Monday, February 11, 2013

A Force of Nature

Plot is a literary convention. Story is a force of nature.
-- Teresa Nielsen Hayden

What the former Tor managing editor (now consulting editor) and Making Light blogger says about plot surely applies with even greater force to genre. At least in the familiar sense of 'the genres' in the the book trade, which I have argued are all somewhat arbitrary subgenres of Romance.

As the title suggests, however, this post is about that much more primal literary force, story. To make one long story short, I have been offered a book contract.

The other and more relevant story, Catherine of Lyonesse, is quite a bit longer - 135,000 words (prior to whatever editing will be called for), somewhere around 300-400 pages of the old fashioned physical book it will be. (There will no doubt be an ebook version, too - ebooks have more or less taken the place of the old mass-market paperbacks of yore.)

No need to click over to Amazon.com just yet - getting the contract is only the start of the process. And the pace of the book industry tends to be ... stately.

It will be published as a YA historical fantasy novel by David Fickling Books, perhaps best known in the SF/F 'verse for Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, The Golden Compass et seq. And because the publisher is British, the final version will presumably have colourful spelling and the like.

(And I shall be paid in pounds sterling, which gives me good personal reasons to be annoyed with the Tories, who are fully living up to Walter Bagehot's celebrated description of them as the Stupid Party. And also annoyed with the LibDems, whom an Anglican God evidently created to demonstrate the utter uselessness of third parties. But I digress ...)

The eponymous protagonist, Catherine de Guienne, is a teenage girl, a fact of which she is blissfully unaware, the concept of 'teenager' not yet existing in her Renaissance-esque world. She is also a royal heiress, a fact of which she is all too acutely aware: Its consequences can sometimes be gratifying, but are all too often alarming.

The basic argument for hereditary monarchy is that it averts succession crises. As the recently reported discovery of Richard III's body under a parking lot demonstrates, it has not always been effective in this regard. When the 'apparent' successor is (what we would call) a teenage girl, the succession can be ... problematic. And there are other complications, such as being raised in a foreign court.



There are no space battles. (On a happier note there are no vampires, sparkly or otherwise.) The original draft did have a couple of early 16th century sea battles, which alas ended up on the cutting room floor.

All of which is to say that the book has pretty much nothing to do with the topics I have usually discussed here. Story, as said, is a force of nature, which brushed aside with cool indifference any impulse on my part to write about something else.


Also, I have been holding out on you, my readers, as the book went from wishful thinking to theoretical possibility to impending reality: My agent advised me against a premature announcement. Which explains, whether or not it justifies, my more sporadic posting over the last year. Blogs, like sharks, need to keep moving, but a lot of the topics I most wanted to talk about would make no sense out of context.

I do not intend to wrench Rocketpunk Manifesto entirely away from its existing course, or turn it into a blog about the book. (At some point I will likely as not spin off a Catherine of Lyonesse blog.) But I will certainly re-broaden the scope to more nearly match the topic range asserted at the top of this page, and explore the host of ways in which the book has more in common with space travel than might be obvious at a first glance.

This earlier post offers one example.

English galleass Hart, 1546


As does this one, which includes a snippet from the draft version.


Which is enough for now. Of course I am chuffed, and chuffed people often make themselves boring. I will try to refrain, but make no promises.





The image of the Royal Arms of Lyonesse was created by me - I got the heraldic lions and other detailing from somewhere, but alas I don't recall where.

81 comments:

John Lumpkin said...

Congrats, Rick. That's fantastic news.

Ben Aaronovitch said...

Congratulations - now the fun really starts!

Spugpow said...

it's funny, just the other day I was thinking how sad it was that your book had presumably fallen by the wayside.

This is awesome news!

Brett said...

I'll fourth the congratulations, Rick!

@Rick
The basic argument for hereditary monarchy is that it averts succession crises. As the recently reported discovery of Richard III's body under a parking lot demonstrates, it has not always been effective in this regard.

I'd go further, and say that it fails more often than it works. There were some royal Houses that lasted in power for centuries, but they were always challenged for power. Or there's the eastern Roman Empire - reading the history of its rulers is depressing, since it seems like they're constantly fighting off one would-be usurper after another.

I do not intend to wrench Rocketpunk Manifesto entirely away from its existing course, or turn it into a blog about the book.

If you want to bring up topics related to the book (as well as a thread on it when it comes out), it's totally cool. Blogs need fresh ideas and discussions, and we've already covered some diverse ground (as you mention in the rest of the OP).

When the 'apparent' successor is (what we would call) a teenage girl, the succession can be ... problematic. And there are other complications, such as being raised in a foreign court.

It probably depends on whether you've got incipient proto-national identities forming around some of the kingdoms/principalities/etc. And of course, necessity can make for some interesting set-ups - like the British importing a German noble house, the first several kings of which couldn't even speak English.

Eth said...

No space battles? Not even a tiny laserstar? Oh, well...

Congratulations, Rick!

 Ashley said...

Well done. Currently going through the burn* of getting a novel written. *Burn in that my brain is burning.

Hoshizora said...

Gratz!

I'd go further, and say that it fails more often than it works. There were some royal Houses that lasted in power for centuries, but they were always challenged for power. Or there's the eastern Roman Empire - reading the history of its rulers is depressing, since it seems like they're constantly fighting off one would-be usurper after another.

The Joseon Dynasty (Korea) only collapsed due to Imperial Japan (not an internal takeover, but an external force). The Yamato dynasty has been going relatively unchallenged for the better part of two millennia (despite losing useful power, all of the Shogunates at least paid lip service to the Imperial Family). How long a Royal House can last is dependent a lot on the culture. If you adjust the cultural parameters to favorable values, it's not hard to have a dynasty that last near forever.

Damien Sullivan said...

"The Yamato dynasty has been going relatively unchallenged for the better part of two millennia (despite losing useful power"

That's probably "because", not "despite". As Brett said the long-lived dynasties were challenged for power. The Shogunate allowed rival warlords to wield real power while leaving the ceremonial monarchy/high-priesthood in place.

Though the Bourbons and Hapsburgs had decent runs.

Anonymous said...

Congratulations, Rick!

Brett said. . . "If you want to bring up topics related to the book (as well as a thread on it when it comes out), it's totally cool. Blogs need fresh ideas and discussions, and we've already covered some diverse ground (as you mention in the rest of the OP)."

I second that. Also how concepts from your book could apply to rocketpunk, near or far future. For example, how does a hereditary monarchy fit in sci-fi? Does it make sense or has society out grown the concept? That sort of thing.

Ron

Anonymous said...

I'll add my congratulations to the others'!Good for you, Rick!

Ferrell

Jim Baerg said...

It's also worth noting that Betty Windsor has her job because she is descended from a few particularly successful pirates of about a millenium ago. That long run of hereditary monarchy did require relinquishing most real power in the last few centuries to parliament.

Rick said...

Welcome to a couple of new commenters - and thanks to everyone for your kind remarks!

Monarchy in SF is in fact one of the topics I intend to address. Entirely apart from political considerations - whether in-setting, or the author's own views - I think there are good story for a bias toward monarchy.

As a side note, ceremonial monarchy separated from actual power is a notably widespread phenomenon. Also something I plan to look at. Though Ms. de Guienne has every intention of being a monarch with full authority.

The Byzantine case is interesting - I'd argue that for most of Roman/Byzantine history the Emperor/Basileus was more an absolute 'president for life' than a true hereditary monarch. Which has considerable bearing on my own interpretation of the Fourth Crusade.

Monarchy, in reality and story, offers a *lot* of ground to cover!

Mukk said...

In futuristic settings the monarchy isn't necessarily plausible. It does make for good storytelling in the vein of star wars. Romance in space kind of thing.

Has there been a rocketpunk entry on what a colony's government might look like?

As to your book I remember your emphasis on the project seemed to be combining romance and good storytelling with relatively plausible historical fiction. It should be interesting. It seems that you could use a lot of the space opera tropes in this kind of endeavor.

Anita said...

SF and monarchy: Two examples immediately come to mind -- Heinlein's Double Star and, of course, Dune.

I've read drafts of Rick's opus; it's a ripping good yarn. You'll enjoy it, bloggers

jollyreaper said...

