Incatena

[the duke of nuke]

Is that really so quaint?

[finlay]

I dunno. It more sort of draws my attention to how awkward and out-of-place the sex scene feels. It was the same when I was reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy (still the last thing I reviewed on my blog even though this is now several weeks ago), which had occasional sex scenes jump out at you from nowhere. I ended up just grinning and bearing it...

Or maybe it's a dialectal thing... grabbing someone's sex is just not something I'd be able to do to a person.

[Izambri]

[...] It was the same when I was reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy (still the last thing I reviewed on my blog even though this is now several weeks ago), which had occasional sex scenes jump out at you from nowhere. I ended up just grinning and bearing it... [...]

Ah, those sex scenes that appear suddenly from nowhere, in the middle of the story... Anticlimatic. You can also find them in Larry Niven's Ringworld. It's a generational thing, maybe?

[Pthagnar]

[...] It was the same when I was reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy (still the last thing I reviewed on my blog even though this is now several weeks ago), which had occasional sex scenes jump out at you from nowhere. I ended up just grinning and bearing it... [...]

Ah, those sex scenes that appear suddenly from nowhere, in the middle of the story... Anticlimatic. You can also find them in Larry Niven's Ringworld. It's a generational thing, maybe?

this reminds me of the scene where Sax, the diminutive rational physicist character is fucking Hiroko, the transrational goddess-ecologist character, and Robinson lovingly describes how he takes pleasure in sticking in sticking his sesquicentenarian hand in and out of her equally superannuated pubic hair and making it appear and disappear

that is all

[brandrinn]

[...] It was the same when I was reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy (still the last thing I reviewed on my blog even though this is now several weeks ago), which had occasional sex scenes jump out at you from nowhere. I ended up just grinning and bearing it... [...]

Ah, those sex scenes that appear suddenly from nowhere, in the middle of the story... Anticlimatic. You can also find them in Larry Niven's Ringworld. It's a generational thing, maybe?

this reminds me of the scene where Sax, the diminutive rational physicist character is fucking Hiroko, the transrational goddess-ecologist character, and Robinson lovingly describes how he takes pleasure in sticking in sticking his sesquicentenarian hand in and out of her equally superannuated pubic hair and making it appear and disappear

that is all

I immediately thought of that very scene when finlay first brought it up! The third book in the series pretty much went poo-flinging crazy in a lot of ways, but the tiny ancient man screwing the gigantic nympho Martian for no Goddamn reason was pretty bad. I still think the first book is amazing.

[finlay]

I immediately thought of that very scene when finlay first brought it up! The third book in the series pretty much went poo-flinging crazy in a lot of ways, but the tiny ancient man screwing the gigantic nympho Martian for no Goddamn reason was pretty bad. I still think the first book is amazing.

exactly.

[Pthagnar]

oh good, so the memorability of that scene isn't just me

[Pthagnar]

also god, it isn't for *no reason*, it continues + consummates the whole Californian theme of The Alchemist as a blend of Scientist and Wooagogue from Red Mars!!

[Izambri]

[...] It was the same when I was reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy (still the last thing I reviewed on my blog even though this is now several weeks ago), which had occasional sex scenes jump out at you from nowhere. I ended up just grinning and bearing it... [...]

Ah, those sex scenes that appear suddenly from nowhere, in the middle of the story... Anticlimatic. You can also find them in Larry Niven's Ringworld. It's a generational thing, maybe?

this reminds me of the scene where Sax, the diminutive rational physicist character is fucking Hiroko, the transrational goddess-ecologist character, and Robinson lovingly describes how he takes pleasure in sticking in sticking his sesquicentenarian hand in and out of her equally superannuated pubic hair and making it appear and disappear

that is all

I immediately thought of that very scene when finlay first brought it up! The third book in the series pretty much went poo-flinging crazy in a lot of ways, but the tiny ancient man screwing the gigantic nympho Martian for no Goddamn reason was pretty bad. I still think the first book is amazing.

