Author Archives: Abalieno

Erikson being playful

A short, playful and “meta” quote from “Forge of Darkness”:

‘I yield the meaningless secrets, Setch, to better hold hidden the important ones. Think of prod and pull, if you like. Explore the concepts in your mind, and muse on the pleasures of misdirection.’

Sechul Lath studied Errastas, lying there propped up against a boulder, beaten half to death. ‘Are you truly as clever as you think you are?’

Errastas laughed. ‘Oh, Setch, it hardly matters. The suspicion is enough, making fecund the soil of imagination. Let others fill the gaps in my cleverness, and make of me in their eyes a genius.’

Before They Are Hanged – Joe Abercrombie

“No point crying about it. You have to be realistic.” -Logen Ninefingers

I admit I read this book probably in the worst possible conditions. It’s been too many years since I finished reading “The Blade Itself” (the first in this trilogy), and too many months since I started reading this book. My impressions have suffered for this excessive stretching out and this series is best read in a compact amount of time. Too much time passed for me, but not because the first book made a bad impression on me. On the contrary, I loved that book and I still remember it fondly. The reason is that I knew what to expect in a sequel, I had a good idea of Abercrombie’s writing, and so kept delaying the rest of the trilogy in favor of books that were more mysterious and novel. In fact “The Blade Itself” marked the second or third book in my rediscovery of the fantasy genre after many years. That’s one reason why I prefer to reach out for what’s different than reading deep into a single series. And I have to admit that reading now “Before They Are Hanged” is different from a few years ago. I know much better all the different flavors the genre offers and Abercrombie for me doesn’t feel as fresh and innovative as it was at the time.

Another reason why I kept delaying the reading of this book is that it was widely acknowledged that this was a trilogy of increasing success. The consensus (that includes the author) was (is) that each book is better than the previous and now Abercrombie is not anymore the new writer fighting to find space in the market. He’s actually one of the strongest names, and has arguably surpassed both Rothfuss and Lynch, whose production was severely limited (personal choice in one case, uncontrollable events in the other). Abercrombie, Rothfuss, Lynch, the three bigger new names that, some years later, continue to monopolize the same space (well, Lynch put himself out of the picture, at least for the time being) and have not yet been replaced by anyone else (beside Sanderson, who picked a different path to success). All of this oddly diminished my interest, since there wasn’t much else to unearth. It was a safe bet. I knew the style, I knew what kind of stuff these books were made of. The group of fans was growing and it didn’t need another to repeat how cool Abercrombie was.

I said that my impression of this book changed a lot now that I have read so much more stuff than what I knew at the time, but not my overall appreciation of Abercrombie’s writing strengths. This series and this book remain for me the easiest to recommend in the genre, along with Martin. A type of work that has a wide accessibility and can be appreciated by a different, broad public. That it is generous and that repays the reader’s attention with fun and charisma, page by page. If we consider a type of work that has to be widely accessible and enjoyable, Abercrombie is probably one of the best choices (if not the best, since it’s less heavily handed, literally and figuratively, than Martin), matching that accessibility with cleverness and a modern, fresh style of writing. It’s perfectly balanced, and at the same time it’s sharp and lively. Nothing of the dullness of conformity that often comes with broad accessibility.

I also think, though, that it doesn’t reach very far when it comes to “ambition”. This is probably the one aspect where my idea of this book is different than what the majority thought of it. While my memories of the first book aren’t crystal clear, I found this sequel a bit less lively and creative. Maybe too polished, because I often felt that the characters and events were on a leash. Forbidden to stray in order to tightly lock with a predetermined plot. The story felt more like a funnel than a natural expansion of the events of the first book, and I think it was too restrained and more limited. Some of that spark of positive foolishness was kind of missing in this book compared to the first, and some characters painted too plainly as caricatures to be thought fondly of or appreciated.