I'm a fan of exploring other forms of political organization in theory and practice. I get bored with hereditary monarchies in scifi because they're old hat. I expect them in fantasy or history. I want something different in scifi. If you're telling the tale of dynastic succession with kings and queens, why do you need spaceships? What does this add to the equation?

Now if you have the conflict between humans, transhumans and posthumans with alien ways of thinking, you might be able to put that in a fantasy world with magic making those changes but it would fit your themes better by making it be in the future of our own timeline and referencing our own historic experience. Despite differences of culture, all of us here today are genetically human. Even if our ways of thinking can be alien, the hardware doing the work is all the same. And what happens if the hardware changes?

jollyreaper said...

track

Locki said...

Congratulations Rick. If your blog is anything to go by I'm sure your novel will be thoughtful and well written. Nice work


jollyreaper said...

I'm a fan of exploring other forms of political organization in theory and practice. I get bored with hereditary monarchies in scifi because they're old hat. I expect them in fantasy or history. I want something different in scifi. If you're telling the tale of dynastic succession with kings and queens, why do you need spaceships? What does this add to the equation?

Now if you have the conflict between humans, transhumans and posthumans with alien ways of thinking, you might be able to put that in a fantasy world with magic making those changes but it would fit your themes better by making it be in the future of our own timeline and referencing our own historic experience. Despite differences of culture, all of us here today are genetically human. Even if our ways of thinking can be alien, the hardware doing the work is all the same. And what happens if the hardware changes?


Funny enough SyFy looks to be finally getting its act together post Galactica and borrowing some of your ideas. Have you checked out the trailers for Defiance?

Notwithstanding the wave of sci-fi motion pictures I've found the almost complete lack of investment in quality TV sci-fi (even star trek)to be very worrying. Since the movies tend to use the TV series for inspiration.

jollyreaper said...

I try to pay little regard to Syfy. It's too depressing.

I'll give the pilot a shot but I hold out little hope for it lasting. Sounds like a very expensive show Eureka was killed not for being unprofitable but for not being profitable enough.

I see one or two seasons before cancellation with no proper ending. And whatever writing we get on the show will be dripping with dipshittery like Falling Skies or Revolutions.

Thucydides said...

Jerry Pournelle had quite a bit to say about monarchy (not only in the Co Dominium cycle, but even an essay in "A Step Farther Out").

Pournelle and Niven also flirted with a political system they dubbed "Industrial Feudalism" (notably "Oath of Fealty"), although as modern Americans they would be less than excited about actually living in such a culture.

The main downside of Monarchies tends to be the quality of the Monarch; especially in highly centralized or personalized systems, unless there is a professional bureaucracy to actually run things (i.e the Roman Imperium), or consultative body like the Senate or Parliament exists with real power to make itself heard (as Charles I discovered).

I am pleased to hear that your writing has paid off, and look forward to eventually sitting down to read your book and see your take on the subject. Congrats!

Grognak said...

First of all most of us are more than a bit hypocritical regarding monarchy... we are supposed to assume - i.e. not think, but feel - that monarchy belongs to a barbarian past and is unfair, outdated and inefficient, if not tyrannical and corrupt.

Even more, low plebeians can love Queen Elisabeth or King Juan Carlos bur we intellectuals are supposed to consider modern monarchs with a slight smile and accept them only because they don't cause any real trouble and besides they are such modest, likeable, charming fellows than firing them would be incredibly rude, you just don't fire the old family butler.

But then why don't we feel the same about inheriting huge fortunes and the power and status they confer, or about inheritance itself? If wealth is inherited, why not power? Or rather, if we forbid inheriting power, why do we accept so easily and comfortably inherited wealth?

In other order of things, 'monarchy' is a term so ample as to be almost meaningless. A monarch can be a Trajan or a Hadrian, adopted by the former Emperor and proclaimed by the army, an omnipotent Louis XIV that owns his position to his birth, or a powerless Mikado more high priest than ruler.

And regarding monarchy and SF, first of all democracy isn't sexy, nor ordered, not dramatic (usually). Where monarchy provides glamour, beautiful uniforms and some very useful adolescent characters in high positions, democracy provides old fat lawyers and bureaucrats, all in grey suits and ugly ties, talking, and talking, and talking to death over raising the budget an irresponsible 0,0005%.

That, and journalists. Novels are demonstrably better without journalists! :D

Thucydides said...

While the monarch may be divested of formal powers in today's world, there is the idea of "Reserve powers" vested in the throne or the Vice Regal representative.

This is a bit difficult to lay out, after all, these are unwritten conventions, and for places without a formal, written constitution like the UK, you cannot even find them by inference in any single document or source.

Still, the idea is there, and in Canadian history, there have been a few times when the idea of the Governor General assuming a more than ceremonial position has bubbled to the surface (most recently in 2008). I also believe this became a reality in Australia during some government crisis in the 1970's.

There are also examples around the world where a president essentially takes on the trappings of a monarch and suspends the constitution or begins bypassing the other branches of government through ruling by executive order or decree.

So while *we* may no longer be ruled by monarchs, there is no reason to suppose this will always be the case.

Anonymous said...

Look at the ruling family in North Korea; they fit all the criteria of a monarchy, no matter what they call themselves. Perhaps in the future we might see more of these dynastic rulers who don't call themselves kings, even though they fit the description.

Ferrell

Grognak said...

They aren't the only example: the Assads of Syria have done the same, and it seems certain that one of Gaddafi's sons would have succeeded him.

And one could say the old USSR was an elective monarchy: excepting Khrushchev every CPSU general secretary ruled for life.

Eth said...

Grognak said:
"Even more, low plebeians can love Queen Elisabeth or King Juan Carlos bur we intellectuals are supposed to consider modern monarchs with a slight smile and accept them only because they don't cause any real trouble..."
Well, for Juan Carlos, there is also the whole 'bringing back democracy with sheer balls' thing.
But, as Thucydides points out, monarchy can serve as a "Reserve power", for when the "normal" institutions don't work anymore for some reason. I can think about the Belgian royalty acting to try and solve a year-lasting government crisis not so long ago.

"But then why don't we feel the same about inheriting huge fortunes and the power and status they confer, or about inheritance itself? If wealth is inherited, why not power? Or rather, if we forbid inheriting power, why do we accept so easily and comfortably inherited wealth?"
That was one of the points behind Socialist doctrines, though the replacement system didn't work out that well. But it was also the point behind some of the first American laws, for example concerning land inheritance that had to be divided among all the children, to prevent a de facto nobility to develop.
On the other hand, some argue that withoug inheritance, many people won't think about the next generation and sacrifice the future for their immediate interest. Or at least, even worse than today.

In SF, the whole Democracy-vs-Monarchy thing makes me think about the anime Legend of Galactic Heroes. It's about a long-lasting war between a (literally) IIe Reich-inspired Empire and a XXe-century-style democracy, where both are inefficient and corrupt. It's also a great epic tale, you should really watch it if you can be ok with the style.
An interesting point is that the Empire hero is trying to become supreme ruler and unite mankind because it would end war, sure, but also he is simply better suited to the job. He is a pragmatist and doesn't understand the interest of democracy, seeing how it's so inefficient and its leaders tend to be corrupt.
The Alliance hero, only joined the military so they would later pay for his history degree. He ended up Admiral simply because he is that good at it. But he is also an idealist, who will fight for democracy despite knowing that the other would make for a great leader, because after him, there is no guarantee that the next one will be that one, while at least in democracy you can more easily overthrow a bad ruler (or at least, they don't stay as long).

Personally, I can imagine that in the future we will create new types of governments, that we may not even imagine yet. Maybe something where most decisions are made by (weak) AIs and expert systems; after all those are hard(er) to corrupt (admitting that your computer security is high enough), they don't get mad with power and they are very good at processing large amounts of data and take rational decisions.
One problem, though, is that a bug where a developer forgot a "-" sign may result in a continent-spanning drought, so the beta-tests may be quite interesting times...

Grognak said...