In many aspects Blue Mars was a lengthening rather than a continuation of Green Mars. While Red Mars has that distinctively flavour typical of the adventure fantasy novel it is, the last two books are more quiet, as well as philosophical and utopian-centered, with all that political-social-economical struggle and all those ideas so typical too of science-fiction (longevity, far space travel, etc), which is not bad per se but they're lengthened through two big volumes, which is a little too much.
Specially if you read all three books straight through in one go. Everlasting and neverending, like these characters with a longevity treatment. But's a worth reading.

[hwhatting]

Ah, those sex scenes that appear suddenly from nowhere, in the middle of the story... Anticlimatic. You can also find them in Larry Niven's Ringworld. It's a generational thing, maybe?

Vassily Aksyonov does the same thing - in many of his novels people have sex every twenty pages or so, without it really being necessary for the story (IMO). My impresssion is that it's some kind of bug that infected writers who went through their adolescence during the 50s/60s.

[Pthagnar]

fucking hippies

[Ashroot]

How would quantum mechanics play into technology? Today we are at the door front of this technology. In a few years we feasibly can send faster than light messages with 100% encryption. Imagine 2000 years from now.

Couldn't you cloak an interstellar ship though meta-materials?

One last thing. Planets with a magneto sphere have belts of subatomic antimatter (positron, and similar stuff). NASA is designing a machine that uses magnets to sweep it up. Here is the site

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... nline-news

[Miekko]

How would quantum mechanics play into technology? Today we are at the door front of this technology. In a few years we feasibly can send faster than light messages with 100% encryption. Imagine 2000 years from now.

No we can't and if you think QM is saying we can, you've misunderstood it. Write a thousand times: "QM doesn't permit superluminal messaging".

Couldn't you cloak an interstellar ship though meta-materials?

Why would you even need to cloak an interstellar ship - space is huge, no one is going to detect it. If you're afraid of getting detected, cooling it down to a bit over 3 kelvin is what you should go for. No fancy complicated optical illusion.

[Salmoneus]

Ah, those sex scenes that appear suddenly from nowhere, in the middle of the story... Anticlimatic. You can also find them in Larry Niven's Ringworld. It's a generational thing, maybe?

Vassily Aksyonov does the same thing - in many of his novels people have sex every twenty pages or so, without it really being necessary for the story (IMO). My impresssion is that it's some kind of bug that infected writers who went through their adolescence during the 50s/60s.

Delany's Dhalgren. It's not just that there's a sex scene every twenty pages... it's the goddamn ten-page-long gangbang scene. I mean being an innocent English boy, my first reaction to these scenes is mild embarrasment, and then 'no, well, there's no reason to be embarrassed, this is a perfectly legitimate thing for authors to want to write about, it's not as though it's here for titillation or anything', but then it becomes "oh dear god can we not please get on with the plot, this is soooooo boring!". Now, admittedly the sex scenes are in keeping with the rest of the book, and, also admittedly, the fact that the ten page gangbang is kind of boring and pointless is probably the point of that scene, but it's not very fun to read through!

[Karavinka]

Wow, that was a long thread. And I'm kind of glad that I read the novel before reading (more likely skimming through) this thread and the other information on the website.

I'm not good at physics or technological stuff, so I won't make comments about it. STL or FTL, cheap energy or expensive one, these kinds of things really don't matter that much (to me, at least) as long as it is applied consistently and they have believable consequences. The Incatena universe is certainly plausible in this regard. And personally, I'm just a mere 20C-born ape from Terra, so I wouldn't really want to try to understand 50C Martian technology and economics even if the author had detailed prophetic visions. Really unheard-of or currently-unimagined technologies are possible, but it might as well be magic for most people. The novel shows you some future technologies, which are mostly extensions of 20C~21C ape technology, and immediately gives limitations with that technology. That actually prevents the future technology from being magic, and I can certainly buy this universe.

As for the socionomics... I happen to be an econ major, and the socionomics makes a lot of sense. Economists are constantly making models and predictions, which sometimes get tested at the policy level (more often not), and they are utilizing more and more data as our databanks grow. Seems like a reasonable extrapolation.

The only nitpick I'd have: seemingly-monoculture planets, with apparently single government per planet. Ormant is shown to be a citizen of Sihor, not of a Sihorian state.. Maybe Morgan meant it as a shorthand, assuming the audience in Satyampur would not exactly be knowledgeable about different Sihorian states far out there in some deep space. "Qengese" seems to have been used as our equivalent for "Chinese" (in reference to restaurants, etc) and again be a local shorthand for "whatever that got inspired by any culinary tradition in Qeng adapted for preparing Okurinese animals and plants."

