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“I clearly cannot choose the cup in front of me”

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I expect some of you recognize the title of this post as one of the great lines from The Princess Bride. It seems to me Vizzini’s thought process bears on something that today has some currency as a “big question”, namely: Free will.

Many of you doubtless think of this not as a big question, but as an old one. I learned in high school about the Reformation and predestination and my teenage self, inasmuch as I devoted any thought to such topics, considered the case closed. Of course we have free will because if we don’t, by definition there’s not much point in debating about it, right? I suspect most people see themselves as making choices every day, using the power of volition, the aspect of consciousness that may be influenced by conditions and experience but is not bound by it.

And of course there’s the point that without free will, there’s no moral responsibility, and without that we’re just NPCs in a really complicated videogame.

But there’s a few things lately that bring this question back on the table. The first is exemplified by a new book,  Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, by Robert M. Sapolsky; I haven’t yet got Determined but I read and got a lot out of his previous book, Behave: The Biology of Humans at our Best and Worst. Sapolsky makes a “hard” determinist case for there being no free will – in his view every single thing we do is a product of our genes, our conditioning, and our hormones, whether we feel we have volition or not.

I don’t expect I’ll get the book and go through all of Sapolsky’s argument but from what I can find about it seems largely circumstantial, citing a lot of behavioral experimentation: There are many, many studies that show behaviors aligning with specific neurological and physiological triggers. But this seems circular – just because a metric coincides with a result doesn’t mean the metric fully and solely caused the result. I’ll come back to this.

The second thing that brought me to this subject is some recent articles about the US economy and what people think about it. It’s certainly no secret the overall national mood is poor, Pew Research has a representative study. While it would not be helpful to just declare everyone is wrong – yes, rent and some food costs are high – there is still a lot to be puzzled about here. Republicans seemed to have thought that things were perfect during the Trump administration, with 80% saying things were “excellent”; the facts were the first part of his administration was just a continuation of the Obama declines in unemployment, while the second half was typified by a disastrous pandemic response that saw unemployment reach 14.7%, as well a quarter-million preventable COVID deaths. But Democrats and Independents also see the economy as continually worsening since 2020 – all while consumer spending is surging in these “tough times”.

To me at least, an indicator of this cognitive dissonance is the trend called the silent depression, that (again, to me) astonishingly claims that our economy today is worse than that of the 1930s. Really? I must have missed the breadlines or the 5 million homeless people – that’s how many we would have at the same rate of homelessness in 1930. Today’s number is a tenth that.

There’s a lot of posts on Tiktok using recycled arguments on how today is worse than 1930. Just one of those arguments cites a figure for average income in 1930 of $4800 – $85,000 in today’s dollars. When we look at the average income today, of $56,000, you would think, “How unexpected, income is 35% less compared to 1930!”

Here’s the problem: That $4800 average income figure comes from citizens who filed tax returns. However, in 1930 only 10% of all citizens filed tax returns; the whole process was still new and so many people had such low incomes. The real value for average income is closer to $700, about $12,500 in 2023 dollars. Hopefully we can agree that $56,000 is a bigger number than $12,500. Or maybe not, as despite considerable debunking of the silent depression, there’s still 1000s of posts on Tiktok tagged or titled “silent depression”.

Coming back to free will, it’s hard for me not to avoid the thought that these silent-depression advocates are predictable, deterministic automatons, acting how they’ve been programmed to act; after all social media rewards contrarians. But that’s a slippery slope, two-way street, you chose the cliché. The political Right version of this is sheeple,  people who unquestionably accept progressive dogma. On reflection maybe we should just accept that people all have views and we should just accept them and not try to undermine the thought process behind views we don’t like. But on reflected reflection, aren’t those people and their views trying to change the world where I live? How can I not question views that pose danger to me? Then again, on fourth-order reflection it seems …

This infinite recursion, turtles-all-the-way-down, “i know that you know that I know that you know …” logic trap occurs both in analyses of politics, and in analyses of free will. There’s got to be a better way, where people aren’t dismissed by some authority, but neither are falsehood and flawed reasoning allowed to control our collective destinies.

In closing, coming back to Sapolsky, I see two big issues with his arguments as I’ve understood them. First, he advocates for things like dispensing with prisons and criminal penalties – since the person who committed an offense really didn’t choose to do so, it makes no sense punishing them. But that’s another circularity, isn’t it? By his argument, we don’t choose to punish anyone, that outcome is determined. If he wants prisons abolished, he better send a harsh note to his genes, conditioning and hormones.

More seriously, Sapolsky’s argument is invalid because he is unable to describe evidence that would disprove his case. Of course the universe is deterministic: gravity is the same for all objects, at constant atmospheric pressure water boils at the same temperature everywhere, and hormones can make animals, including humans, lethargic, amorous, or cranky. None of that precludes the possibility that our consciousness – which is the product of physical laws – includes a capability to exert volition, the power of situational choice. The external predictability of those choices is beside the point, they are still choices that could be different. We cannot hold that the only proof of free will is people making nonsensical or random choices.

That’s all for today, I now choose to go work on my golf swing – no! my book – no, maybe the golf. After all, I clearly cannot choose the cup in front of me.

                                                          robots-choosing

Everyone’s a Critic

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A big part of being a writer is reading, which you have to do on several levels. I find there’s no better source of ideas than reading, especially when you go outside your favorite categories. Four years ago I came across Gods of the Upper Air, about the early-20th century birth of anthropology as a science, transforming from an essentially racist point of view to one that strove to understand cultures instead of ranking them. This reading led to many ideas that are now part of my WIP Only’s End.

Of course there’s reading for pleasure. Some of this for me is re-reading, especially Jack Vance or Patrick O’Brian. A pleasant new discovery this year was Sarah Caudwell. Her Oxford don detective Hilary Tamar is a fresh take on the classic deductive sleuth.

But that overlaps on the third type of reading – reading for work. As Samuel Johnson put it, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.” For a long time I’ve scamped keeping up with trends in my writing genres, and the past few months I’ve been looking at what is currently popular in SF and Fantasy. Writers should be telling stories out of their own vision, but at the same time ignoring what is successful in the marketplace can’t be a good idea.

