Wednesday, March 01, 2023

Aficionado Part II - part of a stand-alone excerpt from EXISTENCE

 Continuing my "shut up and just play your guitar" moment...

(But no, I won't shut up! I'll append to the end of this story an all-out rant about Star Wars, just for those of you who like such things.  

(But sure. LET'S DO THIS! Some actual fun sci fi!)


AFICIONADO - part II

(See Part I here.)

By David Brin

A stand-alone chapter from EXISTENCE  (2012)





          The world still shook and harsh straps tugged his battered body when Hacker awoke. Only now the swaying, rocking motion seemed almost restful, taking him back to childhood, when his family used to "escape civilization" on their trimaran wingsail yacht, steering its stiff, upright airfoil straight through gusts that would topple most other wind-driven vessels.

          "Idiots!" Hacker's father used to grumble, each time he veered the agile craft to avoiding colliding with some day-tripper who didn't grasp the concept of right-of-way. "The only ones out here used to be people like us, who were raised for this sort of thing. Now the robofacs make so much stuff, even fancy boats, and everybody's got so much free time. Nine billion damn tourists crowding everywhere. It's impossible to find any solitude!"
          "The price of prosperity, dear," his mother would reply, more soft-heartedly. "At least everybody's getting enough to eat now. And there's no more talk of revolution."
          "But look at the result! This mad craze for hobbies! Everybody’s got to be an expert at something. The best at something! I tell you it was better when people had to work hard to survive."
          "Except for people like us?"
          "Exactly," Father had answered, ignoring his wife's arch tone. "Look how far we have to go nowadays, just to have someplace all to ourselves."
          The old man's faith in rugged self-reliance extended to the name he insisted on giving their son. And Hacker inherited — along with about a billion New Dollars — the same quest. To do whatever it took to find someplace all his own.
          As blurry vision returned, he saw that the space pod lay tilted more than halfway over to its side. It's not supposed to do that, he thought. It should float upright.
          A glance to the left explained everything. Ocean surrounded the capsule, but part of the charred heat shield was snagged on a reef of coral branches and spikes that stretched far to the distance, filled with bright fish and undulating subsea vegetation. Nearby, he saw the parasail chute that had softened final impact. Only now, caught by ocean currents, it rhythmically tugged at Hacker's little refuge. With each surge, the bubble canopy plunged closer to a craggy coral outcrop. Soon it struck hard. He did not hear the resulting loud bang, but it made the implant in his jaw throb. Hacker winced, reflexively.
          Fumbling, he released the straps and fell over, cringing in pain. That awful re-entry would leave him bruised for weeks. And yet...
          And yet, I'll have the best story to tell. No one will be able to match it!
          The thought made him feel so good, Hacker decided maybe he wouldn't take everything, when he sued whoever was responsible for the capsule malfunction. Providing the pickup boats came soon, that is.
          The bubble nose struck coral again, rattling his bones. A glance told him a hard truth. Materials designed to withstand launch and re-entry stresses might not resist sharp impacts. An ominous crack began to spread.
          Standard advice was to stay put and wait for pickup, but this place would be a coffin soon.
          I better get out of here.
          Hacker flipped his helmet shut and grabbed the emergency exit lever. A reef should mean an island's nearby. Maybe mainland. I'll hoof it ashore, borrow someone's phone, and start dishing out hell.


          Only there was no island. Nothing lay in sight but more horrible reef.
          Hacker floundered in a choppy undertow. The skin-suit was strong, and his helmet had been made of Gillstuff — semi-permeable to draw oxygen from seawater. The technology prevented drowning as currents kept yanking him down. But repeated hits by coral outcrops would turn him into hamburger meat soon.
          Once, a wave carried him high enough to look around. Ocean, and more ocean. The reef must be a drowned atoll. No boats. No land. No phone.
          Sucked below again, he glimpsed the space capsule, caught in a hammer-and-vice wedge and getting smashed to bits. I'm next, he thought, trying to swim for open water, but with each surge he was drawn closer to the same deadly site. Panic clogged his senses as he thrashed and kicked the water, fighting it like some overpowering enemy. Nothing worked, though. Hacker could not even hear his own terrified moans, though the jaw implant kept throbbing with clicks, pulses and weird vibrations, as if the sea had noticed his plight and now watched with detached interest.
          Here it comes, he thought, turning away, knowing the next wave cycloid would smash him against those obdurate, rocky spikes.
          Suddenly, he felt a sharp poke in the backside. Too early! Another jab, then another, struck the small of his back, feeling nothing like coral. His jaw ached with strange noise as someone or something started pushing him away from the coral anvil. In both panic and astonishment, Hacker whirled to glimpse a sleek, bottle-nosed creature interposed between him and the deadly reef, regarding him curiously, them moving to jab him again with a narrow beak.
          This time, he heard his own moan of relief. A dolphin! He reached out for salvation... and after a brief hesitation, the creature let Hacker wrap his arms all around. Then it kicked hard with powerful tail flukes, carrying him away from certain oblivion.


          Once in open water, he tried to keep up by swimming alongside his rescuer. But the cetacean grew impatient and resumed pushing Hacker along with its nose. Like hauling an invalid. Which he was, of course, in this environment.
          Soon, two more dolphins converged from the left, then another pair from the right. They vocalized a lot, combining sonar clicks with loud squeals that resonated through the crystal waters. Of course Hacker had seen dolphins on countless nature shows, and even played tag with some once, on a diving trip. But soon he started noticing some strange traits shared by this group. For instance, these animals took turns making complex sounds, while glancing at each other or pointing with their beaks... almost as if they were holding conversations. He could swear they were gesturing toward him and sharing amused comments at his expense.
          Of course it must be an illusion. Everyone knew that scientists had determined Truncatus dolphin intelligence. They were indeed very bright animals — about chimpanzee equivalent — but had no true, human-level speech of their own.
          And yet, watching a mother lead her infant toward the lair of a big octopus, he heard the baby's quizzical squeaks alternate with slow repetitions from the parent. Hacker felt sure a particular syncopated popping meant octopus.
          Occasionally, one of them would point its bulbous brow toward Hacker, and suddenly the implant in his jaw pulse-clicked like mad. It almost sounded like the code he had learned in order to communicate with the space capsule after his inner ears were clamped to protect them during flight. Hacker concentrated on those vibrations in his jaw, for lack of anything else to listen to.
          His suspicions roused further when mealtime came. Out of the east there arrived a big dolphin who apparently had a fishing net snared around him! The sight provoked an unusual sentiment in Hacker — pity, combined with guilt over what human negligence had done to the poor animal. He slid a knife from his thigh sheath and moved toward the victim, aiming to cut it free.
          Another dolphin blocked Hacker. "I'm just trying to help!" He complained, then stopped, staring as other members of the group grabbed the net along one edge. They pulled backward as the "victim" rolled round and round, apparently unharmed. The net unwrapped smoothly till twenty meters flapped free. Ten members of the pod then held it open while others circled behind a nearby school of mullet.
          Beaters! Hacker recognized the hunting technique. They'll drive fish into the net! But how —
          He watched, awed as the dolphins expertly cornered and snared their meal, divvied up the catch, then tidied up by rolling the net back around the original volunteer, who sped off to the east. Well I'm a blue-nosed gopher, he mused. Then one of his rescuers approached Hacker with a fish clutched in its jaws. It made offering motions, but then yanked back when he reached for it.
          The jaw implant repeated a rhythm over and over. It's trying to teach me, he realized.
          "Is that the pulse code for fish?" He asked, knowing water would carry his voice, but never expecting the creature to grasp spoken English.
          To his amazement, the dolphin shook its head. No.
          "Uh." He continued. "Does it mean food? Eat? Welcome stranger?"
          An approving blat greeted his final guess, and the Tursiops flicked the mullet toward Hacker, who felt suddenly ravenous. He tore the fish apart, stuffing bits through his helmet's chowlock.     


    Welcome stranger? He pondered. That's mighty abstract for a dumb beast to say. Though I'll admit, it's friendly.



read the conclusion of "Aficionado" ...here.

See the exciting video trailer of EXISTENCE





== Only now... ==


Here's that rant lagniappe about... (shudder)... Star Wars... specifically "The Mandalorian."


In Vivid Tomorrows I talk to those who care about plot, character, and logic in self-consistent and morally not-depressing science fiction universes. And by all those standards – except visual pyrotechnics – alas, the Star Wars universe (which started so well in the first couple of flicks!*) comes out dismally opposite to Star Trek, all the way down to basics like belief in people and the ‘allegory of the ship.” . . . But sure, okay, I keep seeing raves that “the Mandalorian is great! No, really David. All your gripes about the insipid stoopidity of Star Wars (except the 1st two flicks) have been solved!” 