Even in the first book Abercrombie’s writing was emphatic, especially in how it handled characterization. But the parody worked because it was balanced by a sharp vision. As if the superficiality was in fact superficial. While in a few occasions in this book I thought things were handled superficially and as a “best effort” that didn’t exactly shine in execution. This is even more evident for me because Abercrombie always tries to entertain in every page and every scene. Always try to add a clever spin even if describing a mundane situation, and in this case sometimes I felt as if he was trying too much, as if the effort was stronger than its efficacy. Then I think this may be also due to the fact I was reading Glen Cook at the same time, whose prose falls at the opposite of the spectrum, and so highlighting the emphatic features of Abercrombie’s writing. This emphasis can feel as somewhat fake, fabricated, but for me this was compensated by characters that are plenty of fun to read, written cleverly, but that specifically in this book suffered from some predictable development (and Glokta is Too Much Tyrion), following events that, as I already said, were more driven by hand than developing in an organic way.

So this time I’ll be the voice out of the chorus. My appreciation of Abercrombie didn’t fall after these years, what I think of his work is essentially unchanged, but I wouldn’t rate this book better than “The Blade Itself”. Too controlled, “stifled” and predictable, less creative and lively, contrasting with the promise full of possibilities of the first book. What was carved out of all that potential fell a bit shorter than the hinted picture. Too much time passed for me to compare directly the writing in that book and this one, but this time the result was for me less effective and engaging. I’ll continue to remember “The Blade Itself” fondly, and this book just a step lower. Beside these issues “Before They Are Hanged” remains a pleasure to read. The different PoVs are organized so that they walk in line, build-up matched by build-up, so that every change of scene isn’t interrupted by a lapse in the tension. The banter remains excellent, mixing the witty with the serious. I’m a bit puzzled about the point where Abercrombie decided to close this second chapter, it’s a bit off-putting even if probably intended, but as a whole I think it works and the problems in the flow of the story I perceived are probably more due to my irregular reading than the nature of it.

It would be silly to conclude these comments with hyperbole since I think specifically this book was one step lower, but at the same time I focused on what I felt was different, which in this case was all about negative aspects. Abercrombie does remain in my opinion a perfect representation of a modern take on the genre that isn’t so subversive or revolutionary, that doesn’t fight for “literary” space, but that is still plenty fun to read while keeping a high qualitative level. An excellent compromise that retains plenty of qualities, and that deserves to be recommended. Good enough to make a strong impression, and not too pretentious and demanding to be condemned to a smaller niche (and that, in my opinion, deserves exactly the success it got).

Hopefully it won’t be too long before I finish the trilogy and move to the other three books he wrote (that I already own).

The Republic of Wine

Actually, I bought both. “The Republic of Wine” arrived first.

It reads a bit like an alcoholic version of Alice in Wonderland. The sense of humor is hit and miss but the prose is lively and playful enough to make it quite fun to read. These are just a few quotes I enjoyed from a story “embedded” in the book.

“Dear friends, dear students, when I learned that I had been engaged as a visiting professor at the Brewer’s College, this supreme honor was like a warm spring breeze in midwinter sweeping past my loyal, red-blooded heart, my green lungs and intestines, as well as my purple liver, the seat of acquiescence and accommodation. I can stand behind this sacred podium, made of pine and cypress and decorated with colorful plastic flowers, to lecture to you primarily because of its special qualities. You all know that when alcohol enters the body, most of it is broken down in the liver…”

Diamond Jin stood at the podium in the General Education Lecture Hall of Liquorland’s Brewer’s College solemnly discharging his duties. He had chosen a broad and far-reaching topic for this, his first lecture – Liquor and Society. In the tradition of brilliant, high-ranking leaders, who steer clear of specifics when they speak in public – like God looking down from on high, invoking times ancient and modern, calling forth heaven and earth, a sweeping passage through time and space – he proved his worth as visiting professor by not allowing the details of the topic to monopolize his oration. He permitted himself to soar through the sky like a heavenly steed, yet from time to time knew he must come down to earth. The rhetoric flowed from his mouth, changing course at will, yet every sentence was anchored in his topic, directly or indirectly.
Nine hundred Liquorland college students, male and female, heads swelling, hearts and minds ready to take flight, along with their professors, instructors, teaching assistants, and college administrators, sat as one body, a galaxy of celestial small-fry gazing up at a luminous star.

