John C. Wright's Journal

Whole another ball of wax. Please see what the often-imitated-but-never-eradicated SF luminary John Scalzi has to say about Heinlein’s pay rates back in the golden years of the Pulps.

As a follow up to my last post, let me mention that there are now a lot more really-actually known worlds on which a modern Hal Clement can put his next realistic aliens. See here:

http://www.strangehorizons.com/2007/20070730/perrin-c.shtml

Thus the scientific community was stunned by the announcement in 1995 of the detection of a Jupiter-mass planet in a four-day orbit, whipping around at a rocket’s pace just barely above the stellar surface. This planet—now called 51 Pegasi b—is at least half the mass of Jupiter, orbits ten times closer to its star than Mercury is to our own sun, and has an atmosphere at a roasting hot 1200 K. To the naked eye, it would glow like an ember, shrouded in clouds of molten metal and rock vapor.

No more need to invent goofy planets like Trenco or Ploor! It turns out that molton superjovial bodies are common, as are planets with a more-than-Plutonian eccentricity. In other words, there is plenty of authentic and interesting scientific material to be turned into tales of space-knights rescuing space-princesses from space-warlocks. The reason why we write science fiction is that the real warlockery of what is likely to happen is more awe inspiring (or terrifying)  than any spells of Atlantes or Prospero.

Here is an article on a topic science fiction fans have some interest in. The death of Science Fiction. Mr. Richard Harter says

Why was science fiction as a genre invented and developed in the twentieth century (we may ignore Moskowitz’s “scholarship”); why not substantially earlier? As an answer consider the changing conceptions of “the future”.

Prior to the industrial revolution there was no significant conception of the future being essential different from the present with the exception of millennarian visions. Empires might rise and fall; prosperity might wax and wane; et cetera; but the thought that the future would be different in kind from the present was a thought that did not occur to people to think. Insofar as people thought of change over time they tended to think of it as degeneration over time with a golden age in the misty past.

In the wake of the industrial revolution we see the Victorian notion of progress. This was a thought of change but one in these terms – the future will be like the present only better. It is only in the twentieth century that possibility of the future being different in kind from the present and that technology would effect this change became plausible, at least to visionaries (and in part science fiction is a literature of visionaries.)

My opinion: I also think that science fiction will die off as a genre, not because it will be gone, but only because it will no longer be unique. It will be absorbed into the mainstream. Once the common man is used to technological change as a fact of life, literature whose main point is awe and wonder or fear of technological change will not stand out.

We have already seen this, for example, in spy fiction. A recent James Bond movie had an invisible car. HG Wells’ wrote a story about an invisible man. Wells’ story was SF because he speculated scientifically about what the invisible men of myth would actually have to be like to be plausibly invisible: i.e. naked. Wells also asked what invisibility could plausibly be used for: i.e. terror. The invisible car of James Bond, on the other hand, was merely a gadget. What had once been a challenge to the imagination, was now a background gimmick. People outside the SF ghetto are using our tropes.
 
And this trend is paralleled within the ghetto by what we might call the “de-scientification of science fiction.”

Someone explain the references to me in Order of the Stick number 388. I am a square. I don’t get it. Fenix down?

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0388.html

Let no one think I am a proponent of ‘Mundane SF’: As far as I am concerned, if it does not involve space travel, it is not science fiction.

Instead of trying to give any sort of reasoning to support this standard, I have decided to use a lot of exclamation points, which makes my assertion invulnerable to counter-argument. It is one of the things I learned on the Internet !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 

The conversation with randallsquared is a bit awkward to have in a live journal format, because comments and answers get scatter across several threads. Let me try to draw the conversation back to the central point.

“I do, in fact, argue that “consciousness is an aggregate property of elements that are unconscious.” It may be that this will turn out not to be the case, somehow, but the example of so many things which were assumed to be caused directly by consciousness which turned out to be explainable by reference only to material entities suggests to me that consciousness itself will be similarly explainable.”

Here is the crux of the matter. One water molecule is not wet, but it does have van der Waals forces that can be measured. If I add together water molecules in sufficient number, those van der Waals forces cause a certain behavior of the water molecules which we call “fluid”. The wetness of water is due to the adhesion of the individual properties of the molecules: there is no gap, no jump, no mystery. The way water behaves on a macroscopic scale is a direct property and one that can be deduced from the microscopic properties.

Likewise, one man cannot be a crowd or have a crowd-density. When he is with fifty men in a fifty-square-foot space, he is in a crowd, and a property that the crowd has, crowd-density, can be measured: one per square foot.