Okay then, I watched an episode or two and tuned in and watched this site’s entire extended run down of the history of Mandalor and all the cults and betrayals and sword fetishes and revenges and revenges for revenges, crossing 1000 years up to “today.” And I have to admit…

…that I had no idea it could possibly be this bad. Oh, sure I take it as given that Disney hired good set and costume designers and background musicians and (above all) effects wizards to make each individual scene pop! But in a macro plot rundown you don’t have all those distractions from the pure fact of an utter maelstrom of truly vile characters, being relentlessly dumb and wreaking vast, vast harm upon dullard populations of trillions of sapient beings and their families and children, all for the same moronic reasons, over and over and over again. Populations who NEVER wise up or engender a better generation that learns one damn thing. 

What is the one redeeming trait that I can see coming out of the cannabis fog that clearly fills the Writers’ Room for this series, or any SW spinoff? At least the glorified mass murderer Yoda (the most-evil character in the history of all human mythology) doesn’t seem to be around anymore. 

If any characters in that cosmos ever woke up, they’d know the real villain wrecking the galaxy and the hopes of 100 quadrillion denizens… 

… and that villain is whoever it is who’s shining a Lobotomy Ray across the entire galaxy. 

Here’s that plot recap…

…and you can compare it to the 20 minute quick scan of Star Trek by the same guys

And no, they don’t get everything right. Want the real comparison? Then get VIVID TOMORROWS: Science Fiction and Hollywood


But perhaps I’m wrong! Can YOU name a plot arc in Wars in which anyone does anything actually smart that helps? Certainly not poor, good-but-dim Luke. (I did once catch the way cool riding-monster-who-fight-each-other episode. Went into a lobotomy trance and enjoyed it! Is THAT the trick to enjoying Star Wars? Drugs?)

---
* PS ... ROGUE ONE was also a great flick! Clue to why... no Jedi! And an actual plot with a trajectory of sacrifice and hope!

108 comments:

Lena said...

Dr. Brin,

Sorry to harken back to the previous thread. There are a few things I would like to mention, if I can remember all of them.

Alfred,

Your comment about living in filth reminded me of something that came up in discussion of Ian Hodder's "The Domestication of Europe." Where people dump their trash is an indicator of who is important to them. H/Gs tended to be pretty fastidious, depositing garbage outside of their temporary camps. We have cases of Middle Eastern hamlets during then long transition to agriculture where the people dumped their garbage right outside their dwellings. Come back a millennium later and they are dumping their garbage outside the settlement entirely. Patterns of garbage disposal can also be a clue to the locations of ethnic enclaves and ethnic relationships within cities, once we got those. But as cities grow in size, it becomes much harder to dispose of wastes when the best transportation technology you have are ox-carts. Pity the Mesoamericans, who had no domesticated animals big enough to pull a cart. Who knew garbage could be so useful? Unfortunately, I bummed my copy of Hodder to a fellow shovel bum, then we all got laid off and I never saw her, and my book, again. It's probably karma for the time I borrowed a rare book from a Native American monitor, then was sent to another site the very next day and never saw her again.

I know there were other things I was going to say to other people, but they escape me. I'll try back later.

PSB

Tim H. said...

I suspect writing to young people and continuing a much retconned and patched, yet profitable series played well with investors. Science Fiction has so much more to offer, story wise, but novelty seems unlikely to give investors the reassurance they crave.

Alfred Differ said...

PSB,

Many years ago while watching PBS NOVA (I think), I recall being surprised at how excited a bunch of archeologists were at finding the garbage pit at an ancient dig site. I get it now. Evidence gets concentrated there. I was confused at first because I was thinking about broken pottery. I wasn't thinking about fabric shards, seeds, hair, and all those other things that we 'sweep under the rug.'

However, that surprise is what led me to be optimistic about our own garbage dumps. Not only do we concentrate commodity/resources we CURRENTLY can't use, we also concentrate health information describing the state of the community. Between the garbage and the sewers, we leave a whole lot of evidence we can use TODAY! (Google's observation a while back that searches for a particular disease often precede professionally acquired evidence of it in a community is more of the same.)

Fast forward a lot of years to when I learned what little I know about epidemiology. We made great strides in disease defense before the germ theory arose. One of the episodes for "The Day The Universe Changed" by James Burke described how people became numbers to those in the medical profession… and how those numbers succumbed to statistics. Ta da! We don't need to know what cholera is to notice how people catch it. People who don't drink water with feces in it… just don't get it… much. Stunning!


———

I'm all for being more fastidious. I'll risk a long, looping orbit around #1B to get away from #2 for a while. I'll even contribute 'tax' money so others can get cleaned up. It's both prudent and just.

Larry Hart said...

Dr Brin in the main post:

alas, the Star Wars universe (which started so well in the first couple of flicks!*) comes out dismally opposite to Star Trek,
...
Okay then, I watched an episode or two [of "The Mandalorian"] and tuned in and watched this site’s entire extended run down of the history of Mandalor and all the cults and betrayals and sword fetishes and revenges and revenges for revenges, crossing 1000 years up to “today.” And I have to admit…

…that I had no idea it could possibly be this bad.
...


You hit upon exactly what went wrong with the Star Wars franchise. The first movie was great at making a light-hearted boy's adventure story come to thrilling life with visuals of a type never seen before. The more somber second movie did the same for a more dramatic operatic tragedy.

Part of making the audience feel they are really immersed in an alien culture involved the injection of casual references to that universe's history. Thus, the throwaway line about "the clone wars", which was just scienc-ey enough to sound profound, but in a manner similar to Han Solo's ad-lib (it had to be, right?) about making the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs. That sort of reference simply lends verisimilitude. It doesn't require going back and explaining in great detail the significance of the name given to the older war.

I haven't watched "The Mandalorian", but from what you describe above, it sounds as if that series is all about explaining backstory. And that is the least compelling aspect of Star Wars movies.

* * *

Since the line came up, I will mention once again that the meaning of Princess Leia's recording to Obi-Wan which said, "You fought with my father in the Clone Wars," changes drastically if we apply knowledge of the prequels. If you think of the words "my father" and "fought with" in the later context, the sentence is still true, but it doesn't mean what Leia meant in 1977.

Tony Fisk said...

I found the Mandalorian became more watchable over time (although some of the setups were cringeworthy. At least young Grogu makes a choice)

Andor is a better series (still far from perfect, mind), also because of a lack of Jedi.
It even lets the Empire exhibit flashes of intelligence, and aim straight.

Meanwhile, my secret vice has been 'Tales of Arcadia' which is fantastical YA goofiness from Guillermo del Toro. Requires less lobotomisation, too.

Alfred Differ said...

Larry,

...it sounds as if that series is all about explaining backstory.

I think that's the bias imposed on the screenwriters by their corporate masters. They expect their primary audience to be nerds who will write the backstories if they don't... so they must in order to monetize them.

I'm not exaggerating either. Pick any social media site where one can write and post story length pieces and/or comic art and you'll find the nerd crowd writing fan fiction and rendering fan art. Pick Deviant Art* and you'll find the adult-themed versions of that creative outpouring too. Everything from classical myths to modern movies.

I'm beginning to see some of the (likely on-spectrum) writers expressing their disgust with what Disney is doing to their beloved Star Wars. I'm even seeing some of them get upset at the inhumanness of the humans portrayed while expressing their unwillingness to suspend disbelief for broad swathes of the franchise. No doubt a few of them will be predicting a reboot of the whole mess soon.

For Star Wars, I usually just chow down the popcorn when I'm watching the nerds argue. If I chime in at all it is to point out that they shouldn't expect much humanity when authors try to write about characters who are demi-gods. Luke is less and less human as the franchise 'matured'.



* Keep the 'mature' flag for your account turned off to avoid wading through all the fetish variations too. OMG! Turn it on and you'll wonder how humans can possibly get anything done other than rut. It truly is a wonder what this civilization has wrought. 8)

Tony Fisk said...

@Larry, the Mandalorian is actually an original tale involving fetishes for space westerns and armour-accessories. The backstories are Andor (Rogue One), Obi-Wan(Wan's Wilderness Years) and the Book of Boba Fett (aka the Digestive Biscuit of Jabba's Hut)

Larry Hart said...

Alfred Differ:

I'm beginning to see some of the (likely on-spectrum) writers expressing their disgust with what Disney is doing to their beloved Star Wars.