Since July I’ve gone through nine or ten books, SF, fantasy and mystery. My takeaways thus far are part obvious, part puzzling. The obvious bit is how strongly character-driven genre books are today. I think of SF in particular as a “fiction of ideas”. Two examples for me as Zelazny’s Lord of Light and Zindell’s Neverness. (Hmm, maybe I should change my surname to Zalazar <g>) For both of those books what drew me in was not the protagonist’s backstory, but the richness of the idea: Technology that allows select humans to wield the power of gods and to make religion “real”, and Interstellar travel controlled by a guild of mathematical savants/adventurers. The characters in these books were powerful and well-drawn, but they were mainly vehicles to explore the idea.

The newer stuff I’ve looked always leads with the protagonist’s problem: They are on the run from some trouble, or they’re recovering from a failed romance or job, or they are struggling with prejudice and repression. I get that people have problems, and that problems make things interesting, but in my assessment these books have humdrum ideas as context. I get that not every book can have a world-shaking idea but c’mon – give me something.

The puzzling bit is how successful many of these books are, which brings me to reviews. I’m not going to name any names here but let me quote some reviews. The subject book has thousands, 79% were 5 or 4 stars, 2% 1 star. I bought the book because from the blurb it did have a big idea, something that sounded cool. Some snippets from the 5 star group:

This book is one of the finest I have ever read. There is a question, about loving someone who has hurt you so unimaginably, and an answer that made me ugly cry. I won’t spoil the ending, but you need to read this book. The language is gorgeous, and the characters are very finely drawn, and their growth is beautiful.

What … managed to do with this story is nothing short of mastery. With a narrative steeped in so much history …, one might think you are reading a reference book. However, by weaving in these amazingly diverse and complicated characters and the more fantastical elements the tale transforms into something completely new. There is emotion, double dealings, and the exploration of social constructs and race all wrapped up in a beautifully written package. This darkly … allows the reader to immerse themselves in the world the author created. The vivid descriptions, the richness of the language, and the eloquence make the experience even better.

I spent some time within these pages because I didn’t want to miss anything, absorbing the story for all it was. Every moment reading this, I would always push myself to read just one chapter more. … is truly an epic fantasy worth reading. I cannot wait to dive back in for a second read.

Sounds great, right? There’s thousands of similarly super-positive reviews for this book.

Now a look at the 1-stars:

I truly wanted to enjoy this book. Hat’s off to … for the marketing. And, there are moments where the author’s erudition nearly salvages the otherwise dull, slow-moving plot and plastic characters who, as others have pointed out, are entirely predictable, if not outright unoriginal. I waited for the hook to draw me in, but it never materialized. Meanwhile, the author’s lack of nuance and subtlety was aggravating. The mystery surrounding the plotline is betrayed by an incessant need to state the obvious. author clearly thinks very little of their readers. In the end, I absolutely *could* put it down.

After 163 pages I can honestly say there was nothing to encourage me to invest any more time because all in all the plot and the characters struck me as childish. I could not dredge up any interest in the fate of anyone and the hocus pocus of … was absurd. If you’re old enough to be out of high school read the free sample before making a purchase. I’m glad I got it on sale. Only the second book in 20 years that I read over 100 pages and did not finish and I’ve read a book a week for over 20 years. Very disappointing.

Where did I come down? Squarely in the 1-star category. The big idea fell flat, it really didn’t transform anything. The characters were stereotypes, the plot was predictable, there was a too much political commentary, and the ending was the most depressing, unsatisfying thing I can recall reading.

The puzzling thing is, there’s clearly vast numbers of people who like this. I can’t discount their opinions, but there’s nothing from their reviews I can take away to explain them. I also went back to look at the NYT and WaPo reviews of this book. Each was only a paragraph long, and I’m skeptical they were even written by the review byline author. Reviews by bloggers seem to be about 3 to 1 thumbs up / thumbs down.

If there’s any conclusion to be drawn here, it’s this: If it was possible to predict was the next bestseller is going to be, all of us would be Stephen King. Just have to keep reading and, or course, writing.

Till next time …

Keeping Track of the Fiddly Bits

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of work on backstory and context, not only for ONLY’s END, but for the worlds and species of Civspace. In my mind I know a lot of this. For example, the Phair species has an extreme male-female ratio, on the order of 10:1. This makes them risk-takers, makes them cynical, and makes them sexually voracious – you have to be, otherwise the other 9 Phair will beat you to the grand prize, as it were.

So, I know that, but to be truthful I haven’t worked out all the implications. That’s why writing it down is so important, so that when I spend time thinking through “what ifs?” I don’t lose any of that, but capture it so I can iterate on it. Some of this is pretty mechanical; for example I need a fixed timeline on when Raylics encountered Terrans, and in broad terms what happened in the 360 years since then. Then when a character refers to this or that war, that will be a consistent point in time for all the characters that might also mention it. Other parts are broad strokes: what’s the temperament of an alien species, or what happened in the early life of the main characters.

All in all, there’s hundreds of facts to think up and set down. No single one is all that important, but taken as a corpus, they’re super-important – thus the “fiddly-bits” reference as used by Slartibartfast.

Another thing that goes into this reference doc is vignettes or bits of backstory that I originally create as part of an actual chapter or story, but that I decide are too much of an “info dump”. Here’s one, hopefully amusing, about the Oro-Ka. All hail Fleen!

The next day the Oro-Ka were still on my mind. They have been a star-faring race for more than ten thousand years, more than three times longer than the Keret, and more than twenty-five times longer than we come-lately Terrans. Terendurr believes the Junn have an even longer history than the Oro-Ka, but they are now a wholly space-borne people and have little contact with Civspace.

As the Black Stone observed, it is pointless to guess the motivations of an Oro-Ka. They are renowned for chaotic behavior. A few years back, in our own city of Kuundo, a prestigious research conference was visited by a certain Oro-Ka. Their name escapes me, but this individual presented several times at the conference and in fact convinced a number of Terran and Raylic researchers to abandon long-held theories and pursue a different, highly unlikely idea, with no evidence, based solely on his arguments. The scientists discontinued their grants and plunged headlong into this new venture, at considerable loss of prestige. Then it was discovered some months later that this same Oro-Ka spent his nighttime hours in Kuundo as a street preacher, passionately proclaiming the imminent coming of the bird-god Fleen, who would ordain a new golden age for Raylic and Terran alike; the only price being the eradication of all feline-form house pets.