One thing we can measure that takes place in time and space—a van der Waals force— defines or describes another thing we can measure that takes place in time and space—wetness. Both the viscosity of a fluid and its surface tension and its melting and boiling points are open to measurement.

One the other hand, no amount of adding together horizontal magnitudes can create even one inch of vertical magnitude. This is because a horizontal line has no height, none at all, so putting more and more horizontal lines end to end will not create a vertical line.

The example is more egregious if we are talking about two measurements that have nothing to do with each other: a Euclidean figure does not have mass. The abstract idea of a Square does not have weight. It exists purely as an abstract concept in the realm of ideas. It is perceived in our brains but obviously it is not physically somewhere inside our brains.

It can be proved that “Squares” do not exist in our brains by the simple expedient: shoot a mathematician so his brain stops working. Do Squares now have seven sides rather than four? Is a square constructed on the diagonal of a given square no longer twice the area? (Since this is somewhat of a violent experiment, perhaps we can conduct it only in hypothesis.)

I would disagree that ‘truthness’ (not to be confused with ‘truthiness’ ;] ) is not a physical property. All existing properties are ultimately physical. The truth of a statement does require a far more complex instrument to determine than the wetness of water, I’ll admit, but that doesn’t mean that it’s somehow beyond measurement and experiment.

‘Understanding’ involves processes which I do not personally understand, but just as many things previously thought to be mystical or non-physical have been shown to be explainable via physical processes and entities, I am confident that ‘understanding’ (and ‘consciousness’) will also be so shown.

“All existing properties are ultimately physical.” 

I respectfully disagree, and for this reason. You are stating an article of faith, or perhaps a conclusion of metaphysics, but not a conclusion of science. If you know, not merely opine, that all statements can be reduced to statements about physical properties, then this knowledge is necessary and logical, not contingent. You are not uttering a conclusion proved to you by an empirical investigation. There is nothing you looked at in a telescope or microscope which taught you this idea.

If all properties were ultimately physical, the statement, “all properties are ultimately physical” could not be true, because it could be made false by altering a physical property.

Do you understand? Physical properties are contingent, not necessary. Twice two is necessarily four; it is four under all times places and conditions. The hue of a billiard ball is contingent. The same ball can be painted black on Tuesday, but repainted on Wednesday, so that it is yellow.

So if  “all properties are ultimately physical” is a statement about material properties, as “the ball is painted black”, then something could be done– a reorganization of brain atoms or something of the sort, let us call it The White Event — to make it a true statement that “not all properties are ultimately physical.”

Now, given that, how do you know that we do not live in a post-White Event universe?

Out of all possible combinations of matter and energy the universe could possibly contain, how do you know this one we actually inhabit at this period in cosmic evolution is one where it happens to be the case that all properties are ultimately physical? 

Is there any arrangement of matter and energy even theoretically possible such that the statement, “all statements are ultimately about physical properties” happens to be false in that time and place or under those circumstances? If your answer is “no”, I will refer you to Karl Popper. Any statement that cannot be disproven in an experiment is not scientific.

randallsquared and I seem not to be able to communicate. This could be because our brain-atoms are not in the same patterns. I suspect it is because our concepts are not agreed on certain points of logic and truth, but we shall see:

“(quoting me) “Well, my point here is that not only is ‘honesty’ not a fluid, we do not have the faintest idea what it is. And yet you and I (both honest, reasonable, well-read men) do not yet even agree on whether honesty it has a physical basis AT ALL.”

(Randall replies) I would have thought that we could agree that ‘honesty’ itself is a description of how some brains act, and that the concept of it is constructed of neurons and their associated chemicals and charges, being a separate construction in each person’s brain.”

Honesty is not  a description of how brains act. “Sleepers enter REM sleep during Delta wave activity” is a description of how brains act. “He said he was awake at his post, but he fell asleep,” is a description of dishonesty.

Not only can I not agree with this, I do not even begin to understand how you or anyone else can agree with it. It sounds like pure gibberish to me.

I mean no offense! When something sounds like gibberish that is a warning bell that one of us (or both) is making a fundamental assumption the other cannot see.  We have axiomatic differences of philosophy. It behooves us, not to dismiss each other as crackpots, but to see if we can find these hidden, unspoken axioms. 

Specifically, I think there is a distinction I am making between when is necessarily the case versus what is contingently the case, and you are talking about the fact that symbols and signs are carried or conveyed in matter, from which you make the leap that all the properties of the ideas thus carried can be expressed in material terms. I do not see that leap because it is paradoxical; I am assuming you do not see it because you take it for granted. Let me expand, and you can tell me if my assumption is a misunderstanding.  We are talking about two different topics

Let me see if I can get us both on the same topic.