Eth, actually I'm Spanish myself... and, while I fully understand the practical value of a "reserve Power" (I remember all too well February 23th 1981) I find somewhat ambiguous defending at the same time democracy and a reserve power that in theory could reside in the army generals, for example.

Then again, it would have been great to have a German reserve power, monarchical or military, removing Nazis in 1934 by hook or crook, that coup we would cheer for...

Some questions just don't have easy answers. "The white moonlight was cold and clear, like the justice we dream of but don’t find", as Raymond Chandler wrote. Or, as Frenchmen are supposed to say "That's OK in practice, but will it work in theory?"

* * *

Regarding inherited wealth I confess I was waiting for someone to impersonate Charles Laughton and say "Objection. Your Lordship, the witness is advocating Communism". But it isn't, or at least it would be a very peculiar form of Communism in which Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and their shareholders could be every bit as rich as they are today but their sons would start as rich as anyone else.

I don't know if such a system would work - in practice it could fail as badly as the Soviet Communism did - but that wasn't really my point. My point is, we don't question wealth inheritance, don't think about it, it's just the way things are. Back in the day absolutist monarchy was like that too... and in the future some things that we don't question will perhaps be regarded even worse, like witch hunting, burning heretics and slavery are today. The trouble is that we don't know which ones they will be, even if some seem good bets.

The future, utopian or dystopian, will be a foreign country. They will speak with funny accents, do things differently and behave in very strange ways. Even our meals and drinks are surprisingly recent, theirs will be different too (conceiving a plausible future in which people don't drink coffee in the morning... that will take genius).

I see you like anime. Have you watched "Girls und Panzer"? Funny, light, tongue-in-cheek entertainment... but it made me think. At first sight the basic premise is so absurd that it is mind-boggling: in the future armored warfare will become a martial art, a sport played by high-school teams. Incredible, perhaps even a bit offensive? Consider archery. What would say Medieval Welsh longbowmen or Japanese Samurai if they saw teenage girls practicing kyudo?

In other words, perhaps it's absurd enough to become reality in the year 2400.

Tony said...

Hmmm...

I'm not very samguine about monarchy, mostly for the reason of succession management. But then succession management in democracies and republics can be outright hairy too.

Also, there is something to be said for the internal policy continuity of a long-lived, and personally self-sufficient monarch's reign. (The "personally self-sufficient" part is important -- monarchs that are prey to the whims of their advisers could be worse than a brand new elected leader every year.) Of course these are few and far between, but they have been known to exist, at least as frequently as truly effective -- as opposed to merely competent -- elected leaders.

But all large, modern technological societies are run day-to-day by bureaucracies. The difference between monarchy, oligarchy, and some form of democracy is how many people set policy. For that's what law fundamentally is -- written policy that you're willing to let your servants, personal or public, back up with force, without consulting you first.

Or, taken from another angle, presidents, prime ministers, and chancellors are indeed monarchs, but ones whose personal power extends only so far as operations. They have to share their policymaking powers with a legislature or official council of some type.

And then there's the whole question of bureaucratic autocracies, a la Stalin or Mao. They may be very temporary, but they're very real while they exist.

In any case, I can see a hereditary monarchy working in the future, simply because it has worked in the past, and to some degree even today. I'm just not sure I can foresee under what conditions. In the case of fiction, I'm generally satisfied that it jut be done well and at least somewhat plausibly.

What I don't believe for one second is that the future will throw up something truly original, much less unrecognizable. People have, over the course of history, experimented with every form of government likely to work.

In any case, congrats, Rick.

Ray said...

Thucydides said...
"Jerry Pournelle had quite a bit to say about monarchy (not only in the Co Dominium cycle, but even an essay in "A Step Farther Out")"

There was also Imperial Stars, a 3-volume anthology of short stories and a few nonfiction essays that traced through the rise and fall of future empires and the conflict between empire and republic.

John Lumpkin said...

As science fiction writers draw a lot of inspiration from advances in physics, biology, etc, I might suggest those looking for ideas also turn to social science. In terms of different types of governments, I'd offer up the Polity IV database, which is widely used in comparative politics and classifies countries by a variety of government types -- when designing a autocracy or democracy or something in between, there are lots of pieces to figure out, and this might give some ideas. Link:
Center for Systemic Peace

Tony said...

"Center for Systemic Peace"?

I just lurv these "centers" for this that and the other thing that claim scientific impartiality, with some idealistic and impractical agenda written on the label.

John Lumpkin said...

Thanks for your insight, Tony.

Perhaps a better link on this site for those designing a fictional government: pdf

It has a number of variables used in political analysis -- again, I'm just offering it up to say social science can provide as many story and setting ideas as the hard sciences.

Tony said...

I don't think SF -- or romance in general -- has missed social motivations and plot complications. Take for example Asimov -- who from Campbell's point of view was just spinning yarns that sold magazines -- basing his magnum opus on the history of the Roman Empire.

And all authors of romantic fiction would do better taking their ideas about society and politics from history than some agendized institute's interpretation of who people are and what they do.

John Lumpkin said...

Yes, of course all qualitative histories contain no agenda or other bias, but a research organization that prepares quantitative data used widely in conflict studies, comparative politics, and international relations, and also has "peace" in the name, must be incapable of any kind of useful analysis.

Perhaps you would be curious enough to click the link and investigate your claim about some deep bias in their work, now that you've made it.

Really, a lot of conflict studies research outfits have put "peace" in their name to make them more palatable to the universities that host them and grant-making groups that fund them. It's PR, although the also quite useful "Correlates of War" database hasn't given in to that temptation, yet.

And by offering alternate paths of research, I have no claim that SF is "missing" anything. But I do think there's useful work out there for writers to draw from; for example, BDM's selectorate theory and Fearon's rationalist explanations for war are two that have given me particular inspiration in my writing.

Tony said...

John Lumpkin:

"Yes, of course all qualitative histories contain no agenda or other bias,"

Please, don't be facetious. Of course individual historians have their biases. But a person relying on a wide variety of historians can usually come to an educated opinion.

"but a research organization that prepares quantitative data used widely in conflict studies, comparative politics, and international relations,"

That doesn't render them free of bias. Looking at their data users guide, there's quite a few dimensions whose data values depend greatly on interpretation, not objective fact.

"and also has 'peace' in the name, must be incapable of any kind of useful analysis."

It makes the data highly suspect. "Peace" per se, is IMO a mania, not a valid analytical framework. YMMV.

"Perhaps you would be curious enough to click the link and investigate your claim about some deep bias in their work, now that you've made it."

Actually, I did more research than that. For an institution that is as influential as you claim, it does seem rather odd that it has no Wikipedia entry. (Whatever Wikipedia' faults, as a rough gauge of influence -- or at least notoriety -- it's pretty reliable.)
That is also a signpost for suspicion.

"Really, a lot of conflict studies research outfits have put 'peace' in their name to make them more palatable to the universities that host them and grant-making groups that fund them. It's PR, although the also quite useful 'Correlates of War' database hasn't given in to that temptation, yet."

So, participation in a mania, even for oportunistic reasons (perhaps especially if one's reasons are oportunistic) is a good recommendation.

"And by offering alternate paths of research, I have no claim that SF is 'missing' anything. But I do think there's useful work out there for writers to draw from; for example, BDM's selectorate theory and Fearon's rationalist explanations for war are two that have given me particular inspiration in my writing."

Both of which miss the basic fact that war is motivated (or at least justified to thoe who must support it) by perceptions of injustice and the desire to seek justice (in each participant's mind, not in some objective sense) at even extreme cost.

I find both this rationalism, and the -- I find myself inescapably constrained to say -- silly idea that conflict is systemic and quantifiable (in all but the most superficial sense), to be preposterously hubristic nonsense. Again, YMMV.

Certainly SF authors have many resources to choose from. But IMO they would do much better to study the general political history available to them -- in sufficient beadth and depth of course, to avoid individual biases on the part of the historian -- and make up their own minds than to rely on academic theories. For a third time, YMMV. Just my $0.02

John Lumpkin said...

Of course attempts to measure social phenomena aren't perfect and may be biased, but I'm not ready to throw out the entire quantitative arms of political science and sociology on those grounds. I disagree strongly that human behavior, like war, cannot be quantitatively studied. I find meaningful value in correlations that tie, say, economic conditions (like per capita GDP) to the occurrence of civil war.

