Pen-losers of the World Unite

Howdy folks.

I'm back from my long break. As some of you may know, and as has been alluded to in a few previous entries, I've been writing a novel.

It got to a point where I realised that I needed to focus totally on that, and so I did - hence the hiatus. But, it's now done. 80,156 words.

Not bad for a first real effort, no? Especially since half of that was done through December, as my deadline approached - that is, the deadline for the competition that it's been submitted to.

Fingers crossed it'll end up somewhere worthwhile - and if not, hey, at least I've got something to submit to people for getting it published the long way round.

But enough on that topic. I shall attempt to begin my daily foray into the world of literature once more, with a curious observation on a truism; he who walks with his head in the clouds is tripped by the smallest pebble.

It's an old saying, and quite true (mostly metaphorically, but sometimes literally...), but few people consider its ramifications in history. For instance, let me tell you about my favourite little history anecdote, and proof positive that if there are gods out there, they have a really twisted sense of humour.

Who is the greatest conquerer of all time? The most infamous leader, the one who shook the world?

Some people might think of Caesar, with his great campaigns against the Gauls and his expansions of the Roman Empire. Others might argue Hitler, whose Nazi regime was seemingly unstoppable for some years. Napoleon, others might cry, the man who really did conquer Europe. Queen Victoria! She ruled over the largest empire the world has ever seen!

No. None of those. It was a man who spent his youth in poverty, killed his half-brother in a fight over hunting spoils, and who grew up in what most people would consider a barren wasteland - Borjigin Temüjin, better known as Genghis Khan.

The Mongol Empire is the largest contiguous land empire in history, and only narrowly loses out to the British Empire at its height on largest of all (around 1% smaller). The Mongols swept through China, Russia, the Middle East and eventually ground to a halt around Turkey. The brutally simple expansion technique (surrender or be butchered to the last man, woman and child, have your city burned down and the ground sown with salt) caused a noticeable dip in world populations according to historians.

Part of it was certainly that the Mongols are tough bastards. Napoleon and Hitler both tried to invade Russia and got crippled by the winter. The Mongols chose to invade Russia during the winter, as the icy rivers and lakes made nice roads for their cavalry.

But... where are the Mongols now? Conquerers that successful, people that shook the world and annihilated civilisations, they must have done well, right?

...well, Mongolia has a population half that of London, a fair chunk of the population is wandering nomads, and it's kind of forgettable in world politics.

Good joke, huh?

But Fen, I hear you say, this is all very well, but what does it have to do with heads in clouds?

I have a theory that you need two things to be a successful conquerer. You need grand vision, and you need to have someone else to take care of the trivia. Genghis didn't have trivia - you live out in the wilderness, living day to day without the concerns that had occupied the rest of civilisation, get an idea for conquering the world, and there's not much to stop you. Napoleon had most of the work done for him; by the time he came to power, France was already everyone's enemy and raring for a fight - he just focused it. Hitler ranted glorious speeches and let others do the hard work.

In other words, the only reason why we don't have more power-hungry world dominating types is that they keep losing the pens to write out their plans, and get frustrated enough by trying to find said pens that they forget the plans for world domination, and satisfy themselves with a really good pen organisation system.

Think about it.

Until next time... you're so like a rose.

Opposites

Goodmountain shook his head. "This is unholy stuff," he said. "No more meddling with it, understand?"

"I didn't think dwarfs were religious," said William.

"We're not," said Goodmountain. "But we know unholy when we see it, and I'm looking at it right now, I'm telling you."

Terry Pratchett, "The Truth"

"Slave is an Ephebian word. In Om we have no word for slave," said Vorbis.

"So I understand," said the Tyrant. "I imagine that fish have no word for water."

Terry Pratchett (again), "Small Gods"

Pratchett has a curious way of making very profound points. His books are undoubtedly funny, but often, they make you sit back for a moment and think.

About opposites, for instance.

It's an old adage that you can't have light without dark. How can you explain colours of light to a blind man? How can one explain the difference between birdsong and dogs howling to a deaf man? But is this true?

From a scientific point of view, analysis of light allows you to infer the existence of dark. You can say, "There are electromagnetic waves of a specific frequency that reflect off their surroundings and are absorbed by our eyes; there must be a state where these do not exist, and we shall call this 'darkness'." That's perfectly fine. But you couldn't look at pitch black and infer the existence of light. You might, at a stretch, say that there could be something. But you couldn't say anything about it. Just that, in an empty space, it is possible that there are spaces which are not empty. And even that is pretty debateable, if all you knew about was empty space.

