Author Archives: Abalieno

The real unreal

You’ve seen me before putting together the most disparate things, while keeping a straight face and a serious tone. So here’s a quote excised from a review of an anime about “magical girls”:

I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of using animation – and paintings, and music, and words, and etc. – to paint not so much the reality of the world, but the essence of it. If we want to see what something truly looks like, we have pictures and video that can do that, but a Van Gogh still holds up because it shows the world as perceived through the artist’s mind. Enzo once referred to Shinkai Makoto’s work as “more real than real”, and it certainly is in the way he meant it, but to me that phrase has always most resonated when an artist deliberately paints the world not as it appears, but how it is. The truth behind it, not just the reality that we see.

If I manage to write a review of “A Dream of Wessex” by Christopher Priest you’ll see how I’m following a red line of mythological journey, across many mediums, cultures, religions, philosophies and so on. That quote is very pertinent.

The basis, or the structure, of this discussion is what I wrote in “The Throne of the Soul” recapitulation. But already in this quote here you should recognize the important element: Cartesian dualism. He describes two ideas, one is the world as “it appears”, and one is the world as it is revealed through “art”.

What’s interesting in that quote is how he makes the fundamental error of inverting the scheme. He makes the distinction between the reality of the world and its essence. And he turns the “more real than real” into the world as it appears and the “truth” behind it.

What is “art” if not “interpretation” of the real? In my partial analysis of Tolkien’s mythology I examined the part about how art is often seen as a god-like creation. The desire to be like the creator. Tolkien explains this as a natural instinct built into human beings. But this deliberate act of creation should be considered as artificial, not natural (or “true”). We do not take the world as it is, we take the world as we want it, reshaping it.

Where do human beings dwell? If “Reality” is out there, then it’s almost impossible for us to reach it. There’s a membrane we aren’t able to breach. Plato’s cave. But for us, living on “this other side”, reality is made of meaning. Of patterns, symbols. To live and understand reality we rebuild it in a form that makes sense to us. This produces an heightened sense of truth. It’s not “deeper”, it’s somewhat heightened. The “truth” behind the apparent reality reveals the truth of the human condition. Not universal truth, or objective, scientific truths, the world out there. It’s the world “in here”, the one you get caged in your head. The one you live in.

A writer, painter or musician, creates a world through a series of signs. This becomes a secondary, separate dimension. With its rules that must usually be consistent. Characters immersed in that world will have to shape their model of reality, interpret things happening around them. They might be poets, musicians, painters. In a delicious recursive self-reference.

All of this features prominently in Malazan, for example. The post-modern aspect is about the “awareness” of the context. Not of the “ceiling of the world”, meaning the boundaries of the artistic creation, but of the interplay of self-reference. Of the writer writing, of the context that contains the created world.

In Malazan this often creates a delicious, playful interplay filled with double-meaning. A scene can be entirely consistent with the level of plot and artistic “sealed” world. And yet it can still be “aware” of where it comes from. Of the “truth” behind the magical trick. Of the writer writing.

This is a scene from “The Bonehunters” that I bet Steven Erikson had lots of fun writing:

Things were not well. A little stretched, are you, Ammanas? I am not surprised. Cotillion could sympathize, and almost did. Momentarily, before reminding himself that Ammanas had invited most of the risks upon himself. And, by extension, upon me as well.

The paths ahead were narrow, twisted and treacherous. Requiring utmost caution with every measured step.

So be it. After all, we have done this before. And succeeded. Of course, far more was at stake this time. Too much, perhaps.

Cotillion set off for the broken grounds opposite him. Two thousand paces, and before him was a trail leading into a gully. Shadows roiled between the rough rock walls. Reluctant to part as he walked the track, they slid like seaweed in shallows around his legs.

So much in this realm had lost its rightful … place. Confusion triggered a seething tumult in pockets where shadows gathered.

I’ve mentioned before, and now is likely public knowledge, that both Ammanas and Cotillion are sometimes used by Erikson to play with this post-modern layer. On the explicit level that quote is consistent with characters and the world, but from my point of view it reads like playful meta-commentary on the writing itself, especially at that point of the overall series.

Maybe Ammanas and Cotillion “roles” are inverted, but this is the book where Erikson has to pick up all the threads he left behind after five volumes. It’s the first real “convergence” on the series as a whole. So, “a little stretched, are you” reads like something Erikson is telling himself, after all that came before and the monumental task still ahead. “The paths ahead were narrow, twisted and treacherous. Requiring utmost caution with every measured step.” This is again the description of where he’s at, writing the story. Meta-commentary on writing the series, self-reflection.

“Ammanas had invited most of the risks upon himself. And, by extension, upon me as well.” This is also the point in time when Esslemont started to publish his own side of the series. So again, it works as meta-commentary. On the sharing of ambitions, and risks.

“So much in this realm had lost its rightful… place.” This may be again about all the things that changed in the course of five volumes. Both in the story and outside it, I guess.

“So be it. After all, we have done this before. And succeeded. Of course, far more was at stake this time. Too much, perhaps.” And here the determination to do it regardless of risks. You definitely can’t hesitate when you’re about to start writing the sixth volume of a ten volumes planned series.

The Shadow realm itself, where Cotillion and Ammanas reside and “scheme”, has similar metaphoric qualities:

Emerging from Shadowkeep, he paused to study the landscape beyond. It was in the habit of changing at a moment’s notice, although not when one was actually looking, which, he supposed, was a saving grace.

It has this dream-like quality. A sort of WYSIATI (What You See Is All There Is). Until things aren’t seen, they lurk in shadows, indistinct. Writing is the same. You put signs on a page. Until those signs aren’t written, nothing exists. And nothing else exists outside what is written. What You Write Is All There Is. The Observer makes reality. The realm of Shadows and Illusions. The illusion of creation.

But then again this treacherous landscape can also concretely refer to the writing itself. Something you are writing may be working well while you are at it. It seems clear, with all the details in your control. But when you are juggling so many different characters and plots, things have a tendency to slip out of control while “you’re not looking” and busy working on some other part. And so the struggle to keep it all together, as if “looking everywhere at the same time”.