I've given Disney a break because I remember how the franchise was looking before Disney took over. I at least willingly went to see the third trilogy, though my expectations were lowered. The prequel trilogy, I watched almost out of sense of obligation, but didn't expect to like them (nor was I disabused of that).

I also suspect that some of the disgust you are talking about is not the disgust I share about ruining plot and characters, but disgust at the inclusion of black and female protagonists by that sort of nerd.


I think that's the bias imposed on the screenwriters by their corporate masters. They expect their primary audience to be nerds who will write the backstories if they don't... so they must in order to monetize them.


So they can't leave mediocre fan-fiction to the fans, but have to put it up on the screen?

A crotchety old-school comics writer/artist, John Byrne, used to say that the decline in quality of comics writing happened when fans turned pro and were allowed to actually write their favorite fanfic in the published comics themselves. I'm going to include the profanity in quoting the example he gave for the kinds of stories he meant--"What if The Vision actually fucked the Scarlet Witch?"

Slim Moldie said...

I was trying to post a link to a podcast transcript. Bahh. Dr. Brin's Star Wars rant on the Mandalorian touches on some of the same exposed nerves as this Jacob Kruger podcast.

https://www.writeyourscreenplay.com/the-mandalorian-writing-hook-engine-original-series/

How Mandalorian doesn't hold up to A-Team (Character) or Star Trek (Theme)

SM

David Brin said...

Disney/Abrams at least ceased lucas's outright relentless preaching of actual evil. But whill JJ is brilliant with characters & dialogue (e.g. LOST) he would not know an original plot if it was delivered to him by face-hugger.

Luke was an okay guy. But did he HAVE TO imitate every single exact mistake made by Yoda and Obiwan? including hiding out when folks needed him?

Silly me. Of vourse he did, see paragraph one.

Tony Fisk said...

"What if The Vision actually fucked the Scarlet Witch?"

I rather liked Wandavision: it was fun, and took some risks with the franchise. (They ruined it with 'Multiverse of Madness' though)

Alfred Differ said...

Luke started out as an okay guy. By the end he was a religious figure and EVERYONE around him knew it. Meh.

John Byrne knew how to do what he did, but I think there wasn't much of a decline. Most comic writers I ever saw... well... they sucked and the books sold on the basis of the art/penciling anyway. What actually happened was a glut of crap in the 80's when the kids could be convinced it was all collectable. The glut required more writing that was... meh.

At least they took the Scarlet Witch story line where it couldn't be easily washed away for next month's issue. Dead kids and she wipes out the world. Heh.

(Yah. I know. They undid some of that later. Meh.)

------

I know I shouldn't be looking to comic books much for great writing, but occasionally they do it. When the art backs it up they produce something worth me opening my wallet. In that sense, I have not opened it to watch any of the Disney Star Wars TV stuff. I considered it for Marvel titles, but decided against it.

The last thing I watched as a TV miniseries that was comic book related came from HBO and was a sequel to Watchmen. It had a couple of rough spots I thought, but finished with a punch that knocked me out.

Paradoctor said...

The voice from the UFO cried,
"To the smartest we'll give a free ride!"
Several men volunteered
But the ship disappeared
With a whale and two dolphins inside.

Tony Fisk said...

... and so was Star Trek IV conceived!

Although I was prompted to write a follow-up using another franchise:

The fins, once they'd aligned the dish,
Bid 'farewell and, oh, thanks for the fish!'
But the whale simply sighed
And turned puce as it died
To achieve an improbable wish.

Tim H. said...

Art would have been better served if after the first Star wars, George Lucas had filmed almost any other story*, to avoid the gnarled plot lines implicit in expanding a small, elegant story into a vast franchise. Especially when it was unforeseen.**

*Many works of OGH would've been good choices.

**I find it difficult to blame him for his choices, more Star Wars paid more... flashbacks of Mr. Drysdale being revived with a sheaf of Benjamins.

Tim H. said...

Off topic, but possibly of interest to some:
https://daringfireball.net/2023/03/tweetbot_and_twitterrific_face_the_cliff

Small developers caught in the radius of destruction.

Larry Hart said...

Tony Fisk:

I rather liked Wandavision: it was fun,


I did too. That's not what I was on.

John Byrne was very old school. To him, the hero yearned for the girl, but never actually "got" her. In his view, that was strictly the realm of bad fan fiction.



(They ruined it with 'Multiverse of Madness' though)


I've enjoyed the ten year romp of Marvel Studios movies through Endgame, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much of the magic of early Marvel comics they managed to capture on the big screen. But it feels like they've gone off the rails with the multiverse stuff, like Tobey McGuire Spider-Man meeting Tim Holland Spider-Man. As much the realm of bad fan fiction as The Vision intercoursing the Scarlet Witch.:)

Larry Hart said...

Dr Brin:

But whill JJ is brilliant with characters & dialogue (e.g. LOST) he would not know an original plot if it was delivered to him by face-hugger.


As another task for ChatGPT or its like, I'd like to see a Star Wars sequel written as if by Aaron Sorkin. Actually, I doubt I would. :)

Larry Hart said...

Alfred Differ:

The last thing I watched as a TV miniseries that was comic book related came from HBO and was a sequel to Watchmen. It had a couple of rough spots I thought, but finished with a punch that knocked me out.


I was also amazed in a good way by the 2019 Watchmen miniseries. I was of the opinion that the original Watchmen was a complete story that could not be "sequelled". At least that it couldn't be done in a way that doesn't crap all over the franchise. But wow, I was impressed at both the tight plotting and the visuals, as well as its obvious reverence for Alan Moore's work.

I'm lucky to have a local library which is pretty current with videos, so I have seen that one multiple times. It took me several viewings to realize that the scenes with Viedt in the castle were not happening simultaneously with the rest of it.

A.F. Rey said...

Speaking of good old Star Trek: in case there is anyone who is not aware, there is a fun web series called Star Trek Continues that we stumbled upon. It is an amateur continuation of the original series, with the same characters but a different cast.

https://www.startrekcontinues.com/

The acting is so-so (you can always tell who the professional actors are, except maybe for Lou Ferrigno :) ), and the scripts are often rather heavy-handed in their moralizing. But the sets and costumes are spot-on, the production values are close to the original, and they have captured the feel of the original Star Trek. And it is fun when you see a familiar face from the original episodes. A good homage, IMHO. :)

Larry Hart said...

A.F. Rey:

there is a fun web series called Star Trek Continues that we stumbled upon. It is an amateur continuation of the original series, with the same characters but a different cast.


You know how our host (and Hal Sparks) says that as soon as holodeck technology is perfected, human males will never be seen again in the real world? Well in a similar vein, once ChatGPT-generated fanfic is perfected, I'll be diving down so many rabbit holes that I'll never be seen again.

Adam West Batman Continues
Steve Englehart's Captain America Continues
Aaron Sorkin's West Wing Continues
M*A*S*H with Trapper and Henry Continues
1977 Charlie's Angels Continues (heh)

scidata said...

Tim H. difficult to blame him for his choices, [projectx] paid more

How many of us would go back and take the road not taken to avoid this epitaph?

Tim H. said...

Pity that isn't an available choice. I suspect the choice was more Star Wars, at a very comfortable budget, or go back to the end of the line if you want to do something else. I will say, the good parts were very good.

David Brin said...

Huh fun extrapolations... and limericks!

locumranch said...

As space operas go, the Star Wars franchise ain't so bad, assuming that you realize that its primary purpose is sell escapist leftist propaganda & plastic paraphernalia to mildly retarded children.

Feeling marginalized, inadequate and unappreciated?

Well, you too can be a great hero and/or a secret king, by the mere virtue of existing, because you're at least as incredibly exceptional & deserving as everyone else is, as long as you buy into the many lies that your culture is selling.

For you are threatened, not by Spengler's prophecies, but rather by the dysgenic nature of urbanity itself.

What do I mean by this?

As a medical doctor, I've dedicated my life to aiding the weak, the sickly & the less fit and I've helped them flourish & proliferate. I repeat. I've helped the weak, sickly & less fit proliferate, yet I've failed to eliminate their illness & debility.

This is what civilization does:

It alters our environment to such an extent that it allows the weak, sickly & less fit to proliferate, and so we rot collectively from the inside out, becoming less fit & capable with every passing day, until our society collapses under its own dysfunction.

We can call this the Kibble Effect (in honor of Dr. Brin) because 'kibble' is what most of us will become, either in the presence or the absence of our seductively comfortable civilization, as what aids us most often serves to weaken us.

