Zompist Bboard Again

I'm currently mostly through a fairly thorough re-read of Against Peace and Freedom. I first read it back in 2011, and then had a look at it every now and then. I have some comments and some questions.

The rest of this post assumes that you've read the book, so here's one final SPOILER WARNING.




First of all, I love the worldbuilding. For now, the Incatena Universe might well be my favourite SF Universe, and the Dzebyet in particular are my favourite alien species. Not many people have come up with a half-way plausible interstellar exploration and politics setting that respects the c speed limit, and among the people who have, zompist is, I think, the only one I've read so far.

Problem is, the plot is less good. During Part 1, when things seemed to be going well for Morgan, I had the impression that the Okurinese Regime was run by idiots, and then, when things turned badly for Morgan, I got the impression that Morgan had been the idiot all along. IMO, the main problem during that part of the book is the presence of Pasty and Nasty. Once they were introduced, there were basically two ways the plot could develop:

1) Morgan accepted their presence and would never be able to do much of consequence, or

2) Morgan got rid of them and triggered an instant planet-wide personhunt for Morgan, forcing Morgan to live underground, which would also have seriously limited Morgan's freedom of action and ability to get stuff done.

But instead, we got Option

3) Morgan got rid of the two and somehow, in some way, this did not lead to an instant planet-wide personhunt for Morgan - which was never explained.

And aside from these plot problems, I've also got the impression that some parts of the plot subtly contradict the basic rules of the scenario. To quote from the Boss's speech (online text adventure version):

”Everybody benefits if we accept a few simple rules.

“For instance— no war. There’s no such thing as interstellar empires— Einstein takes care of that. Bottom line, an interstellar fleet is no match for a whole system, with the manufacturing capacity of a planet or two, that’s right there. While, if your invasion fleet gets in trouble, you don’t even know it till years afterward. Or if you send enough of your fleet to guarantee victory— people, metal, expensive weapons— you’re going to bankrupt your own ecology.

”And as a corollary, you can’t build an advantage any other way, because you can’t back it up with force. You try your textbook economic imperialism on somebody, and the natives are going to get sick of it and line you up against a wall.

But, for one thing, the role of the Incatena cruisers in orbit around Okura seems to indicate that a few well-armed spaceships can still cause a lot of trouble for the locals in a distant stellar system. And the Dzebyet's technological edge seems to mean that Orindzai could cause Okura a lot of trouble - potentially even more than actually happens in the book - despite zompist's assertion that "Interplanetary war is only slightly less stupid than interstellar".

As for "textbook economic imperialism", Ormant seems to get pretty close to succeeding with it, because most of "the natives" on the planet he's targeting follow the one or other version of an ideology that sees his opponents, rather than him, as the main villains.

So, here are my questions:

1) Given that Jidori sees right through Morgan's "Indonesian" cover by observing that Morgan is clearly used to a lower gravity than that of Earth, couldn't the handlers in the Incatena Spire have foreseen that and come up with a more gravity-appropriate cover?

2) What would happen if the Dzebyet of Orindzai, with all their superior technology, would decide to wage a full-fledged war against Okura?

3) What, exactly, was the Peace Party thinking when they sent Morgan to New Bharat? What were they trying to accomplish? Didn't they think of the risks for their side? The book says that the people in the Freedom movement didn't know who Morgan was because, conveniently, that part of the transmission got lost - but couldn't the Peace Party have sent a human escort who could have explained everything?

4) How do you square Ormant's ability to completely control his owm company - I'm not even talking about the NBCC here - with the scenario's general assertion that the "cult of the CEO" has been dead for thousands of years?

5) How would things look like in the dystopian alternate timeline where Morgan failed, Kumari kept ruling Okura, Ormant took over New Bharat, and the two of them together seceded from the Incatena?

That's all I can think of for now.

Thanks for reading and re-reading the book!

Raphael wrote: ↑Sat Feb 05, 2022 3:11 pm Not many people have come up with a half-way plausible interstellar exploration and politics setting that respects the c speed limit, and among the people who have, zompist is, I think, the only one I've read so far.

Thank you! I'm pretty sure Charles Stross respects the speed limit; you might like his space operas.

Problem is, the plot is less good. During Part 1, when things seemed to be going well for Morgan, I had the impression that the Okurinese Regime was run by idiots, and then, when things turned badly for Morgan, I got the impression that Morgan had been the idiot all along.