“Confusion triggered a seething tumult in pockets where shadows gathered.” This seems describing almost a rebellious behavior of the realm. The moment your grasp slips, the shadows start swarming, threatening what was certain just before. The shape of things. As if you lower your guard, uncertainty devours everything. Including the writer self-doubt. It’s an hostile realm. Cotillion and Ammanas are “usurpers”.

Finally, earlier I saw this link about an interview with David foster Wallace. And in it there’s another link to a different chunk of the interview that I find particularly interesting. DFW also was obsessed about self-reference. This part:

Whereas Cantor, yeah, codifies the transfinite, but Cantor’s paradox is the first step into Godel’s incompleteness and self-reference. It’s at once this beautiful climax of the two hundred years before it and the first note of the funeral dirge for math as something that you can just, ‘You know what, we can explain the entire universe mathematically. All we have to do is come up with the right axioms and the right derivation rules.’ I mean, Cantor’s paradox starts the wheel of self-reference.

I don’t know if you know much about Godel’s incompleteness theorem. But in a lay sense, Godel is able to come up mathematically with a theorem that says, ‘I am not provable.’ And it’s a theorem, which means that math is either not consistent or it’s not complete, by definition. Packed in. He is the devil, for math.

Cantor’s paradox, that whole ‘If it’s not a member of the set, it is a member of the set,’ and then Russell’s paradox about twenty years later, those were the first two . . . You know, when you start coming on a really interesting theme in a piece of music, you usually hear it in echo notes that foreshadow it, those are the foreshadowings. And I don’t imagine Godel would have come up with the self-reference loop if it hadn’t been for Cantor and Russell. [Sotto voce] Whatever. You’re not interested.

“You know, when you start coming on a really interesting theme in a piece of music, you usually hear it in echo notes that foreshadow it, those are the foreshadowings.” That’s a nice description of what I’ve been doing, in my reads and this post too. I’m following this red string that links all these disparate things. It doesn’t matter from which angle you start, because everything leads to everything else.

[Sotto voce] Whatever. You’re not interested.

“Young” Vs “Adult” Fantasy

I’m at about 140 pages into Martin’s A Storm of Swords and once again wondering about the causes of its popularity. I know that this third book is considered by far the best in the series, and that I have to expect things slowing down quite a bit in the next two books, so my expectations here are set very high, maybe that’s why I’ve found those first 140 pages not as the best prelude to the best book. The plot is stuck at the end of the previous book, and Martin needs all those 140 pages merely to go through each PoV to make a summary and set a new starting point.

That’s how you can write a huge 1000+ pages book and still give the impression that not much happened. The structure is rather simple, you have an average of 10-15 pages for each chapter/PoV and it takes about 150 pages to return to one. In the end this produces a 1000 pages book where a single PoV has about 100 pages of available space to tell its story, and 100 pages is the bare minimum to show some development, especially with the kind of detail that Martin writes in. That’s the formula to write these epic sized fantasy books. Just an high number of PoVs, fragmenting the story, but also offering that big breadth one expects precisely from this genre.

My question is why Martin and Jordan series were able to reach a huge popularity and the answer I offer is that both do something similar but from two different angles. I think the keyword is “accessibility”. Martin is popular because his series is what you can easily recommend to all sort of readers. That’s why it’s successful: because it’s a genre novel accessible (and written for) all kinds of readers. You don’t need to be a “genre” reader to engage with Martin story, and so this series can tap into the large audience of general readers.

Whereas Jordan retains a similar level of accessibility. His series also taps directly onto a huge pool of readers: all kinds of adolescent readers. The Wheel of Time has the power to engage all sort of “younger” readers. It’s like a LotR where uncool, clumsy Hobbits are replaced by young future heroes destined to conquer and change the world, becoming celebrities. Because of how it’s built, its strength is about tapping onto a certain audience, in a specific age-range but regardless of whether they are “readers” or not. Or even genre readers. The WoT can convert someone, making him a “reader” in the first place, and a “genre” reader as consequence. It does so because it offers characters and themes that appeal directly to that age-range, it’s the call of the adventure and the writer taking the reader’s hand, offering one of the most immersive and engaging experiences. It’s the stuff younger readers dream about, and it fully embraces it. It gives them the time of their life.

That’s why I used that distinction between “adult” and “young” fantasy. Martin’s series can be seen as representing “adult fantasy” that is extremely popular and successful because it can CONVERT adult readers into “genre” readers. On the other hand Jordan’s series is also hugely popular and successful because it converts readers, but in this case it’s more carefully aimed at an age range. What ASoIaF does for a more adult public, the WoT does for younger readers, recruiting them into “genre”. In both cases, these two series can rise so much in popularity because they draw from a huge pool of readers that aren’t limited by “genre”, and that’s why I’m putting the focus on “accessibility” and “conversion”.

There’s finally another element that plays an important role in all this. It’s usually the writer’s job to engage the reader and make him “care”, keep him reading and turning the pages. But I think this is an illusory description because it overestimates (and romanticizes) the writer’s power and ultimate goal. I think in the best case the writer can only work on the illusion of directing and manipulating the reader’s interest, while it’s probably more correct to say that the writer merely taps and rejuvenates interests that have always been there, with the reader. Like suppressed memories that seem to resurface unbidden. It’s a much more subtle touch, and far less powerful. More sleight of hand than magic.