...but again, Morgan mastered Eukoniš, Maraillais, Novorusski and Qengese. Hmm... maybe one among the Qengese or Novorusski languages sound more likely. Euko, Maraille or Novorossiya might be ethnicaly largely homogeneous and speak more or less one language. Not implausible, but somehow we know better about Qeng.. if the various ethnicities in Okura largely migrated from Qeng, then there must be several Qengese languages to start with.

But the important thing is: this minor nitpick is not about the novel, it's after reading the extra info, knowing that Okura had nations with names in clearly different languages, and concluding that "Qengese" must be something more diverse. The novel hints at Okurinese nations at least twice (art hall scene and where Morgan is asked..no, not spoiling) but the Okura-part of the story takes place only in Gōsei and Ikkyū, so Okura seems more homogeneous than it really is. If we had Kamandamaung instead of Ikkyū, then the planet would have looked binary. Well, can't be helped either way.



(Superhuman intelligences existing in the space habitat, in eternal bliss, without fucking around with the lowly humans... there's a cheaper way to do it. Get a life support and have a consistant supply of some kind of narcotic. You'd exist in a perpetual bliss, cut off from the world, until your biological timer runs out. Personally, I wouldn't want that.)

[linguofreak]

Did you look at the date on the last post? The thread had been dead for over a year.

[Pthagnar]

yeah, so what?

NE: also epicureanism isn't about living doped up! that isn't happiness, because you're not in any fit state to do philosophy! and being "cut off from the world" is the last thing epicureans want. junkies have precious few friends in the first place, but isolation would just make it worse.

[Civil War Bugle]

So socionomics works nicely in the whirling world of AD 4901, where it's had a nice amount of time to be thought up and be implemented, and is supposed to be based on the past (at the time of the novel) 3000 years of humanity's high tech industrial culture. It's mentioned that colonies don't necessarily instantly implement the full socionomics program, but that may be because of peculiarities related to being interstellars colonies. Which invites the question, how high tech does your culture need to be, for socionomics to work well for you, assuming you have the political will to implement it? And somewhat relatedly, on what geographic scale do you need to implement it? It exists in a culture where people can connect to the internet via their brains and where very intelligent AI exists, and where we have a nice interstellar economic zone. I assume that if all economic interaction between the different stellar systems inhabited by humans stopped in 5000, each human planet could get by on its own easily enough with a nicely functioning socionomic economy without much loss, but what if you take a Socionomics 101 textbook and send it in a time machine to the ancient past?

If some dudes have socionomic knowledge and sufficient political will behind them, how well could you implement socionomics today, or in 1950, 1900, or 1850? Any interesting things about trying to implement it earlier than that? I have the telegraph in my mind as the earliest point at which real data of real usefulness to the real development of socionomics started to be available, since it allows somewhat fast communications, and is at about the early times of human industrial development. But could socionomics be applied usefully in 1850 on a worldwide scale, assuming sufficient political will to force it through, or is that too early?

And if not on a global scale, how easily can it be applied in one country or a group of countries in the present or recent past? Could the USA or the USSR, or Nato or the Warsaw Pact, suddenly decide to implement it and have it function properly while having a good chunk of the planet not following this sudden new ideology? Could some lower subnational polity do so, such as the state of California or the city of Chicago?

Or, even if the world or nation or whatever wanted to do so, is socionomics dependent on also having a given level of technology or development like how you couldn't build a nuclear bomb in 1700 even if you had a perfect understanding of 2013 physics?

EDIT: And to be sure, this is distinct from the question of whether, in actual practice, you could get the political willpower to implement it in the first place, in 2013 or the past two centuries. Or, for that matter, whether socionomic would work among Almeans who are receptive and at the right tech level, or whether socionomics needs to be tweaked for non-humans.

[zompist]

Interesting questions. In-world, there are some situations where there isn't enough data for socionomics to apply-- one example being revolutions, another being the first decades of a new colony.