As for the validity of the source I threw out, it's more fruitful to search for its products:

Polity data series
Citations on Google Scholar

Rick said...

Of course attempts to measure social phenomena aren't perfect and may be biased, but I'm not ready to throw out the entire quantitative arms of political science and sociology on those grounds. I disagree strongly that human behavior, like war, cannot be quantitatively studied.

I tend to agree. I've had only a glancing encounter with quantitative studies of conflict patterns, and it is easy to see problems with them, but they also seemed to have some interesting implications.

The claims of war-makers that they are only fighting to right some injustice, often (not always) strike me as, like hypocrisy, a tribute that vice pays to virtue.

Tony said...

John Lumpkin:

"Of course attempts to measure social phenomena aren't perfect and may be biased, but I'm not ready to throw out the entire quantitative arms of political science and sociology on those grounds. I disagree strongly that human behavior, like war, cannot be quantitatively studied. I find meaningful value in correlations that tie, say, economic conditions (like per capita GDP) to the occurrence of civil war.

As for the validity of the source I threw out, it's more fruitful to search for its products:

Polity data series
Citations on Google Scholar"


That's a rather broad search. I don't think they had anything to do with:

"CB1 and CB2 cannabinoid receptors are implicated in inflammatory pain" (see results page 10)

As an experiment, I tried out the name of one of my CompSci instructors (BT Stander), whose PhD was granted for a very obscure means of rendering a very specific type of 3D graphic. He gets 3,990 reults just on the strength of having a relatively common last name and initials.

Oddly enough, this actually works to illustrate my point very well -- statistical data, when it deals with people, is largely a matter of interpretation.

Certainly one can make all sorts of correlations between economic and social conditions -- as one may interpret them -- with all kinds of events in life, conflict being just one. But saying that things like economic hardship or outright injustice are likely to lead to civil war hardly needs to be supported by statistics. It's preety much common sense.

Tony said...

Rick:

"The claims of war-makers that they are only fighting to right some injustice, often (not always) strike me as, like hypocrisy, a tribute that vice pays to virtue."

In a lifetime of training for, studying, and participating in war, I have yet to find one example where one side or the other -- and most often both -- have not sincerely believed that they were defending justice. Remember, I'm not talking about absolute justice, but perceptions of justice. Whether you accept one or both sides' theory of justice, I think it needs to be clearly recognized that as long as people seek what they believe to be justice, they will engage in war.

John Lumpkin said...

I think Tony's kind of making a constuctivist argument, that the social reality to the players is the main (or perhaps only) thing that matters.

And it's worthy of study -- that is, the stories people tell themselves to make war palatable. Plenty of fodder for science fiction and fantasy there.

But the economic, demographic, geographic and military conditions that make war more or less likely also have plenty of value in understanding war. (To merge the quantitative and constructivist arguments, I submit there are measurable conditions that make it more or less likely people will build and believe those stories of injustice about each other.)

Even researchers into this do not claim to have found objective truth, but they are building models and theories of war that, when operationalized and tested empirically, seem to be onto something.

Tony said...

John Lumpkin:

"I think Tony's kind of making a constuctivist argument, that the social reality to the players is the main (or perhaps only) thing that matters.

And it's worthy of study -- that is, the stories people tell themselves to make war palatable. Plenty of fodder for science fiction and fantasy there.

But the economic, demographic, geographic and military conditions that make war more or less likely also have plenty of value in understanding war. (To merge the quantitative and constructivist arguments, I submit there are measurable conditions that make it more or less likely people will build and believe those stories of injustice about each other.)

Even researchers into this do not claim to have found objective truth, but they are building models and theories of war that, when operationalized and tested empirically, seem to be onto something."


Ummm...yeah, sorta. Except that I never said that one couldn't make statistical correlations between Factor A and Event B. I just don't see the practical utility. One doesn't need an academic study -- or even an academic approach -- to understand that poor and/or poorly-treated people tend to rebel. Or that economic factors between two powers can lead to interstate war. It's just common sense.

John Lumpkin said...

Well, the next step is to look for certain thresholds where conflict really ramps up or doesn't happen -- it's not always a linear relationship.

And yes, some of it is proving "common sense;" there are occasions, though, when you find something counterintuitive, or that what is considered common sense really doesn't bear out empirically.

(And here's where a good arguer would post some examples, but I'm tired and going to bed instead. The best that comes to mind is the democratic peace, a phenomenon I'd suggest writers read up on before positing a storyline in which two democracies go to war)

Tony said...

John Lumpkin:

"Well, the next step is to look for certain thresholds where conflict really ramps up or doesn't happen -- it's not always a linear relationship.

And yes, some of it is proving "common sense;" there are occasions, though, when you find something counterintuitive, or that what is considered common sense really doesn't bear out empirically.

(And here's where a good arguer would post some examples, but I'm tired and going to bed instead. The best that comes to mind is the democratic peace, a phenomenon I'd suggest writers read up on before positing a storyline in which two democracies go to war)"


The difficulty here is, of course, that what one person sees as counterintuitive is usually a case of bounded rationality. Learn enough details about any situation, and one begins to see the framework of whatever outcome occurs. Of course statistics can't do that for you, precisely because it's not concerned with details.

WRT the alleged democratic peace, I suggest you look at the causes of the Franco-Prussian War, in which a nominal democracy fought a nominal confederation of princedoms, but whose underlying cause was a very democratically popular (even if not formally referendized) imperative towards German unification. Or perhaps one should study the American Civil War, in which neither side was very democratic by 21st Century standards, but both of which would have been perfectly democratic in the Classical Greek world. This so-called "peace" is in reality a matter of narrow interpretation and agenda overwhelming reason.

John Lumpkin said...

Well, I'm glad you've solved war, Tony. :) I still think it's a worthy subject of inquiry from a variety of directions.

Re: Source authenticity and utility. You set a bar of a Wikipedia entry for establishing the authority of the source I proved. I not only provided one, I also provided links to hundreds and hundreds of peer-reviewed scholarly articles that employ the Polity measures. I can further attest that I'm in my third doctoral-level international relations class at a tier-one research university (two classes were on war and peace; the third is on trade), and the Polity measures have shown up repeatedly in empirical studies assigned by professors. So I'll leave it to other readers whether I've established the credibility of this source, and I'm not going to engage you on this point further.

John Lumpkin said...

Re: History v Political Science: Qualitative histories do much the same thing as models of war. I'll grant the histories generally follow a narrative structure, are much more interesting to read and contain excellent details to mine for inspiration. The difference is their theories of salient causes of and events during war are often implicit, and formal modeling and theorizing forces them to be explicit. What historians choose to emphasize, include or leave out reflect their theories of causality, of the nature of power, of economics, and on and on. That's fine, but putting that stuff in the open is useful, too.

... Rick's prior post and discussion included some laments about the state of science fiction. All I'm suggesting that one possible underutilized avenue is exploration of theory and models from social science.

For me, when I start from a model, it gives me a structure to work with, and I can fill in plot and characters operating within that model (or challenging it). The theory provides both constraints but is also a source of ideas. It also keeps me from giving into temptation (which I sometimes fail at) at simply taking a historical event and painting a thin science fictional veneer over it.

To wit: The Polity measures I'm pointing to contain a number of assumptions about what is important in the structure of governance of a state. The authors systematically lay them out: What's the nature of power transfer, allowed and actual organization and capabilities of the opposition, what structural and information checks exist on the executive, and so on. In terms of designing a monarchy, it lays out the choices an author can make, e.g. How are ministers selected? Is there any structured mechanism for the aristocracy or even the commons to raise concerns? For me, this stuff is an extremely useful framing mechanism in setting design, and it helps me ensure I'm not leaving things out.

... If your sense-of-injustice theory (and a theory it is) is in fact true, I'd investigate it by looking into structures of influence and belief transfer within states, specifically education, mass media, and (lately) many-to-many networks, this blog being an example. I betcha we can come up with good measures or proxies that can test that story and, at least, help explain mechanisms of war consent in states, at least to those willing to accept quantitative inquiries have some value. As you say, YMMV.