So why is this sharing of interests important in the case of popularity of these series? Because it’s the real hook that makes possible to reach for that huge pool of readers. Think to Martin’s series. Or even “Fantasy” in general. The common response you get from non-genre readers is: why should I care? Why a normal adult guy who has more immediate concerns should waste hours of his life reading “fantasies”? That’s why the common answer is about conflating Fantasy with “escapism”. It’s the most immediate reaction. But this is also the key to interpret how Martin’s series can be so hugely successful at engaging readers who usually “do not care” about Fantasy. What’s the First Mover in Martin’s series? Family. If you think about it, that’s the whole core. That’s where his series sets its roots. That’s the link to readers who aren’t normally genre readers or have zero interest in reading genre fiction. Its strongest theme is immediately familiar. All the priorities of each characters are simply defined by where he’s born, that will then also define what place he’ll have in the Big Game. Martin has an archetypal grasp on what everyone cares about, and so the possibility to connect with all readers. The first generalized hook that powers the series is about family concerns, mothers worrying about their children. It’s universal even if it’s encased in “fantasy”, and it can immediately engage readers because of its familiarity. The “adult” aspect is merely related to a style. Martin’s series is built on PoVs and these PoVs are selected on a wide range. It’s “adult” because it requires to shift these projections, have interest in this wider range of perspectives, in their breadth and diversity. Adolescents are usually more narrow-minded and self-absorbed to care about what happens outside of themselves (and the WoT reflects this). Then Martin builds the structure of his game by giving voice to different sides, creating contradicting feelings in the readers since there’s not a privileged side the reader can be on (though this is mostly a well crafted illusion).

Compare all this to Jordan and you see why I brought up the “young” angle. The WoT targets younger readers exactly because it selects its PoVs within the narrower range of its expected audience. It more immediately offers PoVs that the reader can recognize and identify with, offering themes that are strong specifically for that audience. And then it at least tries to follow those readers as they get older, by trying to broadening the range of the story. So the WoT is the ideal journey, recruiting and converting “young adults” into faithful readers, and then trying to walk with them into their adult age. That gives enough universal power to explain the popularity.

Now consider Tolkien. In this case Tolkien wasn’t writing for a pool of readers already waiting in potential. He just chased his own interests. This is important because “The Lord of the Rings” isn’t an “accessible” book at all, and so this seem to break the pattern I described above. It’s true. LotR is actually way more “niche” and less accessible than both ASoIaF and WoT. It’s far less easy to pick up and enjoy. And it’s also not a book that easily converts readers that do not have a specific interest in the genre. So why it’s still so hugely popular? Just because it came first? I don’t think so. The reason why Tolkien remains so popular while not being accessible is, the way I see it, because there’s a huge cultural push that overcomes Tolkien’s accessibility issues. His world is now part of mass culture, and being so it means EVERYONE is exposed to it. There’s pressure that comes from general culture that goes in Tolkien’s direction, and so all kinds of readers are pushed in this direction. Works like The Silmarillion are still extremely popular if you consider how nigh inaccessible the book would normally be, impossible to sell commercially. But this happens solely because there’s a general culture push that makes readers overcome those barriers.

Consider Malazan. Malazan, compared to ASoIaF, isn’t easy to recommend at all. It has humongous accessibility issues. This is usually blamed on the “medias res” style of the first book, but I think it’s a wrong angle. The problem with Malazan accessibility is that it’s much harder for a new reader to care about. It takes maybe two chapter in ASoIaF for the reader to figure out what it is about. One chapter in the WoT. Only the Prologue in LotR to set the style. With Malazan the reader feels like hiding in the shadow and chasing after someone on his own obscure agenda. Erikson doesn’t take the reader’s hand and gently leads him on the journey. There are no immediate rewards. You just follow with your own determination, if you want.

Why should a clueless reader care? What’s the big motivation that makes someone pick up a so huge series and overall commitment? But that’s just one aspect. Another crucial one is that all Malazan qualities generate big contradictions. The first book already presents things on a scale that dwarfs most other fantasy series, pulling out all the stops. Then by the time one reaches the third book that scale grew EXPONENTIALLY to levels that are utterly unimaginable. Just unprecedented and with no parallels. And yet, this is counterbalanced by another side that’s deeper, serious and incredibly ambitious. Giving the idea of something that takes itself very “seriously”. This creates different angles that can explode into a strong contradiction. On one side you have readers who engage with the most overt aspects of the series, the breakneck pace of the plot, the insane power levels, great battle and big scale spectacular stuff. The more mindless fun and shiny stuff on the surface, if you want. And then there are readers who instead find all that childish genre reading and instead expect something more “adult” in ASoIaF style. Ideally, one would say that Malazan is a distillation of the best of both worlds, and then even goes its own way to achieve something completely new. But far more commonly readers come with their own set of expectations and what happens is that the average reader is killed in the crossfire of contradictions. “Adult” readers can barely suffer through few pages without branding it as nigh incomprehensible childish fantasy gibberish, while those who are in for the “fun” and immediate pay off felt bogged down later on when the story reveals a depth and requires the reader to engage with more than just the surface. This ends up giving a general and immediate picture of having the WORST of both worlds. It wants to be serious and pretentious, while instead being juvenile and terribly chaotic and rambling. A puzzle that can’t be assembled.

How could Malazan be more successful? Why should the average reader care? It’s definitely NOT aimed to readers who aren’t already “genre” readers. You could maybe picture some serious-looking university professor reading a copy of Martin’s series, but could you imagine him reading Malazan? You need to be part of that inner genre group to even be a potential reader. This already makes the pool of potential readers exponentially smaller. It’s already a niche with a niche interest. And then you can imagine where potential readers come from. Maybe they read on some forum some readers who say how Malazan is so much better (it’s rare, but it happens), and so they approach Malazan expecting something that can compare to ASoIaF. And are immediately turned off by how “genre” Malazan is. Ultimately it engages with a number of themes that aren’t exactly that broad in appeal. There’s very little of those immediate and familiar feelings that give ASoIaF its strength. Malazan is less a traditional narration sprinkled here and there with fantasy elements, the way ASoIaF is. It grasps and deliver what the epic genre is, and why its powerful. It knows where it comes from, and has no identity crisis, or narcissistic pretenses of being appreciated by “everyone”. But then it requires a reader with a very open mind, who can take the challenge of the big commitment and that doesn’t ultimately jumps to conclusion because the book betrayed this or that expectation. The wider the range of interests, the more chances to appreciate Malazan in all its aspects. But this really ends up producing readers who are me, you and a few others. You have to have already developed an interest on that stuff, and the open mind to fully enjoy the “young” and “adult” parts without the feel that they clash horribly with each other.

