Political Science – One Thousand And One Parsecs

E is for Empire

Almost every far future science fiction story has a galactic empire of some kind. From Dune to Foundation, from Star Wars to Firefly, there’s always someone trying to rule the galaxy, often in a way that makes life difficult for the protagonists.

Why? Rule of drama, of course, but also because it gives the story a truly epic scope. Just as the classics such as Homer’s Iliad and Tolstoy’s War and Peace are as much about entire civilizations as they are about the people characters within them, so it is with science fiction, especially space opera. Combine that with science fiction’s forward-thinking nature, and you have the potential for some truly amazing stories about humanity’s destiny among the stars.

But why empire? Because even if we make it out to the stars, we’ll probably still take with us all of the baggage that makes us human. Science fiction may be forward looking, but history repeats itself, and you can’t have a clear view of the future without understanding and acknowledging the past.

Not all galactic empires are evil, but most of them are. We shouldn’t have to look further than the real-world history of Imperialism to see why. Oppression, exploitation, slavery, genocide–all of these have been done in the name of Empire, and many more evils besides. Even benevolent hegemonic powers (such as, I would argue, the United States of America) often end up doing great harm, either through action or inaction.

Of course, all of this makes for some really great stories. When Asimov wrote his Foundation series, he quite literally based it on The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. When Frank Herbert wrote Dune, he drew extensively from his background as an orientalist and based the overworld story on the Muslim conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries. Star Wars is based loosely on the collapse of the Roman Republic, and Firefly echoes many of the old Western tales of former Confederate soldiers heading west after the US Civil War.

It’s worth pointing out that the Galactic Empire is by no means the only form of political organization in space opera. There are actually several, including:

The Federation — A loose organization of stars and planets that usually exists to foster cooperation and mutual peace between galactic civilizations. Rarely evil, but can be crippled by red tape.
The Republic — A more centralized version of the Federation, typically. Exercises more control over its citizens, but not in an oppressive way. Usually features some form of representative government.
The Alliance — A team of political underdogs united to overthrow the Empire and establish a more just form of government in its place. If they win, they usually become the Republic or the Federation.
The Kingdom — A smaller government within the larger political system, often struggling for survival against more powerful forces. Not always democratic, but is often good, at least to its own citizens.
The Hegemonic Empire — Like the Empire, but rules primarily through soft power, ie co-opting their enemies rather than crushing them. May overlap with the Republic or the Federation.
The People’s Republic of Tyranny — The Empire pretending to be the Federation.
The Vestigial Empire — What the Empire becomes when it’s been defeated but not yet destroyed. Still oppressive and evil, but rules a smaller territory and struggles for relevance and survival.
The Remnant — An element from the Alliance that’s gone rogue. The war may be over, but these guys are still fighting it, even if they’ve lost sight of what they’re fighting for.
The Horde — A highly aggressive and expansionist warlord state. By far the most violent and brutal of any political organization, it seeks to conquer and subjugate the entire galaxy.

As a political science major, all these forms of government really fascinate me. I’ve played with quite a few of them, especially the Horde (Bringing Stella Home), the Empire (Desert Stars), the Hegemonic Empire (Star Wanderers), the Kingdom (Stars of Blood and Glory), and the Remnant (also Stars of Blood and Glory). You can definitely expect to see me play with them again in the future.

Story Notebook #4

Alright, it’s been too long since the last time I posted any story ideas here on this blog, so I thought I’d go back to my old notebooks and post a few of them here. Currently, we’re on notebook #4, which basically covers the second half of 2009.

And so, without further ado…here goes!

A society in which infanticide, up to the first two years, is not considered a crime (since infants are not conscious in the same way as adults and children)

Youch–talk about a dystopia! Which makes me wonder, what kind of a society would develop this belief? Probably not one that values human life–or rather, one that somehow considers adults to be more “human” than young children.

As a direct result of this society’s system of values, there’s probably going to be a lot more promiscuity–or perhaps the promiscuity is what causes this belief to be engendered in the first place? It reminds me of an ancient Carthaginian brothel, where hundreds of baby bones were found stuffed in the narrow alley between the brothel and the next building over.

Blegh–icky stuff! Which is to say, it’s probably good story material. 🙂

A near-future dystopia in which the extras in movies (made in overpopulated developing countries) literally act out battle scenes, because hollywood studios can afford to pay for the loss of life

I got this idea from a comment by Dave Wolverton at a con, in which he said that in China, the maximum fine for negligent homicide is $10,000. This is one of the reasons why so many movie studios do business there–if their extras die or get injured, they aren’t held nearly as liable as in the United States.

Of course, if the maximum fine is $10,000, why not put that in a deposit up front and have the workers fill out a form indicating who should get the money if they die? You can then have gladiatorial movies and TV shows, where people actually die. It sounds sick, but I’ll bet you could find a significant audience for that kind of thing.

Economically speaking, it’s a win-win-win situation. The studios save on safety equipment and profit from the relatively cheap labor costs; the workers benefit whether they live or die, because either way, they’re getting paid much more than they would ever make otherwise; and the host country benefits, because the survivors can then be conscripted to form an elite corps of warriors.