[…]the lights singing, the wine surging through my veins, in the flow of time my thoughts travel upstream[…]

“Dear comrades and dear students, do not have blind faith in talent, for talent is really nothing but hard work. Of course, materialists do not categorically deny that some people are more lavishly endowed than others. But this is not an absolute determinant. I acknowledge that I possess a superior natural ability to break down alcohol, but were it not for arduous practice, attention to technique, and artistry, the splendid ability to drink as much as I want without getting drunk would have been unattainable.”

By the way, Howard Goldblatt, the translator that on the cover is called as “the foremost translator of Chinese literature in the West”, has probably butchered these books:

Goldblatt added that Mo Yan writing style is often unfamiliar with Western readers, and that publishers often demanded that he trim parts of Mo’s novels.

Simple guide at US political elections

Following, from Italy, the Obama/Romney debate the other day I was dismayed about how simplistic was it all.

Some of the most relevant claims used from a side or the other are a constant in all political debates, in most countries I guess. On top of this, there seem to be a much greater attention in the US, about the “form” over substance. Who smiled the most, who sounded more secure of himself, who kept more control of his facial expressions. So it is a rather obvious claim I’d make: it wasn’t a “political” debate. The politic I heard from both parties was fake. It was instead just a show, theater.

A simplistic analysis could cover all the meaningful points. For example it is very obvious to see Romney’s weakness by just looking at his speech patterns:
“I know what it takes to…”
“I understand what it takes.”
“We must…”

He affirms the obvious, without ever saying HOW. Or WHAT. It evokes politics without ever saying something concrete. Every phrase he says is missing one half: how he intends to carry out the things he promises.

The “intention” is manifest. Romney intends to tell American people whatever it takes to win. It is that simple.

The entire deal stops there. Romney is not interested in explaining what he’ll do if he’s elected. He’s interested on winning the elections. Generalizing: the “now” is more important that what will happen afterwards.

This idea crosses over to the political idea. You need energy and more jobs? Then Romney gives them now. Drill more for more oil. Exploit all the natural source America has left. Squeeze it all out, right now. Because he isn’t in the least concerned to what happens long-term. Obama shows more concern for long-term impact of his choices, but long-term doesn’t pay off in a political election. Most people are selfish and think short-term by constitution.

The rest of the political debate is about the game of the three boxes:

TAXES – DEFICIT – SERVICES

The relationship between these three “boxes” is not political. It is not a subjective thing. It’s simply factual and depends on the real world. If you want to lower TAXES overall and still want to keep the same level of SERVICES, then the DEFICIT goes up. If you want to lower TAXES without affecting the DEFICIT, then you’ll have to cut SERVICES.

Romney promises that he’ll lower taxes across the board for EVERYONE. That the deficit will go down, and that he’ll provide excellent services. This is not a political plan, it’s simply an objective FRAUD. So let’s call things with the proper name empty of rhetoric.

When he brings up the example of some desperate woman without a job asking him if he can help with her situation, he says “Yes, that’s what I can do.” This isn’t just a lie, but it is speculation on other people’s suffering for personal interest. It’s a sign of how ruthless he is. It is unacceptable, disrespectful and criminal. Because the grater the NEED, the most careful and honest you HAVE to be when you promise a solution. Because not only he won’t be able to help that woman, but he’s also doing it for a personal advantage.

But Romney isn’t interested on being earnest. He’s interested on *appearing* as earnest. He’s not himself. He plays a role. He doesn’t say what he thinks, he says what you want to hear. Whatever you want to hear. He’ll say something to someone, and then the exact opposite to someone else. Romney will say that he’ll help exactly the % of people in front of him right at that moment, because it’s convenient. He can say one moment that he’ll work for 100% of people and another moment that 47% of people are govern-dependent victims. It’s absolutely logical. Why? Because when he was speaking in the second circumstance he was in front of people that wanted to hear just that. Romney says what you want to hear, so you vote for him. And that’s why a lot of the debate with Obama ends with a sort of “me too”. With the difference that Obama at least tries to restraint his political idea within the boundaries of reality, whereas Romney will say exactly what he think people want to hear. No matter how completely absurd it is. To win the elections you need to make people dream.