Finally R. Scott Bakker. He suffers even worse from what I described about Malazan. Even more you have to share the writer’s interest on those specific themes and angles he brings up. Even more his series is precisely aimed, with a very strong thematic focus. This focus is nowhere what you expect to reach a general public, the same as you don’t expect the general public to read his blog because of the content he puts in it. It’s simply stuff not planned or meant to tap onto a big pool of potential readers. If it becomes popular it’s simply because it’s so unique and exceptional that it becomes easily recognized, and so not swallowed in mediocrity.

But what happens then? That lots of readers, all kinds of readers, hear good things and so try Bakker’s books. If they don’t have a serious interest in those themes Bakker offers then they end up noticing just the violence. The violence becomes the point. The edginess, grittiness and all those things that are today negatively branded as “grimdark” as well epitomizing all the problems about misogyny and whatnot. This produces an overall hideous image of Bakker’s series. Seen right now on a forum: “It’s an endless parade of fantasy name salad combined with massive ruminations and internal monologues.” And that’s a positive side. Otherwise it becomes an accusation directly to Bakker of being an horrible human being. Why does all this happen? I think because once you “remove” that deep layer that Bakker engages directly (and it happens whenever a reader “doesn’t care” about that stuff) then only the violence and the ugly remain. They become the one aspect monopolizing the attention, without understanding that all that is built IN SUPPORT of the rest. One element observed in isolation from everything else, and the result is readers who end up feeling offended by what they are reading.

All this to say that it’s all a matter of aims. How big is the pool of readers you try to reach. And matters of “quality” don’t even prominently come up. Only huge cultural pushes can overcome a narrow aim, like in the case of Tolkien. Another example is Neal Stephenson. He also has a very narrow target, writing for those who must already have a serious interest in the things he deals with. Yet he can be so successful because the kind of “geekdom” that makes his public nowadays is so common and widespread that it also became a “general public”, creating a cultural push that isn’t so far from what I described about Tolkien. It’s a wider movement of general culture that makes niche themes become more widely shared.

But I think that at least for the foreseeable future the very big splashes of success (here I think even about the Harry Potter, Twilight or Hunger Games) will come from traditional and familiar narratives sprinkled by “genre” elements. Ending up with a broadening of the genre, indeed, but also reducing the genre to innocuous window dressing. That’s always the risk when some smaller cultural movement is swallowed whole by the mass culture…

Prometheus: explained


Late to the party, but I’ve only seen this movie yesterday. I think that it’s honestly one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen but online it seems the complaints are mostly directed toward the nonsensical plot, while I think instead the plot is more or less straightforward. It’s just a really bad movie. It’s bad as an action movie, visually is only average and doesn’t have a single memorable scene, it’s overflowing with cliches of every kind, and it’s utterly predictable up to its last frame. I just can’t find a single redeeming quality. It’s supposed to ask “big questions” but all its themes are shallow, juvenile and surpassed by average sci-fi. It’s Hollywood at its worst. Big budget spent with zero inspiration whatsoever and a screenplay entirely written by cutting & paste every other Hollywood script. Dull, stupid, naive and clumsy.

But none of these problems are really about “plot holes”, or the movie being too obscure and mysterious. Or complex. This is nothing more than juvenile sci-fi that doesn’t even have the qualities of the Golden Age. Pretentious without doing anything pretentious. That’s why I think that the plot is actually rather straightforward and makes sense. And that’s why I’ll explain some of its mythology, since I’m always interested in figuring out things. Even if in this case there aren’t any worthwhile mysteries to discover.

What’s the “black goo” substance?

That’s one of the most asked questions on the internet, and one I actually didn’t ask myself at all. For me it was so immediately obvious that I never considered it a “mystery” at all. The black goo liquid is just the vehicle of a mutation. Think of a syringe, and how it can contain a poison or a medicine. If you showed a movie to an alien who never saw a syringe and show him a scene where this syringe is used to kill someone, then the alien would naturally associate the idea of the syringe with that effect. But we know that the syringe is merely a tool that can hold different stuff. The black goo works on a similar principle: it’s just how these alien “Engineers” perform their mutations.

In the Prologue scene we see an Engineer, alone on a planet, drink black goo and suddenly collapse, falling in the water (not a coincidence, since life is symbol of the source of life). The black goo carries the mutation itself. In this case the body of the Engineer is first dissolved, and then used to rebuild a new form of life: human beings as we know them. It’s not even necessary to pinpoint if this was the specific case of Earth, what the Prologue shows us is the custom of these Engineers: seeding life on different planets according to their own plans.

The black goo that instead they find in the alien chamber, later in the movie, doesn’t obviously carry the exact same type of mutation agent. It’s the same tool/vehicle, but carrying a different effect. What happens there, and probably a sign of what happened during the “outbreak” that killed most Engineers, is that, as shown in the Prologue, the black goo becomes active when it gets in contact with the air. The room was isolated, but then is opened by these curious human explorers, the black goo activates and there’s a scene showing one of those tiny worms going right into a pool of black goo. Off screen it begins to transform into that bigger snake thing that will kill the two dudes later on. So the pattern is always: black goo + host = new species. This merely to explain logically why we have a difference of effects.

Why does David the android infect Shaw’s love interest (Charlie)?

This is an important plot point with lots of implications. The main (and only) true purpose of the Prometheus mission was to find a way to keep alive the decrepit old Wayland guy. The one who actually pays for the mission and is on the ship in incognito. Before the android starts to play with the black goo we have a scene showing him interacting with Wayland, so instructing the android what to do next. When David is then confronted by Charlize Theron he tells her they have to “try harder”.

Try harder simply means that Wayland cares nothing about secondary purposes, or even the good health of his crew. Like in EVERY OTHER Hollywood movie, we got the powerful rich guy who’s selfish and arrogant, and will do everything to obtain what he wants, even if he has to kill everyone else. That’s what we see. As far as he’s concerned the black goo may be well the elixir of eternal life, so why not test it on one of the crew, especially one who has outlasted his purpose?

That’s the main “plot” reason, but there are also stronger thematic implications. The first is obvious and about the dramatic tension. At that point of the movie we are meant to question the android behavior. Does he knows something we do not? Is he following some hidden agenda? Is he going out of control all HAL 9000 on the crew? All these are essentially dead ends, but they add that shallow ambiguity and mystery this movie aims to.