I propose three basic ideas. 1. Material things exists. 2. Conceptual meanings exist. 3. The one is not the other.

Read the remainder of this entry »

The gentlemen over at Inchoatus have a review of the Earthsea books by Le Guin which captures my sentiment exactly:

Le Guin’s books are almost more poetry than novel. She speaks with the wisdom of a philosopher but the voice of a poet and for that her characters resonate far, far more than all but a very few works by other authors.

They are more complimentary of my books than fair, but one cannot argue against such flattery without being accused of false modesty.

They also have the cleverest and clearest system of book reviews I have seen, where they are grading the work on genre influence, who should read and who should not, and they also contrast their reviews with others’.

The wife and I took our three munchkins to the bookstore at midnight to buy the last Harry Potter book. I figured that such an event would never come again in our lifetimes, since there has been a social phenomenon nothing like the Potter books in our lifetimes. I have heard of fans lining up at movies or rock concerts at midnight to see a show, but who ever heard of such furious delight over a mere book?

For those of you who were ten years old in 1997, when HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE came out, and who are now 20-year-olds, this series has been with you your whole reading life. Now it concludes.

My wife and I read aloud to each other, and so we spent the whole weekend curled up with HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS. We were afraid to go out of the house, for fear any of the surprises would be spoiled.

Our fears were not without merit. On the day, for example, when HARRY POTTER AND THE HALFBLOOD PRINCE came out, I was at the barbers getting my beard shaved. The barber had tucked a cloth over my arms so that I could not raise my hands, for example, to plug my ears. The television was tuned to MTV. Instead of showing us videos of halfclad starlets singing rock songs, as they ought, MTV decided to run a ‘new’ piece where a giggling blond simply screamed out the surprises in that book amid gales of laughter. It was deliberately meant to ruin things for anyone who happened to overhear: I overheard, because I had no choice. There has been enmity between MTV and the Wright Household since that day, between their seed and my seed.

I notice, by the way, that even reviews with no spoilers contain spoilers. For example, the mere fact that I knew THE SIXTH SENSE had a surprise twist ending allowed me to figure out the surprise, which I would not have otherwise. So you cannot even say whether you liked the book or where disappointed, because that will tell readers what to expect.

However I will make one or two comments about the book, which I will hide beneath the cut.

SPOILERS BELOW

I cannot compliment Ursula K. Le Guin without giving equal time to a superior writer: John Holbrook Vance to you Detective story fans, Jack Vance to you Slans.

He is best known, perhaps unfairly, for his comical and dolorous DYING EARTH sequence, where learned mages expend recondite mystic effects upon each other, and haunted cities crumble in the faint rose light of a dying sun: peevish monsters skulk in the perfumed jungles, and erudite footpads will explain the metaphysical principle of detachment from worldly goods as they make off with yours. No one’s language matches Vance’s for richness, strangeness, sheer music, eloquent dry irony.

And yet I honestly call Jack Vance’s science fiction better than his fantasy, and there is nothing in the whole life of Cugel the Clever as moving and insightful as, for example, one afternoon on Dinkum’s Heights of the young Ghyl Tarvoke of Ambroy, staring in hunger at the space yatchs on the field below, or up at the aeries of the Lords. EMPHYRIO is perhaps his best. it is quite simply a grand theme, masterfully understated: one man’s search for the truth. The legend of Emphyrio, who was slain for truth, haunts him.

I am not sure if it counts as ‘Space Opera’ or ‘Planetary Romance’ but I strongly recommend and urge anyone who has not read it to pick up the ‘Planet of Adventure’ series by Jack Vance: the titles are CITY OF THE CHASCH, SERVANTS OF THE WANKH, THE DIRDIR, THE PNUME. It concerns the adventures of a downed space pilot on a world where the human serfs have imitated the cultures and psychologies of their non-human high-tech masters, four alien races locked in a stalemated war. The text is rich with all the inventiveness Jack Vance can bring to bear on societies intricate and delicate as a Faberige egg–there is a strong theme of self-reliance and a yearning for liberty typical of Vance.

Something more space-ish is ‘The Demon Princes’ series. The Demon Princes are five master criminals– easily the most memorable villains in spaceoperadom — who cooperated to raid, enslave and destroy the now-dead world Mount Pleasant. The one survivor of the raid has been raised and trained his whole life to be an instrument of vengeance.

