The Inscrutability of Angels

[Buster's Uncle]

Empire by Orson Scott Card.

Taking the bull by the horns -I've noticed that my enjoyment of Card's always-excellent work has been decidedly hurt since I found out he went all Miller after the thing happened in New York 12 years ago- I picked up a novel by him that I knew was about the American political Left and Right having a civil war.  I started it late last night and finished it, bumping 400 pages, a few hours ago.

...I could write all day about all the crap the man is wrong about in the book, about the ridiculous false premises throughout and a million things in the story that I don't believe for a second, but the fact remains that I kept reading, because it's good anyway.  This would make a fantastic Tom Clancy-ish movie, the sort of thing that stars Ben Afleck and Samuel L. Jackson.  It's got strong elements of buddy adventure, political thriller, and plenty of sequences that would make strong movie chase scenes, yet work as prose.  Lots of snappy, often funny, dialogue, too. 

Card still pisses me off, not least for a hypocritical afterword from a man too smart to be such a hypocrite and not know it, but gosh, when he's good, he's the best.  Recommended if you think you can stomach the politics - he clearly bent over backwards to try to be fair, and just as clearly doesn't know how badly he failed.  But still, I already finished it, because it worked so well as a story that my need to throw the book across the room in disgust lost out to my need to turn the page and read more 355 times in a row.

Empire by Orson Scott Card.

Card still pisses me off, not least for a hypocritical afterword from a man too smart to be such a hypocrite and not know it, but gosh, when he's good, he's the best.  Recommended if you think you can stomach the politics - he clearly bent over backwards to try to be fair, and just as clearly doesn't know how badly he failed.  But still, I already finished it, because it worked so well as a story that my need to throw the book across the room in discust lost out to my need to turn the page and read more 355 times in a row.

/.../

But yes, not very science-fictiony, and no one less conservative than me, let alone less American, will understand the book at all.  It's still really good. Caveat emptor.

Hey, I've read that book and I think I understood it, in spite of being considerably less American and, well, maybe equally non-conservative. It was fascinating to see how little of the world Card understands, though. And while it's a good yarn (Card is an amazing story-teller - in that way he's probably the most worthy successor of Heinlein) I wouldn't really recommend it, if only because there are so many other books that are more rewarding, not the least many of Card's other books; even the shadow novels, the ones that retell the Ender story from another perspective, are a lot better.

I wonder what you mean when you say that Card is a hypocrite. In my view, the scary thing about him has always been that he seems to believe in what he says. 

That's precisely the point, though - a man to whom truth is so important, who has long written about finding truth, has cast his lot in with the murderous, fascistic, liars of the right.  That afterward is false premises and false moral equivalence from beginning to end - being slightly more even-handed in his portrayal of the political climate than Rush Limbaugh is not the same as being even-handed, and anyone who thinks criticizing  Bush Jr. is bad has lost all acquaintance with truth, indeed, the American Way.

He was a hypocrite for making himself out to be fair in writing a book where liberals are the bad guys.  Do that, fine -the right is so far gone into fantasy that they just well write them up as stories- but don't pretend you're being fair.  Don't pretend that the most rapaciously, nakedly, evil administration of my entire life -and I'm old enough to remember Nixon- is headed by a decent person who is only criticized by fools and liars.

Card was never a liberal, but used to be reasonable, and mostly made a lot of sense.  It's painful to see yet another good man (and remember, I know him a little in real life; he was always enormously more angry than ever shows in his work, but mostly still sensible) ruined by that thing that happened in New York in 2001.  It just makes me sick and angry and sad.

I can't talk about Card anymore and not talk about the politics - maybe that's on both of us; it's definitely on him.

[ColdWizard]

I was going to ask y'all Paragons of Literature which sci-fi book featured a puzzle game, but I was able to trick google into telling me it was (allegedly) pentominoes in Imperial Earth by Clarke.