Fair enough; plots always give me trouble. Did you know the book has a TV Tropes page? One of their comments is "Morgan likes to make people think it was all part of The Plan. In reality, Morgan relies on an exceptional ability to roll with the punches." That's insightful, I think! I don't think of Morgan as dumb, but rather as being— usually— better at improvisation than planning.

But, for one thing, the role of the Incatena cruisers in orbit around Okura seems to indicate that a few well-armed spaceships can still cause a lot of trouble for the locals in a distant stellar system.

Not really— they don't actually do much. From an Okuran perspective, Kumari was defeated by revolts in Gōsei and Xinqeng, plus a critical divide within the Peace Party abetted by the fact that Kumari wasn't actually there. Morgan just gave things a nudge.

Given the constraints of this universe, those cruisers are a significant investment. But they can never be an existential threat to Okura. They're meant to put a little teeth into the independence of the Incatena— also, frankly, to serve as hostages. (If a planet destroys them, the Incatena has a clear justification to retaliate.)

And the Dzebyet's technological edge seems to mean that Orindzai could cause Okura a lot of trouble - potentially even more than actually happens in the book - despite zompist's assertion that "Interplanetary war is only slightly less stupid than interstellar".

A civ doesn't reach 90,000 years by trying to conquer anyone it meets. But the Boss's dictum is meant to apply to humanity; you're quite right that the Dzebyet could have caused more trouble than they did.

Morgan got rid of the two and somehow, in some way, this did not lead to an instant planet-wide personhunt for Morgan

True, but I'd note that we don't have to look at Soviet totalitarianism as the only model for how a repressive state behaves— now we can look at Chinese repression. You do not have to "stamp on the human face forever," as Orwell put it— you can allow quite a lot of deviant behavior when it doesn't matter.

Also recall, Ba was working for the Party, so we can assume it knew quite a lot about what Morgan was doing. I'd suggest that they hoped Morgan would cause a lot of trouble— because that would expose a lot of traitors, and justify secession from the Incatena.

That turned out to be a miscalculation. But I think it's realistic enough that such state organs think they are in control far more than they really are. There's also bureaucratic inertia involved. They're not used to this situation and take forever to decide what to do.

Another possible criticism is that in we're already (in the 2020s) in an age of universal surveillance, and this sort of Cold War shenanigans simply wouldn't be possible. (I'm influenced by books such as Harry Harrison's The Stainless Steel Rat, whose thesis was that high-tech states could be disrupted by a high-tech loner.) Again, it's possible that the Party isn't worried because they know what Morgan is up to. But it's also possible that Okura is not a society where the State records everything that happens in every building and street corner. It hasn't needed that level of surveillance, and foreign Agents escaping is too rare an occurrence to motivate building expensive surveillance systems.

1) Given that Jidori sees right through Morgan's "Indonesian" cover by observing that Morgan is clearly used to a lower gravity than that of Earth, couldn't the handlers in the Incatena Spire have foreseen that and come up with a more gravity-appropriate cover?

Fair point, thought the intention here was mostly to show off Jidori's intelligence. (It's more or less a parody of the Sherlock Holmes scenes where he deduces an incredible amount of information from clues everyone else would miss.)

2) What would happen if the Dzebyet of Orindzai, with all their superior technology, would decide to wage a full-fledged war against Okura?

You've been reading too many other space operas. Why would they want to? They don't need oil or gold or any planetary resources; they would get no pleasure from ruling primitives.

3) What, exactly, was the Peace Party thinking when they sent Morgan to New Bharat? What were they trying to accomplish? Didn't they think of the risks for their side? The book says that the people in the Freedom movement didn't know who Morgan was because, conveniently, that part of the transmission got lost - but couldn't the Peace Party have sent a human escort who could have explained everything?

It's all Haikoa's idea. Haikoa is someone who thinks he's playing four-dimensional chess at all times. He's captured the top Incatena agent on Okura— not having read the TV Tropes page, he thinks Morgan is highly competent. He thinks Morgan can be turned— note that he has trouble believing that the Incatena has any morals at all, so it doesn't occur to him that Morgan might have moral objections to the plan. He was probably going to New Bharat anyway, so he takes the opportunity to bring his prize with him. Recall that Kumari was not there to consult— Haikoa is dismayed later on when Kumari does not see his genius.

He arranged to have Morgan detained by his local allies; probably he rushed off to see Kumari and/or Ormant. He had no way of knowing quite how useless those local allies were, but he was amused rather than bothered to see Morgan evading custody. Note that he doesn't let that continue for long, however.

4) How do you square Ormant's ability to completely control his owm company - I'm not even talking about the NBCC here - with the scenario's general assertion that the "cult of the CEO" has been dead for thousands of years?