The second thematic implication is much more important. If you notice David asks Charlie’s “consent”. He explicitly asks how far he’s willingly to go in order to discover the truth about those who “created him” (the Engineers). Charlie’s answer is: “anything and everything”. That’s what David takes as consent. By giving him the black goo and infecting him with it, he gives him that “first contact” with his “maker”. A truth that could even kill him. But there’s an even more important exchange. David first asks why humans made androids (so replicating the pattern of creator/created, father/son, or Engineer/human being) and Charlie answers: “because we could”. David replies: “Can you imagine how disappointing it would be to hear the same thing from your creator?” This is just the most obvious foreshadowing, but it’s important to notice how every character always has that forced and annoying patronizing tone and constant sneer toward the android. For the whole length of the movie. When this happens in a Hollywood movie it’s because they really want to ram on that point.

Why does the awakened Engineer kill Wayland and almost destroys David?

Because once again simplistic THEMES take control of plot. This is a movie called Prometheus, showing a mission called Prometheus, that very openly plays with the Prometheus myth. The myth describes a typical “tabu”: the desire to be like god.

In the specific case of this movie, the tabu is “eternal life”. The ultimate desire of Wayland. So that scene with Wayland in front of the Engineer is a very obvious archetype of a man facing his god and DEMAND he gives him eternal life. Notice how Wayland is portrayed through the whole movie as the arrogant, selfish guy. His stance doesn’t change even when he faces his maker. He’s just there pretending his wish fulfilled.

Now you have to realize this is a movie made by human beings (Ridley Scott and Damon Lindelof). Human beings have this tendency to take Big Unanswerable questions in fiction to try answer them. The typical solution is to make a perfectly legitimate question (why I have to die) into a tabu. An holier-than-thou. A sacred unanswerable thing. Being Holy means that you either accept it, or end up committing a SIN. It’s the typical non-answer. Holy means: righter than you. So if you oppose it, you automatically lose every right, authority or legitimation.

So what happens in fiction when a character demands eternal life? That he’s killed. It’s part of the archetypal script Prometheus is cut&pasted from. Also consider the non-irrelevant fact that, as seen in the Prologue, an Engineer is ready to sacrifice his own life to seed a planet with new life. This means they value evolution far more than personal preservation. Here we have instead Wayland pretending to be given immortality, a very selfish desire, and it’s very obvious that it’s considered by the Engineer the violation of everything he believes in.

Plot-wise the movie hammers on a particular point, in the way you realize it wants no-question-asked. There are two plot-points that are bluntly hammered by the movie. One is about establishing Charlize Theron as non-android (no one really asked until the movie did). The other is the out-of-the-blue revelation that the stone cylinders contain some sort of mass destruction weapon that was then meant to destroy life on earth.

Plot-wise, again, this means the Engineer really shouldn’t have any sympathy for human beings. But more in general it’s the theme of the android/human relationship that carries the action: the same way human beings show no respect or compassion or even consideration for David, throughout the movie, so happens when the pattern is repeated between humans/Engineer. The Engineer shows no compassion.

Why did the Engineers decide to destroy the human life that they themselves seeded in the first place?

This is one of the open ended questions. Those questions that the spectator should interpret his own way. More specifically, this is a question very obviously meant to be answered in a planned sequel.

Without a sequel, my interpretation is that the Engineers didn’t really want to destroy life. They just carry on their quirky experiments. If we accept the fact that the alien ship, carrying the xenomorph goo, was headed for Earth, the purpose here is likely about the experiment itself.

As a weapon of mass destruction the xenomorph aliens aren’t that efficient. You’d guess that aliens that can manipulate genetic code could wipe off a planet far more easily than sending down creatures in hand-to-hand combat. So if they wanted to use the black goo it means they wanted a genetic experiment. Like crossing the genetic code of those aliens with the one of humans, to obtain some hybrid. Or maybe even as a Darwin test, to see if human beings became good enough to survive an invasion: let’s see between humans and xenomorphs who deserves survival.

Btw, this whole deal of thematic depth about the origin of life seeded by aliens and relationship with god is obviously a very shallow and juvenile reproduction of what we have already seen in 2001: A Space Odissey. It’s that plot, made into a Bad Hollywood Movie, that doesn’t even add anything worthwhile to the Aliens mythos.

Btw part-2, Apocalypse, a character from the X-men comics, looks rather similar to the Engineers, and you could say he has their exact same agenda. Including reappearance through history to check on human evolution.

Was Charlize Theron’s character an android?

This could have two answers. If there’s a sequel, it’s possible that she was an android and so would reappear. The movie made clear she’s not one, but her death is a bit suspicious since we only see the ship falling and a whole lot of smoke. Maybe as an android and thanks to the sandy terrain she could survive the impact and play a role in a sequel.

Without a sequel instead it’s very clear she NOT an android. We see her shoving David against a wall, but this is not a test of strength. David has absolutely no reason to harm her, she’s Wayland’s daughter even if Wayland doesn’t have much regard for her. So the scene doesn’t really mean much. Still, it’s very possible that Ridley Scott has this kink for androids who pretend to be human, and so added some ambiguity simply because it’s what you expect from him.

Was that Acheron, the same planet of the first movie?

No.

Why in the classic Alien the alien things come off the egg shaped organic things, whereas in Prometheus the “eggs” are made of stone and contain black goo?

Because the stone cylinders are very obviously not “eggs”. What you see in Prometheus is how Engineers do their job of seeding life. We don’t know if they engineered the xenomorphs, or if they simply took inspiration and copied them, but the black goo is the artificial creation, that embeds with an host and mutates it. Whereas the “eggs” are how living xenomorphs reproduce. The Alien queen lays eggs, it doesn’t build stone cylinders, obviously.

Take the “Chicken or egg” dilemma. This is an obvious transposition. The Alien we know is the chicken, who then lays eggs to reproduce. But how did it come to be? Who laid the first egg? The answer here is: first come the Engineers, who do their job of breeding and crossing species through their “black goo” technology that they put into stone cylinders. So we have (1) stone cylinders -> (2) Alien -> (3) egg.