More broadly, when I think about social theories and good science fiction, I think about 1984 and Brave New World.

Both posit discoveries and human nature combining to lead to the utter end of the rationalist project -- 1984 says it is defeated by mass media and education control, ubiquitous surveillance, and a constant state of fear and othering of (interchangable) foreigners. BNW, meanwhile, says the project ends through genetic engineering of obedient drones and ubiquitous availability of biological pleasures (as opposed to intellectual ones). The deeper story is that each of these states' methods of control comes from discoveries enabled by the rationalist project. Even deeper, the stories were ultimately warnings about theorized aspects of human nature, and its capacity to give into fear or pleasure. We can read histories and make claims in this regard, and we can come up with measures and test them, too.

... Again and again, I make no claims the methods I'm talking about are the sole path to the top of the mountain. But a first-blush denial that they may have something quite meaningful to contribute for some storytellers strikes me as rigid and incurious.

John Lumpkin said...

eh, correction: first sentence "source I proved" should be "source I provided" -- I'll acknowledge a possible Freudian slip there.

Damien Sullivan said...

"Betty Windsor"

Elizabeth II might be descended from William the Conquering Bastard, or even from an earlier Anglo-Saxon king, but she's not part of the same dynasty, by any usual dynastic rules. (Go back far enough and we're all descended from some king.)

"while at least in democracy you can more easily overthrow a bad ruler (or at least, they don't stay as long)"

I've read the Game of Thrones world has a somewhat democratic city-state, which annually elects three Triarchs, and that it was pointed out to a visiting royal relation that they never have child Triarchs, while an insane one can be buffered by the other two until the end of the year. As Westeros has had both child-kings and insane kings (or regents), I suspect this was pointed commentary.

As for inherited wealth, many of us do worry about it to varying degrees, and that's part of the reason behind estate taxes (curbing inherited wealth) and public schools and other programs that raise the minimum children start life with.

Tony said...

John Lumpkin:

"Well, I'm glad you've solved war, Tony. :)"

Not even close. But I have made a reasonably thorough study of it, to the point I feel pretty secure in disscussing both its practical and theoretical aspects.

"I still think it's a worthy subject of inquiry from a variety of directions."

Of course it is. But not all methodoligies are created the same. Many don't even have any real, practical utility.

"Re: Source authenticity and utility..."

I wasn't attempting to establish "authority", simply public impact. (And if you think public impact is not relevant, war is a very public thing.) The fact that references to this database shows up a lot in a particular corner of academia is not exactly a recommendation of utility. It could just mean that a lot of people with academic credentials share the same mistaken apprehensions. And from what I can see of the work, it is based on a some pretty odd ideas about what war is and how it works.

"Re: History v Political Science..."

Political "science" is generally misuse of statistics, IMO. Same-same sociology. Unlike engineering data, which is hard and reproducible, PoliSci data is all a matter of interpretation. (Even things like population statistics and economic output are very fuzzy and highly dependent on what the analyt wants to believe about the world.) The disconnect here is that you're touting a PoliSci dataset as authoritative and objective -- or at least moreso than narrative history. That seems rather...quixotic from the POV of an engineer.

"... Rick's prior post and discussion included some laments about the state of science fiction. All I'm suggesting..."

And I'm suggesting that social science (wait, I thought we were talking about "political science"...) is not particularly more revealing than history -- and ultimately misleading, in terms of its applied authority.

"For me, when I start from a model..."

Let me help you out with something us programmers are forced to remind ourselves regularly: the map is not the terrain.

To expand on that, narrative history tends to have much more of the terrain in it than models.

"To wit: The Polity measures I'm pointing to contain a number of assumptions..."

Period. Full stop.

Tony said...

John Lumpkin:

"If your sense-of-injustice theory (and a theory it is) is in fact true..."

I'm not looking for a proof. I'm thoroughly convinced that it's not a theory. I don't feel the need to have others believe it. I don't have the professional imperative that you do to count academic coups, and -- perhaps more importantly to most academics -- avoid having coups counted againt me. (Which is in and of itself very liberating of productive thought.) I simply offer it as an opinion that I'm personally certain of.

"More broadly, when I think about social theories and good science fiction, I think about 1984 and Brave New World."

This actually explains quite a lot. Many literature profs seem to think that these two (and maybe A Canticle for Liebowitz) are the only "science fiction" novels worthy of their interest. Most high volume SF readers I know barely consider them SF at all. They are both, after all, basically social criticism -- one of Stalinism and the other of consumerism.

In the end, if these are the first thing you think about when you consider SF, you're pretty explicitly placing yourself in a pretty poorly regraded intellectual ghetto, WRT the recreational SF reader.

"... Again and again, I make no claims the methods I'm talking about are the sole path to the top of the mountain. But a first-blush denial that they may have something quite meaningful to contribute for some storytellers strikes me as rigid and incurious."

From the perspective of 30 years of training for, participating in, and studying war, attempts at systematizing an understanding of war strike me as misguided and self-absorbed. Fair enough?

Rick said...

Underlying this debate seems to be something of the classic argument between the crusty old engineers and the theoreticians who have never actually built a bridge, but have in fact explored the underlying - so to speak - principles.

I'm not inclined to dismiss either position out of hand. In fact, the dialog of the two has been far more productive than either by itself.


In any case, a new front page post is up: Technology Revolutions, Trends, and Twists.

jollyreaper said...

Messages that appeared in email are not rendering here. For the record, on my phone and viewing the mobile template.

Rick said...

Strange ...

I don't usually look at the email copies of comments, instead just reading them here. But a quick check just now doesn't show any comments in my email that aren't also on the page.

Also, no comments are stuck in spam jail.

Can you quote a snippet of an email-only comment, so I can see if it shows on (my copy of) the comments page?

jollyreaper said...

Might be the mobile template. My last comment about LIBOR doesn't show. This has happened before in other threads.

John Lumpkin said...

You're a real hoot, Tony, that's for sure. Yes, I'm quite clear you see no value in what I'm offering Rick's other readers.

I do want to recap: I cite an organization with the word "peace" in its name, and you attack its credibility based on that.

I mention taking some doctoral-level classes; you attack my motivations based on some stereotypes about academics.

I mention finding value in 1984 and Brave New World; you attack my, taste, I guess, and credibility in discussing science fiction. If I say I like Starship Troopers, too (and I do), will you like me again?

And, heck, I recall the first time I posted on this blog was after you were attacking my novel based on someone else's description of it, and you insinuated I was lying in my marketing material about having been to Iraq and Afghanistan as a reporter.

One of your attacks claims I argued social science approaches are better than qualitative history. You are misrepresenting what I said. In fact, I've agreed every approach you've offered (history, public sense of injustice) has merit. I also agree none can be taken as objective truths. I simply endorsed another approach in the study of government and conflict that 1) I have found useful in my writing and 2) I suspect many readers here are unfamiliar with.

I'm not sure how you attacking your assumptions about my motivations and preferences undermines my post, but I guess it does in your mind, so okay.

Anywho, I eagerly await your next attempts to mine this post for a new round of ad hominems. I suspect my admission of having worked in the news media will serve as significant fodder. I can also be a great straw man!

Tony said...

Rick:

"Underlying this debate seems to be something of the classic argument between the crusty old engineers and the theoreticians who have never actually built a bridge, but have in fact explored the underlying - so to speak - principles."

I thought of several different responses. But they all rely on a lifetime of close study and practical experience. And I do mean a lifetime. How I thought about these things ten years ago -- to say nothing of twenty -- is so different from how I think about them today that it seems like the knowledge of a totally different person. Strangely enough, I actually have the various discussions on this blog to thank for focussing a lot of that thought into articulation, rather than just vague intuitions.

I've got books on the quantification of war. I've got a great many more that depend on the kill/loss ratios and miles per day -- it's batting averages and yards per carry, so to speak. But they just serve to illuminate just how much isn't quantifiable about war, and probably never will be. If I were to have one piece of advice for John, or anyone like him, it's that he can depend on the material force-fed to him in pursuit of a PhD candidacy to be just the stuff that will not teach him anything useful about war. Not because I have some crumudgeonly objection to academic pursuits, but because academics just don't have the experience of war, and refuse to listen to those who do.

