Cool Things: Dobrenica

Posted by natechen on

There’s a genre called the “Ruritanian romance” that exists in fiction (and it’s one that you’re probably never going to see discussed in Genrely Speaking) where most or all of the story takes place in a small, fictional Germanic/Slavic nation somewhere in Eastern Europe. The genre is named for the country central to the first such story, Ruritania. Today, Ruritanian romances are a lot like Regency romances in that they tend to take place in a specific era and place, although Ruritanias are usually somewhere around the turn of the twentieth century and set in Europe where as Regency stories tend to be set in the beginning of the eighteen hundreds and set in England. Originally, Rurtanias were supposed to be exist in the same era the story was written, but that’s a convention that’s fallen out of style. The genre has also been spoofed mercilessly, and also kind of fallen out of style.

Enter author Sherwood Smith.

I have no idea how much study, world building, language lessons and rewriting Smith’s Dobrenica series entailed, but the result is quite impressive. Dobrenica is the quintessential Ruritania, a small, isolated and kind of backward nation in the mountains of Eastern Europe. It has a semi-monarchy, landed nobility, quaint little ways, gorgeous old manor houses complete with ghosts, keeps guarding passes full of vampires –

Wait, what?

Okay, okay, Coronets and Steel, the first novel Smith has written about Dobrenica, does not throw it’s readers for a loop like that. It’s not another Out of the Dark. From moment one we get the impression that our story is taking place more in an Uberwald kind of a world than a Ruritania kind of a world. Kim Murray, our protagonist, is more of clean cut college kid than a paranormal investigator, but fact is she can see weird things. When she travels from California to Europe to try and track down her mother’s genealogy she stumbles across ghosts all over the place. No surprise, Kim’s seen ghosts since she was a child and Europe’s got some ancient cities where a lot of people have died. Kim tries to ignore them, for the most part.

She can’t ignore the fact that she’s being mistaken for someone else. At first she doesn’t notice it. The ladies in that one dress shop were weirdly polite but she didn’t think much of it. It’s not until Kim meets a fantastically attractive man, who then politely drugs and abducts her, that she starts to think something might be amiss. Turns out that she’s a lookalike for the woman who’s engaged to Dobrenica’s crown prince! Said prince’s fiancee has gone AWOL, causing a lot of problems, and Kim is going to have to explain who she is and possibly play body double for her doppelganger. As for why all this is possible… well, remember how Kim was in Europe researching her genealogy?

As an employee of the largest public English language genealogy reference library in the world, I know that most people have nobility in their family tree somewhere. It just so happens that Kim’s is much more recent than most.

This adds another twist to Kim’s situation. Since she represents a noble line thought lost to Dobrenica sixty-plus years ago, her turning up adds a whole new layer of problems to an already complicated political landscape. Before things have played out, she’ll have to figure out where she stands in the midst of it all, how badly she’s in love with another woman’s affianced and what the heck is up with all this talk of the country occasionally disappearing off the map from time to time.

Not getting stabbed, shot or bitten by fiends of the night in the process is optional.

Again, the world building in the Dobrenica novels is quite impressive. The history of this fictitious country is clearly well developed and we get glimpses of it throughout, and the pastiche of real world languages the Dobrenicans speak reads much like you’d expect, rather than like a made up language. Just as importantly, while the elements of the weird are present throughout the story they don’t take it over, at least not until the third book which is markedly different from the first two. There’s no fourth, so I can’t say if that’s the beginning of a pattern or just a brief aberration.

Finally, the Dobrenican novels are romances in the modern sense of girl meets boy, accuses him of drugging her and then starts to warm up to him. I have no idea what the that says about our culture today, other than maybe it hasn’t changed much since the days courting involved clubs and caves (or tangle guns and spaceships). But Smith handles her characters well and is careful to keep them from becoming one-dimensional. With all the intrigue, hauntings and other stuff going on in Dobrenica how could they afford to pass on those other two dimensions?

While the plots of these books are solid and the characters keep your interest, the real reason you should read the Dobrenica novels is for Dobrenica. The country itself feels real, like you could hop a train out of Vienna and be there in a matter of hours. It’s an impressive bit of writing and worth experiencing even if world building isn’t your thing. If it is, then the Dobrenica novels are among the top ten books you need to read. They will not be a waste of your time.

Water Fall: Hydroelectric

Posted by natechen on

Six Days After the Michigan Avenue Proclamation 

Circuit 

I’d just turned in after another day of waiting for the shoe to drop when Wallace banged on my door. The two days after taking out a drone with an Empion grenade had been difficult, with most of us slowly getting more and more tense as we looked for signs that Project Sumter, or whichever government organization had sent that drone, was getting ready to pay us a visit. In the mean time, I’d spent a lively afternoon tramping through the underbrush and trying to track down the Empion grenade we’d used to disable the drone on it’s way over the park.

In theory, the grenades were supposed to launch off the maglev relays, shut off all extraneous systems and trip an EMP. Then, with internal circuits shielded by a bit of pirated military tech, they’d switch back on, link up with the nearest maglev relay and swing back to the holding area. Unfortunately, the switch back on part wasn’t working exactly as intended. I’d spent part of the previous evening and most of that day arguing about why it might not be working with Davis. When I wasn’t doing that, I was arguing with Heavy or Grappler over how to best set our handful of perimeter guards. Most were mercenaries with some field experience and I wanted to leave them to their own devices, but Heavy felt they’d get out of hand if we let them have too much autonomy. Worse, a few squads were gangbangers and other petty thugs Heavy had scraped together and who weren’t thrilled with taking orders from anyone, but were willing to listen to someone with enough street cred to command their respect. Eventually we compromised on Heavy leading the crooks and the mercenaries working on their own. 

When I finally got to bed I was hoping for a solid five hours sleep before something else went wrong. It was not to be. 

I yanked the door open just as Wallace was raising his hand to knock again. He blinked at me looking more than a little surprised, perhaps not used to seeing me without a shirt on. Then he rallied and said, “The eyes we’ve had on the Sumter headquarters say they dispatched a helicopter around two o’clock this afternoon. Hangman’s trying to hack in and get their flight plan, but no idea where they were headed yet.” 

“They’re probably not coming directly here,” I said, drumming my fingers on the doorframe. “This location is in the middle of a jurisdictional nightmare, they can’t have cut the red tape in a day and a half, even if all five senators on the Talented Individuals Committee rally to the cause.” 

“Well, you said to tell you as soon as they made a move, and now you’ve been told,” Wallace said with a smile. “I’m going to hit the sack.” 

“You’re awful cheerful about this,” I said dryly. 

“Other than running some checks on the last turbine in the concrete dam, I haven’t had much to do today.” He shrugged. “Lots less stress than the rest of you. Good night, Circuit.” 

I watched him head off down the dreary hallway and turned back to flip the lights on and reached for my shirt. Wallace was a very phlegmatic man and took just about everything in stride but it wouldn’t do to run around the installation shirtless and start everyone talking. And I certainly wasn’t getting much sleep with Helix on the way. Might as well get a little work done. 