9/28/22 A new study from the Pentagon shows that 77% of young Americans would not qualify for military service without a waiver due to being overweight, using drugs or having mental and physical health problems.

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/09/28/new-pentagon-study-shows-77-of-young-americans-are-ineligible-military-service.html


Howsoever 'enlightened', the Civilized West is killing itself with creature comforts.


Best
_____

A popular medical explanation for the West's rising incidence of life-threatening allergies, asthma attacks & autoimmune disease is our current obsession with cleanliness & our relative lack of intestinal parasitic disease which fools our idle immune system into attacking itself.

Alan Brooks said...

You’re quite the positive thinker, aren’t you? But thanks anyway, I guess.

Larry Hart said...

Reposting for typos:

locumranch:

Howsoever 'enlightened', the Civilized West is killing itself with creature comforts.


You do present an age-old dilemma. The more pleasant life is, the less it forges you into the sort of iron man who earns his right to live by defeating threats. The more miserable life is, the better it makes you into someone who merits living. So we are left with a paradoxical choice between desirable life cut off by externalities or survival in continual battle with elements while longing for the release of death, perhaps sweetened by the false promise of religion.

Lena said...

Pappenheimer,

Your comment about characters going off and doing their own thing is one I hear from avocational writers quite a bit. I wonder if the Good Doctor might have some tales for us along those lines. I have one who is very mad at me because she wanted a romance but I put her in a sci-fi. That's okay. Sci-fi is a very flexible genre. You can fit just about anything into it. An old gaming buddy wrights about cowboys in space, and has gotten some of it published, too.

PSB

Lena said...

Alfred,

If you love trash as much as Oscar does, William Rathje's your man. He coined the term "Garbology" (the official term is ethno-archaeology) and used to take his students to the Phoenix city dump. It was very interesting when they started coming up with intact hotdogs that were 50 years old... I would hate to imagine the digestive systems of people who ate them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rathje


A more generally useful source is Brian Schiffer's "Formation Processes of the Archaeological Record" in which he coined the term "pedoturbation" to describe damage caused by children.

PSB

Lena said...

Dr. Brin,

I'll start by apologizing for pummeling a deceased equid, but I felt a little vindicated by some recent things I heard on my local station. Apparently I'm not the only one who has these thoughts. It started with a writer whose recent work involved interviewer a bunch of professional scientists who were equipped as females. They all saw that their careers and paychecks were dramatically curtailed by basic bigotry, even in fields where merit is supposed to rule. Then the local business reporter called off a bunch of stats on racial wealth inequality, which is far worse than most people realize. In one city the average white family was worth around a quarter of a million $, while the average black family was worth about $8000. They openly stated that meritocracy is a myth. People who are deserving are screwed for reasons beyond their control, and that pretty well meshes with all the smart, talented, hard-working people I have known who have gone nowhere, or even to the homeless shelter, while ruthless, evil people who won the birth lottery, don't do much besides play golf, and think they are doing great things when they lay off thousands, live in honor and luxury.

Can you really call it meritocracy when it is applied so unreliably and with enormous discrimination? The business people pointed out that the Just World Fallacy is deeply baked into American culture, to the point that most people notice it les soften then they notice the air. Very few people ever get what they actually deserve, and the distribution of wealth looks a lot like a Pareto Distribution, which is basically the default setting, the null hypothesis.

Sorry about that.

PSB

Lena said...

Pappenheimer again,

I forgot that I wanted to ask you what kind of stuff you write. SF, I presume, but do you venture into other genres?

My brain!

PSB

David Brin said...

Paul your complaints about western/US hypocrisy and inequality and injustice are commendably reflective of the value system that pervades about half of our culture and most of the young... and that was absent in almost any other society. One can counter with the rapid rise of the black middle class and professionals ... and both can be true and the work still un-done is more important.

As for the grouchy yowls of "Kids! Why can't they be like we were, perfect in every way!"

Well... we are experienceing a kind of evolution. Those who CHOOSE to stay fit are fitter than any other generation - records are broken every day. Hence we may be evolving toward choice, which is vastly better than sourpus growls that 'you'll be leaner when society falls!' Again, baseless dopiness.

Larry Hart said...

PSB:

It was very interesting when they started coming up with intact hotdogs that were 50 years old... I would hate to imagine the digestive systems of people who ate them.


Well, those are the ones that people didn't eat. Self-evidently so.

:)

TheMadLibrarian said...

Midden heaps are one of the more interesting things you can find if you are an archaeologist. One of the things that really made me go "Huh. Huh??" was that archaeologists sometimes find dead people interred in abandoned buildings that had been used as Ancestral Pueblan garbage dumps, with as much care as we bury people in cemetaries today. Just plant Auntie along with worn out baskets, broken pottery, and dinner scraps.

Unknown said...

PSB,

Sorry, been busy today.

I've written SF and Fantasy - but only had fantasy published - two <1K word pieces. "Dragon's Blood" in Dragon Magazine and "Seven of Dreams" in an online zine, both many years ago. total income $60 and a little letter from Dragon saying "we were quite taken with the O Henry style twist at the end."* I also created a 1st level D&D module titled "The Beggar Factory", sold for $200. This was way back before the internet was in full bloom, probably couldn't sell anything today. It's been harder to finish anything SF related - maybe the genre is TOO flexible for me.

Ventured into historical fiction and tried to complete a novel about King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem (the Leper King) but it's been over a decade since I worked at that.

* Not that I'm proud or anything**.
** Also my Kipling girl said "Dragon magazine called that a twist? I could see it coming a mile away."

Pappenheimer

P.S. Once a character HAS character, they can influence the plot, i.e. "No, I'm not doing that, I'm not crazy or stupid. Find some other way to increase dramatic tension." Scalzi's book "Red Shirts" is basically all about this.

A.F. Rey said...

It occurs to me, locum, that you might enjoy Chinese dramas more than the corrupt Western dramas you so thoroughly eviscerate.

A friend who is into them tells me that they almost inevitably end with the hero and heroine dying or in some other way parting never to see each other again. Even in victory, heroes never personally prevail, and so they teach that hope is but an illusion for every individual.

Such hopelessness seem to go along with your bleak outlook for Western civilization. I suspect you might enjoy such dramas written by fellow tragicians. :)

David Brin said...

AFR yeah I long ago noticed even their romantic songs tend to be about doomed longing and might-have-beens. I agree our hope-hating dyspeptic should go to such flicks & song. Just... go.

Robert said...

Also my Kipling girl said "Dragon magazine called that a twist? I could see it coming a mile away."

Years ago I bought a collection of O. Henry stories. After a dozen I was able to see the twists coming as soon as I'd finished the introduction, which kinda spoiled them.

Lena said...

Dr. Brin,

When I read "Just... go." it reminded me of an article my son found and told me about. He was looking into the health effects of loneliness, which can be quite deadly, and mentioned that this is a much bigger problem in rural communities. That might explain why he never gives up, no matter how much people shame him. Some attention is better than no attention.

I think of meritocracy as being like perfection or nirvana: not really possible, but the closer you can get, the better. But the word is mostly used to bludgeon the weak and blame the victims.

Laissez-moi m'Ennuyer- make me bored.

PSB

Lena said...

Larry,

"Well, those are the ones that people didn't eat. Self-evidently so."
- Actually, plenty of them were fragments or half-eaten.

PSB

Lena said...

MadLibrarian,

Real head-scratcher, isn't it? It does show that different human groups can find very different ways to think sometimes. I haven't looked at that in ages, so I have no idea if anyone's come up with a reasonable explanation. Maybe they really didn't like Auntie, but felt obligated to follow the prescribed funerary rituals?

PSB

Lena said...

Pappenheimer,

Well, your publishing history goes way beyond mine. I started writing in third grade, when the teacher read most of the old Narnia books, then assigned a Narnia-set short story as homework. I've been doing it ever since, but I haven't really tried to get anything published. It's just an outlet. I mostly do SF. It's been years since I tried anything historical or prehistorical.

"No, I'm not doing that, I'm not crazy or stupid. Find some other way to increase dramatic tension."
- Or maybe I am crazy or stupid. Find a more weird way to increase dramatic tension."
I like quirky characters, like Kizzy with her fire shrimp addiction and "happy tea" vs. "boring tea"

PSB

Robert said...

A friend who is into them tells me that they almost inevitably end with the hero and heroine dying or in some other way parting never to see each other again. Even in victory, heroes never personally prevail, and so they teach that hope is but an illusion for every individual.