Applying it to the past, I'd say that the warranty doesn't cover anything pre-1900, simply because econometric data was not available. Even today's economic data would be considered sparse, but if you don't even have data on national production, much less market desires and happiness levels, there's too much guesswork. Plus even today we don't have the neurimplants to handle voting and information gathering, or the social understanding of non-authoritarian business structures.

An analogy might be trying to apply modern dentistry to a medieval peasant. Dentistry could explain why his teeth are all rotted out, but what's there would be hard to rescue, and perhaps the underlying gum and jaw structure wouldn't support denturework.

As I put it in the book, if socionomics can't work work in its usual fashion-- the social values and mechanisms it needs just aren't there-- then it moves back a step, and tells you what social movements need to happen to produce those values. So a group of socionomists in 2013 wouldn't necessarily march into Obama's office with a sheaf of advice. They might start by forming companies, creating movies, getting elected to school boards, lots of little things which would push society in the right direction in a generation or two.

There's probably more to say, but I need to get to bed...

[Yiuel Raumbesrairc]

So socionomics works nicely in the whirling world of AD 4901, where it's had a nice amount of time to be thought up and be implemented, and is supposed to be based on the past (at the time of the novel) 3000 years of humanity's high tech industrial culture. It's mentioned that colonies don't necessarily instantly implement the full socionomics program, but that may be because of peculiarities related to being interstellars colonies. Which invites the question, how high tech does your culture need to be, for socionomics to work well for you, assuming you have the political will to implement it? And somewhat relatedly, on what geographic scale do you need to implement it? It exists in a culture where people can connect to the internet via their brains and where very intelligent AI exists, and where we have a nice interstellar economic zone. I assume that if all economic interaction between the different stellar systems inhabited by humans stopped in 5000, each human planet could get by on its own easily enough with a nicely functioning socionomic economy without much lose, but what if you take a Socionomics 101 textbook and send it in a time machine to the ancient past?

If some dudes have socionomic knowledge and sufficient political will behind them, how well could you implement socionomics today, or in 1950, 1900, or 1850? Any interesting things about trying to implement it earlier than that? I have the telegraph in my mind as the earliest point at which real data of real usefulness to the real development of socionomics started to be available, since it allows somewhat fast communications, and is at about the early times of human industrial development. But could socionomics be applied usefully in 1850 on a worldwide scale, assuming sufficient political will to force it through, or is that too early?

And if not on a global scale, how easily can it be applied in one country or a group of countries in the present or recent past? Could the USA or the USSR, or Nato or the Warsaw Pact, suddenly decide to implement it and have it function properly while having a good chunk of the planet not following this sudden new ideology? Could some lower subnational polity do so, such as the state of California or the city of Chicago?

Or, even if the world or nation or whatever wanted to do so, is socionomics dependent on also having a given level of technology or development like how you couldn't build a nuclear bomb in 1700 even if you had a perfect understanding of 2013 physics?

EDIT: And to be sure, this is distinct from the question of whether, in actual practice, you could get the political willpower to implement it in the first place, in 2013 or the past two centuries. Or, for that matter, whether socionomic would work among Almeans who are receptive and at the right tech level, or whether socionomics needs to be tweaked for non-humans.

I haven't read the book, so what I will say here is just a thought.

I believe you are misled one small yet very important detail. You are comparing socionomics to physics. But is it really that appropriate?

I will ask you, what about biology? Some will contest its scientific nature (mostly physicians), but here you got a science with which a comparaison with socionomics is better. The problem with describing societies and how they work (and this applies to biology as well), is pretty the amount of different basic units involved. Look at physics; we are looking at a handful of elementary particles and just over a hundred elements for your nuclear bomb. The amount of different elements you have to describe is pretty low. Now comes chemistry, with its hundred elements and the thousands of molecules. Biology is just one step ahead, but we are speaking or so many different molecules and combinations thereof that, in the end, a lot of the work we are doing in Biology is description, though we are also starting to make some predictions especially through the theory of Evolution.