——– 

Helix 

The biggest sticking point was what we would use to enter the park. Kesselman was a certified helicopter pilot and more than familiar with the EC-155s the Project used on those rare occasions we needed to be airlifted into a situation. We used that to get out to our meeting with the National Guard and we wanted to go in using it too. The Guard, on the other hand, wanted to go in using a Black Hawk, which meant we’d have to rely on them for pilots. That, in turn, would give them the leverage to insist we take Guardsmen along as tactical support, instead of our usual teams. 

Even though there wasn’t enough room on a chopper for me, Massif, Samson, Amplifier, along with our assorted oversight agents and support teams plus Darryl and his team, I would still prefer that the tactical support we did bring had experience dealing with talents on both sides of the equation. To my surprise it was HiRes, the rookie from Darryl’s team, who gave us the leverage we needed to make the Guard go along with our plan. 

We’d been in and out of meetings and teleconferences with various military honchos the whole of the previous evening and we’d pretty much figured that we’d have to wait on Washington to break the stalemate. Voorman and the team oversight agents were in yet another meeting and the rest of us were sitting in the situation room, in case our knowledge of the enemy’s talents was needed, and HiRes’ head was surrounded by the faint rainbow effect I’d come to realize meant he was using his talent to somehow see things that were far away and, on occasion, around corners. My best guess was that he was bending light somehow, which was cool and creepy at the same time. It was also something I’d never heard of before, and I had to fight the urge to pry into what he could do with it. Not knowing that kind of thing was a novel experience after twenty years of working with talents. 

For most of the morning HiRes had been glancing around a lot, like he wasn’t used to all the hustle and bustle, but now he’d settled down and was just leaning back with his eyes half lidded, watching over the shoulder of various drone operators when he wasn’t skimming classified messages as the cryptologists decoded them. 

Forstburn and Coldsnap had been keeping up a constant string of chatter the whole time, deflecting attention from him by virtue of being cheerful and pretty, and I’d been eavesdropping between fielding the occasional question about Circuit’s methods. The status quo had held for nearly half an hour before HiRes quietly murmured, “They’re using drones.” 

“They told us they were sending in another wave of drones over the park at this morning’s briefing,” I said just as softly. “Nothing new there.” 

“Circuit’s people,” he said. “They have a couple of those high altitude surveillance drones that double as a sat uplink. They think that’s how he’s spotting and shooting down our drones as they come in.” 

“Well that’s a pain.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “It sounds more and more like we’ll have to go in on foot. Jack will be thrilled. He can finally give that lecture on jungle warfare he’s been saving all this time.” 

“Assuming they don’t just give the job to the Guard,” Frostburn said. 

“Because they’re better suited for that kind of operation,” her sister added. 

“Drones are good.” HiRes’ eyes snapped fully open again and he sat up straight. “That means they’re spotting us visually and not by radar. I can make a chopper invisible but I can’t screw with radar waves.” 

“An invisible chopper.” I said, feeling my eyebrows creep towards my hairline. “That sounds too good to be true. What can go wrong here?” 

“It’s a two way street,” Coldsnap said. “When HiRes does his magic no one can see you but you can’t see anything, either. You have to rely on other senses, or leave a hole you can see out of.” 

“Your pilot should be able to fly us by instruments.” He waved his hand downwards. “And I can work it so we can see, and be seen, from the ground but not the sky. It’s all in where you choose to make the bends.” 

“I’ll assume that makes sense somehow.” I drummed my fingers on my knee. He was definitely bending light. Interesting. “Other potential disasters? Things the Guard might say to try and keep us from using this route?” 

“The public parts of the park have a PA system,” Frostburn said. “It wouldn’t be that hard to rewire it so it could listen, too. It’d be a cheap way to monitor those parts of the park and make sure we weren’t slipping through the underbrush. There might be listening stations all over the place by now. What if they hear us coming?” 

I laughed. “Don’t you have the silent man on your team?” 

“There’s a limit to how loud a sound can get before he can’t squash it anymore.” She tilted her head to one side, meaning she’d just thought of something. “Unless…” 

“Unless we have two wave makers working on it.” I pointed at HiRes. “Find Amplifier and Hush, get them together and see if it’s possible. I have a phone call to make.” 

I left the three of them to run errands and started looking for a quiet corner of the base, already scrolling through my contacts list for the number of a certain Senator who had just as much at stake in this case as I did. 

——– 

Circuit 

Wallace and Davis came to me late the next morning, neither one looking particularly well rested. I gave Wallace a rueful look and said, “I thought you were under no stress?” 

“I had an idea after talking to you last night,” he said with a shrug. “I wanted to see how practical it was so I checked with Davis. We were up most of the night getting the numbers crunched and some rough plans put together.” 

I suppressed a yawn and took a gulp of my coffee. “What kind of an idea are we talking about?” 

“One that will get us out of here by three tomorrow afternoon.” Davis handed me a sheaf of papers covered in sketches and notes. “Your plans call for us to make all our superconducting material and shape it into electromagnets here at Chainfall. But, with a few adjustments, we can turn CPC wire into magnets at Deepwoods, meaning can focus the hydroelectric capacity of here at Chainfall on manufacturing the superconductors. That cuts the time we have to stay here almost in half.” 

I glanced up from the plans he’d handed me. “Deepwoods?” 

“That’s what Hangman’s been calling the place up in Wisconson,” Wallace said. 

“I see.” I went back to the papers and said, “This looks feasible. Make the changes here as soon as possible. Davis, I want you to take all the completed materials we have at the end of the day and return to the northern installation and begin prepping it according to these spects.” 

“Just me?” He asked. 

“I need Wallace here to help me finish checking over the second hydroelectric turbine in the permanent dam.” I set the plans aside and stood up from my desk. “We’ve had drone overflights most of the morning and I was busy shooting them down. Once we get that second turbine working we’ll have enough electricity to keep a blanket of Empion mines airborne for half an hour, more than long enough to knock down anything that can come to us through the air. That means Sumter, or whoever winds up coming after us here, will have to come by ground.” 

“And by the time they can cut through the paperwork to do that we’ll be long gone,” Davis said with a smile. 

“Good work, boys,” I said with a smile. “As long as we keep the hydroelectric turbines intact I think it’s safe to say we’ve won this round.” 

“You make it sound like you expect to loose one of these days,” Davis said with a laugh. 

Wallace and I laughed too, but in the back of my mind the Thunderbird gambit gnawed on my conscience. Davis was uncomfortably close to the truth for once. Hopefully he, or worse Wallace or Hangman, wouldn’t see through to the endgame until it was time. 

But first there was Thunderclap. And before that, we’d have to keep the hydroelectric generators going for the next twenty-four hours. Simple enough, right? 

——– 

Helix 

A week and a day after the event the press had started calling the Michigan Avenue Proclamation we were flying low over the marshy forest that held Circuit’s latest supervillain’s lair. The Guard wasn’t happy about it, but the ability to put an invisible helicopter in the middle of the opposition’s base had tipped the turf war in our favor and we were going in to sort things out. 