Part detective novel, part romance, part tour de force, all wonder, Vance paints a unique picture of galactic society. He postulates that, no matter how lawful the core stars are, in space there must always be a frontier, a ‘Beyond the Pale’ beyond which no law and order exists, and whole planets devoted to piracy and slavery will always linger. Expanding the sphere of civilization merely moves ‘The Pale’ a little further away.

The five books are THE STAR KING, THE KILLING MACHINE, THE PALACE OF LOVE, THE FACE and THE BOOK OF DREAMS.

You life will be missing something if you do not drink rose wine with Navarth, the Mad Poet, or listen in horror as the Sarkoy venefices explain the intricacies of their art to you, or discover why the henchmen of Howard Alan Treesong are more fearsome when dressed in white.

In the recent debate in this journal on the wisdom and civility of using cuss-talk in stories, I decided to offer my humble opinion in favor of cleaner language–this by way of confession, because I thought, in hindsight, that one of my books stepped over the line.

It was with no surprise that I discovered vocal opposition. One cannot say anything in favor of the culture these days without provoking the haughty scorn of the counter-culture. Frankly, I do not believe the opposition is honest, and that belief, unfortunately tempted me to answer scorn with scorn, a temptation I did not stumble into so much as run eagerly, leap and swan-dive into.

Putting scorn aside for the moment, one serious question that was raised was whether a writer could portray servicemen with the unblinking honesty demanded of realistic fiction without including their typical earthiness of language.

I was reminded of that debate when I read this, written by an officer in his web journal:

I was in Dallas Ft. Worth airport waiting to catch a flight on the last leg of my TDY trip to help a returning unit at Ft. Sill. As I went to my gate, I saw 4 Sailors in their black uniforms gathered at the gate…one was large and white, the other three were black. There was very little room, and many of them were standing intermingled with civilian airline passengers. As this was close to Christmas time, I figured they were on a break from IET and were heading home for Christmas Exodus. None had rank on their sleeves, so that confirmed my suspicions that they were in initial training. As I approached the group I heard a lot of loud talking, laughing, and a lot of profanity. In particular, one Sailor was on a cell phone talking to someone about some sort of exploratory obstetrics he was going to perform on his “baby mama” when he got to the “crib”. A lady was standing nearby with a baby in arms and what apppeared to be a 5 or 6 year old boy. She looked bothered by all of the commotion. I was particularly embarassed because the loudest and most vulgar one was black, I was also embarassed because they were military acting in an unseemly manner. (I was in civilian clothes as I traveled)I walked over to them and said,

“Hey guys, would you mind watching your language and keeping it down a little? There are a bunch of kids around here.”

There was an instant mood of irritation that came over the whole group, but nobody said anything. The particularly large white Sailor looked at me and said,

“Look man, we’re in the military…we talk like that, it’s just part of it. We defend your right to free speech so don’t try and stop ours. (give me a break you little boot camp punk I thought….) If you don’t like it go somewhere else!”

At this point, the top of the pot boiled over, but I kept my cool. I reached into my pocket and flipped open my wallet and said,

Okay Sailor, if you want to play the military game that’s fine with me. My name is First Lieutenant Smith, I’m giving you a direct order to quiet down and cease with the profanity. When you wear that uniform you are supposed to set the example, not act like a bunch of reform school rejects. I want the language cut out..NOW! Understand me?

There was silence in the group of Sailors and silence from most everyone at the gate. I waited for a moment and said,

“I’m not sure how they do it in the Navy, but in the Army when an Officer gives an order to a Junior Enlisted man and asks him if he understands, the Enlisted Man responds with ‘Yes Sir, or No, Sir’..what’s it going to be?”

A paragraph or two later, this tidbit caught my eye:

I asked him for his unit of assignment, and I demanded his military ID, I wrote down his Social, and told him that I was going to contact his unit commander. (I never did, I thought about it but changed my mind.)

When I gave him his ID back he turned to sit, and I barked at him and said,

“Get out of that seat and let that lady sit down.”

She politely declined, but mouthed the words,

“Thank you.”

In other words, an officer and a gentleman.

It is worth reading the whole thing, because this same officer keeps his cool when one of the sailors refers to him as a ‘nigga’ (A word that even the mavens of Political Correctness will admit is less than perfectly civil, despite their desire to demean the rest of the language to a gutter level.)

Now, the behavior of this officer was more in keeping with what I remember from my days on post than the stream of filth that comes from the pen of ‘authentic’ modern writers. In combat, or in emergency, it might be different, and I do think the infrequent swear  word might be the only right word for a character to use: call this the “Rhett Butler” exception. What I remember from my youth on post was military courtesy that civilians would do well to imitate: those boys were squared away.