Tony said...

John Lumpkin:

"You're a real hoot, Tony, that's for sure. Yes, I'm quite clear you see no value in what I'm offering Rick's other readers."

I see no practical utility in one particular offering of yours. I gave my reasons. People are free to agree or diagree.

"I do want to recap: I cite an organization with the word 'peace' in its name, and you attack its credibility based on that."

I suspect it's credibility based on that.

"I mention taking some doctoral-level classes; you attack my motivations based on some stereotypes about academics."

I didn't attack your motivations. I said they were different from mine. I think I was quite accurate in pointing out that the motivations of the academic track tend to straightjacket one's thinking. And I have to admit that it's for very sound economic reasons -- you don't get rewarded in the academy for practical thought; you get rewarded for formalism and gamesmanship.

"I mention finding value in 1984 and Brave New World; you attack my, taste, I guess, and credibility in discussing science fiction. If I say I like Starship Troopers, too (and I do), will you like me again?"

I didn't attack you. I pointed out how a lot of people I know in the SF readership would react to someone who who rates Brave New World and 1984 as "good science fiction", particularly where "social theories" are concerned. You don't have to accept that that's the case. But I know a lot would.

"And, heck, I recall the first time I posted on this blog was after you were attacking my novel based on someone else's description of it, and you insinuated I was lying in my marketing material about having been to Iraq and Afghanistan as a reporter."

I just found it too pat. Perhaps if you'd had the experience I've had with faux veterans, you'd understand.

"One of your attacks claims I argued social science approaches are better than qualitative history. You are misrepresenting what I said."

Ummm...no. I implied that they are pernicious, because they bear the imprimatur of objectivity, yet are in fact rooted in interpretation at leasst as much as narrative history.

"I simply endorsed another approach in the study of government and conflict that 1) I have found useful in my writing and 2) I suspect many readers here are unfamiliar with."

And I submitted the opinion that they have no practical utility. I'm not going to back off of that, John. It's what I sincerely think.

"Anywho, I eagerly await your next attempts to mine this post for a new round of ad hominems. I suspect my admission of having worked in the news media will serve as significant fodder. I can also be a great straw man!"

Speaking of attacking caricatures. It would certainly not have occurred to me to attack anything you have done on the basis that you have done it. And nobody is making ad hominem attacks here. It's your ideas (and only some of them) and maybe some attitudes that I'm criticising, not you yourself. But then that's just one more powerful disconnect between the norms of academic formalism and practical business and professional communication.

Tony said...

I want ot add something on this account:

"I mention taking some doctoral-level classes; you attack my motivations based on some stereotypes about academics."

What I was really responding to here was your attempt to frame my convictions about war and justice as just another interesting theory to be subjected to some formalistic investigation. It's not. It's what I think to be true. It's not an intellectual toy to me. To you it is.

That's a very real disconnect in our mutual understanding of the subject. You seem to me to think that everything must be formalized and proven in some abstract sense for it to be real to you. Whereas I act on the basis that knowledge just is -- the only caveat being that it has to be reliable. If you will, my epistemology is Newtonian, while yours appears to be strictly Popperian.

jollyreaper said...

Broad brush, Tony.

Are there ivory tower academics who teach about things they've never done, never experienced? Of course. There are also those who went into teaching after doing those things. You use academic like an insult.

By the same token, there are pig-headed and open-minded engineers, arrogant and humble programmers, sincere religious leaders and scammers in collars.

Note that I myself differentiate: when I say business-criminal, I am not talking about the guy running the corner store or the president of a solvent bank that does what it's supposed to, I am talking about the criminal element in suits, the ones too big to jail. But you will accuse me of falling to cliches while saying academics collectively have no idea what they are talking about and your lifetime of education is more productive than theirs. Granted, there are many people who spent a lifetime at something without truly learning but can you generalize from that?

Anonymous said...

jollyreaper, John, et all; some people just feel the need to argue about everything, no matter the subject. Ignore it.
Anyway, as I see it, fantasy and SF share a common sense of 'what if' mood, differenting mainly in setting and characters. So, 'what if' magic were real? 'what if' we had a colony on Mars? 'what if' vampires exsited? 'what if' FTL were possible? the list goes on and on. 'What if a teenaged princess inherited the throne of an unknown kingdom?' certainly fits the bill. Historical fiction is a grand tradition; readers have enjoyed it for centuries, so it's got to have something going for it. Perhaps because it is so difficulte to get right makes the ones that do so appealing to readers. Knowing how to get the mix of fact and fiction just right is as difficult as creating a meal; the more elaborate, the harder it is to satisfy. So, once again, congratulations Rick!

Ferrell

John Lumpkin said...

If experience is the yardstick for validity of opinions, I'll detail mine.

As a national security reporter with AP, I spent very short periods in two war theaters, Iraq and Afghanistan, and traveled with the secretary of defense and/or chairman of the Joint Chiefs to 20 additional countries. I spent several years during wartime covering policymakers and other officials in the U.S. national security community in Washington, particularly in the CIA and other intelligence organizations. Prior to that assignment, I wrote about a lot of military research in New Mexico; for you fellow sci-fi buffs, I have a coaster around here that was made by an Air Force laser burning a circle into some plexiglass.

I've interviewed veterans from World War I and many conflicts since -- I remember, in particular, a World War II vet who still teared up talking about his brother, who was killed on the Oklahoma, 50 years prior. And another guy, who must have been the Forrest Gump of World War II, as he was at Pearl Harbor, Normandy and Guadalcanal. I also remember an Iraq war vet who'd lost his foot to a mine, who had gotten so good at walking on his prosthetic you couldn't tell he had been injured, unless you noticed the metallic shine between his shoe and the bottom of his trouser leg.

I've been asked to withhold information from the public on national security grounds; heck, I once had something so hot, the previously unreported identity of an high-level al-Qaida detainee, I went to the USG and asked them whether they wanted to make a case that we withhold it. (They thought it over and declined; Amnesty International has reported the detainee was being tortured at the time, but I guess they had decided by then he didn't know where OBL was.)

I remember a couple of National Guard guys outside of Baghdad begging me to dig out my reporter buddy's flask from his gear. I remember being in one of Saddam's palaces in 04 or 05 and hearing a loud explosion that shook dust from the ceiling, and the one-star shepherding us reporters looked at his watch and commented mildly there weren't any scheduled disposals of ammo dumps for that hour.

I'm also well aware the limitations of being a reporter of, rather than a direct participant in, these events. I'm aware that I saw many staged events intended to have a persuasive effect on me, and, through me, the public. And I'm aware of the easy hate many, many people direct at the news media, not all of which is unearned.

I'm working on a second career now (in addition to novel-writing), which I embarked on because I get a real charge out of teaching college kids, and I need to be degreed to do that and make a living. A big part of my studies are theoretical treatments of war. I've been a bit straw-manned in this thread, into somehow claiming I've discovered authoritative truth by endorsing these works. I make no such claim. In actuality, in the discussions I've had with many professors, I find a striking amount of humility and critical self-reflection, an acknowledgment that the process of premise, logic, modeling, operationalization and testing of theories about mass social phenomena like war is difficult and imperfect, and also quite new and exploratory. Our classes are exercises in challenging these articles, in the spirit of improving them, if they can be improved. It's an aspect of the scientific method at work. We have veterans in those classes, and they often raise substantive protests, many of which I agree with. (The biggest one that comes to mind is that the common ratings of power don't really measure power projection.)

...

Anonymous said...

(third try posting this)

Yes, there are those in academia who internalize their work, demand adherence to their orthodoxy, and do nothing but issue insults to those who challenge it. And, yes, there are abuses of statistics to further political or professional agendas. I'm certainly not ready to toss out the endeavor on the grounds that there are imperfect measures and flawed inquiries, that the problems being studied can't be solved to the degree of certainty that engineering problems can, or that modeling by its nature lacks the ability to capture interesting details.

And there's also plenty of crossover between academia and the real world; one of my professors, Jaroslav Tir, advises DoD on future water wars, and I've interviewed Paul Pillar, one of the first to apply bargaining theory to war, who also served as an Army officer in Vietnam and later a senior analyst at the CIA.