Romney will create more jobs, lower taxes for everyone, cut the deficit, make America autonomous with energy, take care of the environment, strengthen the use of green power, reduce criminality, crack down on China and cure cancer. Because he believes he can say whatever the fuck pleases him. He’s burden free, responsibility free. He only wants one thing: your trust and your vote.

The model he uses for himself is a winner. Real politics is about people getting involved. And not observing things from far away and nodding their approval. But the great majority of people don’t care about politics and won’t get involved. They want to delegate the choice-making and responsibilities to someone who takes charge of EVERYTHING. They want the holy savior. They want to have faith on a President that will take care of everything. And then, one day, they’ll want someone to blame for everything so that this wheel will make another turn. They do not care HOW things will be done. They only want them being done, right now. Romney knows this. He knows that people voting for him aren’t interested in HOW he’ll lower taxes, create more jobs and everything else.

On the bottom of all this there’s some real politics. One handhold Romney has is that a way to rig the game of the three boxes above is economical growth. Economical growth brings more jobs, lowers the deficit and can lower the taxes for each, because it increases directly the volume of money that those three boxes deal with. But usually economic growth requires money being spent to jumpstart it, the deficit increasing, and America can’t afford that kind of program. So if he can hope of achieving something similar then it is about removing all rules. Deregulate everything and let businessmen go wild. Let everything loose so that there can be a net earning. Go after profit AT ALL COSTS. The lack of rules can offer a short term advantage and, again, long term is not a problem because he won’t be President by then. Some people will be crushed underfoot by this process, but that’s the price to pay. They’ll be guilty of not being rich and not having taken advantage of all the opportunities America offered. The American dream is paved with bones.

The other handhold Romney has over Obama is what Obama himself exploited to become President. When Obama was elected the first time, he was something new staked against a system. He could promise change, and he won because of those promises. But today Obama IS the system. He’s stuck in a role and he can’t promise changes. This pattern is the same no matter in what country you live. The current political party is always at a disadvantage against the competitor. And that’s why Romney gains points whenever he focuses his arguments on what Obama has or hasn’t done.

On top of all this, Obama has his hands tied, whereas Romney is free to take advantage of every opportunity. For Obama this is like playing a game of chess where your opponent plays with a different set of rules. And that’s why I think Obama’s strategy should be to overturn the whole table. This is not a game where the two players are in their own fields. Obama has NO HOPE of describing a political plan that can look better than Romney’s plan, because Romney isn’t playing by the same rules. It doesn’t need to “add up”. You can’t win that kind of match if not by accepting to do the same. And if that happens then there’s zero difference between Romney and Obama. So what Obama should do is not focus on his own plan, but focus on the rules and the game that Romney’s playing. He should treat Romney as a parody to show exactly how Romney’s agenda is working. More simply: he should expose how simplistic, self-focused and dishonest is that plan.

And to do that he can’t simply state “Romney’s plan is”, and Romney then saying, “Nope, that’s not my plan, my plan is.” Because that kind of back and forth establishes the kind of balance where Romney PROSPERS. Obama can’t play the politically-correct game, because that’s where Romney built his own strategy.

Romney will keep a relevant advantage as long America continues to focus on the participants, and not on the rules.

Mo Yan, wins the Nobel

As probably most people I never heard the name of this writer, so started looking on Amazon and Wikipedia. I ended up buying a book.

Two titles I tracked that are most interesting:
Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out
The Republic of Wine

And extrapolated comments that piqued my interest:

“there are three major features in his works: extraordinary characters; language with absurd local flavor (or somewhat black humor of the absurd); and plots with symbolic meaning.”