[Vishniac]

We all watched Buck Rogers and the real Battlestar Galactica and Space: 1999 ... none very good, especially that last

[Buster's Uncle]

Pooh.  Discuss/argue, don't just growl-and-run, fer chrissakes; you know perfectly well how I hate the drive-bys, but don't mind arguing.

All had their charms, but Space: 1999 was oppressively bad when you re-watch as an adult -which I did, the first season, circa seven years ago- the whole show was literally built around model-shot action sequences of the Eagle - it was made by the Thunderbirds are Go! Anderson family...

I was going to ask y'all Paragons of Literature which sci-fi book featured a puzzle game, but I was able to trick google into telling me it was (allegedly) pentominoes in Imperial Earth by Clarke.

I re-read that one just a few months ago - not Clarke's best, not even his top ten, but Clarke was never terrible.

-If SF featuring games along that line intrigue, OX by Piers Anthony and Glory Season by Greg Bear both sorta center around Life, the latter being a lot better on multiple levels.

[Syn]

You're going to hate me. All I do are drive-bys.

[Buster's Uncle]

Naw - drive-bys are ideal for crap-talking forum comedy, at which you have excellent instincts and fill a niche I've been missing having someone (besides me) fill for the entire life of AC2.


-Glory Season is by Davis Brin, BTW.

[Vishniac]

Space: 1999 was oppressively bad when you re-watch as an adult -which I did, the first season, circa seven years ago- the whole show was literally built around model-shot action sequences of the Eagle - it was made by the Thunderbirds are Go! Anderson family...

Second season I only saw a few episodes.
First season I can remember a lot in details 35 years after watching them. It wasn't oppressively bad: it was oppressive!

Almost no humor. A lot of deaths. Philosophical themes making you think for hours.
Often the show was bordering on horror, either visual or told:
- the guy possessed by an energy life-form sucking life out of people until it burnt himself inside the nuclear reactor
- the last survivors of a planet passed by a Project-Orion earth probe and who seeked vengeance
- the guy who wanted to ride back to earth but didn't have time to properly cryogenize and was left screaming in the dark until, we imagine, he died of thirst, hunger and despair.

It had something of the original Star Trek but without any lightness, flirting and good words. At the episode's end, they were left wondering why and what if, journeying without hope farther into space. A dark show...

-If SF featuring games along that line intrigue, OX by Piers Anthony and Glory Season by Greg Bear both sorta center around Life, the latter being a lot better on multiple levels.

About SF and games, I bought for a younger brother "Carrion Comfort" by Dan Simmons. I never read it but he said it was good. I know it's about games because its French title is "The Evil Chessboard".

[Lorizael]

I remember watching some Space: 1999 reruns when I was younger. I don't remember much except me not being able to get over the premise.

[Buster's Uncle]

There's a go-round a few years ago with me and Geo where I pointed out the science of the premise was so bad I was shouting at the TV during the pilot, age 11.  That would have destroyed Earth - twice over.  -And I knew it instantly. at. 11. - and adults made it and aired it anyway.

(There's a post-apocalypse adventure/quest Earth: 1999 sequel idea in that...)

Space: 1999 was oppressively bad when you re-watch as an adult -which I did, the first season, circa seven years ago- the whole show was literally built around model-shot action sequences of the Eagle - it was made by the Thunderbirds are Go! Anderson family...

Second season I only saw a few episodes.
First season I can remember a lot in details 35 years after watching them. It wasn't oppressively bad: it was oppressive!

Almost no humor. A lot of deaths. Philosophical themes making you think for hours.
Often the show was bordering on horror, either visual or told:
- the guy possessed by an energy life-form sucking life out of people until it burnt himself inside the nuclear reactor
- the last survivors of a planet passed by a Project-Orion earth probe and who seeked vengeance
- the guy who wanted to ride back to earth but didn't have time to properly cryogenize and was left screaming in the dark until, we imagine, he died of thirst, hunger and despair.