As for flying invisible, it was really weird. If you looked up there was nothing visible but a nauseating pulse of twisted light over the chopper while the Indiana countryside continued to roll by undisturbed below us. On top of that, the combined efforts of Amplifier and Hush were suppressing most of the noise we were making, so the helicopter’s engines were making no more noise than the typical house fan. This also meant that if you wanted to say anything to anyone you had to yell at the top of your lungs, and even then our wave makers were pretty upset about it. 

But thankfully we made it safely to the landing zone in the northern part of the park, about two miles away from what our drone reconnaissance suggested was the center of Circuit’s clandestine instillation. It wasn’t really anything more than a small, level clearing well removed from the public areas of the park and all of Circuit’s territory that we could identify. It was really quite impressive the way he’d managed to smuggle enough materials and labor into the park to build three hardened bunkers and one smallish dam. There was probably an inside man in the DNR or something, Analysis and Records were going to spend months working out how it might have been done, but in the mean time it meant that we had a lot of work to do. 

Grandpa Wake used to tell stories about jumping huge distances, like the time he vaulted off a three story building onto a Panzer Mk. IV to bend the main gun out of shape. I’ll admit that I had a sneaking suspicion those stories were hyperbole, at least until Samson jumped twenty feet from the chopper to the ground and proceeded to secure our landing zone like nothing unusual had happened. Kesselman put us down without incident and the rest of us piled out in a less spectacular fashion. 

I glanced around and suppressed a slight shudder. The group included Teresa and the rest of our team, Massif and Screeton, Amplifier, Sanders, Darryl and his team and Sampson. In all, there were eight talents present, twice as many as I had ever seen in one place outside of a briefing room. “All right people,” I said, rubbing my hands together. “You all have your assignments. Circuit’s had his chance to make history. Let’s show him how to do it right.” 

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Broken Homes – A Series in Transition

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Normally I take this section and ramble about writing. Technical tricks, what I’ve been doing, what I think about the male gender, that kind of thing. Today, I’m going to talk about a subject I first introduced in my Wednesday segment: Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London novels. 

If you haven’t read any of these excellent books let me just warn you –

There Will Be Spoilers 

– so if you’re not into that kind of thing then maybe you need to go read those books (or at least the first four, since you may be reading this in 2020 when there are considerably more books in the series.) The kind of discussion I’m aiming for today can’t really dodge around spoilers and still make sense, so I beg you to read the books or accept that going beyond this paragraph may ruin many things for you. Okay? 

Okay, so what’s this all about? If you’ve made it this far you undoubtedly already have a grasp on the themes and characters of Rivers of London and are wondering what, exactly, I’m going to go on about with this whole “series in transition” title and whatnot. It’s actually pretty simple. In Midnight Riot (Rivers of London for those of you across the pond) we’re introduced to all the major players in Peter Grant’s world and the general formula of the series is set. Said formula is (so far) thus: 

  1. The discovery of a body is described to us in fairly clinical detail. While Moon Over Soho and Whispers Underground don’t begin with this, things happening before the discovery of the body basically amount to a prologue. 

  2. Peter winds up on the case. In the first book this is a sizable chunk of story, since Peter isn’t yet a wizard-cop in training. In the other three it’s usually just a matter of getting the call from somewhere and showing up to get the rundown from the officers on the scene. 

  3. Investigation takes place. 

  4. Peter is drawn into unrelated matters pertaining to the balance of power in London’s supernatural community. 

  5. Investigation and politicking cross paths a couple of times. 

  6. Peter learns new spells! 

  7. There is a break in the case. 

  8. Peter puts all the pieces together and confronts the criminals. 

  9. Everyone lives weirder ever after. The level of weirdness keeps escalating, presumably because Peter isn’t a fully trained wizard yet. Although if his boss is any yardstick to measure by, full wizarding credentials doesn’t mean weirdness stops increasing. 

I don’t want to waste too much time breaking this formula down, and I know it’s very loose and not everything fits nicely everywhere. What I want to show is that, magical nonsense aside, the formula of a Rivers of London novel is much closer to a police procedural than the typical urban fantasy or even paranormal investigation novel. That’s important, because, with Broken Homes, the series is starting to make some changes. 

It’s been most apparent in the way Aaronovitch is building his myth arcs. The biggest arc, of course, revolves around the eponymous rivers. While the Thames is the biggest river in London it has a myriad of tributaries that run into it, and each river has an anthropomorphic embodiment that Peter and Nightingale have to deal with. The scariest of them is undoubtedly Tyburn, who is both magically and politically powerful, and ambitious. Exactly what her ambitions are is kind of unclear, even at this point, but it seems like the wizards of the Folly could be in the way. 

But the rivers were always going to be an issue. You could tell that from the first book – even if you read the American version, which was titled Midnight Riot rather than Rivers of London. What’s more interesting is how the other long-running elements in the books are snowballing into bigger and bigger hurdles. 

The first book introduced Mr. Punch, the embodiment of riot and unrest. He was the culprit in Peter’s first case with the Folly and, as a metaphysical manifestation of an abstract concept, he was not arrested and sent to jail but rather dragged deep into the Jungian unconsciousness of the city and staked to the ground. Later, in Whispers Underground, while Peter is buried in a collapsed subway station, he wanders into the past again and hears Punch still wailing in misery. One of the old riverine spirits warns him that the time will come when Peter will let Punch go of his own free will. Ominous, no? 

But Mr. Punch is far from the only recurring villain in the series. In Moon Over Soho we were introduced to the Faceless Man, a wizard who somehow learned Newtonian magic without getting the government’s blessing and is now using it in horrible, evil ways. He starts as a sidestory to Moon‘s primary plot, the investigation of jazz musicians who are dying mysteriously. But the two narrative threads converge when the Faceless Man tries to recruit the Jazz Vampires responsible for the deaths Peter is investigating. His involvement in Whispers Underground is less pronounced, but by the time we reach Broken Homes  things have changed. 

And this is what I mean by the series being in transition. The first three books were straight up murder investigations. Sure, they went all over the place because real people have messy lives and working out which part might have killed them can be a real headache sometimes. Worse, Peter wears many hats in his little department of two, and he has many responsibilities outside of the murders he looks into. But Broken Homes, while it opens with a body being found just like the first three, is never really about solving the murder. They never get any proof of whodunnit but by the end it’s pretty clear to everyone involved. 

Broken Homes is not about the who, it’s about the what. The Faceless Man is shaping up to be an honest to goodness supervillain, and the story this time around is less about whodunnit or how you’re going to prove it and more about running down the Faceless Man’s schemes. It’s kind of troublesome. 

If you remember Disappointment Deconstructed, we’ve talked before about how audience expectation can factor into how they receive a story. This is a perfect example. People who have read Rivers of London are used to a police procedural with paranormal elements. What we’ve gotten is closer to a traditional urban fantasy. The story itself isn’t bad, per se. But it’s not what I was expecting. 

In many ways, Broken Homes is a great example of how to introduce a major change in the direction of your story, in direct contrast to Out of the Dark. That said, if things continue on this path Rivers of London will slowly become less a police procedural with wonderfully quirky paranormal elements and more the traditional intrigue fueled urban fantasy. There’s nothing wrong with that, except the first is much rarer than the second. Only time will tell.

