faith in simple rifles, lines of soldiers, and even melee weapons overly romanticizes earlier periods of warfare.  Cutting edge technology is expensive, but in the event of a mass-casualty zombie outbreak, the lives of survivors are all the more precious. 

Ingenuity and invention can substitute for manpower by using sensors to detect precursors of outbreaks in populated areas or to keep an unblinking eye on wilderness, abandoned settlements, and even the oceans.  Anti-zombie squads can use unmanned ground vehicles to scout out urban areas and perhaps even to target ghouls remotely.  Unlike humans, robots cannot be added to the ranks of the enemy.  This technology can also save lives, infrared scopes can be used to differentiate between the heat signatures of living creatures and the undead.  Best of all, the against zombies net-centric systems of systems do not have to worry about enemy eavesdropping, cyber-terrorism, or anti-satellite strikes. 

Intervention-Skeptic: The flaw of all the above perspectives is that they view the military as the solution to a zombie outbreak.  The ultimate solution to a zombie outbreak is a cure or at a bare minimum a vaccine.  As we work to develop such a solution, our first priority must be securing the United States, although many suspect that the actual risk to developed nations is overstated in the first place.

Yes, some violence may be necessary, but there is a reason most military anti-zombie sorties result in disaster.  Taking the fight to the zombie ultimately only depletes our resources while adding to their ranks.  Even the less violent counter insurgency approach is delusional.  Do we honestly expect citizens of other countries to accept a U.S. soldier killing their mother, even if said ghoulish mother was craving brains a few moments earlier?  We are not capable of effectively developing other nations under peacetime conditions, how can we expect to do so during a zombie outbreak?

 

I wouldn’t spoil the actual doctrine used in WWZ, but it makes more sense than the above while and still is quite horrifying.  If you enjoyed this, or if you thought you might have enjoyed this were I a better writer, I’d strongly recommend the book.

Apology for slow weekend

Been busy with move and wedding stuff (and a Fallout 3 addiction).  I've got a memorial day post planned, but don't think I'll get to it until this evening at the earliest.

Among other things, I've put almost my entire collection of books up at Librarything.  I've been rather pleased with it so far.  I even bought a CueCat barcode reader to speed up insertion.  That helped and was more fun then typing them in, but I think it only managed about half to two-thirds of the books. 

Aside from enjoying cataloging, I put up the data in an effort to organize and trim some of the fat from my ~500 book library.  I figure it will be easier to check out reviews and such on some of the old textbooks whose quality I have forgotten if I ever measured them.  If anyone recommends any other methods for weeding out the less helpful non-fiction books, please let me know.  Lots of books are fun, but ultimately there are transaction costs in mixing good and mediocre material.  The marginal return of an okay book might be outweighed by distracting me from looking something up in a better one.  Space limitations are also an issue, but the time factor is a bit more of an interesting problem.

Blog roll addition: Hathor Legacy

Hathor legacy is a cultural criticism site with the tagline “in search of good female characters.”  They recently revamped things by consolidating their multiple feeds into a single one (they also have a LJ feed), so this seemed like a good time to link.  The design of the core site doesn’t excite me, the text is a little big and you need to read more to get the details on any post.  However, that’s not an issue with the feeds, so I don’t really care.

My favorite discussion has been one by guest author Audra on Laura Roslin, the female President in Battlestar Gallactica.  The write-up does a good job of both addressing her strengths and acknowledging that she does make a fair number of iffy decisions.  The discussion went off topic some, but added more analysis and kept the things interesting well after the initial post.

A second post I enjoyed was one I disagreed with put up by Kris Ligman.  She thought Portal did more to advance female protagonists than Mirror’s Edge because the latter’s marketing was really driven by its main character.  Loving both games, I disagreed, as did other commenters, but while the discussion was a bit harsh on Kris I think she handled herself well and updated her views as new info came to light.  Potential for good discussion really is key in my view to a good criticism site.  Another fun series by the same author is a salutary set of pieces on the women of Metal Gear Solid.

The site was started by Jennifer Kesler who both gets a nice mix of writers and wades into comments as a moderator when appropriate, which is key to getting the commenting community that I enjoy.

Can a creator be too willing to kill their fictional characters?

As television has moved from more episodic stories to dramatic arcs, there’s been an increase in willingness to kill characters that have been around for more than one episode.  This is less of a new thing in books, although the death tolls of some recent series, such as a Song of Ice and Fire, are legendarily high.

The cost of using death is obvious, if the death is real, you can’t tell any more non-flashback stories using the character. I’m not really talking about killing off lame characters here, as the downsides are much more minor. The advantages are also important.  First off death is part of life and having plot advancement and character growth in more dangerous settings will involve facing that.  Second, death increases the drama of putting characters at risk.  The occasional death keeps viewers or readers on notice that bad outcomes are possible.  This secondary effect can also be achieved by character failure or non-trivial wounding, but with failure there’s a risk that that plot advancement will also suffer.  Similarly, if the wounds are psychological, characters can just become broken ground out shells.