The cult of Fleen persisted, with hundreds of members, for over a year. Certain commentators pondered whether this Oro-Ka might all along had been here for a different purpose than religion or scientific collaboration, but rather to experiment on the population of Kuundo.

The thing is, with Oro-Ka, you can’t tell. He might have been hoaxing everyone, measuring our gullibility. But he may well have been totally sincere in all he said and did.

A Detective Lifts Their Binoculars and Sees … ?

detective-binoculars

Answer: What the author thinks will move you. Many readers will consider this as part of the plot or the action – hero sees something, hero learns or does something. But that’s just a fact, and probably one you could’ve predicted; our hero is a detective, of course she finds dead bodies. What’s more important is, where is this discovery set? Isolated woods? Grounds of a country estate? The rubbish pile of a fenced-off construction site? The setting of the action, and the details of how that particular setting differs from the general type, are what create emotional responses in the reader. When the body is found in the woods we might feel the victim agonized over their fate, as it was likely just them and the killer. For the country estate we might feel the victim deserved it, the setting suggests he was a rich toff who probably had wronged dozens of people. And for the rubbish heap, we might feel the most sympathy of all these cases – no one deserves to be discarded like trash. Of course, all that is dependent on the details the author gives you. What’s on the rubbish heap? Crushed stone, cement and rebar? Furniture and personal effects from bulldozed houses? Logs and shrubs from ripped-up landscaping? Whatever the choice is, it will tell you something about the world but, I guarantee, it will also make you feel something.

BTW before I go to much further I need to call out the source of the photo above. It’s from Deadloch, a hard to describe show from Australia – black-comedic mystery with absurd dashes is best I can do. Highly recommended.

Setting is something I’m looking at in my current work on ONLY’s END, a trilogy where Blair MacAlister and Terendurr the Black Stone contend with cruel master-criminal Bandal the Only. Book 1 will be two hundred fifty paperback pages (that’s my current guess). In all of that there’s around twenty-seven distinct settings. A few of these, like Terendurr’s office, are the backdrop for several scenes. How much do we need to know about an office? Sometimes it’s just the intent of the action:

With screens and projectors brought from the lab, and guest chairs arranged in ranks, the boss’ office had become a lecture hall.

But other times, the details (I think) help:

The Black Stone was behind his desk, just as I’ve seen him a thousand times or more. As Sandrine and I drew closer I was aware of the many familiar artifacts – the Phair executioner’s sword, Oro-Ka ritual gong, the Keret selling drum were things my eyes couldn’t help but light upon – but Terendurr was the only thing I really saw.

The one-time locations are in a way easier. You can’t invest an often-used location with too strong a default emotion, because you may want to vary the impression from that location. But with a one-time, I feel the more intense the better, like with the Dontoo Gardens, a public park that Blair visits with her beau, Theo:

We both laughed. Walking on, we became happy fairgoers, chatting with Raylic merchants, tasting bits of this and that offered by hawkers, with the faint drum and cymbal sound of Raylic music in the air. All around Raylic pups scampered in small packs, their parents and older siblings coming in their own packs behind, growling out cautions or encouragements as needed.

…

We continued our amble along the pathways of Dontoo. Music still wafted all about, though the crowds grew larger as we approached the area of the stage. On any day of good weather there were acts of various sorts – dance, acrobatics, puppetry – and today was fine.

With the bigger crowds came more hawkers. Now, the “hard sell” isn’t part of the Raylic character; where a Terran peddler would badger you to buy, a Raylic will just stand holding out their wares, if anything trying to look both pathetic and trustworthy.

Perhaps I was too interested in Theo and the charms of the gardens to see right in front of me. There was a hawker barring our way, an old Phair with tarnished-gold skin. He bounded side to side as we tried to pass by.

“Terran lady!” he exclaimed. “I have just the thing!” From a voluminous bag he withdrew an object and pressed it into my hand. Without thinking I looked at it. It was a small statuette, of a grimacing, sword-drawing warrior, made of warm brownish-white material. It fit in my palm perfectly, like a keepsake I’d had for years.

I won’t presume to tell you how you should feel, reading that, but I will tell you what I’m hoping for: A sense of safety, of family, a carnivale-like break from the real world, and finally a bit of foreboding of something different to come.

I’ll close by suggesting you reflect on settings from your own favorite books. Thinking on Lord of the Rings I think can name at least ten amazing settings without thinking, and can visualize almost all of them. Till next time …

Crunching Words into Numbers

What is it, 6 weeks since my last post? It’s not so much that time flies when you’re retired (though I am that), but rather that it flies when you are working.

That work is the work of writing. I certainly can’t claim an encyclopedic experience of my new vocation, but I do know enough to say it is not just staring out the window awaiting inspiration from Sharon Stone. For one thing, when inspiration does strike me it’s most likely to do that while I’m exercising, on a walk or on my stationary bike. For another thing, Ms. Stone and I … ah, best not to go there.

So what is this supposed work? For the past 5 years I’ve been working on a Blair and Terendurr trilogy. Thus far I’ve completed about 250,000 words – two and a half books worth. I’m quite pleased with that and as I copy-edit and re-read I’m more and more confident this work is good. But that does not mean it’s done. It means it’s time to make it better.

Whether you consciously know it or not, whenever you read a story, you are processing the rhythm of the action. Almost all stories (and almost all movies) use a three-act structure that is roughly like so:

  1. Meet the hero or heroes, learn about their problem or antagonist.
  2. Heroes contend with the bad guys, suffer a crushing defeat.
  3. Heroes bounce back with a just-so-crazy-it-just-might-work plan – which works! Yay!