I've got a pretty fair-sized collection, purchased when I was trying to learn Mandarin. Your friend is sort-of right, but sort-of wrong too.

A great many popular Chinese dramas are tragedies, but there are also ones that aren't. I think what your friend is noticing is the relative lack of tragedies in contemporary American dramas. There are Chinese films that aren't tragedies, and love stories where the couple get married and have happy lives (a good example being My Mother and Father, released over here as The Road Home). We have our own tragedies, but they usually aren't as popular as feel-good escapism. I've seen remakes of Romeo and Juliet where the young lovers live happily ever after, and had people argue that this is 'better' because Shakespeare's original is 'too depressing'.

As to heroes never personally prevailing, it's not quite that. The hero almost always prevails — it's just that their group-related goals are more important than their personal ones, and so they often sacrifice their personal happiness/life for something larger. Or sometimes just for someone else. Horatius at the bridge, without the hero's monuments Horatius got. That often happens in love stories, too — especially historical ones, where marriages were business transactions and so giving in to "longing and might-have-beens" would mean damaging your family/clan.

duncan cairncross said...

Chat GDP
Writing "sequels"

I had not thought of that - so it could continue series written by my favorite deceased writers

I'm not sure if I'm horrified or pleased at the concept

Unknown said...

PSB,

Kizzy and Kaylee are, indeed, my 2 of my 3 favorite engineers.

Suddenly trying avoid shipping the 2 of them with Scotty, because you know what would happen if all 3 found themselves alone in the engine room of a starship...

Pappenheimer, unapologetic

Unknown said...

Also,

Socks match my hat.

Pappenheimer

Alan Brooks said...

Don’t know him, but similar to him are people I do know who are filled with self-pity—and lash out. I know many a divorced man who is filled with unceasing low-level anger.
To them, it’s always Someone Else’s fault.

Alfred Differ said...

Howsoever 'enlightened', the Civilized West is killing itself with creature comforts.

Meh.

We've been working on that for about 300 years. Cheap gin. Toxic air and water. Levelling forests. Ozone depletion. Etc.

Cheap carbs that trigger our appetites (likely through hormonal imitations) are among the recent risks.

-----

Killing ourselves slowly?
The evidence suggests otherwise.

Larry Hart said...

The recent mayoral election in Chicago demonstrates an interesting twist on the "top two" runoff system. We had about ten candidates for the office, five of whom at least got double-digit percentages of the vote. But the top two were the most right-wing and the most left-wing of the candidates*, whereas the next three (including the incumbent, Lori Lightfoot) were running in the more centrist lane.

Chicago does have the system where the top two vote-getters go to a runoff in April, which seems to make sense when one thinks in terms of a Democratic-adjacent and a Republican-adjacent candidate. But it seems to have failed the voters when (I think) the three centrists combined received more votes than either of the top two, indicating a general voter preference for centrism, while the runoff will be between two extremists.

I haven't done the math as to whether ranked choice voting would have done better in this situation. Maybe it would, but I still feel that there's a logical hole here when more than two lanes are competing for votes.

* They're all Democrats**, but Paul Vallas has been cozying up to the racist police union and running on "law and order", whereas Brandon Johnson is a black activist who in the past has said he actually does want to defund the police. One of those will be the winner in April, although I'm guessing most voters aren't totally on board with either.

** Except for perennial candidate Willie Wilson, who runs as the candidate of the Willie Wilson Party. No, I'm not kidding.

Larry Hart said...

duncan cairncross:

I had not thought of that - so it could continue series written by my favorite deceased writers

I'm not sure if I'm horrified or pleased at the concept


This is just me--and I hate to admit this in public--but I would grow bored with holodeck sex before I would grow bored with endless extensions of my favorite book, comics, or movie series in the same style that I liked about the originals.

Unknown said...

Larry,

"grow bored with holodeck sex".

Who is to say that you have to gp gallivanting off over the holosexual horizon? in "Sword Art Online", the main couple meet and marry online (locked in the middle of a death game) and there is every indication that, while they certainly do hook up in the meatworld afterwards, they also continue to meet up at a little holiday cabin in some online woods that is really their shared home - wherever they may live physically. Such tech would be godsent to aging or disabled couples. Who would not want to appear to your loved one as you were when they first met you?

Dr. Brin even has a short story that touches on this.

Pappenheimer

P.S. "endless extensions of my favorite book" do sound interesting, but there are some works that are complete in and of themselves and I will volunteer to burn to ashes any server containing extensions of "Good Omens", "The Forgotten Beasts of Eld", or "The Forever War". Which, now that I think on it, are all love stories...

Larry Hart said...

Pappenheimer:

P.S. "endless extensions of my favorite book" do sound interesting, but there are some works that are complete in and of themselves


I hear ya. A while back, there was supposedly a sequel to Casablanca that I had absolutely no interest in.

But my focus is on series which I would have liked to see/hear more of before the quality lapsed.

Others more into music than I am might want new Beatles songs in the style of their favorite era.

Alan Brooks said...

People who know about music know that the majority of the Beatles’ songs were fillers. But there’s five percent of songs worth listening to.

Larry Hart said...

@Alan Brooks,

Five percent of eleventy-billion is still a lot of songs.

Unknown said...

Larry,

Or a series where the author suffered existence failure before finishing? OK. Maybe. But I'm trying to picture an AI capable of continuing the Chronicles of Amber as if it were Zelazny, and that wouldn't be narrow AI. That would be frighteningly broad. Or maybe I'm underestimating a narrow AI ability to mindlessly extend an established pattern* well enough to entertain a human mind?

Pappenheimer

*Pun, of course, intended.

Robert said...

I had not thought of that - so it could continue series written by my favorite deceased writers

I'm not sure if I'm horrified or pleased at the concept


Likely depends on the original authors and the quality of the writing. ChatGPT and its ilk might do a decent job at creating run-of-the-mill pulp fiction.

I'll admit to liking tribute anthologies. Tales from the Fountain was a wonderful tribute to Tales from the White Hart — good authors playing with the same tropes Clarke did, creating stories that were recognizably inspired by the originals, yet unique.

Similarly, Multiverse was a thoughtful riff off Poul Anderson's Time Patrol setting.

Currently GPTs can't manage anything like those. ChatGPT can't even write 'as if written by Shakespeare' without using anachronous vocabulary.

Larry Hart said...

Pappenheimer:

*Pun, of course, intended.


That was a pun?

But seriously, I wasn't suggesting that any AI was capable of such a thing yet. Just daydreaming about the possibilities.

Alan Brooks said...

Aye. If I were going to do a Beatles compilation (one track from each album), the dozen or so tracks on the disc would naturally make it worthwhile—even if the other 175 songs they did weren’t imo worth paying attention to.
One could do the same with segments of, for instance, Stravinsky symphonies.

Acacia H. said...

Looking back to your previous post, Dr. Brin, I once again bring forward my theory to explain away the Fermi Paradox: In order for a space-faring civilization to come about and expand to a point that it makes even a partly-galactic impact, you need to have a sizeable moon orbiting the life-bearing planet... and that planet has to be not much more massive than the Earth - in fact, it would have to be between the mass of Mars and only slightly more massive than the Earth or the civilization would be bound to the surface of the planet.

An excellent example of a moonless "habitable" planet can be found with Venus. The scientific community really needs to send more satellites to Venus to scan the surface of the planet and determine if there is much in the way of accessible metals on the planetary surface, as without sufficient resources, no species is making their way into space. We may have a multitude of Venus-like planets in the universe that may have initially been able to support life but ended up trapping life on the surface until finally their suns grow hot enough to bake those planets to death.

The manner in which a moon comes about also may impact (no pun intended) the viability of intelligent space-faring life. If a moon is captured in orbit then while it may stabilize the axial tilt of the planet but not stir up the crust to have sufficient resources for intelligent life to utilize - and in fact if those resources are not found in high enough levels then life itself may never grow beyond simple microbial life.

The early universe lacked those resources. A universe even a couple billion years younger may very well have lacked enough diversity of resources outside of galactic cores to have viable life-bearing planets... and the galactic core is not a safe place for life. The Fermi Paradox may not be a Paradox. Instead, it may be that Humanity is the Precursor Civilization in the Milky Way Galaxy. We may look out into the void and not hear any voices because no one has been able to speak just yet.

Acacia H.

A.F. Rey said...

Sounds like ChatGPT could handle those ubiquitous kids series of our youths--Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, The Three Investigators, etc. They were written by multiple authors, had a standard style, and became pretty unimaginative toward their ends. Just ChatGPT's speed.