Now, comes in Socionomics. As far as I can understand Mark's head, it's basically applying the scientific method to human societies. Each single human is a different element; none of us behave exactly alike, because we are absolutely all different (even "identical" twins). On current Earth, we are 7 billion dudes. And the groups, societies, we form are even more numerous, because we easily form groups, and groups of groups and etc up to the very Incatena, the Common League. And, obviously, each and every of these groups will be different, because its components, well, are. Even if, say, two cities had the exact same population and the exact same configuration, its inhabitants would still be different. Making predictions and acting upon them is very, very hard in such a context.

But some (*cough* Jane Jacobs *cough*) have taught us that, even if all these are different, that does not make it impossible to see patterns. Sure, because we are lousy statisticians we must first try to reject these as random chance, but after the random hypothesis is excluded, patterns can surely be found. But I will give you an example out of urban studies : mass public transit.

Mass public transit didn't appear before the 1850s, in London. And the reason is simple : to have mass public transit, you must be able to make all the various tools like the engines, the cars, the roads etc. And to have all that, you need specialization. But to have specialization, you must have exessive production of what is currently needed; the first step of this is exessive production of food per person, which leaves some people free; and the more free people there are, the more specialization can occur.

If you have an independent group of about 100 people in a small village, you will not see much specialization. When you only have 100 people, you might afford a metalworker for agricultural tools, a guardian to educate the children, but certainly not the mechanic for trucks. (Remember, you are on your own : no big cities.) Multiply by 10 this population, 1000, and now we are getting closer. But we aren't there yet; this is still quite a small village, but it probably can afford a little more specialization now on its own. One of the first thing is to have a leading council, because above 1000, while we still can know everyone, we are on the verge of loosing track of some. Now, one step further: 10,000. Now we are speaking! This level is pretty much your typical medival town. You probably have some sort of school (like a fully fledged church) at that level. Go one step further : 100,000. CITY! Now it is starting to swelling, specialization does occur at a greater pace. 1,000,000 : Damn, now we are at a level where specialization can occur even further; public transit can finally appear, because the city could finally afford all the institutions needed for a public transit company... (I usually have fun saying that cellphones need to go one step further, when a city reaches 10,000,000 people like NYC was when the first cellphones were created. Smartphones needed even more specialization, but looking at migration patterns within the US, one could see it as a fully 100,000,000 people city region around NYC, because of how much production is delegated to other regions in the world...)

Basically, it's not that socionomics seems useless or unapplicable; it's because a community with 100 people will not and, actually, cannot work the same way as a community with a billion souls like those in the Incatena. I would say that you can apply socionomics pretty much at any point if you want to have a bigger, stronger and healthier community. But you have to adjust what you apply, not because each community is following different socionomical laws, but because the elements within the community are drastically different. Like between a human and a sponge in biology.

[Civil War Bugle]

I guess this is more or less what I was expecting, although I was hoping to amuse myself with thoughts of Trotsky implementing socionomics with an iron hand, haha.

[Yiuel Raumbesrairc]

I guess this is more or less what I was expecting, although I was hoping to amuse myself with thoughts of Trotsky implementing socionomics with an iron hand, haha.

It's like the exact opposite of everything zomp has ever written on his blog and website. I couldn't imagine him making a novel and having a Trotsky-like idiot forcing something of that kind

[Civil War Bugle]

I guess this is more or less what I was expecting, although I was hoping to amuse myself with thoughts of Trotsky implementing socionomics with an iron hand, haha.

It's like the exact opposite of everything zomp has ever written on his blog and website. I couldn't imagine him making a novel and having a Trotsky-like idiot forcing something of that kind

The Trotsky reference was a joke, of course.

[Salmoneus]

yeah, so what?

NE: also epicureanism isn't about living doped up! that isn't happiness, because you're not in any fit state to do philosophy! and being "cut off from the world" is the last thing epicureans want. junkies have precious few friends in the first place, but isolation would just make it worse.

?
Epicureans weren't in favour of drugs, because they didn't like hangovers. If you could produce a hangover-free drug - an anaesthetic, preferably, why wouldn't Epicureans take it all the time?

And if you don't think Epicureans wanted to be cut off from the world, what's your explanation for their repeated insistence on cutting yourself off from the world, avoiding politics and public opinion, and ideally living in a commune? Sure, they wouldn't support individual isolation, but they'd certainly, in my view, support the isolation of a small community of like-minded friends.