We don’t want every story to simplistically follow the three-act structure (which would be boring) but at the same time we need to see challenges and victories. The books we like the most tend to be the ones that vary the rhythm, keep us guessing, while still fulfilling the goals of the three-act structure. This is where the crunching comes in.  I’ve taken the first story of the first book and for every separate scene in it, given it a number that indicates an achievement or a setback. When Blair finds a new lead on the case, that’s an achievement, worth a “1”. When she finds someone has deceived her, that’s a setback, a “-1”. A major defeat is a “-3”. Then I’ve plotted those values on a graph:

clichy-storyline-1

This literally shows the ups and downs of the story. “A” is the crisis, a tragic gun-battle where civilians are killed, the bad guys make off with the object everyone is pursuing, and Blair is knocked out and apparently kidnapped. “B” is where Blair and her kidnappers – who were her allies all along – rally, strike back at the bad guys and at the last instant hit upon the one weapon that will bring them victory.

You’re probably thinking, “Didn’t he already know this, seeing as he wrote it?” Having this in number form is more than just confirmation of what I already knew. It’s a way to plan optimization: Are the lows low enough? The highs high enough? And the achievements/setbacks are just one way to look at all this. In what scenes do the characters change? What made them change? Is it clear enough to the reader? Finally, a very practical asset is knowing the length of every scene, so you can assess where to make cuts or tighten things up. For example, as a writer I might like the scene where Blair and her beau have dinner, and we learn some of the beau’s backstory. But, is it worth 5 pages?

To end let me leave you with a few paragraphs from story 2 of book 1, REMNANTS:

At that more Keret began entering the saloon. These were Alwin’s officers and senior staff, each needing an introduction. Most were formal in their greetings. One, Pinthill by name, offered a witticism, “Blair? I thought all Terrans were named Doug.” This raised shrieks of Keret laughter, together with much waving of tentacles. I chuckled myself and was grateful at this lightening of mood.

The conversation in the company was that typical of new space-travelling acquaintances: What places have you been? My roster was the shortest by far. An older lieutenant claimed twenty-one worlds and was subject to interrogation. He was a shy sort – uncommon for a Keret – and it seemed he was oppressed by his shipmates’ skepticism. Until, that is, Alwin-vir intervened, “For shame, you spratlings. You should all serve so long to see what my friend Theebus-lim has seen. I go nowhere new without consulting him – a paid service, mind you! Now let us to table. Theebus shall sit on my left. Blair, you shall be at my right. The worthy elder lieutenant may offer some good advice.”

I rather like the “Doug” joke. Will it make the final cut? Only time, aided by my spreadsheet, will tell.

A slave to wages no longer

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The simple meaning behind this over-dramatic title is this. I have retired from work. My official last day as a Senior Engineering Manager at Klaviyo was July 5. I had shared my plans with my boss back in April. The Google-consensus seemed to be that retirement required a longer lead time than the plain old “I’m leaving” kind of quitting. I’m pleased with my approach, as it really did allow the company, and my co-workers, time to prepare while also giving me the space to disconnect in good order. I made my exit secure in knowing nothing had been left undone, and that I had conveyed to my colleagues and my management everything that needed to be conveyed.

There was even time in mid-June for a retirement party, which for me was no less than epic:

Image from iOS

There were *two kinds* of sliders, a charcuterie board that could have doubled as a Spartan shield, a pastries board of similar grandeur, plus 3 bottles (in addition to our on-tap wines and beers) of wonderful Riojas, courtesy of my boss Greg. With such a great setup it was only natural that the conversation was engaging, enlightening, and fun. The picture above shows only a portion of the team I worked with, so many of our newer members working remote from Boston.

I suppose a few lines about what my job actually was are in order; after all, there will be no need to speak much of it in the future. Klaviyo is a late-stage startup with a digital-marketing SaaS product. Klaviyo’s customers are e-commerce companies who want to grow their own businesses, with analytics that show insights and patterns, and with communications via email, SMS and push message to promote their products and services. The part of Klaviyo where I worked is called Channel Infrastructure. The team provides the direct capabilities to format and transmit messages, on all the channels the company supports.

A large part of what I did was help the engineering team grow. When I joined in Sept. 2021 my team was 9 people. When I departed the teams I managed or had started comprised ~30 people. This pace may seem fast, but it’s in line with the trajectory of similar companies, like HubSpot or Shopify, had when they were the “same age” as Klaviyo is now. Those familiar with the inner workings of startups will understand the picture. In the startup’s early days you can make ultra-fast progress with a small team; the original Klaviyo was created by <= 10 engineers. The core capabilities of the software need to be good and hopefully distinctive, but they don’t need to have tons of options, be super-scalable or have perfect quality. But as your startup acquires customers, the stakes of what you do get much, much bigger. Today it is not uncommon for Klaviyo customers to send email campaign mailings to 5 million recipients. Such a campaign might be expected to drive $100,000 in revenue for the sender. If the campaign doesn’t go out, that’s $100K the customer will not get and they will not be happy. So more engineers are needed to scale things, test things, enrich the capabilities, and to respond 24 x 7 when things go wrong.

Another aspect of my work had to do with improving the Klaviyo system itself. Again, as the startup-savvy are well aware, the priority for startups in the beginning is features, creating them as fast as possible and then iterating on them, elaborating on what works with customers and dumping that which doesn’t. Unfortunately such a process repeated over years tends to make the system codebase – to use the engineering euphemism – “sub-optimal”. The sort of problems you see include: appearance of hard-to-foresee and hard-to-fix bugs when adding new features; or, newly added features that should support multiple areas of the system are mysteriously only active for one part of the system. Over time the code had developed so many pervasive and non-obvious dependencies that in order to add one thing, you had to touch everything. Anyway to get the code going back in the right direction, I led a few initiatives, the most significant of which was Domain Decomposition, a project to detangle those dependencies and to organize the system into separate areas that could each evolve and grow independently, without requiring major changes everywhere else.

So this last act (fingers crossed!) of my working life was great, helping to grow a dynamic and promising company, while solving some tough technical problems at the same time. Most people I know in the tech industry would sign up for that any time.

Great as it was, all that is now in the rear-view and receding. What’s next?

Certainly I’ll be doing lots of typical boomer retirement stuff, like golf: not just playing it but systematically trying to get better. And Kim and I have a number of long put-off trips we want to take, like (again, fingers crossed) next Spring to Milan and Florence. And there’s relatives and family, both old and young, to visit.