It had something of the original Star Trek but without any lightness, flirting and good words. At the episode's end, they were left wondering why and what if, journeying without hope farther into space. A dark show...

-If SF featuring games along that line intrigue, OX by Piers Anthony and Glory Season by Greg Bear both sorta center around Life, the latter being a lot better on multiple levels.

About SF and games, I bought for a younger brother "Carrion Comfort" by Dan Simmons. I never read it but he said it was good. I know it's about games because its French title is "The Evil Chessboard".

That sums a lot of the suck up nicely.

I like the say in the average first season episode (I recall the second season with Maya the alien metamorph being better to my very young sensibilities, but the first season burned us out before we rewatched more) half or all the crew of Moonbase Alpha  would get killed in the middle - and then the wizard would die at the end and everything reset - that's literally more than one episode described...

[Elok]

Re: hypocrisy, I don't think it's reasonable to expect smart people to be less hypocritical.  If anything, I'd expect the reverse, or at least some sort of bell-curve effect, since intelligence lets you handle more complex ideas and thus allows ever finer distinctions to be parsed as to why it's different in your personal case.  I think everyone's a hypocrite to some extent.  Remember the last election, when everyone said with a straight face that we needed to elect Bill Clinton's wife to show the world that we don't turn a blind eye to sexual predators?

I read Empire, thought it was open-minded by Card's low-bar wackadoo standards.  Then read Hidden Empire and found it was a completely different book with an essentially unrelated plot which just happened to have certain common characters.  Because Card got ambushed by an idea halfway through writing and felt compelled to jam it into his current WIP come hell or high water.  He can be bad about that.

[Buster's Uncle]

Remember the last election, when everyone said with a straight face that we needed to elect Bill Clinton's wife to show the world that we don't turn a blind eye to sexual predators?

Nossir, I don't remember a single soul before you saying that.

[Buster's Uncle]

I'll award five internets to anyone who can satisfactorily work out and explain how Space: 1999 was even faintly possible...

(I think a wizard did it.)

Maybe we should explain for the younger ones, BU.

The premise of Space:1999 was that the moon left Earth orbit and became it's own planet. That is not that bad. Thre are things that can knock moons out of orbit and the Moon IS traveling AWAY at 1 cm a year.

The way the story has it is that nuclear waste from Earth stored in mass bulk on a part of the Moon blew up. The explosion rocketed the Moon out of orbit with inhabitants of a moonbase still on the Moon.

Yes, and my point is that in just the first episode, the Moon is knocked of into space, and on the way out of the solar system Moonbase Alpha sees a newscast from Earth about the tidal disaster caused by the Moon leaving. 

Yeah.  Something well over half the human race and closer to 90% of the broadcast news facilities are situated on a coast, and if that happened to the Moon, they'd most all be dead in hours.  Alpha might catch a local newscast from Colorado, and it would be all Armageddon, not widespread disaster.  This is assuming it's traveling, at that point, slow enough for speed of light transmissions to catch up, slow enough that doppler effects don't screw up the frequency too bad for the communications system to adjust.

And at the beginning of the second hour, the Moon arrives in a new solar system, having traveled FTL, and dawdles there long enough for some Eagle flights and an adventure...

Yeah.  Something well over half the human race and closer to 90% of the broadcast news facilities are situated on a coast, and if that happened to the Moon, they'd most all be dead in hours.  Alpha might catch a local newscast from Colorado, and it would be all Armageddon, not widespread disaster.  This is assuming it's traveling, at that point, slow enough for speed of light transmissions to catch up, slow enough that doppler effects don't screw up the frequency too bad for the communications system to adjust.