This should give a second thought to anyone who opines that a love of clean language or a respect for women and children is something our brave young fighting men do not or should not share.

( Of course, this officer was an Army guy dressing down Navy guys, and my loyalties are required to go with the Navy. He was right to tell these sailors to clean up their act, but we will still beat you at the Army-Navy game, ya landlubber. GO NAVY! )

This man’s level of courtesy, once ubiquitous, is now as rare as Sahara rain. I have been in crowded rooms at science fiction conventions, for example, and I was the only one get up and offer his seat to a lady, even if the lady were blind, lame, or pregnant. Disgraceful. The Culture Wars are over, and our side lost, so women are treated like dirt, and the weaker they are, the more in need, the worse they are treated. You’ve come a long way, baby.

I notice, by the way, that all the arguments used in favor of dirtying up a book or movie with Anglo Saxon expressions of excretion, copulation, and perdition, could also be used in favor of colorful expressions for African-Americans, persons of alternate sexual orientation, and differently-abled persons. Can anyone draw the distinction for me? For example: If the censors ought to allow Starbuck on the new Battlestar Galactica to say, “I am going to kick the shit out of you,” during a catfight with Boomer, on the ground that it is honest and realistic, why can’t she also say, “I am going to kick the shit out of you, you slanty-eyed Chink bitch.” ? Is the one really less offensive or less realistic than the other? Let me ask a more pointed question: is there really any grounds for political correctness aside from a Marxist theory that language oppresses certain classes and races, and that correct “party thought” requires correct “party speech”?

(For the record, let me say that, aside from the bad language, no one could actually use a slang term for Boomer that referred to a Chinese ancestry. Not only is the gorgeous Grace Park a Korean, the character of Boomer is from the space colony of Capricorn. She would have to be called some made-up sci-fi slang term: a Cap. For the same reason, Lando Calrissian cannot be called an African-American, or insulted with a slang that referred to Niger. He would have to be called a slang for a man from a galaxy long long ago and far far away– I suggest “Longlong” or “Farf”. Hence: “You betrayed my friend Luke and sold me to a bounty hunter! I am going to kick the shit out of you, you farf nerfherder!”)

(Along these lines, Humans could refer to robots as “bleeps” and robots, of course, could call us “meat puppets.” )

I notice in Robert Heinlein’s HAVE SPACE SUIT WILL TRAVEL is set in Centerville — my home town. It is not far from the spaceport known as Wright Field.
http://www.heinleinsociety.org/concordance/books/hs_hc.htm

Someone asked me my opinion of LeGuin. I thought my reply deserved its own entry.

I think Ursula K LeGuin is very nearly a perfect writer. I cannot wade through the feminist tripe of her more recent books, unfortunately, but I think everyone should read A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA, THE FARTHEST SHORE, THE DISPOSSESSED and LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS. But even in her recent books, her power as a storyteller, if anything, has grown beyond her earlier and more famous works. Read FOUR WAYS TO FORGIVENESS to see a potent and subtle narrative.

As for her literary quality, she has a clean and luminous prose, a simple way of putting across striking characters and scenes and memorable images that a writer of my humble talents cannot even approach, much less imitate. No sentence is confused, no words are jarring, and yet there is a real fire of poetry, a divine fire, in what she writes. Compare her sentences to the bland journalistic style of Robert Heinlein or the tepid intellectual style of Isaac Asimov: you cannot because there is no comparison. The closest comparison one can make is to Ray Bradbury, and even there, she is the superior, because Bradbury often pauses to indulge in strange metaphors or intrusive description.

Her male characters never seem girlish, which is the plague of talentless female authors. Her characters are whole.

She is a mistress of the understatement. Le Guin can draw a tear from your eye merely by describing a scene where an old woman gets out of bed, and the gray light is coming in through the farmhouse windows.

Reading Ursula Le Guin at her best is like watching a ballet: it is so graceful, so seemingly effortless, you forget that you are looking at hard-working female athletes, and you think you are looking at swans.

It is merely a pity that she places her muse in the service of feminism, which is, after all, a rather peevish, unjoyful, and self-centered religion. Like the other members of her religion, she has to periodically interrupt her narrative to genuflect to her gods, and to scorn mine: but since she is a  true craftsman of the first water, her interruptions are nigh unnoticeable.  It is not like reading Ayn Rand or Bob Heinlein. Le Guin never preaches: she has strong opinions, but she shows, not tells.

Her silence is louder than all the thunder and hellfire of preachers like Ayn Rand.  Her sermons are in stones and sunsets, the human souls and distant stars and the other things her quiet pen creates.