But the biggest thing I’m looking forward to is applying myself to my fiction writing. This has been a background pursuit of mine since 2009 or so when I attended the Ultimate SF Writing Workshop, taught by Jeff Carver and Craig Shaw Gardner. Soon after I started the first story in what would eventually be published as FRACTURED SYMMETRY in 2017. While I’ve self-published a few things beyond F-S, I really want to tell more stories about the characters from it, Blair MacAlister and Terendurr the Black Stone. And so since 2018 or so I’ve been working on a trilogy, that I call Only’s End. This is the story of Blair and Terendurr’s battles with master-criminal Bandal the Only. As a trilogy should attempt, the scope is vast, including many worlds and no less than seven alien races all contained in a setting I call CivSpace. Some of the new characters you will meet there:

  • Hwhorrin, Player-King of the Entertainers, a band of actor/assassins.
  • Kirk Teurjarian, anthropologist and popularizer of folktales; also a lieutenant to Bandal.
  • Nico del Barra, a Kopardi of lowest possible caste, due to his function of draining negative emotions from others.
  • Astranche, a flamboyant Phair assassin who serves Bandal, his weapons are throwing knives guided by a radar-enabled brain-computer interface.
  • Tullath O’Brian, a Terran intelligence agent who helps Blair investigate the murder of her brother, Ian.
  • Manuel Alvarez, a mercenary who fancies narco-corrido ballads; his weapon is a high-tech version of an AK-47.
  • Kastus Hel, a Dann-al-thi intelligence agent who doubts the existence of free will.

I’m actually about 2 and 1/3 books done with the main writing. But what edits, updates of re-writes will be needed, that is hard to say. Certainly I will want to enlist beta-readers, but that will be for another post. For now let me close with a short bit from the first book, BANDAL THE ONLY. Blair has encountered, and been rescued by, the Entertainers. She knows they can tell her about what is really happening, but Hwhorrin refuses to answer:

The King turned back to me. “We Entertainers are ruled by law, foremost of which is: We never explain our art to those not of the troupe. The world is our audience, and it must construe on its own. We can tell you nothing.”

Then, he whirled with agility to strike a dramatic pose. “Unless!” he called out. “Unless we take you on. The apprenticeship is lengthy, but the rewards are great. I nominate you for membership! She has the token already – show!”

Without thinking I unclasped my hand. The troupe of Phair rushed forward to look, oohing and ahhing over the warrior statue I held.

“Who will second the nomination?” the King asked. Bylo-By spoke up.

“I do second. Myself I saw her, she stood before Red Flary weaponless, but defiant. It was a moving scene.” He paused, shuffling his feet, then went on. “She does sometimes flail and saw at the air ungracefully, but I am sure such can be mended, with study.”

The King spoke again. “A fair second and a fair critique, good Bylo-By. Now, do any oppose? What of you Belager? Alas I forget – you will not speak! A shame, else you might have thwarted my will.” At this the sulking Belager turned and stalked away into the darkness.

He turned to me. “It is now up to you to accept, or no. Understand, to join the troupe means to follow the law: Never to divulge to outsiders the secrets of our art; To aid and defend your fellow Entertainers; To follow the direction of your King and to take the occasional note; and lastly, To never upstage a fellow Entertainer, unless it buttons the scene. Embrace our offer, follow the law, and you shall know all that I know.”

It is my hope that, before long, all who are interested can know all there is to know about Bandal the Only. Till next time …

Laying In, and Taking Stock

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Xmas Eve 2010

I think our Salazar Family does not have an excess of traditions, but the ones we do have are, well, pretty traditional. Foremost on our short list is Christmas Eve, which we celebrate in the French style of Réveillon. The essence of this is simply: On this special night, the best of everything. And the best, as I’m sure everyone knows, takes work. Kim and and I are already into the researching, recording, shopping, and planning. The day-of, every half-hour from 8am up to serving time will be scheduled. Here’s the menu:

Entrée: “Daniel Boulud” Cold Smoked Atlantic Salmon, French Canadian Cretons pâté, Rye toast points, capers, cornichon, mustard. Muscadet.
Soup: Double-Beef Consommé with Wild Mushroom, a la Jacques Pepin.
Fish: Sole Paupiettes with Lobster Mousse, again a la Jacques Pepin. Chablis.
Plat principal: Whole Roast Sucking Pig, Creamed Leeks, Gojujang Glazed Carrot. Sablet, 2018.
Fine Cheeses
Galaxie des Biscuits Bonne Femme (our fancy way of saying Kim’s Cookies)
Sauternes
Digestif
Coffee

We have had such a pig on Christmas Eve one time before, in 2010, as the above more-youthful Alex and Morgan can attest. While (forgive me) you never forget your first pig, I’m hoping this year’s edition will excel its predecessor. The plan this year is a slower, longer roast, with a lot of garlic and ginger inside.

There’s a lot of ingredients there, thus the laying-in. As pigs are not had on-demand at Stop and Shop, I have bespoke one from Savenor’s, to be available on the 23rd. I expect to get my seafood that day, though past few years sole has been hard to find. I know I can get it at some of the Boston pier outlets, but I’m hoping the better fish mongers in Cambridge will suffice.

In the back of my mind during all this activity is the Taking Stock. No, I don’t mean an end of year Augustinian reflection on my shortcomings – rather, it’s a work thing. For some years now in my jobI have been a manager and I now have a total of 22 teammates in my responsibility. As is the case with so many tech companies, now is the time we do a performance review – an assessment and comparison of each employee’s achievements and potential. Managers have to write a fact-based, thoughtful, encouraging yet realistic chunk of text that distills into a few paragraphs an employee’s professional worth and prospects. So, no pressure.

It’s really not that bad. I find that most people want to do a good job, and to get better at what they do. For me this process is more about bringing each person’s activities into perspective compared to what the company needs, and about helping them find their particular path to improvement.

The unfortunate thing is, in my company I have to do this for 9 people by Dec 30 the latest. I’ll likely be laptop-bound a good bit of the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Will the good cheer of the season permeate what I write? No way to tell but frankly – I hope so.