Classic Movies: The Maltese Falcon

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What have we got here? Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade, the prototypical hardboiled detective? Yes please! 

The Maltese Falcon is pretty much the iconic noir tale, and since noir is a genre that hasn’t had it’s day in Genrely Speaking yet I’ll take just a moment to define that term for you. Noir is a story that examines what the world would be like if everyone lived for their own self-interest, entirely without restraint. The one exception tends to be the protagonist, who has something that resembles a moral code, even if it’s not one that would make him welcome in everyday society. Needless to say, most noir stories take place on the seedier side of life. So with that said, what makes the Maltese Falcon such a prime example of this genre? 

Let’s start with Sam. He’s not a nice guy, he’s quite rough around the edges. He shows respect to Ruth Wonderly (Mary Astor) when she shows up in the office of his detective agency, but we quickly learn he has no qualms about playing around with his partner’s wife and when that partner turns up dead Sam has no qualms about taking over the business entirely. He does stay away from the wife after that, and sticks with the job he’s taken until the end, although part of that is simply because he knows he’ll never make it in the business unless he actually helps find his partner’s killer. Failing to do some things can ruin your reputation entirely. 

He also lies to everyone he meets, is ruthlessly cruel to a young, headstrong thug he meets in the opposition and fights like a man possessed. 

On the other hand – he does the job. He does stick with it until the end, makes sure all the crooks he meets are arrested and put in prison at least for a while, and finds his partner’s murderer. He does all this in spite of the fact that, for at least half an hour of the film, it’s fairly clear he’s stopped planning on getting money out of the deal. 

And you know what? That’s really what makes this movie entertaining. Sam Spade got a raw deal, no getting around that. His partner took a job that was a little fishy, got killed and left him holding the bag. Every person – everyone – that Sam tangles with is lying to him and may be out to kill him. He has to tangle with Peter Lorre as a rival (and that’s just creepy). And when it’s all said and done, he’s still broke. 

There’s something classic there. It’s not the clean, glorified kind of heroism we might like to see, but there’s a truth in it that we can’t always appreciate. Sometimes it is hard to see through all the lies, sometimes we don’t know who’s playing straight with us, sometimes we are too tired and too roughshod to handle the people around us kindly. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a right thing to do, no matter how hard it is to see, and doing it will leave us feeling right, even if there’s no other reward in store for us. 

The Maltese Falcon is also the debut movie performance of Sydney Greenstreet. His performance will delight you, although you will have a hard time articulating why. Don’t worry, Greenstreet is always like this. 

There are a lot of classic tropes in The Maltese Falcon, to the point where listing them all is best left to some other website. Even if you don’t enjoy noir or crime dramas, it’s worth watching the movie just to see them executed so well. Best of all, the story is timeless. It could easily unfold in some shady dockside district in America today. 

So go watch it! And let me know what you think. 

Water Fall: Flood Waters

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Five Days After the Michigan Avenue 

Helix 

There were many problems that resulted from the revelation that talents walked among us. Believe it or not, Project Sumter had very detailed contingency plans in place detailing possible fallout from public knowledge of talented individuals. These scenarios cover pretty much everything from witch hunts and pogroms aiming to wipe out talents to individual talents who set themselves up as the leaders of cults. 

Absolutely none of these scenarios mentioned the necessity of field agents taking part in press conferences. 

I feel that this was a major oversight, because anyone who put an ounce of thought into it would have immediately banned me from getting within a hundred feet of any member of the press. In fact, I have no idea why that memo didn’t go out as soon as I pulled my stunt to rescue Teresa from the reporter mob. And yet two days after I did that I found myself staring glassily at a wall of microphones and ravenous, soul-sucking journalists. It was less than ideal for my peace of mind, and not just because I was wondering what had gotten into Voorman. 

And while we’re on that subject, let me just say I found how easily he adjusted to the press a little disgusting. He gave the opening statement, a quick five minute summary of Circuit’s case and where we currently stood with it, using nothing but a couple of note cards and without showing any sign that he was nervous. This from a person who, a week ago, I would have told you was defined by his nerves. I’d say he looked totally in control of the situation except, as soon as he opened the floor to questions things went south. 

If you’ve never seen the press all over a new story, it’s kind of like watching flies swarming over a dead raccoon on the side of the road. It’s obsessive, repulsive and relentless. The basic shape of things was like this: Voorman was at the center at the podium and to his left were the three Senior Special Agents we had that had been involved in the case since the beginning; my current boss, Teresa Herrera, my former boss, Bob Sanders, and Massif’s boss, Harriet Verger. These four were chosen for their extensive field experience, their familiarity with the case and the fact that, with two men, two women, one Hispanic, one African American and ages ranging from mid twenties to late fifties, they made a wonderful picture of the diversity and inclusiveness of Project Sumter. I would have preferred to face the press backed by my highly experienced tactical team, but they were all middle aged white males and hadn’t been invited. 

Of course, the ethnically balanced, open and fair shtick may have been to counterbalance the fact that Amplifier, Massif and I were all white as they come. Only Samson broke the mold. Sure, that’s because the Midwest is a bit more homogenous than other parts of the country but that doesn’t play in front of the press and the fact that I don’t care for that kind of posturing much doesn’t change the fact that perceptions matter. The four of us were lined up by height, with Samson closest to the middle and the rest of us in descending order moving away from Voorman. We weren’t supposed to be there to talk, that was Voorman’s job, but we had been introduced to the public by our code names and our status as talented people made clear. 

Unfortunately, as soon as Voorman finished outlining, in general terms, the extent of our current investigation into Circuit’s activities and what kind information we were hoping to get from the public the press was free to ask questions. The first question came from a reporter from the local broadcast news, a shortish Asian American woman with black hair pulled into a bun. “Agent Voorman, is there any indication of what this Open Circuit’s motivation in his crimes might be?” 

“At the moment it seems to be purely self-interest, based on the pattern of his crimes,” Voorman said. “His public statements have suggested he wants to be seen as some kind of freedom fighter but so far most of his crimes consist of grand theft of pretty much every type and criminal trespass. And that’s just the things he’s wanted on five or more counts of. Not the behavior of an altruist.” 

A journalist with the ragged haircut and slightly worn clothing of someone who didn’t have to get in front of a TV camera every day raised his hand and asked, “There’s a lot of people with what you call talents coming forward all over the country and saying they’d like to use them in a productive fashion. In interviews they’ve said that’s something you’ve forbidden, by and large. Are there plans to change that policy in the future?” 

Voorman glanced at Sanders, who cleared his throat and said, “There’s been a lot of talk about that at the management level over the past few days, discussions I’ve been a part of.” I felt my eyebrows raise a bit at that. I had wondered where my old boss had gotten off to, since I hadn’t seen him with his new talent much recently. “Some talents do receive licenses for specific kinds of work already. State and Federal governments are debating how those programs might be expanded but our involvement in that is going to be strictly advisory from this point forward. Politicians will have to sort it and put it before the voters.” 

