Tag Archives: Cool Things

This War of Mine

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This War of Mine is a computer game about a familiar topic: War in the modern age. Mechanically it’s very cool, combining elements of resource management and base building with careful, stealthy gameplay. Basically, during the day you keep your base running and during the night you go and collect resources without drawing too much attention. While none of that is new or groundbreaking gameplay it’s solid in concept and well executed. That said, the game would be pretty bland if that was all there was to it. In fact, there are a number of zombie survival games that probably do the base building half of the game better and there’s certainly at least two ninja/commando style games that do the stealth parts in a more interesting way.

Or, at least they do if approached from the direction of most game stories.

See, the typical video game is an examination of what the player would do with unusual powers. Could you manage to rescue a princess? No? What if you could jump really high, throw fireballs and utilize plumbing in surprising ways? Well play a Mario game and find out!

Strategy games give players the chance to command armies, first person shooters give players unlimited stamina and military gear they’ll probably never see, RPGs let players develop powers that could never exist in real life and Minecraft lets you make just about anything you could ever want. It’s no surprise these games are popular since they let you do things that, for the most part, you could never hope to actually do. This War of Mine, on the other hand, does the exact opposite. It challenges you to do something that you would never want to do in real life and gives you no special powers to accomplish it with. While that doesn’t sound interesting at first it is still an engaging experience.

You see, in This War of Mine your base is a small house in the middle of a civil war somewhere in Eastern Europe. The stealth portions of the game are you going out to look for supplies in the night, so soldiers won’t see and shoot you. And you play a civilian with no special training just trying to stay alive while bullets and shells fly by outside.

This War of Mine is a nerve-wracking game. I don’t recommend playing it in large chunks, the decisions you have to make are sometimes unpleasant and emotionally draining. You will probably wind up turning away other refugees looking for shelter because the house just cannot hold anyone else. You will run like a coward when the soldiers outside spot you on a foraging run. You’ll have to decide whether running a risk to help someone you meet outside is worth your possibly not getting back to the house and the hungry people there. Especially if helping means standing up to a soldier with nothing but a crowbar in your hands.

As a game, from the angle of gameplay mechanics and execution, This War of Mine is not groundbreaking even if it is solid. But it manages to convey an experience that people must live through every day in a way that is gripping and rightly draining. For that alone, the game qualifies as an unmitigated success.

Cool Things: Foxglove Summer

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Usually when I talk about books or movies I enjoy I try and avoid spoilers. But this is book five in Ben Aaronovitch’s excellent Rivers of London series and, while I’m going to try and avoid spoiling anything about this book, there are some major spoilers for the rest of the series. If you haven’t read the first four books and you want to do so without spoilers now is the time to bow out. You can come back after you read up to this point, though!

So if you read Broken Homes you know that Rivers of London has gone through a major transition. Leslie May, a major player in PC Peter Grant’s life, has abandoned the forces of good and joined up with the Faceless Man to work against Peter, DCI Nightingale and the rest of The Folly (namely, the maid, Molly, and the department mascot, Toby the Dog). In exchange she hopes to get a new face to replace the one she lost to Mr. Punch at the end of the first book.

Foxglove Summer opens with Peter being sent out of London (gasp!) to investigate a case of missing children. There’s no evidence of this being the kind of case The Folly normally investigates but due diligence is due diligence and that goes double when children are involved. That goes double again when witnesses report the children talked to invisible friends that, unlike the typical invisible friend, are actually there. Moving things. Giving rides. Touching people. It seems like you can’t go anywhere with Peter and not find something Folly-esque.

Beyond saving the kids Peter has issues of his own to work out. First, by going into the country he’s quite literally run from his problems back in London. He hasn’t dealt with Leslie’s betrayal or the near-death experience he had on his last assignment. The Metropolitan Police aren’t entirely sure he wasn’t in cahoots with Leslie. And Beverly Brook, London River Incarnate, has come in on this case to consult and there’s unresolved emotional issues there, too.