Last comment: Been re-watching a lot of ST:TNG of late. Last night was Lower Decks (S7E15), in my view a great episode and one in which the performance-review process aboard the Enterprise-D plays a part.

A writing look back

I recently was posed an interesting question: What was the first email address you ever had? If nothing else that takes me back. In the late 80’s we had Compuserve and GEnie dial-up accounts. There was no SMTP email with those, but I seem to recall in our last years living in Maryland, circa 1992-6, we had a dialup ISP account that did provide email. For the life of me I can’t find any mention of such an address. When we came back to Mass in ‘96, we had accounts on sprynet.com and later mediaone.com.

Anyway that was the starting point of me poking around in all the oldest files I have lying around. In that I cam across the fragment below, the start of a story I had titled “Into the Out”. I remember the characters and the concept very well, and who knows? In coming years I may come back to it. But I had totally forgotten the fragment below. It is crudely copying of Jack Vance in tone, and it’s way longer than I would render such an idea today, but it was a pleasing connection back to my 1990’s self.

So below, the opening pages of INTO THE OUT …

“Another day … when will it give up?” Kenneth Iborgan Teele muttered his customary morning complaint. He sat up straight and swung his feet over the side of the bed, twisting to give first his spine then his neck a crack. He tilted his head left and right, as if listening. On a few past occasions there had been in fact something to hear; for Teele such a situation could betoken nothing good.

Today there was nothing. His morning ritual completed, Teele threw a robe about his shoulders and went off to the kitchen for breakfast, pausing to pick up his data-cache, that was lying on the nightstand. As he went, he pulled aside some drapes, and slid open a window to let a breath of air through the cottage. A bright beam of sunlight described a yellow rectangle on the floor and highlighted wisps of dust floating and turning like asteroids. Teele paused a moment by the window to wonder at the golden yellow orb of Sol, so different from the paper-white lightbulb of Vega. A current anthropological fad suggested that the differences between Earth and Vegan culture stemmed from the quality of light their peoples lived under; Vega 9, under pure white light and razor-edge shadows became a world of crystallized towers and perfect symmetries; Earth under the flickering bonfire-light of Sol grew into a world of subtly blurred distinctions, of brushstrokes instead of penlines.

Teele, of course, knew the folly of hypothesizing after the fact. But he smiled as he recalled a conversation he once had on this very subject, with a self-proclaimed “Chromatic Redemptionist” in a tatty bar on the outworld Hodown.

“You hold then that light influences our brain?” Teele questioned.

“Never doubt it!” the man replied, already half-exalted from drink. “Strands of the visual apparatus intermingle with fiber of the frontal lobe, and the temporal, and even the hippocampus and other areas of the ancient under-brain. In this way the quality of light impinging on the eyes sends impulses of uncertain effect into every area of the mind. Thus, the time the mind functions best is in absolute darkness – and even then, so many pathways have been warped from a lifetime of seeing that there is little improvement to be gained.”

“But as I understand it, your creed admits the possibility of redemption from this state?”

“The lost world Eden orbits a star of the perfect light, of an exact spectral quality that will allow the mind to function in its perfection, as it was meant to be. To see the healing beams of the sun of Eden is to think and perceive as the original man, innocently and cleanly. Thus, when mankind attains Eden, the numerous ills of our myriad warped societies will be cleansed.”

“A happening we all fervently hope for, to be sure. Yet I wonder, since all the modulations of light can be created by simple machinery, if one might not experimentally generate stellar wavelengths and test them for the enlightening effect you describe. You might save us all a period of unhappiness as we await the discovery of the actual planet Eden.”

“Pah! I refute this paltry hypothesis! Man cannot replicate by craft the sublime frequencies of Eden; that you suggest such a thing is only evidence of a warped mentality caused by exposure to light.”

“By the same token, since your creed comes from a light-tainted brain, how can we know its veracity? Unless of course, you were swaddled in blindfolds since birth?”

“First you spout heresy, then inveigh against an obvious revelation from the divine; if not for this excellent beer you have purchased for our consumption, I would end our association on the instant!”

“Well then, how do you propose to locate Eden? Presumably you do not command an armada of pioneer-drones.”

The man brushed at the shoulders of his threadbare coat. “You presume correct. Till now, the best I can do is closet myself in absolute dark, and by sheer intuition try to apprehend the location of Eden. My efforts all conclude that Eden lies somewhere in Sagittarius. I then prevail on wandering spacemen to convey me in that direction. I perceive you belong to this class, and since you are of a sympathetic bent you can no doubt provide me a berth, possibly even joining me in my search … ”

“I fear my business Out is done; my plans take back through the Door and In.”

“Always worldly pursuits stand in the way of salvation. Shall we not at least take more beer? And consider those ladies at the end of the bar – do they not grow in attractiveness even as we watch?”

“I believe it is the light of barrooms that causes this effect.”

“As good a cause as any – but still the effect remains. Ladies! Are you occupied? Observe my friend; a bravo of the spacelanes – and myself, a searcher among stars …”

Strange, the things we choose to include in our memories, Teele thought.

We Were Innocent Then

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LORDS! I call thee! LADIES list now to my tale.
In Denmark’s far days came these doings dire,
when men of might were mickle and many,
when dwarf spoke doom in caverns dank,
dragons with demons vied to bring disaster,
ere even the pernicious pipes of the Scots
did assail the innocent ears of Northmen.

Thus begins a piece of writing dear to my heart, “The Tale of the Brothers (A Saga of Old Denmark)”. My wife Kim, aka Countess Ianthe D’Averoigne, recently noted to me that on a list somewhere, people were reminiscing about it. I brought out my copy and paged through. At once I thought, why not put out the text, perhaps someone may get some enjoyment out of the whole thing. The PDF is linked below. But I have been thinking much on it since and I see now a lot I did not understand back then. *Not* having the foresight of my people, I have no idea if my recollections will be worthy of note. Nonetheless, I will share them.