I think having a few deaths in a series is normally a safe bet.  The risks come in when it becomes a more regular phenomenon.  I’d argue the structure of the show or book, as well as the practical realities of the medium, have an important impact on whether regular death is a mistake.  For this purpose, I’d argue that there’s three main types of structures.

• Static team:  By and large from one arc to the next the cast is stable.  If someone is replaced it will often be in close succession with the arrival of the replacement.
• Rotating team: Common in team stories, particularly in comics.  Characters may leave and return, assuming they don’t permanently die.  The cast may vary greatly over time, although there’s often a few central stalwarts.
• Farm system: These stories have a wide range of characters and are often told from multiple viewpoints.  New characters are fairly regularly introduced, are less likely to be killed within the short-arc they arrived in, and those that resonate often stick around.

Hybrid systems are fairly common.  The main cast, supporting characters, and antagonists may each have a separate structure.  The use of a rotating team or a farm system often means that the boundaries between main cast, supporting cast, and antagonists are permeable.

Books and shorter firm mediums like films and miniseries have the most freedom to kill characters.  There’s no actors involved so the real-world consequences are minimal.  In Japanese anime, the series often follow plots from written manga and thus death is more commonly expected.  Comics in the short and medium term tend to be more like books but for major franchise works their habitual resurrections show a real fear of losing characters.

Despite the increasing lethality of some modern American television series, I don’t think the underlying model has changed that much.  A variety of shows with arcs: Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, post-TNG Star Trek, and to a lesser extent shows like Buffy and Angel have stable main casts and are most likely to change if there’s a problem with an actor or actress.  As a result, if the show is more lethal, it will tend to express this lethality by running faster through supporting characters.  Under the old episodic system, supporting characters that weren’t star cameos would probably have never lasted beyond the end of the episode, so this is still an improvement.  However, and I’m thinking most clearly of Battlestar Galactica here, the lethality denies us some of the benefits of a strong supporting cast.  As the relative safety of the main cast becomes widely noticed, the dramatic boost that the lethality provides will be undercut.

Thus, I think unless a show or story employs a rotating cast or a farm system for the main cast, it should avoid being too lethal or risk undercutting the supporting cast enabled by arc-based storylines.  Similarly, if a show wants to go more than three seasons, I think it should also be careful with psychologically wounding a static cast.  Shows like Buffy and Angel tend to run into this a lot as the main characters are all ground down by a war of attrition with comparatively few reinforcements.  I think this also was beginning to take it’s toll on Battlestar Galactica, but since the show only ran four seasons it was easier to stick through the pain because an end was coming.

Book Review: Burma Chronicles by Guy Delisle

Unlike your average travelogue author, Guy Delisle is a cartoonist.  His drawings are fairly spare and stylized, but I think it's an approach that works rather well.  He'd spent a year in Burma with his wife, who works with MSF (Doctors without Borders).  He touches on many parts of the ex-pat lifestyle: raising his young son who is adored by locals, his wife's work and the barriers in her way, stand tourist trips plus visits to more remote locals, and a cartooning class he runs for locals plus his own work of course.  The timing was fairly recent, but before the latest series of uprisings.

I found it quite enjoyable and I think I hve a better feel for the country.  I was on occassion reminded of reading Burmese Days, by George Orwell, which depicted a fictional colonial officer but was based on Orwell's own experience.  Both were primarily stories of outsiders that give insight into the local culture but shouldn't be mistaken for the lives lived by those with the ill-fortune to be born under British imperial rule or the iron-fist of the present generals.  Of the two, Burmese Chronicles was the much more interesting read, I think Orwell's essays are the better source for learning about his experiences colonial service.

I wouldn't recommend it to someone that was primarily interested in the history of Burma or just depictions of its tourist sites.  That said, he makes excellent use of dialogue free drawings giving the rundown of some of his visits.  I definitely want to check out Lake Inlay if I ever go to the country myself.  Similarly he gives enough background on the current situation that even if you haven't followed the news you can catch up rather quickly.  Really, the book tells what it's like to spend a year in Burma and as a result teaches a reasonable amount about what life's like for the locals.  If that interests you, as it certainly does me, this is a good purchase.

As a side note, the book was written in French and is translated by Helge Dascher.  The translation was excellent as far as I could tell.  I didn't even realize the book was translated until I glanced at the cover page.

Origin: Christmas 2008 gift from Fiancee

Unexpectedly pleased with the revised WP Outlook section

While I still certainly mourn the loss of Bookworld, I’m happy to say that Outlook seems to have stepped up its game as a result of the merger. There’s been a few good long form reviews, the short reviews are shorter than I’d like but still useful, and the articles have been an often interesting mixed bag.

I’m particularly impressed with the 5 Myths about X pieces.  I often hate those as they tend to beat down a strawman or overstate the contrarian case.  The last few have been pretty solid, and I find that very reassuring.

So kudos.  I hope it keeps up.