A different, younger looking reporter near the back shouted, “What about superheroes?” 

“That would-” Voorman began, but stopped short when Samson stepped to the edge of the raised platform we were standing on, picked up an empty metal microphone stand from off the floor and held it up for the audience to examine. 

Then he bent it into a rough circle using his bare hands. The room went deathly quiet as Samson carefully set the bent pole on the stage and said, “My talent is one of the most powerful we know of in direct confrontations. If you want to see something really interesting we can go to a junkyard later and I’ll throw some cars. But the fact is, even I rely on equipment, backup and information from Project Sumter to do my job. I can’t take a bullet safely without a bulletproof vest, for example. I still only have two eyes and they only see in front of me, so I need someone to watch my back. Vigilantes have none of that support and are more likely to get themselves and other people hurt than solve any problems.” 

“On top of that,” Verger added, piping up from the other side of Voorman, “the legal system itself doesn’t deal with them well. Evidence gained through vigilantes is rarely if ever admissible in court, and if they did take the stand we’d usually have to turn around and arrest them for trespassing or assault and battery. Vigilantism remains something the law highly discourages, and we are a law enforcement agency, no matter what else people choose to call us.” 

“Don’t you think constantly dismissing the potential contributions talented people make out of hand is part of the problem here?” The anchorwoman who had asked the first question demanded. 

“We’re not dismissing them out of hand,” Voorman said. “There are a lot of issues to be explored-“ 

“And that’s a process your agency has been actively suppressing for almost seventy years,” she said, too fired up to notice her breath gathering in front of her in an icy cloud. “Why do you call Open Circuit a run of the mill crook when he’s obviously been confronted with such widespread systemic injustice his entire life?” 

“Because he’s a liar, a thief and a killer.” Both Voorman and Sanders short me warning looks but I ignored them. I’d been prepared for a lot of strange sounding questions from the press but I honestly hadn’t expected them to be sympathetic to Circuit. “Project Sumter has asked talents to keep what they can do a secret as much for their own safety as out of a desire to keep the public in ignorance.” 

I stepped forward and picked up the stand Samson had left there and let it rest in my palm for a moment, until the heat gathered there melted through it and the two pieces tumbled to the ground. A flick of the fingers sent the last drops of molten metal sizzling onto the ground and I looked the reporter in the eye. She’d paled visibly. “On the face of it, what we can do is more than a little scary, don’t you think? Even fifty years ago, this kind of thing could have caused riots. Maybe times have changed and we can be out in the open safely. We’ll see. But it wouldn’t be the first time the government has erred on the side of caution and gotten it wrong. That doesn’t justify robbing people of their livelihoods, threatening their safety, or leaving their families in mourning. Circuit’s done all that, and the only reason for a person to act like that is pure selfishness.” 

Behind me Voorman cleared his throat. “I think that will be all the questions for now.” 

——– 

“You are not doing that again,” Voorman said, his tone closer to exasperation than anger. 

“Thank goodness,” I said, wiping sweat off my forehead with my sleeve. I didn’t let the air around me change in temperature but nerves still had me dripping. “I hate press conferences.” 

“You’ve never done one before,” Sanders pointed out. 

“But I’ve seen plenty on TV,” I replied. “And I hated all of them.” 

“Helix,” Teresa said, visibly struggling to be patient. “It’s going to be very important that the press not paint us like a loose cannon or some other kind of threat to the public interest.” 

“Because the press never smears people it doesn’t like regardless of facts,” I said, favoring her with a mock-naïve expression. 

“I’m not disagreeing with you,” Voorman said, regaining some of his patience. “But it would really help if we didn’t feed them sound bites to use against us.” 

“Hey big guy!” Jack waved to me from the other side of the floor, standing with Darryl by the computer that was keeping the situation map up to date. “Get a load of this.” 

When your tactical leader says get somewhere you get, and when you’ve known Jack as long as I have that goes double. Teresa, Voorman and Samson went along with me and, due to longer legs, Teresa and Samson got there first. I snorted in disgust and Voorman spared me a sympathetic glance. Then we were at the desk and the moment of short men solidarity was over. 

“What have we got?” Teresa asked. 

Lincoln Wu looked up from the computer station, which he appeared to be in charge of. Apparently he had gotten some new clearances, a lot had been going on in the office in the last week or so and I was keeping up with less than half of it. “The National Guard in Indiana sent us this about two hours ago. Records is working overtime and the Watch has been pulled in, too, since censoring the news is less of a thing now, but we’re still having a hard time keeping up with all the tips and reports coming in so it got lost in the slush pile somewhere.” 

He pulled up a new window and hammered a few shortcut keys, flicking through menus at a near-epileptic pace. A couple of seconds later we were looking at grainy image of a densely forested area. 

“This is the Chain o’ Rivers State Park in southern Indiana. It’s a hiking and camping kind of a place and, until last year you could even go canoeing through the rivers.” Jack grabbed a sheet of paper that had a map, presumably of the park, printed on it and handed it to me as he went on. “The problem is there’s no one route, they can be like a maze at some points and people have gotten lost before, sometimes for a day or more. It was decided to add some markers and close off certain parts of the river, to help keep people safe. The canoeing was closed while the work was being done.” 

Darryl picked up the story at that point. “Last week a cop who was there on vacation spotted some really heavy equipment being trucked through some of the maintenance roads. Concrete mixers, a small backhoe, not the stuff you expect to see in a State Park. Being outside of his jurisdiction and not wanting trouble, he called it in to the DNR. They sent in a couple of agents to look into it.” 

“No one’s heard from them in three days. Things get a little murkier after that but the Guard got involved at some point,” Jack said, gesturing back to the computer screen. “So they asked for some satellite images and this is what they found.” 

I leaned in for a closer look. “Okay, I’ll bite. What did they find?” 

“These,” Lincoln said, zooming in on the lower right corner of the image. Now I could make out a strange boxy thing nestled in under the branches of a large tree on the bank of the river. A dark line ran out into the water. 

“Is that a tree branch?” Voorman asked. 

“We think it’s some kind of makeshift dam,” Darryl replied. “You remember what that girl Amplifier was tracking when we first ran into her?” 

“A stolen prototype for a hydroelectric generator,” Teresa said. “One that would function even with very shallow water at high efficiency. Stolen by Circuit.” 

“And look.” Lincoln hit another shortcut key, cycling quickly through at least a dozen other images. “They’ve found at least fifteen of them scattered through the park. There might be more, better hidden. Then there’s this.” 

The last image was of an honest to goodness concrete dam. Jack tapped a knuckle against it. “That looks to have been built sometime in the last month, probably finished about the time our cop was visiting the park. It’s caused a lot of flooding but so far nothing in the public areas. The Guard didn’t want more people going in and not coming back out so they decided to send a drone to investigate.” 

“I’ll be the FAA was thrilled with that,” I muttered. 

“Not sure they’ve found out,” Jack replied. “Show them the footage.” 