The year, 1979 (AS 14). At Masked Ball the previous December, I played in “The Song of Roland, or Franks (Incensed) and Moors”, a comedy penned by Eugenie de Bruges and Marian of Edwinstowe. Eugenie had a particular reputation as a wit, especially for her puns, and “Roland” while sweet and funny, was also a real groan-fest. Somehow I got it in my head I should write such a play. Why? I was a Count by then and had done more than my share of non-fighting SCA stuff, but truthfully my broader SCA interest was beginning to wane as I had started my training in Aikido. But my connection to my friends and that place and time was still there. The best answer is, it was because that is what Carolingians did.

The main subject, mythic Norse heroes, came to me instantly. I had recently read Poul Anderson’s “Hrolf Kraki’s Saga”, and also the actual “Njal’s Saga”; much of the plot was lifted from these sources and, after all, who doesn’t dig Vikings? But there was more going on. A favorite part of mine is when evil Frodhi questions Regin, the foster-father of the heroes:

FRODHI … I have longed to meet you, Sherriff, for I hear many things in my travels.

REGIN And what hast thou heard, hoary one?

FRODHI Nothing but that Regin was a fine lord with fine lands; but his pride was two hunting hounds, clever and strong beyond the measure of dogs. I would fain see them, for they are said to be a marvel.

REGIN Alas stranger, luck is not with you today. Those hounds ran away years past; and I wonder at it, for I was as a father to them. What else do they say of Regin?

Frodhi next asks about two fine falcons, and then finally about two sons. The direct inspiration for this was the ballad “King Henry”, as rendered by Steeleye Span. This is a “loathly lady” story wherein the female monster repetitively demands that King Henry first kill his hounds, then his horses, till finally he must sleep with her.

Now I must speak of wit. Words – using them well – mattered a lot back then and wit, frankly, was a far more valuable currency in the Carolingia of those days than fighting. Putting on a show for Masked Ball without a heavy larding of one-liners and puns – the more painful the better – was not to be thought on. I believe I did well enough – I’ll let the interested plumb the actual text for these “gems”, as it were. But above and beyond jokes I like to think this play, through well-placed repetition and reinforcement, got people more engaged in words than most others.

“Foresight of my people” appears 5 times in the play; this was enough for Eugenie to dub it “The Foresight Saga” – a coinage more clever by far than any of mine. Of course this is a Tolkien thing (his elves are always foretelling stuff) but he took it from the Scandinavian tradition where prophecies of doom practically come with the daily papers. Somehow after the first occurrence, the audience seemed to expect the next, then the next. Whether intuition or just dumb luck, this phrase set the rhythm of the play – hearing it was a signal of a turning point of information – and it seemed to buoy the audience and keep them connected.

The other phrase is “My name is not important”, which appears 4 times, or maybe 4 and one half. I still hear people say this today, typically accompanied by a small Jedi hand-wave to indicate the hearer is being beguiled.

This one ended up being more subtle. Again, I had no idea what I was doing, but “name” is an essential theme of the play. The heroes have 2 names each: Hrot and Hrani, their peasant names, and Helgi and Halfdan, their royal names. Finding their true names is their quest, though they don’t know it. But more, “name” is a super-important thing for a Norse hero. Such heroes seek renown in order to build the power and potency of their name; to have *no* name is to be a slave, a creature of no account. The prologue, Hugi, the avatar of Odin, says this line 2 times.; but he’s a god and beyond caring about names. Next, Frodhi says it – but he’s the bad guy and he doesn’t care about name, just grabbing power. Halfdan, played by me, is asked his name 2 times. He cannot bring himself to say his name is not important – my own vanity at work perhaps? – instead he declares his name to be “Vandrade”, Swedish for “wanderer”.

Finally Halgerde says it in the final scene. Now she’s a woman and in a trivial sense the names of women are not important, not when compared to heroes. But I like to think she sacrifices her dignity in order to save the Brothers.

Why 4 *and a half* times? Hugi, the Odin/Prologue, was played by my sword-brother Vissevald. Now even then, Vis was a man of significant name (which has only grown since). The final scene is very fast-moving, with tons of eye-patches, false beards, and flailing of weapons both long and short. Just as it looks to be curtains for the heroes and heroines, Hugi makes reassuring signs to the audience he will do a deus ex machina. But he is forestalled by the long-lost Gunnar – played by Cassandra Boell von Bayer – companion to the dead King and offstage since act 1, scene 1. The All-Father is flabbergasted by Gunnar’s impertinence:

HUGI (Indignant) What is this? Who are you? Don’t you KNOW who I AM?

GUNNAR YOUR name is not important. Away old man, I have business here!

I hope he will forgive the observation, but Vis, almost as much as me, is not blessed with an over-abundance of humility. I still chuckle at this image today.

Coming back to Tolkien, for anyone in the SCA, he is an inevitable influence for almost everything we do. The curse on Frodhi, “You will die at the hands of a woman”. is the same as that on the WitchKing, though more explicit of course. And the scene with Damnir the Dragon owes much to Bilbo and Smaug, though mainly through my determination to write something different from that iconic piece:

HALFDAN Verily, Damnir the Fierce! But first, I would have words with thee, oh calamity of the skies! For, mighty pinioned one, many questions assail my thought and only one such as thou, owl-wise mistress of reptiles, might answer them.

DAMNIR Think you so, lad? Tell me, what is your plan? To beguile me with riddling talk, and thus trick me out of my treasure? Frail youth, hardly an original plan! Though it might have proved useful if I were one of those overblown male dragons. Pride is their downfall, but I am wiser. No riddles!

HALFDAN By the hammer, how un-draconic!

DAMNIR If you will. But I warn you, I have a particularly strong dislike for young adventurers, so mind your tongue.

HALFDAN Yes, ma’am.

Damnir was played by Caryl de Trecesson. That was a truly great performance. Any play needs some suspension of disbelief but, rendering a dragon – that required an entire Verrazzano-Narrows of suspension. Yet Caryl brought it off: the looming danger, the petulant menace, the put-upon unpredicatability, all standing on an old trunk and equipped with an upholstery-and-stuffing tail that would not fool a 1-year old. Bravo.