So: My experience in proximity to warfighters and war has not led me to conclude the effort to conduct a systematic, quantitative study of war as a phenomenon is meritless. Instead, I think it's useful and illuminating perspective that I haven't found anywhere else. Of course it doesn't capture the violence and toil of the battlefield in any real sense, but that doesn't mean it has nothing useful to say.

To turn to matters of writing good fiction, I'm advocating methodological pluralism in research, a state of open-minded curiousity, and humility about one's limited knowledge in certain matters. I make no claim that my experience makes me a better-than-you writer, or commentator on international affairs, or person -- only that I've found it all interesting and useful, and it enables me to create characters and tell stories in ways I'm pretty sure I could not otherwise have done. My encounters with flag officers and politicians and wounded PFCs all inform my writing, as do what were those thrilling hours in August '04, zipping through canyons between Kabul and Jalalabad on a CH-53. Certainly written histories of World War II and other conflicts also inform me, as does SFConsim, Atomic Rockets and this blog. And so does James Fearon's discussion that war's inefficiency puzzle boils down to information problems and/or commitment problems, and Robert Powell's theory that war grows more likely between two states when their distribution of power is off-kilter with their distribution of benefits.

With that, I'll bow out; I find the snap judgments and reflexive antagonism here makes contributing to meaningful discourse a little more challenging than I would like, but if anyone would like me to point them to some of the research I find interesting, I'm certainly reachable through my web site. Cheers, JL

Tony said...

Ferrell:

"jollyreaper, John, et all; some people just feel the need to argue about everything, no matter the subject."

If that were the case, why is it that some people refrain from commenting on everything said, and focus on just what they have a strong opinion about. Your mistaking commitment for lack of commitment. Quite a feat...

Tony said...

John Lumpkin:

"If experience is the yardstick for validity of opinions, I'll detail mine."

It's not. It informs judgment.

Nice job, BTW, of bragging on your travels and of not-quite-name-dropping. And, nothing personal, but I don't count historical interviews, nor the surgical insertions and extractions of modern media life as much experience, though I suppose it teaches one more than just eeing it on TV.

"I've been a bit straw-manned in this thread, into somehow claiming I've discovered authoritative truth by endorsing these works."

Quite red herring on it own merits, considering that the commentary has been explicitly focussed on the utility of the dataset offered, and advice -- for John, as much as for anybody else -- to avoid taking it too seriously.

"In actuality, in the discussions I've had with many professors, I find a striking amount of humility and critical self-reflection, an acknowledgment that the process of premise, logic, modeling, operationalization and testing of theories about mass social phenomena like war is difficult and imperfect, and also quite new and exploratory. Our classes are exercises in challenging these articles, in the spirit of improving them, if they can be improved. It's an aspect of the scientific method at work. We have veterans in those classes, and they often raise substantive protests, many of which I agree with. (The biggest one that comes to mind is that the common ratings of power don't really measure power projection.)"

That's not science. That's not science. That's critique. But of course, I'm one of those philistines that doesn't believe in the "science" of liberal arts. IMO, if these academics you speak of were truly humble and self-reflective, they wouldn't even attempt to invoke the imprimatur of science, much less bank on it.

"...Paul Pillar, one of the first to apply bargaining theory to war..."

I wonder what Metternich would have said to that...

"So: My experience in proximity to warfighters and war has not led me to conclude the effort to conduct a systematic, quantitative study of war as a phenomenon is meritless. Instead, I think it's useful and illuminating perspective that I haven't found anywhere else. Of course it doesn't capture the violence and toil of the battlefield in any real sense, but that doesn't mean it has nothing useful to say."

And nobody said it had nothing useful to say. But it has pretty narrow limits. I believe I already mentioned the operational and strategic use of simple statistics, as well as the use of statistics in operational analysis. What I'm dubious of is the academic use of statistics to try to ensnare the topic categorically. Like I said earlier, it's notable hubris, to say the least.

"With that, I'll bow out; I find the snap judgments and reflexive antagonism here makes contributing to meaningful discourse a little more challenging than I would like, but if anyone would like me to point them to some of the research I find interesting, I'm certainly reachable through my web site. Cheers, JL"

Again, it's not hostility towards you, nor is it snap judgment. It's considered opinion about a certain type of idea (and a certain type of professional ideal). It truly is not personal. I don't know if this is the case, but is it posible you just don't like the fact that you ran into pushback on something that you implicitly accept, for personal or professional reasons, from people that feel no imperative to accept it?

Rick said...

I'll beg for some patience, even when annoyance at the tone of late is all too well justified.

On balance I prefer to err on the side of open discussion, even when it involves commenters who are conspicuously short on the social graces.

Anonymous said...

*heavy sigh* Could we please get back to the original topic of this post? If memory serves (and a quick check of the top of the page), we were talking about Rick's new book, and by extention, comparing SF to the wider context of Romance and related genres.

Ferrell

jollyreaper said...

So, Tony, which of the liberal arts do you hold in the least respect? The trivium—the verbal arts: logic, grammar, and rhetoric; the quadrivium—the numerical arts: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy?

You say your experience informs your judgment but the experience of others is just uninformed opinion. You say it's nothing personal but you use some very insulting language. Name-dropping? Bragging? You are incapable of seeing how this could be insulting.

What an exercise in futility this is.

jollyreaper said...

@ferrell
Wider context. Want to venture into the amusing gap between the popularity of scifi and it's respectability? :)

Rick said...

Popularity v respectability ...

SF has been whoring after respectability for decades. And SF fandom, at least, still seems to have a lot of status anxiety on this score, or the issue wouldn't come up.

Oddly (or not) the spread of SF tropes to the wider culture has been largely the result of what even around 2000 I disparagingly called Hollywood Sci-Fi.

My impression is that this particular cultural barrier has largely eroded - after all, a generation of fandom, even of 'serious' written SF, cut its teeth on the Star Wars films, and TV shows like Babylon 5, BSG, and even gone-in-a-flash (sob!) Firefly.

In spite of its older roots, and Peter Jackson's Oscars, fantasy seems now to have the bigger respectability challenge. Gary Gygax did the subgenre no favors in that regard.

jollyreaper said...

Per your link you have not tried the tv Dune yet. Have you now? While not perfect, they're better than crap.

Tony said...

jollyreaper:

"So, Tony, which of the liberal arts do you hold in the least respect? The trivium—the verbal arts: logic, grammar, and rhetoric; the quadrivium—the numerical arts: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy?"

I didn't say I held any of them in poor respect. They all have their uses -- and abuses. I said that liberal arts (in the broadest sense of course, not science specifically) are suspect as to their scientific aspirations and claims. In reality, a lot of nominally scientific inquiry isn't really all that scientific either. In fact, there isn't any real consensus on what science itself is. See my earlier allusions to Newtonian and Popperian epistemologies.

"You say your experience informs your judgment but the experience of others is just uninformed opinion."

Did I? I believe I said that my opinions, based on education, training, and experience, are what I am convinced to be true. But I didn't say they were anything other than my opinions. If your beef is that I don't explicitly label my opinions as opinions, that's because this is supposed to be a conversational salon, not a formal debate competion. (Or at least that's what I perceive Rick to be sponsoring here.)) It's all supposed to be regarded as opinion, unless it is explicitly advertised as fact. If we all kept that firmly in mind, there would be a lot less hate and discontent.

"You say it's nothing personal but you use some very insulting language. Name-dropping? Bragging? You are incapable of seeing how this could be insulting."

Was John's discourse on his travels not bragging, and was his discourse on his acquaintances not name dropping with the serial numbers filed off?

And still it's not personal. It's just saying "I saw what you did there." Which, we should not fail to recall, is, well...certainly not limited to myself.

Tony said...

Ferrell:

"...we were talking about Rick's new book, and by extention, comparing SF to the wider context of Romance and related genres."

Isn't that fairly well established, at least in the minds of the regulars here? I certainly haven't seen anybody dispute Rick on the idea that SF is a subgenre of Romance. In fact, since the novel form is in fact an outgrowth of Romance, I'm not sure how one could see things any other way.