Recall Morgan's exclamation when Hrvatski explains this: "He wants to go back to the 21st century!" Stories begin when things go wrong. This is unusual behavior in an Incatena corporation; that's why it's a crisis.

You could also ask why it's not more common behavior. Well, because the Incatena is good at what it does. That is, they know better than (say) Americans-- and Europeans-- did after 1945. Things went right for while— income was redistributed without revolution or destruction, social discrimination started to be addressed— but there wasn't an ideology behind this except for general good feelings, and nobody expected plutocracy to successfully fight back. The Incatena is a timeline where this pattern occurred enough that people now know how to guard against it.

But vigilance always lags when enough time has passed that no one lived through the last crisis. In the Incatena that's a matter of many centuries; but evidently Sihor and Mars didn't see the danger in Ormant until too late. Still, note that he had to do his mischief 28 light years from Sol.

5) How would things look like in the dystopian alternate timeline where Morgan failed, Kumari kept ruling Okura, Ormant took over New Bharat, and the two of them together seceded from the Incatena?

Bad for those planets, of course. But one can wonder if those two would have continued to get along.

Also note what I have on the book page: "The Incatena’s top agent was sent to Okura to solve the situation there. This is what happened next. After he failed, I mean, and we had to send Morgan instead." When you're limited to STL, you can't just send an Agent, see how it goes, then decide what to do next. Maybe the Boss sends someone out there every ten years.

zompist wrote: ↑Sat Feb 05, 2022 5:34 pm Thanks for reading and re-reading the book!

Raphael wrote: ↑Sat Feb 05, 2022 3:11 pm Not many people have come up with a half-way plausible interstellar exploration and politics setting that respects the c speed limit, and among the people who have, zompist is, I think, the only one I've read so far.

Thank you! I'm pretty sure Charles Stross respects the speed limit; you might like his space operas.

Ursula K. Le Guin and Orson Scott Card almost do so as well, though both have FTL communication. (Which curiously enough goes by the same name in both universes; the latter stole it from the former.) The Orion’s Arm universe is the same IIRC, though that one’s a completely online project — no books.

bradrn wrote: ↑Sat Feb 05, 2022 8:12 pm

zompist wrote: ↑Sat Feb 05, 2022 5:34 pm Thanks for reading and re-reading the book!

Raphael wrote: ↑Sat Feb 05, 2022 3:11 pm Not many people have come up with a half-way plausible interstellar exploration and politics setting that respects the c speed limit, and among the people who have, zompist is, I think, the only one I've read so far.

Thank you! I'm pretty sure Charles Stross respects the speed limit; you might like his space operas.

Ursula K. Le Guin and Orson Scott Card almost do so as well, though both have FTL communication. (Which curiously enough goes by the same name in both universes; the latter stole it from the former.) The Orion’s Arm universe is the same IIRC, though that one’s a completely online project — no books.

I’d be remiss not to mention Alastair Reynolds.

Thank you, zompist, that's very informative - especially the part about Haikoa clears up a lot.

Hm, I'm not so sure about Stross. I tried reading some of his early stuff back in the mid-2000s, and - well, while I'd rate my own computer skills as a good deal better than the average person's, I'm by no means a cutting-edge techie, so his apparent visions of a future in which cutting-edge techies would be the only people who matter left me cold.

bradrn: Not sure if universes with FTL communication are what I was thinking of.

Raphael wrote: ↑Sun Feb 06, 2022 9:01 am Thank you, zompist, that's very informative - especially the part about Haikoa clears up a lot.

Hm, I'm not so sure about Stross. I tried reading some of his early stuff back in the mid-2000s, and - well, while I'd rate my own computer skills as a good deal better than the average person's, I'm by no means a cutting-edge techie, so his apparent visions of a future in which cutting-edge techies would be the only people who matter left me cold.

bradrn: Not sure if universes with FTL communication are what I was thinking of.

You might enjoy Stross' later works more. I like his later works a lot myself, but I find Accelerando insanely boring.
As I recall Saturn's Children has the same joke about cutting off body parts to save mass.

I second Man in Space's recommendation of Alastair Reynolds. He does take his c limit very seriously.

Is even light-speed travel feasible? As far as I remember (stuff I read decades ago), light, radio waves etc. can travel at that speed because they have no or negligible mass, but it would take impossible amounts of energy to accelerate things with mass (like people or space ships) to light speed. What I've seen described as realistic (again, stuff I read decades ago, so if science has moved on, please tell me) were photon drives which would go to 5-10% of c.