“Whatever the subject matter is, a torrential flow of rich, unpredictable and often lacerating words remains his trademark.”

“Today’s most revered, feared, and controversial Chinese novelist offers a tour de force in which the real, the absurd, the comical, and the tragic are blended into a fascinating read.”

“He flouts literary conformity, spiking his earthy realism with fantasy, hallucination and metafiction.”

“This “lumbering animal of a story,” as he calls it, combines the appeal of a family saga set against tumultuous events with the technical bravura of innovative fiction. Catch a ride on this wheel of transmigration.”

“use of multiple narrators”

“Much of the book is very funny, especially when the narrator is one of the animal reincarnations Of Ximen Nao (he returns as a donkey, an ox, a pig, and a dog) commenting on the foibles of humans and the many reforms of the Mao era.”

“This book is written masterfully and encompasses a half century with sorrow and wit.”

“Set in the fictional province of Liquorland, this tall tale begins with a rumor of cannibal feasts featuring children as the delectable main course. In response, Chinese officials send special investigator Ding Gou’er to look into the allegations. He arrives by coal truck at the Mount Lao Coal Mine, where he meets the legendary Diamond Jin, Vice-Minister of the Liquorland Municipal Party Committee Propaganda Bureau, a man known for an epic ability to hold his booze. Almost at once, Ding’s worst fears seem to be realized when he is invited to a special dinner, given enough alcohol to stun an ox, and then served what appears to be “a golden, incredibly fragrant little boy.” Despite his hosts’ explanation that the boy’s arms are made of lotus root, his legs of ham sausage, and his head from a silver melon, Ding remains suspicious–until he is rendered so addled by wine that he ends up eating half an arm all on his own.”

“A lesser novelist might be satisfied with just this one narrative thread; Mo Yan, however, has bigger ambitions. The correspondence between fictional character and author allows Mo Yan to wax satirical on the subject of art, politics, and the troubling point where the two intersect in a Socialist society: “One of the tenets of the communism envisioned by Marx,” the hopeful Yidou writes, “was the integration of art with the working people and of the working people with art. So when communism has been realized, everyone will be a novelist.””

“only a first-rate artist like Mo Yan could pull off such a subversive and darkly comic metafiction.”

“he waxes metafictional in this savage, hallucinatory farce.”

“The novel grows progressively more febrile in tone, with pervasive, striking imagery and wildly imaginative digressions that cumulatively reveal the tremendous scope of his vision.”

Framing devices: MS Paint Adventures

Some more speculative garbage ;)

One of the Internet phenomenons I never understood, though I tried at least a few times already, is MS Paint Adventures. Especially its last, epic and mythical, incarnation, Homestuck (somewhere around 5200 “pages” right now), that can reach a rather impressive depth in its mythology. It is easier to grasp how it started since Jail Break was modeled after a classic point&click adventure game. You can call it a typical post-modernist “deconstruction” of the medium. The guy posted an illustration on a forum, and then prompted people to suggest an action. So it was something like interactive writing, where the original author still had control over it, as he still picked one suggestion among many and showed its outcome.

Today I was going through the first “pages” of Homestuck and noticed something else instead. The story is again presented as if a “game”, complete with a parody of a rudimentary interface. The protagonist of the story is a not-so-good programmer who happens to be working on a game, called SBURB. You can play the beta. And you can see that it’s exactly the beginning of Homestuck, with very minimal differences. A game within a game. A world within a world. The protagonist of the story, putting himself into the story. All of this being the exquisite post-modernist quality: playing with frames.

“Sometimes you feel like you are trapped in this room. Stuck, if you will, in a sense which possibly borders on the titular.”

So this time my interest was tickled by this different perspective. Think of a programmer, putting himself in the game he’s making. Is it possible, from within the boundaries of the game, to reconstruct the world outside? How do you think out of the frame? How do you punch holes through it?