Yes yes, if all you knew about was empty space, then what would you be? Let's leave the smartassery out of metaphysics, it spoils the fun of these thought experiments.

All right, Fen, I hear you say. So science can sometimes tell us about the opposite. But we won't know what it's like, will we? Of course not.

As part of the previously mentioned series on Quantum Physics and Relativity, the lecturer remarked in an early lecture on relativity that the only reason why it isn't obvious is that we live at too slow a speed, and in too little gravity to notice its effects. If we were some kind of being that regularly travelled near the speed of light, then it would be common sense. But because we don't, our common sense is misleading, and we find it hard to comprehend. It's even worse with quantum physics. If that minimum energy for photons were astromically higher, high enough to be noticeable, we'd live in a very bizarre world where quantum physics was common sense. But again, it's out of our experience, so it leaves us floundering.

Even smaller things, like trying to picture four-dimensional shapes; we can't do it from our 3D perspective. So just because we can infer the presence of an opposite in some cases doesn't mean we'll know what it's like.

So what about Pratchett's dwarfs and their concept of unholy? Are we simply getting drawn into a battle of linguistics? Clearly they know what 'holy' is, even if they don't believe in anything labelled as such. But do they have to? Pulling out a thesaurus and looking up 'unholy' provides profane, unhallowed, unsanctified, unblessed, sacriligious, godforsaken and accursed, so by dictionary definition, and by Goodmountain's remark, it is a psuedoreligious declaration. On the other hand, the omnipresence of gods in the Pratchett novels lends a slightly different atmosphere to the debate, so perhaps the whole debate is skewed.

So let's look at something else unscientific: good and evil. Can you have good without evil? Some philosophers, notably Kant and Bentham, would say yes. Although both argued very different things (Kant believed in absolute morals, Bentham in ones mutable according to the situation), there is a sense in both their ideas that there is a separate existence of good and evil.

"You know the thing about chaos? It's fair," the Joker says in 'The Dark Knight'. A better example of a truly amoral character is hard to conceive of. Not immoral, to do a little dictionary bashing; to be immoral, he would have to have a concept of good and evil that is fundamentally lacking. But is this true? Does he truly not understand?

I call upon another philosopher at this point, the cynical bastard AJ Ayer. His theory, Emotivism, essentially calls upon linguistics and looks at 'good' and 'evil' as personal judgements. They are what we make them. We can look at something and say 'yay', or 'boo' depending on our own feelings - that there is no objective good and evil.

The presence of an ethical symbol in a proposition adds nothing to its factual content. Thus if I say to someone, "You acted wrongly in stealing that money," I am not stating anything more than if I had simply said, "You stole that money." In adding that this action is wrong I am not making any further statement about it. I am simply evincing my moral disapproval of it. It is as if I had said, "You stole that money," in a peculiar tone of horror, or written it with the addition of some special exclamation marks. … If now I generalise my previous statement and say, "Stealing money is wrong," I produce a sentence that has no factual meaning—that is, expresses no proposition that can be either true or false. … I am merely expressing certain moral sentiments.

AJ Ayer, "Language"

You can consider from this the point of view that it isn't possible to have good without evil, because we automatically know what is good and bad for us, from the animal, instinctive part of our minds. So in a sense, the debate is meaningless. Either there is no objective right and wrong, in which case it comes down to personal definitions, or there is an objective right and wrong.

I'll stop before I get too deeply into the philosophical debate - could be a good topic for another day. But I will posit this thought: if we go by Ayer's definition, what if we lived in a world that we only liked or disliked? If have no experience of something that does not provide us pleasure (or pain), could we conceive of the opposite?

'Dr Horrible's Singalong Blog', the short film by Joss Whedon, considers this in a throwaway fashion, with the nemesis of the protagonist feeling pain for the first time at the end, and ending up bawling to a therapist in horror at the experience. Certainly Captain Hammer behaved in a deeply unpleasant fashion that could be taken to mean that he had no concept of other peoples' suffering.

So... this brings us, in a roundabout way, to the Tyrant's line. If we only know one thing, would we conceive of it? If we only experience pleasure, never pain, would we have a word for pleasure? Would it not be erased from consciousness, as a simple state of being? If we knew only light, would we not forget the words 'light' and 'dark'? And in turn, does this actually matter?

I think my brain is in too low a gear, the engine's complaining.

I think the conclusion is that it is possible to have one thing without its opposite. You can apply that to just about any concept. But would we have a concept of this? Possibly not.

Hopefully this vague collection of ideas has brought insight into your day.

Until tomorrow (in theory)... I am the hate you try to hide.

Quantum Physics and You

As the child of a family of what could be justifiably called intellectual snobs, I've been watching a DVD series about quantum physics recently.