The only real downside is the utter moral depravity of it all–but hey, we’ve already crossed that moral line so many times, what’s to keep us from crossing it again?

A time travel device that allows collection of data from the future without affecting causality–how would this change political science?

By “without affecting causality,” I think I meant that the time travel device itself wouldn’t cause any huge problems–that one could use it to observe without interaction, something akin to Orson Scott Card’s Postwatch. And of course, because I was so deeply engrossed in school at the time, the first application that came to mind was political science.

It would certainly lend a degree of credibility to the science, something which it currently does not enjoy. It would probably also lead to fierce debates about fate vs. free will between the positivists and the interpretivists–something that has already been ongoing for some time.

My second novel (Genesis Earth) was, in some ways, a response to that debate.

A character who always has the latest liberal candidate’s bumper sticker on the same corner of his/her car, so that it builds up over time.

Interesting character quirk–though since it could only really makes sense in our world, I would never write about it. Stories set in the real world bore me.

An MMORPG for orcs and elves where they play as humans

Check it out! I’m a level 80 corporate CEO with the ability to cast ‘complete financial collapse’ and totally screw you out of a job!

Zombie insects

Oh noes! Even worse if humans can become infected.

Sentient planets

Already done; the book is called Solaris.

Golfing on the Moon or Mars

This…would actually make a fairly awesome short story.

Were-squirrels!

Sounds like something Terry Pratchett would write if/when he parodied the urban fantasy genre.

What if all of us are characters in someone’s story?

God help us all!

A psychic agency that allows you to instant message dead relatives

Personally, I’d never stop wondering whether it’s just an elaborate hoax.

And that’s all for notebook #4! Don’t worry–I swear I’m not as screwed up as these story ideas make me out to be.

Old story notebook, part 3

Alright, it’s time to finish up with the old story notebook I discovered a couple of weeks ago. These ideas were written down back in 2007, when I was writing the first draft of Ashes of the Starry Sea. Without further ado:

In the future, people live in arcologies, and wars are fought outside by robots. It will be a new system of feudalism: arcologies are like castles or walled towns, and people won’t die in the wars, just change sides.

I’m not sure I knew very much about feudalism as an economic system back then, but the basic idea, I think, was that life would be localized in the arcologies and nationalism as a unifying principle would die out.

In the Middle Ages, warfare was basically a contest between nobles, and though it certainly disrupted the lives of the peasants, they didn’t really care which side they were on because it didn’t make a difference. Napoleon revolutionized the world because he galvanized the peasants through the new concept of nationalism and made them actually care about the outcome of the wars.

An AI falls in love with a CS major, but the CS major loves a real girl.

The Little Mermaid, with a modern twist. And the mermaid AI commits suicide by uploading herself to a trashy old computer that’s on the verge of crashing. The final scene shows the wrecked computer somewhere in rural China, being scrapped for the metal parts in a vat of toxic chemicals. Awesome.

A character who’s an android and sees the world in terms of numbers.

The story should revolve around the question: if math is a language, how do you say “I love you” in numbers?

An election where people can scientifically predict best and worst case scenarios, based on each candidate’s qualities and the world situation.

Political science may not be a hard science, but it is awesome for science fiction.

Voter preferences are normally distributed around a common mean, but parties choose opposing points of view because of an information shortfall about the nature of that mean. What if the information problem were solved?

We would have exactly two parties that are identical in every meaningful way…wait a minute…

Someone discovers a language that is intuitive in all humans and overcomes many barriers of language in describing the world.

Linguistics is good for sf&f, too.

What if galaxies themselves were sentient?

Sounds like something out of a Robert Charles Wilson novel. I love it!

A space colony that, due to information technology, is a pure democracy.

I’m using this idea right now in Mercenary Savior. When I first started planning the novel, I wanted to do a story about the Mongols in space, but I knew it would need more than that, so I thought “what if one of the places they invaded was this pure democracy?” As soon as I combined the two ideas, BAM! I had a story.

An advanced society without public education or health care.

Uggggh, don’t even want to go there. Not until Obama’s out of office.

The Mormon pioneer exodus in space.

I tried to use this idea with Hero in Exile, but for some reason it didn’t work. It was as if the story wanted to go in a completely different direction. Oh well–you win some, you lose some. Besides, it’s not a total loss; it’s always possible to recycle.

A kingdom that will be cursed if ruled by anyone other than a direct heir. What if the direct heir is a child?

An attempt to brainstorm some fantasy.

Robot prostitutes–one who has no feeling or emotion, but develops artificial intelligence. This is what will fuel the development of androids.

Sad, but true.

A spaceship so massive that it generates tides when it enters orbit.

Sounds like something out of Arthur C. Clarke.

A tomagachi becomes sentient and uploads itself to the internet. OR…an AI disguises itself as a tomagachi.

Tomagachis! Whatever happened to them? They were so trendy…for like six months in the 90s.