All in all, Foxglove Summer is kind of a renaissance for the series. Peter is put in unfamiliar circumstances so he can get perspective, set new goals and come to grips with his very unexpected place in life. At the same time, it provides a jumping on point for new readers. If you want to get into this series in the middle, don’t want to go back and read a bunch of backstory or just want to enjoy a good suspense story with an otherworldly twist then this book will fit your bill. The one disappointment you might find as you read will stem from the title’s failure to advance it’s overarching plot, as Beverly is the only river of London in the book and the machinations of the various riverine incarnations is alluded to but never comes into play. While events in this book may eventually play a part in future parts of that story the lack of obvious advancement might be frustrating to some longtime readers.

All in all this is another solid installment to the series and reaffirms my belief that Aaronovitch will be able to transition things well from the opening act of his story to the larger stage of whatever is coming down the pike. But it’s also probably the last really accessible entrance point for new readers so if you want to get on board do it now.

Cool Things: Master of Plagues

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If you’re not reading E.L. Tettensor‘s Nicholas Lenoir novels you’re really, really missing out.

In her first novel Tettensor introduced us to Lenoir, a tired old detective who spent a good chunk of his adult life in terror of an otherworldly creature that pursued him for crimes he barely understood. Now, with his peace made to the higher powers, Lenoir has to try and find a new purpose to a life he long though forfeit. His passion for his work has returned, his brilliance, once shaded by apathy, now shines all the brighter and things are generally going well for him.

And then the plague breaks out.

Normally this wouldn’t be the territory of the Kennian Metropolitan Police but some of the doctors working to contain the plague have become convinced that it was started on purpose and that… well, that most definitely is a crime. Problem is, even if they catch the people responsible Lenoir and his fellow hounds won’t be any closer to actually stopping the plague.

Or will they?

Master of Plagues is a wonderful progression from Tettensor’s first Lenoir novel. It changes the game in a number of ways – supernatural elements in this yarn are much less pronounced, although one paranormal character from the first book returns. Lenoir is up against criminals with totally mundane motives this time, even if their methods are spectacularly unusual, and he’s not looking over his shoulder for specters or fiends any more either, making the threat of death by misadventure or disease somehow more intimidating.

What’s more, Lenoir now has to juggle his desire to see criminals brought to justice with his desire to see the suffering innocent brought relief. He’s trying to find a cure as well as catch a mass murderer and every step he takes in one direction seems to take him further from the other goal. Lenior’s trying to reconcile this quandary gives us great insight into his character and motivations.

On top of that, there’s a new dynamic between Lenoir and his Sergeant, Bran Kody. Kody is ambitious and worked with Lenoir to learn how he solved cases. Kody’s goal was to move up the ranks as quickly as possible. He didn’t really like the apathetic Inspector Lenoir, even if he did respect his superior’s brilliance. But now, with Lenoir more invested in what’s going on around him, Kody is starting to see the foundation of a good man emerging from the stagnant soul that once was Nicholas Lenoir, and, for his part, Lenoir is starting to value Kody’s drive and goals as well. The pressure the plague puts on both really brings out the changes as they happen.

The story itself is well written, well paced and suspenseful. There’s a real mastermind at work here, scheming for their own profit at the expense of others using a scheme that is as brilliant in it’s simplicity as it is chilling in it’s callousness. Lenoir’s (and really the whole culture’s) unfamiliarity with disease and the unusual angle the criminals are exploiting make it no surprise the police don’t catch on faster making it a story uniquely suited to Tettensor’s world as well.

Master of Plagues is a well written story, perfectly suited to its characters and its world and offering deep and satisfying insights into the people that populate it. What are you waiting for? Go read it now!

Cool Things: Blue Beetle

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Okay, we’re back to our regularly scheduled segment which contains considerably less romance than last month’s installments. This week we’re taking another look at a comic book that tackles the ever-popular (in American comics) superhero genre in a different and refreshing way. Today we’re going to look at the Blue Beetle.

What’s that? Not familiar with the big blue bug? Not surprising. He’s never been an A-list hero and he’s had three different gimmicks over the years. I’m only familiar with his most recent incarnation, Jaime Reyez (pronounced “high-may ray-ez”) who first appeared in the DC event comic Infinite Crisis. I haven’t read Infinite Crisis but Blue eventually got his own series and I have read some of the trade paperbacks collecting his adventures there.

In the form of most superhero books, the Blue Beetle series was not really interested in telling a single overarching story but rather just takes us along from story to story as Jaime tries to balance being a high school student and being the Blue Beetle. Notice that I don’t mention anything about maintaining a secret identity. That’s because Blue doesn’t have one.