Hey, maybe it could bring back the Tom Swift series! That would be fun. With the requisite Tom Swifies in the text, of course. :D

Tim H. said...

Something (Else) strange:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvjggv/hershey-boycott-trans-woman-ad

Extra chocolate for tolerant people?

Unknown said...

A. F.,

There might need to be a slight machine learning curve before you get away from titles like "Tom Swift and his Animatronic Ovipositor".

Pappenheimer

P.S. "Why don't you want to be turned into a forest herbivore?" he asked endearingly

Lena said...

Alan Brooks,

I hear you on the Stravinsky! You could do that with his ballet suites, too. Petruchka, particularly, has some fine stuff intermingled with complete wastes of temporal lobe real estate.

PSB

Lena said...

Pappenheimer,

How fortunate that only 2 of your 3 fav engineers have names starting with K.

If you ever meet a professional writer, never tell them you do, too. They tend to cringe, since everybody and their monkey's uncle thinks they can write, thinks it would be much easier than "real" work, and are certain that the only way to get into it is to know somebody. I had to learn that one the hard way.

I once went to a party where an old roomie I hadn't seen in years showed up with his new wife, who was a fantasy writer. She got a lot of attention for a little while, but the host was a very charismatic attention whore, and after awhile the writer was looking kind of lonely and awkward. So I spent most of the rest of the party chatting with her just to keep her company. The next morning I got a call from the old roomie, who said he wanted to thank me for hanging out with his somewhat shy spousal unit. Then he asked me, and sounded quite perplexed, why I never said a word to her about my writing hobby. I gave him the answer above, everybody and his monkey's uncle ... They were both quite appreciative.

PSB

Unknown said...

PSB,

Learned that a long time ago at university - took a creative writing class from Daniel Keyes (Flowers for Algernon). In class, he was very helpful. Out of class? That wasn't his job.

Pappenheimer

P.S. Nearly everyone can write. Nearly everyone can catch a baseball, too, but there aren't many Micky Mantles out there.

P.P.S. The youtube video series below depicts an ongoing and highly entertaining argument between a heroine and her author as the author's novel, and the heroine's life, progresses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-axbuh6v68

scidata said...

Pappenheimer: Daniel Keyes (Flowers for Algernon)

As I've mentioned before, I'm basically living that book, although the uplift/downlift is cyclical and less dramatic. That's why I appear to be cogent one month and 'Egon has gone bye-bye' the next. Fairly common in mid-brain stroke pathology. Somewhat amusing actually, though less so for colleagues and family.

Unknown said...

Scidata,

Burning books*, I am sorry for you. I didn't catch that before. You are living my worst nightmare. Kipling Girl has been talking about the stuff in her life that has - well, like all of us, she is not the same person she was thirty years ago, but she has the medical records and memory losses to prove it. This is, indeed, amusing, in a "Up your *ss with a dull chainsaw, God" kind of way.

*I don't have a worse epithet.

Pappenheimer

David Brin said...

• “while they certainly do hook up in the meatworld afterwards, they also continue to meet up at a little holiday cabin in some online woods that is really their shared home” – See my story “NatulLife”

Acacia there are many 'rare Earth" scenarios. We may learn within 2 decades if distant planetary spectra reveal ecosystems or if there are robotic envoys in the asteroid belt.

scidata said...

@Pappenheimer

Thanks, but I'm fine - truly blessed life to be honest. Better lucky than smart.

Alan Brooks said...

https://www.scaruffi.com/vol1/beatles.html

Unknown said...

Dr. Brin,

I was thinking of that short story, too, when I was writing my entry. I also had a story idea that I may find hard to write - a young man introducing himself to a young woman in a starport concourse, and offering to share his starship with her, to see everywhere they can -

While outside the simulation she is in a hospice, and he is making funeral arrangements when not online.

Pappenheimer

Unknown said...

And O Henry can just shut up.

Pappenheimer

Larry Hart said...

Pappenheimer:

And O Henry can just shut up.


The house next door to me has a large tree in which a branch has broken off, fallen partway down, and become wedged in other branches in some way which defies explanation. We've had fifty and sixty mph windstorms as well as all kinds of snow and rain, none of which has caused that branch to fall from its perch.

I humorously expect that some day, the tree itself will fall down, and that darned branch will remain where it is, suspended in space. And being familiar with "The Last Leaf", well if I couldn't see it from outdoors, I would suspect the branch was painted on my window.

Unknown said...

"May I order another drink for you?" I asked the pretty young girl sitting alone on the station concourse. She had a grand view of the planet below, half sparkling nightside cities and half the greens and blues of a habitable world, with an orange sun's reflected glimmer off an automated shuttle sliding down into its gravity well.

"Have we met?" She looked up, puzzled.

(got to go, stuff to do)

locumranch said...

I've been a big fan of Chinese tragedy for many years, especially the formulaic ones that adhere to the old adage about digging two graves before seeking revenge.

Such a preference should be obvious to all, as this is the overriding narrative of every cowboy western ever made AND the basis of the prototypical red state social contract, a fact that's so definitional that it would behoove the average urban blue to keep this forever foremost in their thoughts.

It may surprise you, however, to know that I am a huge fan of the Hallmark Channel whose treacly tales of romantic redemption reduce me to howls of laughter, as I am also a divorced man (as 60% of all US men are) who is filled with limitless cynicism as well as unceasing low-level anger.

It is for these many reasons that your propaganda-based word magic about forgiveness & forgetting has lost its power over all those who identify as white heterosexual males, as we no longer believe your relentless lies about individual sacrifice, collective progress & a better tomorrow, leaving us with only one remaining option.


Best
____

Like the aforementioned Star Wars franchise, most fiction serves first & foremost as propaganda which exists to sell the consumer on some sort of worldview, belief system or idea, begging the following question:

What is the belief system that the story of Hacker (Aficionado I & II) is trying to sell you on?

I await your insightful answers.

Larry Hart said...

locumranch:

I am also a divorced man (as 60% of all US men are) who is filled with limitless cynicism as well as unceasing low-level anger.


Then it shouldn't surprise you that as a happily married man of over 25 years, my world view has been shaped in a different way, almost the opposite way, from yours. Much like Batman's and Superman's in the original Dark Knight series:

"You sold us out, Clark. You gave them the power that should have been ours. Just like your parents taught you to. My parents taught me a different lesson--lying on the street--shaking in deep shock. Dying for no reason at all. They showed me that the world only makes sense when you force it to!"


It is for these many reasons that your propaganda-based word magic about forgiveness & forgetting has lost its power over all those who identify as white heterosexual males, as we no longer believe your relentless lies about individual sacrifice, collective progress & a better tomorrow, leaving us with only one remaining option.


So you're acknowledging that you and your fellow white men have given up on Christianity. I mean, it was obvious, but good to see it spelled out in black and white.

Alan Brooks said...

How did I guess you had divorced? Have heard it all before.
Just one illustration. A very good friend, who is admired by all, shows how one’s personal trauma can embitter the nicest of persons.
He was raised by a kindly Christian family. Horse ranchers. As his father had, he joined the army at the age of 18. (He was given ill-fitting boots in the army that ruined his feet.) After four years he was discharged and used the GI Bill to get a degree in IT. Got married and had two children. Divorced. Got married again and had one more child—divorced again. Was laid off by IBM during the Great Recession. Blamed his second wife for his problems. Last time I saw him he said it doesn’t matter what happens, as Armageddon cannot be long in coming.
Does he happen to remind you, in some way, of yourself?

David Brin said...

Carumba, just when I was about to mutter, I'm not even gonna skim him, anymore... old Locumranch delivers unto us something... rather eloquent and moving and almost (tragically) poetical.

Dang.

Still, NOT every western had a Chinese tragedy motif. Only most of the best ones. Like THE SEARCHERS, HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER, MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, LITTLE BIG MAN and COWBOYS VS ALIENS. Good prevails and the hero rides on... alone.

Ever see RUSTLER'S RHAPSODY?

Larry Hart said...

Alan Brooks:

How did I guess you had divorced?


Well, it hasn't exactly been a secret. loc has used his own personal story to explain why he's abandoned the White Man's Burden many times here. It's like someone looked into his life and wrote a country song about it.

Alan Brooks said...

A pity. My friend too, embittered by two divorces and raised by a family that entirely rejected divorce (until death do ye part.) He sometimes wished he’d stayed on the ranch—but how you gonna keep down on the ranch, after they’ve seen Paree? And the Army.

My favorite Western, despite its flaws, is ‘No Country For Old Men’.