Lincoln cued up a video that gave us a bird’s eye view of the area around the park. As in, it actually dipped and swooped like a bird, it was pretty nauseating actually. I have no idea how the people who operate drones put up with it. The footage went on for about ten seconds before suddenly cutting out to static, then the words SIGNAL LOST came up on a black background. Samson grunted in surprise. “What happened?” 

“Show them the satellite footage,” Darryl said mildly. 

“Right.” Lincoln sounded a bit sheepish but did as he was told without further comment. 

This time the satellite was focused on the drone so the terrain around it was pretty much a blur. But then the miniature aircraft came to a sudden stop and started to fall. Lincoln froze the frame before it went far and zoomed in. A gray blob was shooting through the bottom half of the frame, obviously moving pretty fast. 

“There was a big blast of static at the time the drone’s signal was lost. It could be explained any number of ways, but smart money says this,” Darryl pointed at the blur, “is some kind of EMP device launched from the ground and set of to fry our machines.” 

“Definitely Circuit,” I said. “I don’t know what he’s doing all the way out there but I don’t care so long as we can shut him down and drag him in.” 

Teresa glanced at me, then over at Darryl. “What does the National Guard think of all this?” 

“They were thinking it was a terrorist plot to take over a Park and poison the water supply. There’s a squadron of A-10 Warthogs based in Fort Wayne that they were planning to mobilize as part of an operation to storm the park and round up anyone present. Then the news about talents went public and local field offices started circulating information on Circuit’s case and they came to us.” 

“So when do we go in?” Teresa asked. 

“Actually, they just want us to send an advisor. They still plan to run their op, they just want someone from the Project to ‘look for unanticipated complications’ and suggest adjustments.” Jack’s tone of voice told me he thought that wasn’t going to be enough. By several orders of magnitude. 

I felt my own eyes narrowing at the thought of just handing this job over to a bunch of soldiers and sitting in an office while other people dragged Circuit out of his watery little hideyhole. I glanced from Darryl to Voorman. “What do you gentlemen say we go and explain to the Guard the errors of their ways?” 

Darryl rubbed his hands together and picked up his cane. “I’ll go get my team.” 

I glanced at Voorman and Samson. “That’s the Secret Service spoken for.” 

Samson shrugged. “Who knows that our position is not for such a time as this?” 

That got a grin from me. “Okay, Mordecai, get your bags packed, time’s a wasting!” 

“Wait.” Lincoln gave me a confused look. “I thought his codename was Samson.” 

Samson laughed. “At least he didn’t call me Sam. Or Esther.” 

“Then I’ll do it, Sam.” Voorman gave his partner and I a grim look. “You two need to calm down. We can’t take this op from them by force and we don’t have the standing to demand they turn it over to us. The National Guard isn’t going to give up on running their own plan unless we can bring them a better one, and they’re not going to let us execute our plan unless we give them a good reason why they’re not qualified to carry out that plan themselves.” 

“Fair points,” Teresa said with a smile. “But we have the world’s foremost expert on Open Circuit to draw on so that should be easy to do.” 

I frowned. “Darryl did work a lot of the early cases with me, but he had moved to Analysis chief before most of the really heavy stuff happened. This is Amber’s first time working a Circuit case, and Mossburger and Mov-“ 

“Big guy,” Jack interrupted. “She’s talking about you. Not the getmen.” 

“Oh.” I stared blankly at him, then Teresa. “Me?” 

“Yes,” she said slowly. “You. In eight years you’ve worked twelve cases involving Circuit, out of seventeen attributed to him in one way or another. And that doesn’t include whatever it was the CIA asked you to do in Morocco a couple years back. No one knows him like you.” 

I swallowed once, hard. “I guess not.” 

Jack grinned. “Then I guess you’d better get to work putting together a plan for us.” 

“Yeah.” I’d never been in a position where I had to put a plan together before. But as soon as Jack said it I realized it was Circuit we were going after all the pieces just slid into place. “Actually, scratch that. We’ve got a plan. I just need to get Darryl back and make sure he’s on board…”

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Writing Men: Compartments

Posted by natechen on

Welcome back to Writing Men, a look at what things a writer should keep in mind when writing male characters in fiction. Previous segments include the introduction, goal oriented behavior and axioms. Up to date? Then let’s get cracking! 

One of the best pieces of advice for women seeking to understand men that I have ever heard is this: When you’re dealing with men, it is important to understand that they are not women who are failing to communicate properly. Men have their own ways of dealing with ideas and emotions and they are just as correct and just as dangerous as those used by women. A perfect example of this is the way men compartmentalize. 

We’ve covered the way men are goal oriented and the fact that they amass a set of rules and principles that serve as the foundation of their behavior. To this point, the behavior of men is fairly straightforward and easy to understand, even if you’re not a man. From here on out, things get a littler murkier, even if you are a man. 

See, men tend to disassociate one object from another, devoting the entirety of our energies and thoughts to one thing at a time, where women frequently try to connect everything to everything else. I’ve heard this described as “waffles” vs “noodles” where men’s minds are a grid of separate and independent boxes and women’s minds are a dizzying mess of ideas running haphazardly into one another. We could dissect both these systems of thought, but our focus here is men and that means compartmentalization, a system of though that has effects on male behavior which are baffling to everyone involved, except possible the man doing the decision making. 

Let me give you an example. In the Firefly episode “Trash”, Malcom Reynolds decides to team up with a swindler, one both he and the audience have tangled with before (in the episode, “Our Mrs. Reynolds”) even though the last time they crossed paths Mal and the crew of Serenity almost wound up dead. Why does Mal decided to do this, in spite of the obvious dangers involved? 

It’s because the last, near-death encounter was a different situation. Mal and his dubious partner will be allies this time, not adversaries, and there is a whole lot of money to be made. Yes, there’s no trust between these two, but they both want a payday. Further, Mal is dealing with a known quantity this time. He doesn’t trust the swindler, sure, but at least he knows to be prepared for the double cross. 

While it didn’t happen right away, Malcom built an entirely different frame of reference around different goals and axioms than those he used on his first encounter with the swindler and used it to asses the playing field during their second meeting. The result was his agreeing to take the deal and try his hand at a heist. 

This is the same kind of behavior you see from kindergarten boys, who will be calling each other names during lunch break and then turn around and play soccer like they were old buddies. Women do not usually indulge in nearly this level of paradigm shift when their circumstances change and unless they train themselves to identify and work with it they’re going to be frustrated by the men in their lives quite a bit. 

But this is not a relationship advice column, this is a column on writing men in fiction. So what does this mean for the male character you are writing? 

First and foremost, it’s important to point out that the fact that men compartmentalize does not mean men don’t interconnect the areas of their life. Rather, interconnectivity itself is a kind of axiom, a rule that is applied or ignored as circumstances dictate. If a man doesn’t see a need to switch on the interconnectivity node, he won’t. This means that, at least eighty percent of the time, he’s not actively building connections between what he’s doing and whatever else might be on his mind. But he can do it if he thinks he needs to. 