Which brings me to another thing I now see about the play: Women do a lot in it. Damnir is a female of irritable temper – “dragon lady”, get it? – but I knew if I wrote women who were just doe-eyed damsels in distress, I’d never earn the approval of those I respected, most notably Marian. When my 22-year-old self playing Halfdan meekly answered “Yes, ma’am” to Damnir I might as well have been saying it to Marian.

Then there is Olga, wife to Regin, who defies the evil Frodhi to his face and is slain for it. And Haleth and Halgerde, the Forest Girls; they don’t wait around for help when they hear the brothers are betrayed – they make their own plan and rush to the rescue. Part of this is the Norse motif – the sagas abound with strong women. But the bigger part was the time and the place.

I write fiction today and I of course understand what I write is a product of all my experience, including the experiences of others. But today I very much write alone, saying what I think is important. In 1979 I was as much channeling the feelings of those around me as I did my own. Marian I have already mentioned. Two people I spoke with much about writing were Kali, who portrayed Halfdan’s brother Helgi, and Gyrth. They both had studied far more literature than I and in car trips to events, or late-night bull-sessions at the Buttery, I absorbed a lot from them. Finally an influence perhaps hard to recognize but still strong and foundational was Aelfwyn. His stoic demeanor, combined with a keen sense of irony and, lastly, generosity, was my image of Regin the Sherriff. The good in the story comes from them, from our other companions of those days, and the world they collectively created. Me, I just did the fiddly bits.

“The Brothers” is not great literature: It is small, topical, and lowly comic. But in the end it is a play about three things: Renown, Romance, and Honor. In our innocence that’s what we cared about back then. For a few hours each month, we sought an elevated life: To be a hero or heroine; To test ourselves; To see the right prevail. ‘Twas childish, I know. Yet I will defend it. Not because my name is important but because other names were, and are.

THE SAGA OF THE BROTHERS, PDF

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A CivSpace Christmas

Twas the night before Christmas, and across his wide grounds

Terendurr the Black Stone listened for sounds.

His wide ears were twitching both downwards and up

And his head swiftly turned like the most nervous of pups.

His own sounds were sickly, twiddling and coarse,

An orchestra drained of all its force.

When I could stand it no longer I had to yell out,

“Boss! What’s the problem? What’s it about?

Alien invasion? Quantum death-beams?

A party of Keret forming volley ball teams?”

“The night is quiet, Blair,” he said,“Too quiet for me.

I fear some plot of fearsome degree.”

“No help for it now,” he said, nodding his head to the door,

“Go out to the city and search out the score.

Do not return until the danger is known –

Then I, a genius, the solution shall intone.”

He seemed so sincere I didn’t dare scoff

so grousing and grumbling I departed straight off.

My first stop was Bartoe the Monitor,

a lawman grumpy but tough as a boar.

“MacAlister!” he growled, “Trouble as always!”

“Thanks, Bartoe,” I said, “From you that is high praise.

But tell me, straight-up, any evil brewing tonight?

The Black Stone is nervous and fearing a fight.”

“No, nothing,” he barked so onwards I strode

My next stop, a Phair, to cash a favor long owed.

“Terril, you thief, you inveterate cad,

you owe me some info, so don’t make me mad.

A job is happening, this very eve.

Tell me the play and I’ll let you leave.”

His bald head he nodded, big eyes he blinked,

“Lovely Blair, I’m not so bad as you think,

no crime is planned across the town tonight.

In fact I intend a solemn and personal rite

Where clothing is optional and qualms passé –

What say we share a moment outré?”

In reply I just slapped him down to his bench

(Why should an alien know French?)

and headed out to the dark. My geas unlifted,

weary across the silent town I drifted

till at last I encountered a rare thing indeed,

an Oro-Ka, moving at speed.

Chaotic beings, of power great and manifest

He was my last chance to finish my quest.

“Hail, your worshipfulness!” (an ancient expression we scoundrels all favor).

“Questions I have I know you will savor.”

“What’s this, a Terran?” he cried.

“A child race – upstarts, infants – my patience you try!”

“Calm yourself,” I scolded, “lest dignity you misplace.

A riddle I have ,as great as space,

That I would pose.

Will you answer? Chose!”

“Ask,” he replied, sparks of power flicking about his head.

“My riddle,” I began, not without dread,

“concerns nothing, nothing at all.

When we are threatened by ‘nothing’, what defender shall we call?”

“’Nothing’, you say?” he stroked at his chin.

“A riddle from the Terran Sphinx’s kin.”

His powerful hand indicated the stars.

“Child, attend to the answer I tell.

Time is infinite, and space as well,

both curving, both swerving, both infuriatingly grim.

Back upon themselves they bend, an enclosing rim,

Tighter and tighter and the end – Is nothing – Unless.”

“Unless?”

“Unless a fracture is introduced. Foolish primate.

Only by that can you avoid your fate.

At the beginning of things the answer lies,

When quanta were mist and atoms dreams.

I am done, and so are you I deem.”

There was a shimmering flash and he was gone,

Leaving me to ponder the night alone.

Above were alien stars, around me alien air,

All lonely, cold, beyond care.

But in that moment I smiled, and laughed —

the Oro-Ka was right, and not by half.

Back to the compound I sped,

Till through the silent doors I did tread.

Distant sounds drew me on, breathless,

To the Great Hall when, blinding light left me helpless!

For there was Madeline the Raylic and the Trang, Pierre,

Bearing wrapped gifts, the grinning pair.

And the Black Stone as well a present he had

(its wrapping I must say was terribly bad).

“Apologies, Blair,” he boss announced,

“for the false assignment so lately pronounced.

Too late I learned that gifts are needed this night

For your Terran celebration to be observed aright.”

And we laughed, and talked, till Terendurr inquired

“Christmas, Blair, what is it? besides presents acquired.”

“The beginning of things,” I said, thinking on The Oro-Ka.

“We choose how the symmetry cleaves, what flaw

Shall set our yearly path towards we know not where.”

“Hrrmphh,” he grumbled, “Unaccustomed for you, wisdom quite rare.”

Then shaking his head he left, off to his office to ponder,

On problems I’m sure most dire and somber.

But I heard him exclaim, as he tromped to his lair—

“Happy Christmas to all, but most to you, good Blair!”

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