Other forms of SF (along with all modern narrative fiction genres) are rooted in much older storytelling conventions too. The short sotry is basically a somewhat extended joke, in form if not in purpose. There is a setup, some action, and then the punchline. Likewise, the novella is nothing so much as a written vignette.

THe real interesting thing to me is how the long form narrative account of non-fiction has become so much like the novel in construction. Read any modern biography and you can detect a pretty obvious attempt to create rising tension to the presumed climax of the subject's life, with the rest being denoument. Accounts of historical events are most often constructed in just the same way. I think there's some very interesting questions tied up in all of that:

Are narrative history writers and biographers just influenced by the dominant literary form? Are they consciously playing to audience expectations (perhaps with the guidance of editors)? Or is there something fundamental about the story arc that lends itself to the description of events over time?

Tony said...

jollyreaper:

"Per your link you have not tried the tv Dune yet. Have you now? While not perfect, they're better than crap."

They're...not bad. But the good production qualities serve to expose some of the weaknesses of the original concept. People flying around in interstellar spaceships the size of cities, with personal force fields and anti-gravity, but they fight with swords? It was a stretch in the book. In the miniseries it's just more odd. And the midievalism in the costumes -- from the samurai-like Harkonen troops to the Renaissance Italy-inspired Sardaukar -- didn't help matters much.

Rick said...

(third try posting this)

I just discovered that the first two tries ended up in spam jail. I have no idea why - Blogger just gets zealous sometimes, for unknown reasons.

I went ahead and deleted them, since your third try got through.

Rick said...

The comparison of short story structure to a joke is interesting to me on two counts: I agree, and I have never seen this point made by anyone else until just now.

The 'creep' of narrative arc into nonfiction is also an interesting point.



I wasn't even aware that there was a recent version of *Dune.*

Costuming (and set design in general) in visual SF strikes me as a huge challenge. I'm not sure how you avoid either blandly retro-futuristic, a la Trek, or ripping off the historical era of your choice.

I personally had this problem even in writing SF - as a writer I'm mostly exempt from describing costumes, etc, but not from imagining them.

Anita said...

The TV Dune like the film version was a mixed bag. The Fremen and Atreides costumes/sets came across well, especially the Fremen. The Imperial and Bene G were just this side of trashy. Decadent and trashy are not the same thing.

Anonymous said...

Well, as far as costumes in SF goes, you could always have one character complain about the silly retro-whetever revival in current fashions, or how bland the current state of garments are. I say, have fun with it!

Ferrell

Brett said...

@Rick
Costuming (and set design in general) in visual SF strikes me as a huge challenge. I'm not sure how you avoid either blandly retro-futuristic, a la Trek, or ripping off the historical era of your choice.

I think Star Wars does it well. Clothes are practical for the various settings they're worn in (with the exception of some ceremonial outfits), but still different in cosmetic aesthetics from how we generally arrange clothing here. They look similar (pants, shirts, etc), because there are only so many arrangements you can do with practical clothing for human beings.

Grognak said...

Clothes? That's a minor nuisance, Brett is right when he says there is just a limited number of viable alternatives. But hair... hair is far worse. Considering all the shocking things human beings have done with their hair in shape, length, mass and color (facial hair very much included) I tremble imagining the unthinkable, blasphemous hairstyles the future could bring.

Just try to see in your minds the first human beings in another solar system wearing walrus mustaches big enough to make Friedrich Nietzsche cry, or twin ponytails. Or walruses _and_ ponytails; unisex for maximum impact...

Cordwainer said...

Seems like it might be possible for hereditary monarchies or at least dictatorships to develop in a postmodern or futuristic setting. North Korea is practically an example of one. Not all such monarchies might absolutist or repressive in nature either, case in point The Empire Of Brazil. I suppose that if Interstellar settlement were done by Generation Ship or DNA Arks that such governments might be common. Also if most of the planet ignore Mars as a possible outpost for settlement and goes for the more easily attainable mineral wealth from say the Moon, Mercury and Asteroids then one could posit that a politically isolationists nation or group might try to create their form of utopia on Mars if given ample reason to migrate and if the technology were advanced enough to make the move cheap.

Cordwainer said...

Regarding reserve powers and inherited wealth.

Personally I'm of the opinion that reserve powers might be safer in the hands of a hereditary monarchy than the military or a commander in chief. As we have seen in many countries particularly in Latin America and Africa reserve powers in the hands of an Executive leader has often lead to the redrawing of constitutions through their control of parliament, thus leading to dictatorship. Similarly divestment of special powers to a Generalisimo or triumvirate of Generals has often led to military coups and civil war. In cases where those reserve powers are limited and the Royalty has relatively limited political power like Great Britain or the Empire of Brazil the likelihood of Prince to President and President to dictator is greatly lessened. Admittedly there are instances of it like under Napoleon III and the Bourbons of France in the 19th century but there descent into repressive dictatorship was slower, ineffectual and more benign than most dictators.

On the subject of inherited wealth, while I think family businesses and nepotism have positive effects for society I think generational wealth or multi-generational wealth through economic or political mechanisms has a tendency to make the free-market more oligarchic and less free. If you want more capitalism then you need more capitalists. That's distributionism not communism. Technically they are both forms of socialism with facism being the extremist form of distributionism that leads to either crony capitalism or the national socialism of the Nazism. None of these forms of government are necessarily bad since bad government is actually the result of who is in charge and has little to do with the illogical argument of political exeptionalism. Personally I think you have to be careful with subsidizing the market though. If the government exerts too much control on the market or special interests have too much control of the government you start to move toward national socialism or crony capitalism both forms of government that are highly susceptible to corruption, the kinds of corruption that make Ponzi schemes and Teapot Dome scandals look tame in comparison since they would effect even larger segments of the population in dangerous and even deadly ways. Increasing Inheritance Taxes and reforming the patent/copyright system and putting price controls on licensing, broadcasting and distribution rights to create a more fair playing field I think would be an effective strategy in controlling multi-generational wealth. Of course you have to allow some multi-generational wealth or the Bill Gates Jr. and Steve Jobs of the world would never had the capital to start their businesses or would have been dependent on government hand outs. Inheritance taxes should be higher but not too high, and both business-related taxes and taxes related to saving wealth should be relatively low. The government can subsidize industry but there need to be clear restrictions and aims to such subsidies. If large amounts are going to large business there need to be strings attached and smaller businesses should get the greatest part of subsidies and tax breaks.

Also, as for what Rick said the Kings of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth would be a better example of a President for life than the Byzantine monarchs since many Byzantine Emperors often influenced the selection of their successors whether successfully or through compromise. Also during the later years of the Byzantine Empire the empire was more like the Shogunate of Japan with a Imperial figurehead that sometimes acted as Commander-in-Chief over a number of Feudal quasi-states.

Cordwainer said...

Liberal Arts are not not Sciences? I've always thought that Liberal arts should be called Humanities. The Quadrivium is definitely a study of hard sciences while the trivium is a study in quantitave sciences that are still more an "art" than science. Certainly "Social Sciences" have not become as developed as the "Hard Sciences" but that does not mean they won't be in the future or don't have there validity for modern use. As for Rick's book didn't a similar situation arise in England after the death of Henry I.

Thucydides said...

Moving forward here, this blog post by author Karl Schroder suggests some alternatives to the currently fashionable "Singularity/Dystopia" divide which is populr in SF these days. While you may not agree with what he says, it does open up new avenues of approach:

http://www.kschroeder.com/weblog/archive/2011/08/22/i-am-the-very-model-of-a-singularitarian

Anonymous said...

Grognak re: "Regarding inherited wealth I confess I was waiting for someone to impersonate Charles Laughton and say "Objection. Your Lordship, the witness is advocating Communism". But it isn't, or at least it would be a very peculiar form of Communism"

Yes it wouldn't be anything like the standard form of comunism, but it does share with communism a complete disregard for property rights, with property being taken and reallocated by the government rather than truly being privately owned. Bill Gates might be just as rich, but a legal and political system that decides it can take it all upon his death, is probably also granting itself the power to take it all before then, just perhaps choosing not to exercise that power.