Second, the scope of a man’s thought may be narrow at times, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t nimble. One of the benefits of compartmentalized thinking is it’s very easy to shift from one paradigm to another. Men can dance through several different mindsets in a short period of time, allowing them to adapt rapidly to changing situations or sending them dashing off after random side thoughts to the annoyance of everyone in a conversation. (Good luck getting them back on topic, since that bunny trail is going to be the total focus of their thoughts for the next five minutes.) 

But, by the same token, a drawback of compartmentalized thinking is that building new paradigms to switch to takes time, effort and significant fine tuning. Sometimes a man will just take a paradigm they already have and that looks like it fits a situation then run with it, without taking the time to really test their assumptions. In military strategy this is called fighting the last war. In social situations, it’s called putting your foot in your mouth (in the best case scenario.) If a man’s done this a lot before, he might instead ask a number of clarifying questions to make sure of the situation he’s dealing with, which might make him come of as obtuse when he’s just trying to cover all the bases.

Finally, men can be accused of switching off or suppressing their feelings because of compartmentalization. While sometimes this is true, far more often they are acting as they think the situation dictates – and all the while feeling something quite contrary to what their actions suggest. The classic example of this is courage, or the ability to ignore fear to do what needs to be done. Not all compartmentalization is courageous, of course, but it does all take an emotional toll that is rarely appreciated and poorly understood. If we leave these emotional conflicts unsorted for too long, it can take a great toll on relationships, personality and eventually sanity. You, the writer, should exploit this for all it’s worth.

Like all the things I’ve talked about in this examination of writing men, compartmentalization is not unique to the male gender. But it is something that is far more definitively associated with them. As always, I don’t pretend to assign values or reasons for this, only encourage you to look at it carefully, assess the corresponding strengths and weaknesses, and try to write your male characters accordingly. Good luck!

Cool Things: Raiders From the Rings

Posted by natechen on

Time for a classic sci-fi tale. Raiders From the Rings is a space opera of limited scope that is none the less of excellent quality. Written by Alan E. Nourse and published in 1962 this story is both entertaining and purposeful and, to an extent, it holds water today.

Which is not to say it doesn’t suffer from zeerust, that peculiar brand of datedness that accompanies pretty much any work of science fiction published more than ten or fifteen years ago. Ben Treffon’s space ship runs on atomic fission and antigravity generators, but it’s mother computer reads magnetic tapes and takes commands from punch cards. So before we start, yes, not everything here is bleeding edge scifi. But, if you remember your space opera basics, that’s really not the point.

Plot summary time: Ben Treffon is a member of the Spacers, a group of interplanetary colonists. Ben calls Mars home but the Spacers are scattered everywhere within the Sol system.

Everywhere, that is, but Earth. Earthmen shut the Spacers out a long time ago, casualties of a Cold War that lasted much longer than the one we know. While the vastness of space provides plenty of room for the Spacers, there are some things you can’t get in space. So periodically the Spacers gather together and launch a Raid, diving recklessly through layers of defense satellites and ground based missiles to reach the ground and grab valuable supplies of grain and meat.

The Spacers are very humane, armed with web guns and striving hard not to hurt anyone on their way in or out, and they insist that given the chance they would trade for what they need rather than fight for it. The Earthmen aren’t buying it, however.

Because on ever raid the Spacers also make a point to abduct women.

Not just one or two, but dozens.

Ben Treffon is about to set out on his very first raid and his assignment is mauki recruitment (read – kidnapping duty). After months of careful study, consultation with agents on the surface and analysis of previous Earth response patterns, Spacer High Command have conceived of the following plan:

  1. Crash the Earthling’s singles night.

  2. Abscond with females.

  3. Profit!

Unfortunately, like most plans, this one does not survive it’s encounter with the enemy. In fact, by the time Ben gets back into space, he’s juggling not one but three distinct problems:

  1. He’s abducted a girl but she hates his guts. So much that she’s kneed and elbowed him in them repeatedly.

  2. The girl has a brother, who has come along for the ride in an attempt to rescue his sister. While abducting women is totally kosher, taking men of Earth into space without their consent isn’t just frowned on, it’s illegal.

  3. Decades of raids have allowed Earth to crack some agents and feed the Spacers false information, setting them up to get hit hard this time around and giving Earth time to launch their own fleet and hit the Spacer fleet as it lands. Now, most of the Raid fleet is wreckage and the space between Earth and Mars is crawling with hostiles.

Problems? Ben’s got them. And did I mention the invisible spaceship that’s stalking them?

Nourse is actually kind of leisurely in dealing with all his plot threads, carefully explaining one thing at a time until we have all the pieces and we just have to wait for Ben and company to decide what to do with them. In fact, what Ben and his Earthman companions choose is the hinge of the plot on more than one occasion.

This is where Raiders holds up. As a genre about ideas, science fiction also presents us with the choice of what ideas we will choose to operate under. Nourse goes to a great deal of trouble painting a picture of two conflicting ideas of thought, how they came to be and what people might do about them.

Unfortunately, at the same time, one of his schools of thought, and how that school of thought might become dominant over it’s opponent, are a little naïve and fail to take into account important aspects of human nature. In the world of the Raiders, all that’s needed for peace is less ignorance and more music. While that’s a noble sentiment, and may take your part of the way to achieving your ends, I’m afraid I don’t think it will actually usher in an era of human peace.

But that’s okay! While some aspects of human behavior in this book may look unbelievable, Spacer society itself is quite fun looking, especially once we understand all the dynamics behind it (such as those that lead to the constant kidnapping.) Many of Nourse’s ideas for what might be done with the outer solar system remain in discussion today, a sure sign that he was on the right track with his technological innovations, even if he did wiff on some of the details.

On the whole, if you’re looking for a quick, fun, kind of light-hearted space opera that’s both meaningful and classic, Raiders From the Rings is a good choice.

No Water Fall Chapter This Week

Posted by natechen on

Dear readers,

I know that some of you look forward to the weekly installment of Water Fall. When I started this blog I knew that I wanted to publish weekly for as long as possible and took a lot of steps to try and make sure that I could make every post, including writing a two week backlog and doing my best to keep it up. Sometimes it’s lapsed and I’ve had to double time to try and fill it back out. Sometimes I’ve taken planned vacations and used some of that time to push further ahead than planned.

The last two months I’m afraid I’ve not kept up as much as I would have liked. There’s a lot of reasons for that, including weather related problems, busy schedules and assorted other matters. Things really went off the rails a couple of weeks ago, when I was seriously sick for two days and basically sat around being miserable and trying to sleep to get my health back. As a direct result of this, and in spite of my best efforts to catch back up, I don’t have a complete chapter ready to go this week.

I’ve said before that writing is a discipline, and someone aiming to be a pro (as I am) will do all they can to keep up with it in spite of the obstacles. Unfortunately, it looks like I’m not quite a pro yet. I have done a fair amount of work, and there were definitely be a chapter ready next week and, Lord willing, each week after that until the book is done. In the mean time, I hope you’ll forgive this lapse and come back on Wednesday (or next week, if you just tune in for the story). Thanks,

Nate Chen

Genrely Speaking: Dystopia

Posted by natechen on

Welcome back to Genrely Speaking, the part of the show where we examine the classifications of literature and what we mean when we use them here. The dystopia is a particularly notable genre at the moment, as it is used to describe a number of stories that have come out recently, particularly The Hunger Games and Divergent series of books and the corresponding movies. Shall we take a moment to break down the genre and see what that means, and if these two series actually qualify?