Yes, just like Shazam/Billy Batson Jaime makes no real effort to hide his superhero identity from his friends and family (the world at large is in ignorance of his identity). In fact, almost the first thing he does after his first hair-raising superhero adventure is reveal to his family – who haven’t seen him in a year – that he’s the Blue Beetle. No excuses. No hastily constructed lies. A simple explanation that, yes, weirds his family out quite a bit but they also come to accept.

In fact, short term weirdout for long term understanding and cooperation is a theme of Jaime’s career. Both his family and some of his closest friends are in on the secret, helping him spot crime as it happens and running interference to keep the world at large from knowing who he is. Even his girlfriend knows about his other career, in fact she’s a superheroine herself, working the magic angle of things even as Jaime works the technology side.

The upshot of all this is that Blue Beetle reads more like the adventures of a tight knit group of friends with a passion for justice than a single knight suffering through a lonely crusade. It gives the title a warm, energetic feeling missing from many comics these days.

To go with that, the story also has a great sense of humor. Blue announces his victory over thugs by using the power of Science, wears a suit of armor that thinks for itself and believes it’s onboard weaponry has theological implications and faces a giant robot named Thinko! that always spells its name with an exclamation mark. The humor is quirky, charming and fun, never mean-spirited or hostile.

Most of all, the title is nuanced. In one story line Jaime, who lives in El Paso, Texas and is the son of a Mexican immigrant, gets roped into being a kind of figurehead for the border patrol. The story carefully examines the issue, Jaime’s father taking him back to Mexico to see the kind of circumstances that drive people to sneak across the border while Peacemaker, his mentor and trainer in the field of superhero work, points out that even the vigilante boarder guards aren’t really that different from the people who don capes or cowls and go out to protect their communities. And through it all we’re shown that an unsecure border will be exploited by those who seek to profit off of moving things like drugs or guns illegally and such activities often come at the expense of those with more legitimate reasons to want to cross the border.

You don’t get that kind of careful, nuanced, detailed coverage of muddy situations from mainstream newspapers. But this “comic” book? Yeah, it manages to do all of that in spades.

Blue Beetle sadly only ran for a few years before low sales caused the title to be canceled. But what is there is really good and worth your attention, so go check it out. With the New 52 in town enough popularity for an old character like Jaime may even bring him back for another crack at breaking into the market. Or at least so we might hope…

Sense and Sensibility

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I still don’t understand how the man who made this film could have gone on to make… every thing else Ang Lee has made. Yes, it’s still romance month here at Nate Chen Publications and we’re wrapping it up with a true classic. This film is fairly old, in fact it turns 20 this year, but it’s based on a story by Jane Austen so it’s less a question of whether it’s aged well and more a question of whether it’s timeless.

Sense and Sensibility is two love stories in one, the first focusing on Ms. Elinor Dashwood and Edward Ferrars, a pair of people eminently suited to one another. Both are quiet, serious people of good sense who see in the other admirable qualities and good character. If this sounds kind of boring don’t worry, circumstances and previous history are very much set against them. There’s inheritances, overbearing mothers, previous commitments and general social standing to take into account, after all.

The second romance focuses on Elinor’s younger sister Marianne, a free sprited and sentimentally minded young lady who faces no obstacles to her paramour, John Willoughby, except that of Willoughby’s character itself. He’s a real cad, eventually proving to have gotten another woman pregnant and run from the fact. When he looses his inhertiance over the matter he leaves Marianne and goes looking for a wife who can support him. Marianne eventually winds up married to the kind, generous but reserved Colonel Brandon.

This story contrasts two different ideas of romance. The first is represented by Elinor and Edward, who don’t have a particularly exuberant or emotional connection. That’s not the same as saying they don’t connect, because they do. It’s just not in the big, expressive way most of the people around Elinor can understand. Marianne is even worried about her sister, wondering if she gets what love is. Marianne, on the other hand, falls hard and extravegantly. She practically throws herself at Willoughby (by the standards of the time) and takes not time to build a connection beyond a superficial emotional reaction. She never stops to see where she stands with him, instead building castles of dreams that ultimately prove to have no foundation.