The layout in the Prometheus ship “mimics” the layout of the eggs simply because the Engineers pay homage to it. The same as they paint the murals. It’s just their xenomorph’s shrine.

—
That’s pretty much everything worth commenting. As I said the movie is shallow and doesn’t even have some good themes. The most ridiculous thing, and where the movie drops the ball without ever picking it up again, is right at the beginning. It’s directly framed as creationist/evolutionist debate and instead of actually grasping that theme we’re given: “it’s what I choose to believe.”

That’s how you give the most idiotic answer in an idiotic movie. The real power of science, as everyone knows, is about going AGAINST your personal choice and desire. Otherwise we would still believe in the whole universe orbiting around Earth. We see Science as a tool to discover “Truth” exactly because it gives answers that aren’t subjective or that follow one own agenda or personal preference.

Yet it’s very obvious that this movie celebrates blind faith. By being a believer that main character is rewarded with survival. Everyone else dies, obviously because no one else had a necklace with a cross. Protected by god.

It’s not that I’m anti-religion. It’s how this movie uses religion in the shallowest way: it’s Plot Armor by way of religious power. That never enters the picture. You are just rewarded for blind faith in some arbitrary mythology.

This should tell you how simplistic and shallow this movie is.

P.S.
I should mention that all Alien movies after the second suck. Is just the Alien franchise being so bad? Nope. Dark Horse long ago published comics made as direct sequels to the second Alien movie, written by Mark Verheiden (who also worked on Battlestar Galactica), that are very good and answer pretty much all questions in the Aliens mythos, including the “space jockey”. Ridley Scott could have made an EXCELLENT movie if he just stuck to these much better stories, believe me.

The White Rose – Glen Cook

“I’m talking about the death of dreams, son. About losing the big, wild make-believes that keep you going. The impossible dreams. That kind of jolly pretend is dead. For me. All I can see is rotten teeth in a killer’s smile.”

This book completes the trilogy that makes the core of The Black Company. There are more books in the series (and I’ll probably get there at some point) but they go in their own separate ways. It took me an excessively long time to read this first segment as I prefer to shift focus over different series to have the broadest vision possible. Still, it’s been five years since I’ve read “Shadows Linger” and this means that, while my memory is decent, I can’t effectively compare these books to each other and can only give a general idea.

I remember that I loved the first book especially for its structure. I thought it was a straightforward, self-contained story with an open ending, but still wrapping up most things in a satisfying way. Each chapter was a cohesive whole, telling its own story, all then linked in a neat sequence so that each contributed to the overall arc, adding some meaningful elements. It was well organized and elegant, the story grew without becoming distracting and unwieldy, with a rather big battle at the end to cap it off with a nice climax. Book two instead shifted the tone, it mimicked more the structure and aims of a local and smaller horror story, but I appreciated that it was spun differently and that this second book didn’t end up formulaic. Overall less satisfying and epic, being a more limited and focused story, but having its own personality. And finally this third. I think there are a number of things that make this conclusion even better than the previous two, the one I’ve likely enjoyed the most. But having now finished it I admit that, while the finale “works”, it’s quite anti-climactic and it left me with a bland feeling, all in the span of a few pages. It definitely does not end on a high note, as if before reaching the last 30 pages the story grew, reached a certain height and acquired an excellent speed, but then right at the final push it suddenly lost all its momentum and made a rather clumsy and awkward landing. There’s nothing particularly wrong with it, or even a delusion of expectations, it actually manages to tie neatly the hanging threads, but it simply has no momentum. The final battle itself is the least interesting and inspired part of the whole book, as well of the whole trilogy. Everything cool happens before those last 30 pages, then it’s just about stuff happening in a predictable pattern, almost falling completely into cliche. There are a couple of nice touches here and there, the kind you expect from this writer, but the overall conclusion is forgettable.

This sours my impression because, as I said, this was the most fun and interesting book to read, of the three. But when you go through a relatively big arc, then an anticlimactic, predictable and bland conclusion can weaken the impression of everything that came before as well. It just sticks in your memory. So let’s talk a bit of the 90% of the good stuff that makes the book. The story jumps forward a number of years, offering again a new beginning and context. New environment, different threats, a few new characters. It serves to reestablish everything without forgetting what came before. As it develops it also serves as an in-character commentary on those events. This means that some interesting past events are slowly retrieved and rediscovered, linking them into the new narrative, and this is especially important for a last book in a trilogy. The need to look back and, hand with hand with the reader, pay homage to the times passed together. Not simply as a shallow celebration, since this rediscovery is also successfully integrated into plot. I was surprised to discover how some past events are given an interesting spin, some nice and unexpected plot twists and puzzles pieces that come together only in this book, building toward a cohesive overall arc. It’s with this third book that the story makes more sense as a trilogy, instead of just separate stories loosely linked together. I didn’t see this coming and it probably shows that Glen Cook had at least a plan to follow, whereas I thought that every new book was simply made “on the spot”, meaning that I thought he just went on writing a new book when he found some fuel, without a definite idea outside of the vague “White Rose” versus Lady/Dominator. This third book is again its own story and separate context, it more successfully links all the parts together, reproducing over the whole trilogy what the first book achieved within itself.

Another positive aspect is that, again as it was the case of book two, the structure of the book feels fresh and far from being just a retread. It pushes even more to the front the story within the story format, running it in parallel with the main one. This secondary a story happens in the past but is told as if it develops in the present, adding mysteries and interesting details that feed directly the main thread. It works like a PoV switch and it’s rather well handled by Cook, keeping the tension on both sides. This dual story progression goes on for most of the book and is probably the most successful part because after the cat is out of the bag everything starts to develop in more predictable ways and that’s where the story loses some of its spark. Structure-wise I’m rather satisfied, with the exception of the ending, that I’ve already commented. The context of the story is also something I enjoyed a lot. A Black Company that for too many years has been on the run and now is tired and battered, giving an even more sharpened edge to that world-weary and cynic style that is typical of Glen Cook (the quote at the top is an example).