It was in the latest episode that I came to an interesting philosophical conclusion, one which has some bearing on fiction. In a smartass kind of way, true, but I thought I would share.

I'll try to explain this as simply as possible, because it's a really cool idea. One of the most basic principles of quantum physics is that there is a minimum amount of energy anything can have. This includes the humble photon, which is basically a unit of light energy. In the case of a photon, you can say with reasonable accuracy that this minimum amount depends on the colour of the light - red light has a low minimum energy, while blue light has a high minimum energy.

Now, this minimum amount is so small that in the everyday world, we don't notice it. It's unimportant. But at the subatomic scale, it's relatively quite large.

Now, say that you want to look at a very small object, like an electron. If you want to find its exact position, you need a highly focused photon, which means it has to be closer to the blue end of the spectrum. This means you know exactly where the photon is, and thus can work out exactly where the object it bounces off of is.

But because it's high energy, it'll make the object change direction. So you know where it is, but not where it's going.

On the other hand, if you want to know where it's going, you can use a low energy, red photon. This won't disturb the object, so you know where it's going. But because it's an unfocused photon, you don't know exactly where it is, so you can't say exactly where the object is!

I'm aware that I'm striking a horrible middle ground where physicists will sneer and lay people will go 'huh?', but hopefully at least some of you will understand. The bottom line is, you can't know both where something is, and where it's going with absolute certainty, because the light you use to see this will affect what you're trying to find out.

Thus, the interesting philosophical thought: certainty is only possible without knowledge. You can be certain that everything has an exact position and velocity, but only if you don't try to find them out.

Physics lesson over. That was kind of interesting, Fen, I hear you say, but what's it got to do with writing?

Science fiction is an interesting genre, because there's so many ways of doing it. At one end, you have 'The Forever War', an interesting and cynical take on the future, which is one of the few that includes relativistic effects (and even making them key plot points - the protagonist is promoted from Private to General in three missions due to the amount of 'real' time that he's been in the military). At the other, you have things like the Culture universe, of 'Consider Phlebas' and 'The Player of Games', where intergalactic travel is almost casual, people build mountains as a hobby and switch genders for a change of pace. In the middle you have the near-reality of (the reimagined) Battlestar Galactica, and the well known middle grounds of Star Wars and Star Trek.

So what's my point? My point is that when it comes to writing sci-fi, it is possible to get too hooked up on the exact details of how stuff works. The reader doesn't care. Sure it's fun to play around with principles - I've come up with half a dozen methods of FTL travel with some kind of logical basis, but you don't need to explain exactly why things work. It's science fiction.

People care about the story, and the cool spaceships, that's all. They don't need to know about screwdrivers.

Unless they're sonic.

With that thought to consider, I leave you...

Until tomorrow... he lives in my basement, I can hardly face it.

The Cult Moment (and Vampires)

The dish contained something shiny and wobbly and pink with a cherry on it,
and in some strange way it managed to look like something you wouldn't eat even
if it was pushed on to your plate after a week's starvation diet.

"What does it taste of?" said Masklin, after Gurder had chewed a
mouthful.

"Tastes of pink," said Gurder.

Terry Pratchett, 'Wings'

Ever since reading that, 'Tastes of pink' has become an inescapable phrase in my life. I'm quite convinced that Gurder is correct; there is such a thing as the taste of pink. Of course, there is a question as to whether what I'm tasting merely associates itself with pink, and if I'd never read the book, I'd never think to call it the taste of pink... but as it stands, the concept that pink is the only colour you can taste without needing synesthesia is lodged in my mind.

I'm sure we can all name a dozen little things that we've picked up over the years, some from utterly bizarre sources. Years after first seeing it, the line "Well... there's this nurse" from 'Shakespeare in Love' is still invariably used as a jokey way to begin a story. The majority of internet memes, most notably "All your base are belong to us", can be traced back to a seemingly innocent remark (or, in that particular case, extremely bad translation of an innocent remark).

So how and why are these little 'cult moments' formed? Certainly we all react to them differently. I'm sure that most of the world, on reading the "Tastes of pink" line merely chuckled and moved on.

Pretty much all of them that I can think of are funny in some way; whether the satirically true consideration of airline food in Pratchett, the the dry humour from 'Shakespeare in Love', or unintentionally hilarious mistranslation, all the examples I've used are somehow amusing. And that, I think, is the core of it. After all, we're all slightly different. Our senses of humour are all distinct. The trick about writing a cult moment, based on that, is that it has to be short, quoteable, and funny. From there, human nature can take up the rest.