Like all of Austen’s stories, in most of their adaptations, Sense and Sensibility takes a lot of time to look at the characters and how they relate to each other. With Emma Thomson and Kate Winslet staring as the two leading ladies we can see a lot of the contrast between the two characters, with the less expressive Elinor coming across as a woman who says little but feels deeply and the vibrant Marianne practically floating across the screen in most of her scenes. Of course, this is most effective when the romantic couple are together. Both Elinor and Edward and Marianne and Willoughby spend a lot of time in conversation. They manage to avoid boredom while clearly illustrating the character traights and connections that will eventually make Elinor and Edward’s relationship work when Marianne and Willoughby’s will fall through.

What I love the most is how the film manages to stick to a dry tone, rarely taking love entirely seriously but still recognizing that the people it portrays could very well be us. The mixture of humor and sympathy, along with an understanding of the importance in a meeting of characters and minds, as well as hearts, makes this a great romantic film. If you’ve never seen it, now’s the time to go and check it out.

The O’Malley Serries

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It’s the month of romance so we’re taking a look at a handful of romance stories that I feel really do romance right, avoiding cliches of sentimentality and accidental relationships and instead providing thoughtful, emotionally and intellectually satisfying looks at romance. This is going to be a particularly hurried look because we’re not looking at a single book but rather a series of six. The story goes like this.

Seven orphans meet in a group home in Chicago and start looking out for one another. With time they reach the age of legal adulthood, change their last names to O’Malley and declare themselves a family. The first rule of the O’Malleys is family will always come first. (No, nothing to do with Fight Club. Not anywhere in the rules.)

So far this probably doesn’t sound like much of a romance series, right?

Well, as it turns out the O’Malleys have found themselves a wide and diverse set of careers to work in, the family includes a U.S. Marshal, a hostage negotiator, an EMT, a firefighter, a trauma counselor, a forensic pathologist and a pediatrician. With such a crazy line-up of careers, and the kinds of personalities that tend to get into such careers, the only logical thing to do is try and marry them all off, am I right?

At least, such is the premise of Dee Henderson’s six book series that explores this wacky and unusual family and exactly what it might take to get such people to the alter. There are a lot of things I like about the O’Malley series but probably the biggest is the way the characters look at each other. Most of the couples meet on the job – no matter how crazy the job is, what they do is never a source of tension in the relationship. Way, way too many romance stories try to treat work as this terrible, horrible thing that will only be a barrier between you and the one you love.

What Henderson does in her books is show how the O’Malley family have chosen their paths as a result of the burdens they bear from their time as orphans or abandoned children, a way to fight back against the wrongs they’ve seen and suffered and make the world a better place. What’s more, she shows how the people who come into the lives of the O’Malleys understand the choices they have made. These are not romantic interests with no connection to the callings the O’Malley’s have undertaken, these are romantic interests who understand those callings and share in them.

In point of fact, each and every one of the O’Malley books centers on a situation that demands the unique talents of one of the family. Solving those situations, whether it be the murder of a Federal judge or a string of arsons across the city, brings one member of the family closer to someone they know or meet and sparks of a relationship built not only on feelings but on shared purpose and the promise of a brighter future. At the same time, the O’Malley family itself is drawing closer together, dealing not only with the promise of better futures but the troubles of jobs that are not always forgiving and the specter of hard times in the distance.

That’s probably what I like the most about the stories – aside from the healthy dose of suspense and intrigue next to the romance. They have a healthy emotional equilibrium. While each story has heroes and villains, romance and filial love, they also balance these things against very difficult personal problems that the O’Malleys have to face when dealing with a world that needs professional firefighters and hostage negotiators.

In a way, the O’Malleys themselves embody what makes their stories so great. Their powerful bond exists only because each and every one of them was once without family or friends and they are grateful for it every day and work to make it a continued reality every moment. It’s a good background for romance – one we can all try to cultivate, whether we find romance there or not.

Sabrina

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This month we’re looking at romance stories. Given that it’s February and all. So let’s look at the movie Sabrina.

We’re talking about the 1995 version with Harrison Ford. If you were wondering. It’s funny but never mean-spirited, it tells a story about love but never makes it a story about destiny or raw sentiment and it’s not afraid of allowing it’s main characters to need each other to complete themselves.