I should mention the writing style. As usual Glen Cook has his own recognizable voice. The terse but straight to the point prose. This time I thought that a characteristic of this writer is that he doesn’t weaver. He’s not struggling and wrestling with the language in order to reach some height, or produce some intended effect in the reader. Every sentence is like a stone being placed. It is precisely what it is. One step after the other. There’s no stumbling or dragging. While most writers always oscillate between genius and failure, it’s like Cook is squarely in the middle. He knows exactly who he is and never falters. It gives a sense of self-control. And in this series it matches perfectly, or it fits perfectly, the personality of the narrator, Croaker. Who is, hearing what other readers usually say, what makes this original trilogy truly shine over the rest of the Black Company series. They just fit so well together, Cook and Croaker, that this makes the story even a more personal and authentic affair for the reader: because one connects to that voice and so shares the experience.

That style is also once again what makes the rather quirky setting “work” and feel at least somewhat plausible. This time it seems Cook just wanted to have fun, so we have (slowly) walking trees, teleporting menhirs, flying whales, and a few other non conventional fantasy elements. All this is described in that typical Cook style that means that stuff just is as it is, grounding those fancy elements as if there’s nothing peculiar about them (though he also provides an explanation for what is going on and why). You end up not thinking much at the absurdities, as they are part of the context as every other thing. Haven’t you seen enough weird stuff already?

Considering the trilogy as a whole, and the way this third book fits in, I’d suggest another reader to not follow my example and instead read it all in a relatively shorter time span. That would probably allow one to appreciate more how the story develops and the relationship with the characters, and maybe even enjoy the ending more than I did. The good thing about Glen Cook is that if you appreciate the kind of writer he is and the kind of stories he narrates, then any of his books will deliver on those expectations. A Malazan fan can also dig out an incredible number of influences and little things, and you can feel how much Erikson loved his work. As for me, I’ll likely continue at some point with the “Instrumentalities of the Night” series that, while requiring a greater effort and dedication, I still find more interesting and spinning things in a more original way.

“ALL THE ARTIFICIAL STARGATES HAVE BEEN NEUTRALIZED!”

I guess no amount of Science Fiction can surpass what certain people end up BELIEVING. I just bumped into this conference video. I don’t even remotely know what they talk about, but it sounds like “fun”. It’s as if they live in a different world. X-files by comparison is dull and unimaginative.

I enjoy mythology, so this stuff is at least interesting.

The breach in the System

My bad. I made a mistake in the simplified scheme about point of view being trapped in relativity, even more clearly in its summarized version.

Overall, it still makes sense to me and should be solid, but there’s an aspect that I probably got wrong. What’s still correct is that Science sees the world as a closed system, and so there cannot be any meddling of any external entity, as well intervention of metaphysics. Even in this last case metaphysics mean that something external seeps into the system to influence it.

Given this model, it’s still true that no amount of information, information coming from within the system, can produce any real change, or any real “freedom”. From that external point of view of god, we are still trapped in a deterministic system (so, predictable), acting in deterministic ways.

My mistake is here:

So Bakker believes that if we posit that “consciousness” is a perceptive fraud/illusion, then one could explain consciousness from the “outside”. Starting from the natural world. That way, in his intention, consciousness should be “explained away”. In the sense that he should be able to describe how consciousness comes to be, how it works, and why it is perceived in the way it is (and why this is only a sort of hallucination).

The problem is that, even more specifically when you deal with consciousness, we know exactly the “origin”. It’s the brain/mind. The postulate is that everything begins in the brain, and so every consequent observation and description need to start from the brain. The switch Bakker makes from an internal self-description, to a “scientific” description from the outside is a formal violation. It’s like in a book switching from first person into third.

My mistake is about assuming that the same as we believe the universe as a closed system, so could be considered the “brain”. Another closed system. The creation of the world only “really” happens IN the brain. Without a brain that perceives things, there’s no reality. So that’s our closed system that we can’t escape.

This is also why I reverted the model: the metaphysics of consciousness. The dualism through BBT becomes the illusion of consciousness. The way we live as if in a different dimension that is separated from Nature. This dimension of conscious thought. It’s the dualistic model upside down. All the metaphysics happen right here in consciousness. There’s the world of physical reality, with its scientific laws out there, and there’s the world of consciousness, with all its myths and legends, with its gods, spirits, and all the “magic”. If consciousness is the illusion, then we all live WITHIN magic, completely soaked in it. Magic is not “elsewhere”, it’s not exotic, but the world we inhabit. The dualism body/mind becomes reality/magic, physics/metaphysics.

The important point of BBT is that it erases this bi-dimensionality (that I refused to accept because even illusion is still one legitimate point of view). But a model where there’s no dualism is also the model, obviously, where my claim is wrong: the brain isn’t closed in any way. The system doesn’t need to be opened, because it’s already wide open.

And if the system is open, then BBT has the power to alter perception directly. This STILL doesn’t offer any real freedom, since it’s still a deterministic system, and opening one box doesn’t achieve anything, nor can in the future. But from the relative experience within the system this makes a great difference.

It also doesn’t change the validity of the relative freedom we have. The deterministic system only removes this freedom if seen from the external point of view. But we can only theorize this point of view, we can’t get there. And so the subjective experience remains authoritative and valid.

The Metaphysics of Unreality (the Human Condition)

The title should be mostly accurate, minor a slight subversion on the concept of “unreality”. This is an attempt at charting the consequences of Bakker’s Blind Brain Theory, so the hope is that everything I write is an abstraction of what’s entirely possible within the grasp of Science. Hence, for Unreality I do not mean the “impossible”, but the illusory experience that is the “human condition”. In the distinction body/mind (that BBT sets out to remove) is present the distinction between physical world (body) and metaphysics (mind or soul).

Look at this image:

This represents the “environment”. For environment I intend everything that pertains to “Reality”. It includes the planets, the starts, as well as all the laws regulating the behavior of it all, and down to physical objects like a rock or a table. All “environment”, all within the domain of Science. You can see this line in the image as oddly shaped. This because every “object” that we can distinguish in reality has a different configuration, or structure. A table and a rock are both environment, just differently organized, and so abstracted in the image as the line having a different shape.