Of course we shall!

Let’s begin at the beginning. Dystopia, like so many words today, started life as two separate Greek words. “Dys” is derived from a Greek adjective that refers to something hard, or straight out bad. “Topia” comes from a Greek word that can refer to either a place or an incredibly horrible artificial substitute for hair. Thus it is most literally a hard place, or possibly hard hair, something certainly favored by real life dictators who tried to create dystopias.

But enough of that. What is it that makes these stories, and the places in them, so hard?

  1. The government is treated much like a god. It is nearly or perfectly all-knowing and destroys all attempts to challenge it ruthlessly, but at a time of its choosing. Its power may or may not be absolute, but the long arm of the law is at least powerful enough to crush most resistance and probably alter most circumstances, including culture and sometimes even memory, to suit its own ends.

  2. Like most gods, the government cannot be destroyed or even appreciably harmed, only annoyed. In this way, dystopias are oddly like cosmic horror. Except instead of squidheaded aliens poking their heads out of R’Lyeh, like you’d find in a typical example of Yog’Sothery, what you get instead is masses of humanity united into Parties and actively tearing one another down. The result is actually far more chilling, as the human motivations are far more believable than the supposedly uncaring cosmic beings that populate Lovecraftian stories. Worse, these human gods can and do demand appeasement at the expense of their followers, appeasement that quickly grows natural, then even enjoyable.

  3. The character is feeble in the face of the government’s overwhelming strength. Again like the protagonist of a cosmic horror story, the characters in a dystopia are pretty much unable to make a meaningful change in the world around them. The power of the government is too absolute for them to challenge, their society, crafted by the government to keep them imprisoned, withholds all skills and ideas that would make challenging the status quo practical or attractive. This doesn’t mean people don’t try, just that they’re very bad at it.

What are the problems of a dystopia story? Well for starters, building a believable one is very, very hard.

Keeping all those lemmings in lockstep requires an almost equal sized herd of cowboys (lemmingboys?), all of whom would have to buy in to the ruling ideal unquestioningly. How exactly is a society supposed to make the jump from even the most repressive regime known to man (say, North Korea, where people still escape on a nearly constant basis and subversive ideas like Christianity runs rampant in the backwoods) to a true dystopia where all contrary ideas are extinguished? That such a powerful and self-contained society could exist defies belief and you have to be very, very careful when including ideas that defy belief in a story.

Another problem lies in the very ideas underpinning most dystopias. From Big Brother’s hate (1984) to the World State’s soma (Brave New World) to the hedonism and agism of the Sandmen (Logan’s Run) to the enforced ignorance of the Firemen (Fahrenheit 451), none of them are very good foundations for societies. As the old parable says, a house built upon sand is doomed to collapse as soon as the floods come. It really shouldn’t be possible for these societies to stand up to any kind of serious testing, so why bother telling stories about them at all? In other words-

What are the strengths of a dystopia story? Dystopias are a kind of science fiction, which means the stories they tell are about human ideas. Dystopias seek to take an idea that might look serviceable and even attractive on the surface, and carry itto its most extreme logical implementation.

Doing this exposes the weaknesses of a given system of thought. This is true regardless of what the system of thought is – it’s possible to found a dystopia on the maxim “love thy neighbor as thy self”. (And some people might say we’re in the process of doing that in modern day America. Humans are nothing if not inventive in finding new ways to oppress themselves and others.) The point is, when we take these ideas to their natural conclusion we realize maybe they aren’t such swell things after all.

So dystopia stories fill an important purpose in social commentary. They show us our ideas, and what can become of them when we let them get out of hand. This is where they shine.

You may have noticed that I’ve defined dystopia very narrowly. Like all genres, the dystopia as a kind of amorphous and vague thing, but I feel that it’s important to limit the genre to stories about a society where human culture is in the process of active and gleeful self-annihilation, and not confuse the genre with others it often overlaps with, such as post-apocalyptic literature, or noir (both to have their own days in the spotlight here, I’m sure). Elements of these two other genres can often turn up in dystopias, particularly in modern times, and elements of dystopia can turn up in post-apocalyptic or noir stories as well.

So I don’t consider The Hunger Games, Divergent or even The Matrix dystopian stories. While each contains a totalitarian society that is ruled over by a government that has gained power through manipulation (of food and entertainment in The Hunger Games, social structure and work life in Divergent and technology in The Matrix) they don’t carefully examine the ideas that would create such a society or spend a great deal of time deconstructing how that society dehumanizes individual people. The totalitarian governments are just there to be torn down. While that story serves its own purpose, that purpose is not the purpose of a dystopia story.

Ultimately, dystopias serve to show us human society at it’s nadir and remind us that there, but for the grace of God, go we.

Cool Things: The Way Things Work

Posted by natechen on

Let’s talk about the way things work.

Excuse me. Let’s talk about The Way Things Work.

Much better.

This book is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. Neil Ardley wrote and David Macaulay illustrated this excellent tome to take many of the pieces of technology we encounter in the day to day and explain to us, well, the way they work. Done wrong, this process could turn out to be incredibly boring but, thanks to Arley’s conversational writing style and Macaulay’s whimsical illustrations, we find ourselves being interested and engrossed instead. Sure, the books are crawling with wooly mammoths (mimmoths?) and the gizmos aren’t always drawn to perfect scale, but the scientific principles the book engages with are surprisingly deep and thorough.

The book is broken into sections ranging from the very basic mechanical principles up to electricity and primitive electrical devices and, if you pick up the updated version, basic computing ideas. Don’t remember how buoyancy works? Treat yourself to a quick refresher and a chuckle as you watch a hapless mammoth try and keep its balance in a too-small boat. Never understood how a nuclear power plant works? There’s a basic primer here that will leave you with a better understanding of the process – and profoundly grateful that mammoths never got their hands on enriched uranium.

Now there’s not really a whole lot new or unique going on in this book. If you’ve been to a high school physics class you’ve probably seen half or even all of this before, but that’s kind of the point. The Way Things Work takes high school level material and breaks it down to a level that even a young grade school student could easily understand it. In fact, I was in first or second grade when I first read this book and I loved it. Not because I was unusually smart (although I’m not so humble as to deny that I might have been) but because the material was presented in such a simple, straight-forward and engaging way.

The mammoth motif is a great example. Do we need woolly mammoths (and the attendant theories of extinction) on nearly every page to appreciate the ideas presented? No, of course not. But it’s these added touches of whimsy and fun that make the book engrossing and they succeed in making advanced ideas accessible to younger minds. For that alone the book would be worth the price of admission. That the book holds up well to age, continuing to engross and teach us slightly more chronologically advanced folk just adds to the value of the book.

Whether you’re looking for a quick, fun primer to physics and mechanics for a young person(s) in your life, or you just need a quick, fun refresher on the same for yourself, The Way Things Work is the book for you.