Sabrina is basically a coming of age story for it’s three main characters. Sabrina herself is coming into her own – at the beginning of the story she leaves home to study overseas in Paris, leaving behind her father and David Larrabee, her childhood crush. She comes back mature, confident and has to come to realize she’s outgrown David. Linus Larrabee, David’s brother, is trying to close a business deal and David’s brief infatuation with Sabrina poses a threat to that deal, so Linus tries to break them up. In the process he comes to grip with the fact that he’s missing something and Sabrina offers it to him. And David himself is a bit of a wastrel who needs to get out of his brother’s shadow to come into his own.

As a romance this story excels in a number of ways but most significantly it does so by allowing all of the characters time together, not gushing with emotion or plotting against one another, but just interacting with one another in fairly normal activities and letting us see how they mesh with each other. Rather than give us planned speeches about who’s best for who and why we get to see why Sabrina forming a relationship with David would be unhealthy for them both but a relationship with Linus would benefit both.

At the same time, the story is not afraid to let a romance be a time of growth. Too many modern romances make it sound like any kind of change threatens to tear a relationship apart, while Sabrina shows us that the very act of finding a relationship should change the people in it in a myriad of ways and, in fact, if they aren’t changing constantly that is what threatens to break them up. Finding romance is what spurs on the growth of all three of these characters, it’s not about savoring some ephemeral moment together but rather about charging forward side by side.

The best part about this film, both as a romance story and as a work of film in general, is how quiet it is. There’s nothing loud, nothing in your face, rather it’s full of moments where we see people’s attitudes through little things. Sabrina is always tense around the Larrabee brothers at first. It takes her longer to open up to Linus but ultimately she becomes more comfortable with him than with David – and we see it entirely through her posture and expression. Linus goes from preoccupied and intense to gradually more relaxed and open. David gradually starts to look more thoughtful. It makes the whole story feel comfortable and lived in, like it’s the kind of thing that could go on forever, rather than like a shiny trinket, eye-catching but likely to tarnish or scuff at the slightest touch.

In all, this is one of the great romantic stories of recent memory, and a fitting place to start our examination of stories that have done romance right. If you haven’t seen Sabrina, go out and watch it now.

Cool Things: Shazam!

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I have issues with American comics/graphic novels for a number of reasons. They tend to address a very narrow range of topics – mostly people in colorful suits battling crime and/or evil and/or each other. There’s nothing wrong with superhero comics, as a genre, but like many genres with entrenched fanbases and a fairly continuous, unbroken history stagnation is a real problem, with many of the tropes and stereotypes reinforcing one another until everything starts to look the same.

On top of that, most of the comics I’ve read seem to have forgotten that they are visual media, and attempt to tell most, if not all, of their story through captions, narration or dialog. While a certain amount of this is necessary, comics are a visual medium and must be told visually or they kind of loose the point. These two factors combine in some form or another to comprise most to all of my problems with the American comics industry.

Fortunately, there is the occasional title that comes out with enough fresh perspective, engaging characters and well used imagery to stand out from the crowd. One such title is Shazam!, a collection of shorts that ran in the Justice League comics for a time. I recently read the collection and highly recommend it to anyone who wants to see a good reinterpretation of a classic superhero origin in modern times.

This book does a lot right but I’ll just touch on a few things.

First, the art is great and does a lot to tell the story all on it’s own. People are expressive, poses are dynamic and there’s no jump from panel to panel that you simply cannot follow because of bad composition or poor blocking. It’s amazing how many comics, even those drawn by artists with perfectly fine technical skills, fail in the area of composition and loose readers simply because you’re not sure what’s happening from one panel to the next. That’s never a problem for this book.

Second, Shazam! chooses it’s tropes wisely. The two it ignores, which most stories of this flavor would try and include, are the trope of the overly tough hero and the trope of the heavily guarded secret identity. Both of these are avoided to the story’s great benefit.

A quick overview – Billy Batson is taken in by a foster family. He expects to be kicked right back out, just like he eventually was at  all the other foster homes he’s been in, but the family works hard to make him feel at home and they make small inroads. Things take a turn for the weird when a wizard named Shazam takes Billy from off of a subway train and tests him for a good heart. He doesn’t find one – he hasn’t found one in the dozens of people he’s tested, but Billy points out that it’s pointless to look for a good heart among human beings and maybe Shazam should consider looking for the potential for a good heart instead.