The first may be the abstract representation of environment configured as a rock, and the second as a table. Now look at this image:

What you see there is instead the abstract pattern that represents a “man”, a single human being. From the perspective of the environment this different shape is no different from everything else: it’s still environment. It has a different configuration than the rock or the table, but it isn’t “special”, or qualitatively different. Just peculiar because that shape specifically defines a “man” instead of something else, and so can be distinguished.

With the course of evolution, and the emergence of complexity, this happens:

The man develops observing capabilities. We can still assume he’s still completely passive, but he can now observe the environment, and so understand it, making distinctions between the various configurations the environment can take. By turning observation on himself, he can also make the distinction between himself and the environment (becoming a system, distinct from environment). From the point of view of the environment, that barrier dividing the man from the rest of the environment simply does not exist, but from the point of view of the man, having observation and now a sense of “self” distinct from everything else, that barrier is real. It’s the barrier giving the man his individuality and so also his personal needs and desires. From that point onward the man acquires knowledge so that he can use the rest of the environment he’s observing for his own end and personal advantage.

Consider this:

The one on the left is the general idea we all normally embrace, and that is also subscribed by science. It simply means there’s a Reality, that here I call “Nature”, and within Reality human beings exist. Part of it. One element within the bigger set representing all of Nature.

But from the perspective of the man I described above, the way a human being “feels” and lives in the world is better represented by the image on the right. The man exists within a separate dimension, existing out of Nature, and actually in contrast with it. Man and Nature are constantly at war, one against the other. A human being would not survive in Reality, it’s not a natural habitat, and so men create a protective cocoon, an artificial dimension meant to become an “heaven”, where men can survive. A safer space. We can call this “egg” as Culture. Culture, and language, is the dimension within which human consciousness lives and manages to survives. It provides sense and meaning, it provides values and morals. It creates a vision of the world that is tolerable.

Yet we still know that this vision is just an artificial construction, and that the scheme that more accurately describes Reality is the one on the left: men as one element within the bigger set of Nature. This already reproduces the problem of Dualism: the point of view of the environment, versus the point of view of man (or man as consciousness).

Now let’s get to the problem of God. Science is compatible with the idea of God as the First Mover. As long god doesn’t interfere with Reality, and so as long the system of reality is CLOSED, then this view is compatible with Science. Science can only deal with observable reality, and so only opposes the idea of metaphysical intervention /within/ the closed system. It can’t exclude powers or dimensions existing outside our perception and outside Reality.

So let’s assume that there’s an external entity to Reality, our god. He created the System of the World, but from the moment it was created (the Big Bang) this system becomes “sealed”, and so completely closed. From this point onward the god can’t modify anything anymore and can’t meddle with what happens within this system. The god can only “observe” what happens within it.

What I’ve just described is a deterministic system. Everything in this system simply happens accordingly the law of Reality as they were defined from the beginning. From that point onward it’s only about a cascade of effects. This means that from the perspective of our god, given any point in the timeline of this universe and, knowing every element of the system and every law, the god can predict EVERYTHING that happens in the future (of that point) and EVERYTHING that happened in the past. It’s the same as taking an arbitrary point of a movie and that move forward or backwards. Since the movie is a finite thing you are going to see always the same thing, it doesn’t get to “change”. If at some point in the movie a car turn left, it will always turn left no matter how many times you rewind and replay the scene. And since the System of the World was created by the god as closed, then everything that happens is deterministic, and so can be directly deduced as long you know every element and every law within.

Now let’s assume, as I was doing at the beginning, that one of the particles in this system, a human being, acquires observing capabilities. This is our element:

I’m abstracting to get to the point. This particle represents a human being. He can observe the environment, he can self-observe, and he always, constantly moves “East” as long he stays alive.

During the course of his life this man, since he can observe, has made his own idea why he’s going East. He thinks that moving east is his own choice. Maybe there are all sort of ugly people around him and he said: “what the hell, I’m going East.” Where there are less ugly people. Now let’s say that at some point this man has a big revelation. He finds the Blind Brain Theory and suddenly realizes that he’s not moving east for the reasons he thought, but simply because he’s a particle whose purpose and obligatory need is to “move east”. His nature.

Here’s the PARADIGM SHIFT. He decides to turn and go North:

If our particle suddenly decides to stop going East and go North, after it got the revelation of its true condition, then two, and only two, scenarios open:

1- A formal violation happens. The system of Reality that was supposed to be closed, is not. Because a particle within the system, by gaining consciousness and making a different choice as consequence of the information it acquired, “exited” the system and then re-entered influencing it. It’s like this particle was able to communicate with the external entity called god (so information not originally part of the system) and bring back that information into the system. Producing a change.

2- We are just observing the perpetuation of the illusion. It’s the system that was meant to make the particle go north at some point during the course of its life. The system is still closed, everything still moves accordingly to the original plan. What appeared to be as “change”, or a novel behavior, was only novel for the norm. But it was still caused by the natural law governing this system, in the exact way they were set in motion when the system was sealed.

Let’s assume that (2) describes exactly Reality and that (1) is completely speculative and implausible. This means that a Blind Brain Theory won’t free human beings of their limited perspective. No amount of (accurate) knowledge gives a man a true control on Reality. The closed perspective we’re trapped in can’t be betrayed or breached. Our knowledge can aspire to reach the knowledge that the hypothesized external entity I called god might posses. But it’s still information in this system that belongs to the system. It can never ACT on the system itself to change it, because this would mean the system isn’t closed anymore. That there was a breach. No amount of self-awareness can free one of the Determinism within a system, because that self-awareness is simply an iteration of the Determinism of that system. More of the same.

That’s the point of my counter-argument to BBT. If we have no way to escape our closed perspective, then paradoxically our perspective acquires legitimation. Even if we are able to imagine the other perspective, and assume it “true”, it still can’t change the way we are and feel. We can swap one dream world for another, but we can’t get free even if we are aware of the illusion.

Can then human beings be blamed if they decide to live solely in their fictional bubble, in their artificial and illusory Eden?