The question then arises, is it possible to write something that everyone will quote? I have my doubts, but it's an infinite multiverse...

Now, by request, and since this post is a tad short as it stands, I shall go on to one of my pet peeves. Fluffy vampirism.

Ever since its popularisation by the novel 'Dracula', the vampire mythos has captured the imagination of the world. Vampires are somehow popular. Exactly why we're so fascinated by these creatures of the night is a topic for another time, but the fact is, they are.

Unfortunately, some novelists don't seem to really understand what vampirism means.

What is a vampire? A nocturnal, parasitic, camouflaged superpredator. That's it! That's a vampire in a nutshell! Playing with the various traits of vampires is fine. The rules set down by 'Dracula' are hardly set in stone. But at their heart, something which cannot be changed without taking away the fact of vampirism, is that they are predators.

So in other words, no, they are not mopey, sparkly, pale, emo types that teenage girls with no personality squeal over.

We're vampire food. These are creatures that, in most sources, are faster and stronger than us, have a grab bag full of special powers, and can only survive by drinking human blood. This does not provide a good basis for a love affair.

I'm not pooh-poohing the whole concept of human-vampire relationships. Of course they're possible. What I do doubt is any kind of two-way love. A human can love a vampire, but the vampire will most likely just view the human as a kind of favoured pet.

World of Darkness, True Blood, even Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Anita Blake; they've got it right. Please. Can we have less of the Twilight gibberish? Hell, just give vampires a rest for a while. They've been done to death. They're old news. Let the poor things sleep in their coffins for a few years.

On that note, I must sign off. I trust that this has been an enlightening insight onto my twisted mind.

So, until tomorrow... When I am king, you will be fast against the wall.

'Evil'

A few weeks ago, I remarked a little sadly to a friend that I don't seem able to write a simple, innocent, basically good character any more. It always gets... complicated.

You would not be unjustified in saying that I have a thing for 'evil' or 'broken' characters; perhaps for the same reason that we read with interest about serial killers. We want to know why, what makes them tick, what leads them to their actions. For me, it is much the same.

One of the best examples that springs to mind is that of Selene Sundheim, AKA Inferno. She's an anti-hero in Dark City, my personal take on the superhero concept. Selene is borderline psychotic, cynical as hell, and a drug addict. Her last actions before disappearing from society for years were to burn down her school, and murder her own father. Yet somehow, in the dystopic world of corporate corruption in Dark City, she's one of the good guys! I've remarked several times to a friend who I've bounced ideas off for a long time that in any other universe, she would be a perfect villain... but in Dark City, she's just extreme. She's the victim of a horrible childhood, a bad environment, and a hundred other circumstances.

By contrast, there's Edgar Coralsten, AKA Terminus, also from Dark City. Terminus is not one of the good guys. He's nominally on the same side as the story's protagonists, but he was kicked out of the little band of rebels for being too extreme.

I like Terminus, as a concept, because he's utterly off the wall. He's smart, and his incredibly destructive acts of terrorism mark him as your average scheming villain... but he has a strong cockney accent, and is always quoting Robespierre, the architect of The Terror during the French Revolution. Both Terminus and his role model are pretty despicable men... but that above friend once remarked that it's oddly hard to argue with him.

So where's the gap? What makes Inferno a hero and Terminus a villain? Both are fighting against the looming, faceless corporate oppressors who make up the backdrop of Dark City. Both kill without hesitation, and both are wanted criminals. Where's the line that Terminus has crossed and Inferno has not?

It's little questions like that that keep bringing me back to writing 'evil' characters - plus, of course, the aforementioned "What makes them tick?". The idea of 'The Cage' is one that I've returned to a few times, espoused by a couple of unmitigatedly evil characters in short stories and concepts; the idea that everyone has a beast inside, imprisoned in the cage of society's rules, and most of all, the consequences of their actions. When the consequences no longer matter, the beast is released.

A rather bleak and cynical view, perhaps. But is there some element of truth to it? Don't we all, as we go through life and meet people, have little flashes of what we could do, but don't, partly because of the consequences?

It puts me in mind of the werewolf myth, the literal beast within, released at the full moon to rampantly destroy... but during the day, just an ordinary person, obeying society's rules. I've always preferred vampires to werewolves, mind... but please note that anyone mentioning Twilight to me will be stared at disappointedly for some time.

Although, I confess, I am interested to read the book (or at least try to), simply to see if I can work out what the hell the fuss is all about. Vampires are a sad case, so devastatingly hackneyed and overused... but I digress.

For now, dear readers, I leave you to consider the concept of 'the beast within'.

Until tomorrow... I hurt myself today, to see if I still feel.