The wizard takes Billy’s advice and finds such potential in Billy. Thus, Billy is entrusted with the Power of Shazam and the Living Lightning and winds up forced to battle his corrupt predecessor. With the help of the others in his forster family Billy defeats Black Adam and takes his rightful position as the Guardian of Magic in the DC universe.

Also, there are magical tigers. Trust me, it’s cool.

At it’s core, Shazam! is the story of how a damaged foster kid finds himself once more placed in a foster home which he has no expectations about. Billy’s a realistic kid – he’s been in the system a long time and he doesn’t expect much. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t want a family, under all the layers of cynicism and disappointment, he just doesn’t expect one. At it’s heart, Billy’s struggle to find his place is well written human drama and neither takes over the story nor comes off as a cheap sugarcoating.

It also gives the story one of it’s greatest strengths.

At no point in the story does he try and hide the fact that he’s received the power of Shazam from his fellow foster kids. In fact, a lot of time is spent with Billy and his friend Freddy Freeman, exploring what Billy can do as Shazam and what they can do with those powers. Eventually the whole set of foster kids knows about them – the parents are left out only because the growing mess Billy’s new role as Shazam has created has separated them from their kids for a while. This dynamic, with Shazam having a bunch of people who know he’s got superpowers, lets the story explore a lot of ideas that normally never get any attention in comics.

For starters, there is the natural reaction and surprise at seeing Billy’s powers. But that’s gotten over fairly quickly, mostly because Billy is just as surprised at them as everyone else. Then there’s the phase where everyone is trying to figure out what it is Bill can do. Finally, everyone tries to pool resources to solve problems quickly and efficiently while keeping everyone in touch with each other and safe. It’s this last part that I feel most comics really fail at. We never see superheroes collaborating with normal people and sharing responsibilities. Even those who pay lip service to trying such a thing usually end up with the superhero doing everything on their own. But, perhaps in part because Billy is still young, a positive team dynamic rapidly coalesces and the story is both more engaging and more endearing for it.

The comradery among the characters, although not easy to come by, does help the book achieve it’s second major trope aversion. While his life in foster care has made him a hard case, Billy is by no means lacking emotional depth. We see his disappointment at previous failed foster situations, his extreme skepticism at his current foster family and simultaneously his nagging desire to be a part of this family create a meaningful personal conflict for Billy and it’s through that conflict, and the carefully balanced use of the rest of the cast, that we get a chance to see that depth.

Freddy, in particular, is a great foil to Billy’s attitude. Both have practical and self serving streaks that should make it hard for them to appreciate one another but, at the same time, they are the ones who show the most wonder and excitement when Billy is suddenly given superpowers and manage to form a solid bond. The moment they realize Billy can fly as Shazam is one of the best in the book.

Finally, I love the fact that Billy ultimately defeats Black Adam (Spoiler! Hero wins in superhero comic book!) because he is clever and courageous, not because he’s simply more powerful. Many superhero books let their protagonists win because they were more powerful or more determined or more cunning than their enemies. Billy ultimately gambles on courage and good character and I like the fact that he wins.

All in all, Shazam! is a superhero tale that has the trim and trappings of the modern day, that reflects our modern ills and attitudes, but still manages to be a superhero tale at heart. It’s worth at least one read.

Scifi Fundamentals: I, Robot

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The three laws of robotics, when expressed in spoken or written English rather than mathematics, are as follows:

  1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
  2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Once upon a time, these were almost universally known by scifi geeks as a cornerstone of AI theory. But why are they important and why should you want to read the stories about them?

Welcome to a new segment for Wednesdays which I’m calling Scifi Foundations, it will reoccur whenever I have something to add to it.

Scifi is a young genre, with the very earliest scifi story generally being attributed to Edgar Allen Poe and only really coming into vogue about a hundred years ago. As such, foundational questions that the genre has addressed have not been as thoroughly examined as they have for other genres. There is no scifi equivalent to the hero’s journey, for example. But there are some core works that put forward ideas that are at the very heart of the genre and, in my opinion, ideas that have been somewhat forgotten over the years as authors try to innovate and make new stories. Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics are at or near the top of my list of such forgotten concepts.