Matter can't reach c, but it can get damn close— we routinely accelerate protons to 0.9999999896c.

If you want to send a ship instead— or hell, a car-sized mass— it gets harder. This article by Stross is essential reading. He doesn't even bother to consider possible propulsion systems, just considers energy requirements, and the bottom line is that it takes 5 days of the entire Earth's electric production to send that car to Alpha Centauri.

My book is set 3000 years in the future, so I didn't bother with the sorts of propulsion systems you'd find described in Wired anyway. To make it work at all, I assumed they'd have planet-sized solar panels, and even so space travel would be an almost unimaginable luxury. (Also, FWIW, I assumed it would be possible to beam energy to the spacecraft from either end. That means the ship itself doesn't need to carry fuel to decelerate itself. Probably there is a big sign on the windows that says "Do not look directly at the energy beam.")

Ares Land wrote: ↑Tue Feb 08, 2022 5:33 am
You might enjoy Stross' later works more. I like his later works a lot myself,

Interesting to see Stross praised by someone who once quipped that the Singularity "failed to destroy civilization as we know it but did come pretty close to killing SF". But if even you think that his later work is good, I might check it out.

Raphael wrote: ↑Wed Feb 09, 2022 9:55 am

Ares Land wrote: ↑Tue Feb 08, 2022 5:33 am
You might enjoy Stross' later works more. I like his later works a lot myself,

Interesting to see Stross praised by someone who once quipped that the Singularity "failed to destroy civilization as we know it but did come pretty close to killing SF". But if even you think that his later work is good, I might check it out.

Not so surprising; it sure looks like he lost interest in the Singularity at some point -- most of his books seem to either ignore or parody it.

(FWIW: I liked best Saturns' Children and the Laundry series -- the first book is okay and the series really takes off after book 2. The Merchant Princes series isn't bad either.)

@zompist - Thanks to the link to the Stross article; that basically confirms my hunch that space colonisation is only possible in scenarios with a lot of handwaving (or hope in future scientific discoveries that up-end the current models, which amounts to the same). Mind you, that doesn't mean it can't be explored in SF, we just need to keep in mind that they basically become fantasy settings with technology instead of magic.

zompist wrote: ↑Sat Feb 05, 2022 5:34 pm

4) How do you square Ormant's ability to completely control his owm company - I'm not even talking about the NBCC here - with the scenario's general assertion that the "cult of the CEO" has been dead for thousands of years?

Recall Morgan's exclamation when Hrvatski explains this: "He wants to go back to the 21st century!" Stories begin when things go wrong. This is unusual behavior in an Incatena corporation; that's why it's a crisis.

From what I can gather, one of the protagonists has a thing for 21st century CEOs. If not, disregard what follows.

Honestly, this breaks the 4th wall some for me, without having read the book. Why does Ormant like 21st century CEOs specifically, and not e.g. 14th century knights or 26th century cromulentists? It reminds me that I myself live in 21st century and of current popular opinions.

Zju wrote: ↑Sat Feb 19, 2022 12:24 pm Honestly, this breaks the 4th wall some for me, without having read the book. Why does Ormant like 21st century CEOs specifically, and not e.g. 14th century knights or 26th century cromulentists? It reminds me that I myself live in 21st century and of current popular opinions.

I hear you, as I don't like excessive anachronisms myself. (One of the post-Asimov Foundation books was marred, for me, because the author inserted AIs speaking as Voltaire and Joan of Arc. In a period when scholars debate where Earth was!)

But I'll defend this one, because in the Incatena timeline, the 21st century is the time of the Collapse, a key event in human history. The sort of behaviors that preceded or contributed to the collapse are notorious. And the idea of all-powerful CEOs is not (in this timeline) a universal, it's largely concentrated in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Zju wrote: ↑Sat Feb 19, 2022 12:24 pm
Honestly, this breaks the 4th wall some for me, without having read the book. Why does Ormant like 21st century CEOs specifically, and not e.g. 14th century knights or 26th century cromulentists? It reminds me that I myself live in 21st century and of current popular opinions.

Ormant is already an ultra-rich businessman, so wanting to be like ultra-rich businessmen in a time when they had fewer limitations to put up with comes more naturally for him than wanting to be, say, a pharaoh. Besides, I don't think it's ever directly said that he consciously thinks of himself as wanting to be a 21st century CEO - that's just how the general gist of his ambitions is summed up by another character. It's like how today, you might sometimes hear comments along the line of "I think [fill in politician's name here] wants to be an absolute monarch!"