- The broadcast would most likely be satellite-enhanced, not coming from Earth's surface directly.
- I don't remember if searises were mentioned as the disaster. It could as well be that lots of harbors became less accessible because tides are lower. For instance, the Schelde river here in the lowlands can only carry huge container ships during high tide. Economic rather then natural disaster thus.
- Alpha would always be able to catch speed of light transmissions. It is matter, so always traveling slightly slower then electromagnitic signals.
- descrambling a signal (if strong enough) only needs a good doppler filter to make it intelligable. The newscast becoming garbled while the Alpha crew was watching only means they crossed a signal strength boundary when it was received.

And at the beginning of the second hour, the Moon arrives in a new solar system, having traveled FTL, and dawdles there long enough for some Eagle flights and an adventure...

Blame "the story is larger then real physics" syndrome here.

But the studio was on Earth, probably within 20 miles of a sea coast, and ain't there to film the show no more.

You're not even talking sensible physics about what would happen if the Moon's pull suddenly vanished.  All the high and low tides in the world would suddenly seek a new equilibrium, i.e., God's Own Apocalyptic Tidal Wave happens in every body of water on Earth large enough to have tides.  Which would travel hundreds of miles inland up the major rivers.  -Good for your career, if you work in TV news in Denver or Ulan Bator.

You'd be one of the dead, along with everyone in Belgium.

Incidentally, most every fault on Earth just had the biggest earthquake it could.  This occurred to me when I was 11.  The entire Pacific rim is uninhabitable for hundreds of years because of the volcanoes.  And the ash cloud ruins the environment everywhere in the whole world for at least ten years.

And if the Moon didn't move away from Earth exactly straight out, all the water got a sideways twist, making it a lot worse.  We're talking easily three-four billion dead in weeks, assuming current population levels.

-And it gets better.  Where did the push come from?  The side of the Moon away from Earth.  The Moon got a lot closer to Earth on its way out.  On top of how THAT would exacerbate the effects on Earth, it's a bad day to be in LEO, the trojan  points, or anywhere nearby.

Earth: 1999 would be a possibility for a post-apocalyptic spin-off...

-Finally, the Moon inexplicably travels at varying velocities even in that one episode, so Alpha would NOT always be able to do anything.  Koening and crew don't die of old age between episodes, so FTL between stars, not so much while near them.  This is the fundamental WTF of the show, BTW.

The newscast alone doesn't work, because that wasn't a guy at some mountainous inland station reporting the end of the world.  At the most top-crack, professional operation imaginable, there'd be people constantly handing the anchor bulletins, and a thinly-veiled atmosphere of near-hysteria - at best.  I've worked professionally as a journalist, and have a degree in broadcasting, for what appeal to authority that's worth.

[Elok]

C'mon, don't be tiresome, you know what I mean.  The [cat]-grabbing tape comes out, and everyone's horrified.  You see scores of people on the Left arguing that we can't possibly elect a man with that kind of attitude towards women--ignoring the fact that his opponent's husband has spent his career dogged by accusations of worse, and admitted to a "consensual" relationship with a girl half his age and fifty ranks lower on the White House totem pole.  After the election was done, the MeToo spotlight turned retroactively onto Bill--but it would never have touched him during the election proper, because that would be party disloyalty.  Everyone's a hypocrite somehow.  The more interesting question is how we react when our hypocrisy is pointed out.

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm not being tiresome.

My mommies calling, so back soon on that...

[Lorizael]

Everyone's a hypocrite somehow.  The more interesting question is how we react when our hypocrisy is pointed out.

I agree that everyone's a hypocrite, but I think the reason why is largely to do with the world being too complex and interconnected for us to be morally uncompromised. I don't think the answer is to not care about hypocrisy, though; I think the answer is to realize we have almost no power to produce unalloyed, certain good and should therefore focus our attention elsewhere.

(An easy refutation is, duhhhh everything's uncertain, but we can measure uncertainty. If the odds of some act being morally positive are good, do the bleeping act, man. My answer to that is I think the complexity of the world makes the uncertainty significantly greater than we realize in a butterfly -> hurricane kind of way.)