Robert said...

everybody and their monkey's uncle thinks they can write

Well, most people can write. Poorly, but they can do it.

Doing it well is difficult. Even doing it adequately is difficult. If you count RPG source material as writing, I've done it adequately enough to earn hundreds of dollars. (If you played Traveller you might have encountered some of my stuff.)

Fiction is harder.

Robert said...

NOT every western had a Chinese tragedy motif. Only most of the best ones. Like THE SEARCHERS, HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER, MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, LITTLE BIG MAN and COWBOYS VS ALIENS. Good prevails and the hero rides on... alone.

In a Chinese tragedy the hero would likely die. Heroically inspiring others, like Bjorn Ironside in the Vikings series. Good survives, but doesn't necessarily prevail.

But isn't that true for all tragedies? I know almost nothing about Greek literature, but certainly being a hero in one of Shakespeare's tragedies would make one a poor insurance risk!

Alan Brooks said...

Magnificent Seven, aye.

Unknown said...

This is reminding me of a fascinating little book called "The Chinese Knight Errant". I'd recommend it for an overview of the genre.

Robert,

Not all ancient Greek plays were tragedies, but the casualty rates were pretty high in the ones that were. Not that Agamemnon, for instance, didn't deserve every stroke of the axe, but in his bath...kinda harsh.

Pappenheimer

DP said...

Dr. Brin, I think you would like "The Mandalorian" better if you understood the story it is based on: "Lone Wolf and Cub" by Kazuo Koike.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Wolf_and_Cub

Even if you consider the Jedi to be nothing but corrupt oppressive overlords posing a noble warriors, like the daimyo of feudal Japan, I think you could at least appreciate the Mandalorians as ninja/Ronin who fight in opposition to the ruling class on behalf of the nomin peasants for the sake of justice and true honor.

IOW, in "The Mandalorian" it is strongly implied that the Jedi are the bad guys (I'd give proof but would require major spoiler alerts).

Now that I have allayed your political objections, perhaps I can also dispense with any artistic objections you may have by pointing out that there is nothing to object to. The The Mandalorian is simply a good action flick. Don't overthink it. Nobody should think too deeply about any action flick.

Just grab some popcorn, sit back and enjoy the fun.

P.S. And Baby Yoda is just so freaking cute and adorable.

DP said...

locumranch:

"I am also a divorced man (as 60% of all US men are) who is filled with limitless cynicism as well as unceasing low-level anger."

Scott Adams*, is that you?

(* creator of Dilbert)

DP said...

"9/28/22 A new study from the Pentagon shows that 77% of young Americans would not qualify for military service without a waiver due to being overweight, using drugs or having mental and physical health problems."

To paraphrase the Bard, "The fault, dear loc, is not in our culture, but in our forever chemicals and microplastics".

What we are seeing is the first generation with bodily and mental damage caused by exposure to and saturation in these chemicals even while in the womb.

DP said...

While those on the right worry about silly things "wokeness" real dangers are sneaking up on us.

3,500 seals just suddenly died from H5N1 bird flu on the coast of Peru:

https://bnonews.com/index.php/2023/03/nearly-3500-sea-lions-in-peru-die-of-h5n1-bird-flu/

“The high mortality observed was worrisome; for instance, up to 100 dead individuals floating together in the sea – an unprecedented observation for this geographical region,” researchers said in a study last month. “The clinical symptoms of dying individuals were mainly neurological, such as tremors, convulsions and paralysis.”

The South American fur seal has also been affected, with five of these mammals having been found dead in recent weeks. Authorities have also reported the deaths of a dolphin and a lion.

It’s unclear how the sea lions were infected but researchers have not been able to rule out mammal-to-mammal transmission. “This should be urgently investigated,” the authors of the study said.

A little girl and her family were also killed by H5N1 last month in Cambodia, not by human to human transmission.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/bird-flu-father-daughter-cambodia-not-spread-person-to-person-rcna73076

Recent cases of bird flu discovered in two Cambodian villagers, one of them fatal, show no sign of human-to-human transmission, health officials in the Southeast Asian nation say, allaying fears of a public health crisis.

But it took only 6 days from observable symptoms to death. The seals may be evidence of mammal to mammal transmission. Fortunately there is no human to human transmission... yet. It's something to keep an eye on.

Covid-19 has a 1% mortality rate

H5N1 has a 58% mortality rate.

And while we await the development of human to human transmission, H5N1 is devastating wildlife:

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/02/avian-bird-flu-virus-outbreak-epidemic/673058/

Eagles Are Falling, Bears Are Going Blind Bird flu is already a tragedy.

A human epidemic, though, remains a gloomy forecast that may not come to pass. In the meantime, the outbreak has already been larger, faster-moving, and more devastating to North America’s wildlife than any other in recorded history, and has not yet shown signs of stopping. “I would use just one word to describe it: unprecedented,” says Shayan Sharif, an avian immunologist at Ontario Veterinary College. “We have never seen anything like this before.” This strain of bird flu is unlikely to be our next pandemic. But a flu pandemic has already begun for countless other creatures—and it could alter North America’s biodiversity for good.

Deadly strains of avian flu have been ferried onto North American shores multiple times before, and rapidly petered out. That was the case in 2014, when a highly virulent version of the virus crossed the Pacific from Asia and invaded U.S. poultry farms, forcing workers to exterminate millions of chickens and turkeys. The brutal interventions worked: “They did all the right things, and nipped it in the bud,” says Nicole Nemeth, a veterinary pathologist at the University of Georgia. Hardly any wild birds were affected; egg prices bumped up briefly, then settled back roughly to baseline. “It just kind of died down,” Nemeth told me. “And everyone breathed a sigh of relief.”

This time, though, the dynamics are different. The epidemic, which first erupted in Europe in the fall of 2021, appears to have crossed the Atlantic into Canada, then zigzagged down into the U.S. around the start of last year. American scientists have detected the virus in more than 150 wild and domestic avian species and at least a dozen different types of mammals. It’s by far the longest and most diverse list of victims the virus has ever claimed on this side of the world.

Larry Hart said...

Robert:

Fiction is harder.


George Washington in Hamilton might put it thusly:
History's easy, young man,
Fiction is harder.

Larry Hart said...

Robert:

In a Chinese tragedy the hero would likely die. Heroically inspiring others,


The most inspiring heroic epics of ours go that route too. I can think of three musicals right off the bat.

Camelot
Ragtime
Hamilton


Not to mention the New Testament. I might have included Jesus Christ, Superstar among the musicals.

Boys' adventure stories don't usually go beyond the hero's prime of life, but a story that depends for justice or closure on the hero's always being around is not applicable to the real world, not to mention that it is at best a bit fascist-adjacent. I'm looking at you, Atlas Shrugged, but if the writer isn't being careful then even Superman can suffer from this. To have significance over the long term, the hero can't merely be powerful enough to impose his will. He has to inspire a movement that survives his demise.

Larry Hart said...

Pappenheimer:

Not all ancient Greek plays were tragedies, but the casualty rates were pretty high in the ones that were.


I've heard Greek comedy described as "Everyone but two characters die," as opposed to Greek tragedy in which "Everyone dies."

scidata said...

Robert: Fiction is harder

Agreed. I was a decent tech writer (software documentation, user manuals, courseware). Easy because it's impossible to stray off topic too far. In fiction, you can write for days or weeks before suddenly realizing it's all useless flotsam. Then it's time for a long pull (tree sauce of course).

Robert said...

Not that Agamemnon, for instance, didn't deserve every stroke of the axe, but in his bath...kinda harsh.

Nah. Shows consideration for the slave (likely female) who would have had to clean up the blood. :-)

locumranch said...

I'm not sure of who first introduced the term 'meatspace' into this thread, or whether they realize the term's implications, as it betrays a level of reality denial & self-abnegation that would shock even the most extreme transcendent renunciate.

Similarly, Larry_H's pyrrhic 'zingers' display astounding cluelessness, as he asserts his opinion that 'real' North American Christians should, ought & are supposed to be a bizarre amalgamation of the celibate Shaking Quakers sect and the Warsaw Shtetl dwellers who passively knelt to receive a bullet.

Well, here's a long overdue wakeup call, as the typical North American evangelical emphasizes Old Testament-style divine wrath and offers religious salvation without good works, expressions of remorse, godliness or the repudiation of sin to all who desire & accept it.

Luckily, those remorseless bastards can learn kindliness, leniency and sympathy from the likes of Alan_B who has "heard it all before" in a manner that allows him to ignore, marginalize & reject the emotional agony suffered by his "very good friend", along with the millions of other men.