I, Robot is an important foundation for anyone who writes fiction that includes a strong AI if for no other reason than the fact that it’s a good illustration of the principles that form the core of interesting stories about them. The three laws of robotics are simple but the whole purpose of the stories collected in I, Robot is to illustrate the kinds of difficulties even simple “laws” present when dealing with a computer. Probably the most important rule to keep in mind is repeated more than once, that a computer is entirely logical but never reasonable.

Most of the stories in the first two thirds of the book feature problems that result from robots applying the laws in entirely logical ways that result in insane behavior. The point was less to demonstrate how simple it would be to create moral AI and more to demonstrate how very difficult morality is for anyone, relying strictly on logic fails to take into account things like intent, outcome and purpose in laws. In particular, the case of the robot telepath and the robot with the flawed First Law both illustrate both the importance of understanding purpose, something logic cannot do, and the shortcomings of a strict reading of the laws.

Asimov’s careful examination of these concepts is a very important starting point for any writer who wants to examine these aspects of AI in further depth. Unfortunately, most people who write AI in this day and age tend to pattern their work after the last portion of the book, or more likely after Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s at this point in the progression of I, Robot‘s short stories that Asimov departs from his original, highly logical approach to the three laws and decides that AI will simply become capable of abstract thought at some point.

This leads to robots assuming a fourth law of robotics, a Law Zero, that forces them to place the good of humanity above the good of individual human beings and allows them to override the First Law if harm to a specific human being will lead to the greater good of the species. This part of the book feels largely like a cop-out, because it allows robots to break the rules without allowing the reader to follow along with the logic. Yes, we know the actions the robots are taking supposedly benefit humanity as a whole but not how the robot arrived at that conclusion. Or, for that matter, how the robot arrived at it’s definitions of humanity or what is good for it, questions that even the best philosophers, theologians and artists still struggle with today.

In the end, I, Robot is a case study in the use of AI in science fiction. It presents us with interesting problems and an understanding of the limitations our technology has in solving them, but it also worships some inexplicable future technology as a savior, set to free us from all that hinders us if only we trust in it. If you plan to write about artificial intelligence, studying I, Robot for the good and the bad is one of the best places to start.

Cool Things: Vacant

Posted by natechen on

Okay, so back when I did my first recommendation of the Mindspace Investigation series I tried to go along with the gimmick of the first novel, in which the central character’s name isn’t mentioned until the very end. Since this is a review of the fourth book in that series I’m going to assume you’re already familiar with the series or you don’t mind having some little details spoiled. If you’re not familiar with the series rest assured, there’s no particular significance to our psychic’s name… I think it’s just done so that his introduction at an NA meeting at the end will seem more significant.

Still, if you don’t want this tidbit spoiled now’s a good time to stop reading.

The great thing about Mindspace, beyond it’s fascinating setting, is the way each book manages to put a new spin on the basic premise. The first three books do it by offering different takes on a paranormal murder. The first two have different kinds of villains, one a powerful psychic the other a “normal” human. The third changes the setting from the Atlanta police force to the mysterious Telepath’s Guild.

In Vacant, book four of the Mindspace Investigations series, things change once again. This time, Adam Ward is going to work for the FBI, and not as an investigator or an interrogator but as a bodyguard. Thus the formula is changed once again. Not only are we seeing Adam in a different venue than previous stories, we’re seeing him working with a different set of skills. In addition we get to see Adam working apart from his normal support group.

While Marked, the previous installment, did see him working for the Guild and in a different venue than normal he still went home at the end of the day and had some contact with his normal life. But in Vacant he’s traveled a couple of hours south and is stuck with the FBI agents he’s working with until the job is done. On the plus side, the FBI seems to value Adam’s abilities much more than the police force he’s worked with in the past.

Ultimately, in Vacant Adam faces a test of character. He’s semiprecognative, able to see potential futures on occasion (although with no control over the gift). He knows the ten year old boy he’s been assigned to look after will die if he does things wrong. But back home things are looking bad for his new girlfriend and the craving for his drug of choice is worse than ever. And there are old enemies that have come to call.

All in all, Vacant is a watershed in the course of Mindspace Investigation’s overarching story and it’s a good one. Fast paced, bringing in old plotlines to tie them up while introducing new ideas at the same time. Adam Ward still has a long way to go before he can sleep easily again but, slowly and surely, he’s pulling himself back up and turning himself back in to a useful member of society. Whether they want him or not.