It becomes a parody on reality, metaphorically strong. See my analogy with dreams and reality. The creator and his creation. The dreamer and the dreamee, trapped into the dream, unconscious about the dream. And here in this case, the protagonist of a game, unconscious of himself in a game, but playing within the rules. This blinkered look at reality that makes you take everything for granted, because the brain is hardwired to make sense of what is fed to it. WYSIATI, What You See Is All There Is. Sufficiency. The brain projects a world using a severely limited set of features. An abstract.

This is exactly like in a game, where you program and defines just a few features of the world. Is it a limited top-down 2D view? So what would the characters see if they were to look up, out of the “frame”? You don’t know. You can’t know. And, more precisely, you don’t ask questions. Because the question itself is out of the frame. Not only it can’t be answered from within, but it also cannot exist. Because it’s outside the bounding rules. Out of the physics that regulate and frame your world.

Take the idea of “time” into this frame. The character of a game experiences time. The game story has a natural flow. It starts and then goes on. The character may have a sense of previous history even at that starting point, so “misperceiving” it. But is the game a “beta”, or a final version? How many iterations that world has gone through? What was written “before”, and what “after”? The timeline experienced in the game is not the timeline that exists in the world that built that game. You could perceive an embryonic state where instead there’s a final one. So it gets to the point where time collapses, like in the other example I was making.

Once again, this is all the result of reflexive properties. Things that self-describe through recursive processes. And, in these endless loops, the impossibility to escape.

P.S.
I’ve seen a similar concept mentioned here. Though I’d stay more with the world itself, “closure”, describing precisely the “binding” of these worlds. As I think the property of doing without the details, erasing them, is more meaningful than the property of “filling in”.

GNU’s Not Unix, as a model of reality

Some speculative garbage ;)

I was watching this video, and its two children. Stephen Hawking’s Grand Design, The Meaning of Life.

Quite a bombastic title. The documentaries are nice to watch, with flashy editing. Content may appear a bit superficial, though, but they are meant for the large public and not the specialized one. I wrote some comments over at Bakker’s blog.

The summary is that I think it could be possible to see progress and science as the opposite they usually represent. The more science develop, the more we think we have a better grasp on reality. We have more knowledge and disproved ideas such as the sun orbiting around earth. We know physics, we can use electricity, make fancy things and so on. All of this possible because we know better how reality works.

Though you could say that, with this kind of progress, we are emancipating from reality. We concretely live in meaning-full worlds. The internet becomes a good chunk of life. We watch movies, play games. We live into fancy cities with skyscrapers. The environment we actually live in looks nothing like a “natural” world. We still die, suffer of illness and all those things that remind us where the real world is, but there’s still a drift toward a virtual world that is made, opposed to a real world that we are subject to.

The more we achieve progress, the more we purchase virtual land. We take from reality and build anew.

Where does it lead? To a point where reality is completely reclaimed and stops existing. Reality becomes subjective. That threshold may well mean that the notion of “reality” stops to matter. Philosophically you can decide what is true and what is not.

An idea suggested in one of Bakker’s books is that all this could have already happened, in the future. So stretch that same fancy hypothesis. Take the biggest idea like the one about the many worlds, of which the one we know, from the Big Bang to the final collapse is just a grain of sand. What if this impossibly large construct is also man made?

If reality stops existing, then time stops existing. The future collapses into the now. So we have now, a reality that will be built in the future. God, making reality, in this case would be an advanced human being far in the future, who built reality as we see it.

Now think that if reality is completely virtual and man-made, then it means that the actual “real” reality we started from is lost. Men end up living within their imaginary worlds, leaving “real” reality behind. Reality vanishes.

Take the acronym: “GNU’s Not Unix!”. It’s recursive, built by itself. It’s as if the “G” is an original state that is lost and then absorbed into the rest of the body. The same way, virtual reality spawns from “real” reality, but when virtual reality becomes complete, reality disappears. It’s like a “ladder” that you use to reach an high place.

You climb the ladder, then look down. There’s no ladder. It’s like the time paradox where you go back in time to give someone an object so that in the future he’ll give it to you so you can go back in time and give it to him. Strange loops.