That there are those who can hear the same tale repeated, over & over, and still doubt its veracity, why it's practically inconceivable, especially when Shakespeare said as much, that all tragedies begin with a wedding & all comedies end with one.


Best

Larry Hart said...

locumranch:

Well, here's a long overdue wakeup call, as the typical North American evangelical emphasizes Old Testament-style divine wrath and offers religious salvation without good works, expressions of remorse, godliness or the repudiation of sin to all who desire & accept it.


You willfully misunderstand my point. It's obvious even to the most obtuse by now ("Ah can plainly see.") that the American Christianists who insist that the founding fathers intended citizenship to belong exclusively to white Christians have themselves repudiated Christ. They can call themselves any number of things, but "Christian" ain't one of them. And so they can go back to Hungary or Russia or whatever country they feel algience to, because by their own definition, they don't share our American values.

If they want to claim some bizarre incarnation of Judaism instead of Christianity, more power to them. I'll happily cede the title and all that that entails. They might want to tone down the swastika flags, though.

Alan Brooks said...

Not so.
I did not ignore, marginalize, or reject the emotional agony of my good friend (who has disappeared and may be deceased). I did distance myself from his emotions, so as not to cry a little river. That’s for women to do.
But possibly you are correct on “meatspace” or “meat world.” Remains to be seen. We all have doubts... but if we accepted what you write here, we’d give up, lay down, and die.

I’m not really opposed, though, to what you write, because what you’re saying isn’t precisely clear. Too broad.
What you’re saying/attempting to say comes very close to making sense (science is blind?) but not quite. I asked more than a year ago what your beef is, and you expressed personal, not philosophical disappointment.
If divorce messed your head up, I’m not insensitive to it. If your parents hit you with a broomstick in your youth, I’m sorry.

Larry Hart said...

Alan Brooks:

Not so.


That's practically his trademark.

Tim H. said...

The "Fundagelicals" should reconsider the wisdom of setting precedents to attack, immiserate & harass folks they're sure will go to eternal punishment anyway, a change of fortune could see them suffering all the abuse they wish for particular sinners. If those they despise have justice, they will do fine, they risk all, merely because they're unwilling to "Let go, and let God", to borrow a phrase from them.

Unknown said...

Orson Card is an author I used to read and enjoy, but he seems to share with the Loc-Nar the idea that America was the promised land, but only for white people, and if it's not 95-99% white, it's ruined. This isn't something you find only in the US; Japan seems to be committing slow motion demographic and economic suicide because large-scale permanent immigration is a political nonstarter. The difference is that the American myth is centered around immigration; unfortunately, living and working conditions of poor people in our original (white) population sources (western Europe) have improved to the point that modern immigrants are likely to be from elsewhere, and suspiciously off-white in color. Apparently this is bad. Me, I lived in Asia for most of my youth and, you know, kids is kids. I really regret not picking up passable Hindi or Malay when I had the chance.

Also, since I did read Loc's latest, I believe I brought up meatspace. There is every indication that, if tech manages to continue progressing, what you perceive and your actual physical surroundings, your ding an sich*, may have less and less to do with each other. You can decry this as the Doom of Man or as a new way of being human - see Scalzi's Head On for details.

*(Not that I ever dipped more a toe into Kant's works).

Pappenheimer

Joe said...

"Nearly everyone can catch a baseball, too, but there aren't many Micky Mantles out there."

We Okie boys are just naturally tallented.

Larry Hart said...

locumranch's Rorschach-like rants are saying the same thing that Bill Maher's latest guest, Russell Brand, was saying on last night's show. I gather I'm supposed to be familiar with the guy, but I've never heard of him before. He's a British comedian whose voice sounds a lot like John Oliver, but his points are vastly different from Oliver's.

His biggest point seemed to be that both parties are the same (in America as well as in Britain) because they're all beholden to the elites and never do anything for the little people. In that vein, he insisted that MSNBC and CNN are every bit as propagandist as FOX is, because for example, the "liberal" networks didn't allow on-air speakers to promote Ivermectin. When even Bill Maher himself pushed back against the bothsiderism, arguing that Obamacare was a lifesaver for average Americans, Brand pooh-poohed that, essentially arguing that the perfect is the enemy of the good--that since no Democratic program solves all problems at once, without cost, and forevermore, they're all just as worthless as Republicans who don't even try. And his counter to anyone arguing against him seemed to be that he can't be wrong--about anything--because he's SAYING IT IN A LOUD OBNOXIOUS ACCENTED VOICE!!!

Anyhoo, the part that reminds me of locum is when Brand was asked about they buyers' remorse that Britishers seem to be feeling relative to Brexit. He bristled at the sarcastic question, "Was it worth it?". I don't entirely disagree with his initial rejoinder, which is that the pro-Brexiters largely felt abandoned by the system altogether, and saw the Brexit vote as a "Fuck you!" to the establishment. But that was not incidental to the question, "Was it worth it?". It was the whole point. "You thought that your life sucked so bad before that any change, even tearing the whole economy down, couldn't be any worse for you. Well, what do you think now?" But Brand was having none of it. Instead, he admonished the other guests and Maher that they weren't winning the Brexiters over, and in fact were alienating them further, by pointing out that they wrecked their own lives.

So to paraphrase, a subset of the population feels so abandoned that they are willing to upend the lives of everyone else so that everyone else will then notice how bad things are and change the situation more to those people's liking. I might turn that around and point out that willingness to destroy my life because you are unhappy isn't winning me over, but somehow, no one ever puts it that way.

Larry Hart said...

Tim H:

they risk all, merely because they're unwilling to "Let go, and let God", to borrow a phrase from them.


Yes, contrary to locum's insistence that the evangelicals preach Divine retribution against any who offend Him, they obviously don't believe that God will enforce their particular requirements, because they feel they have to intercede with threats and violence on their own.

Dave Sim once pointed out how much hubris it demonstrated for the Nazis to essentially claim that God made a mistake choosing the Jewish people, and that it was up to them to rectify God's mistake. They evangelical hypo-Christians are cut from the same cloth.

David Brin said...

Aaaaaand he's back. a brief shimmer of honest (if grouchy) self-revelation sank back into his regular foam of dyspeptic irrelevance and way-over-there strawmanning. Sigh/

It is trivial to refute the "both sides kowtow to their rich elites" garbage. Fully funding and modernizing and unleashing the IRS means ALL cheaters will at minimum hve their oprions constrained and political connextions won't protect the worst who get exposed to light. Likewise Biden's miracle negotiation of a worldwide(!) minimum 15% corporate tax was inadequated, but so vastly better than before that it demolishes the 'both sides' bullshit.

There are no writhes or squirms against that.

Alan Brooks said...

Don’t know what to make of Loc. I don’t dislike him at all, possibly because he reminds me of my fundamentalist horse-rancher friend. In his case, his parents were so kind that he could never get over their would-be Christian inculcation.
Such people WANT to be Christians, yet they can’t; they’re too materialistic. However, they do try.
After two bad marriages, horserancher junior blamed the last marriage’s demise on his wife and Beelzebub. In that order. Wonder if parallels can be drawn with horse rancher and locum rancher? But we can’t know because loc understandably wants to protect his ego. Who doesn’t?
From experience living in rural locales, would say it isn’t the isolation that is disheartening, privacy after all is what so many seek in the sticks. Rather it is often fear, fear in being so close to nature’s half-expected. A farmer may be outstanding in his field, but he can experience Sudden Death. What I disagree with is the notion that the rural dweller is morally superior—unless being close to nature is to be considered synonymous with moral superiority. Say the noble savage in his pickup with a rebel flag in the back. That is a stretch, though.

Larry Hart said...

Alan Brooks:

Such people WANT to be Christians, yet they can’t; they’re too materialistic.



I don't know your friend specifically, but from what I've seen, such people want to have it both ways. They want to be regarded as Christians, but they don't want to do any of the stuff that Christ advocated.

Larry Hart said...

PSB:

"It was very interesting when they started coming up with intact hotdogs that were 50 years old... I would hate to imagine the digestive systems of people who ate them."

"Well, those are the ones that people didn't eat. Self-evidently so."

- Actually, plenty of them were fragments or half-eaten.


Your definition of "intact" is not the same as mine.

Hey, I kid because I love.

Alan Brooks said...

LH,
horse ranch jr is in a grey area: because of his orthodox upbringing, his actions are almost Christian. Yet almost doesn’t count.
According to scripture, an upright person can slip from grace at any time. It’s like walking a tightrope—but what isn’t?

David Brin said...

onward

onward