What if our most deeply held beliefs had the power, under the right circumstances, to turn into monsters–real, literal, fantastic beings of awesome power?

Now there’s an idea with some interesting potential. We could build battle arenas and watch our beliefs duke it out, literally. Which ones would win?

A society that values myths more than facts.

I’m sure that societies like this have actually existed–or may still exist today.

American suicide bombers.

Hey! It could happen.

Ghosts on a spaceship.

Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide…

A culture where kissing (or any other public display of romantic affection) initiates marriage.

Now THIS I would like to see, or maybe even use someday. It could be interesting.

And that concludes the old story notebook, bringing us to the end of 2008 when I finished Ashes of the Starry Sea and left for the 2008 BYU Jordan study abroad.

Goodbye DC

So I have some crazy, unbelievable news to share: I got fired from my internship, under disputed circumstances. That’s right: fired from my unpaid internship four weeks before it was scheduled to end.

The exact reasons for the termination were never made completely clear to me, but I suspect politics played a significant role and that’s all I’m going to say about it here. If you want to know more, please contact me privately.

Fortunately, the Washington Seminar people have agreed to let me get credit for my academic work–which means that I’ll be able to graduate. I’ve been sent home early, but I can still pass the class with a C/C-.

Oh well. In some ways, this kind of sucks, but in other ways, it’s a blessing in disguise. I learned everything that I needed to learn from my internship: that I don’t want to pursue a career in government or policy making.

Government work is long, hard, and very intensive. It also involves office politics, sitting behind a desk, and fighting entrenched bureaucracies. It’s not the kind of career that allows time for family, let alone writing. And the payoff? The common refrain I heard was that the work was “interesting.” Not “meaningful,” “life-changing,” “personally enriching,” or any of that–just “interesting.”

Nope. Not for me.

I also learned that the kind of people who are attracted to Washington DC are not the kind of people I feel very comfortable around. Generally speaking, Washington DC tends to attract people who are ambitious, self-absorbed, arrogant, loud, poor listeners, opinionated, and oblivious of the people around them. This certainly wasn’t true of everyone, both at the institute and at the Barlow center, but I found they were the exceptions to the rule.

I will say a few positive things, though. DC has some excellent museums and monuments–the best of any I’ve seen anywhere else. In particular, I found the FDR memorial, the Portrait Gallery, and the science and innovation exhibit at the American History Museum particularly moving.

In terms of people, ironically, the ones that struck me as most sincere and genuine were all politicians. In particular, I was struck by Congressman Matheson and Senator Bennett. I’m not sure if I would vote for either of them–it depends on their stance on the issues–but they both struck me as intelligent, well meaning, good people.

I will also say that my respect for the military went up significantly. After hearing so many people spout of so much self-important hot air about this or that political issue, it was remarkably refreshing to see people who were willing to put their lives on the line for their country. To any servicemen reading this, thank you for all you do. I have nothing but the deepest respect and admiration for you.

My experience in the Barlow center was generally quite positive. I had an excellent roommate and made quite a few friends. I’m sorry if I seemed kind of aloof most of the time–it’s probably because I was miserable for other reasons and didn’t realize it. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone again back in Provo.

So, what’s the plan now? Finish the academic side of things ASAP, then head back to Utah. I’ve got a lot of old friends I want to catch up with before the summer, not to mention the last couple English 318 classes. That’s one thing I sorely missed this semester–English 318. Beyond that, I don’t quite know–a lot of things are still in the air. I’m confident, however, that whatever happens, it will be for the best.

Why I love Robert Charles Wilson

From Mysterium, which I plan to review here soon:

“Do you ever wonder, Howard, about the questions we can’t ask?
“Can’t answer, you mean?
“No. Can’t ask.”
“I don’t understand.”
Stern leaned back in his deck chair and folded his hands over his gaunt, ascetic frame. His glasses were opaque in the porch light. The crickets seemed suddenly loud.
“Think about a dog,” he said. “Think about your dog–what’s his name?”
“Albert.”
“Yes. Think about Albert. He’s a healthy dog, is he not?”
“Yes.”
“Intelligent?”
“Sure.”
“He functions in every way normally, then, within the parameters of dogness. He’s an exemplar of his species. And he has the ability to learn, yes? He can do tricks? Learn from his experience? And he’s awarer of his surroundings; he can distinguish between you and your mother, for instance? H’es not unconscious or impaired?”
“Right.”
“But despite all that, there’s a limit on his understanding. Obviously so. If we talk about gravitons or Fourier transforms, he can’t follow the conversation. We’re speaking a language he doesn’t know and cannot know. The concepts can’t be translated; his mental universe simply won’t contain them.”
“Granted,” Howard said. “Am I missing the point?”
“We’re sitting here,” Stern said, “asking spectacular questions, you and I. About the universe and how it began. About everything that exists. And if we can ask a question, probably, sooner or later, we can answer it. So we assume there’s no limit to knowledge. But maybe your dog makes the same mistake! He doesn’t know what lies beyond the neighborhood, but if he found himself in a strange place he would approach it with the tools of comprehension available to him, and soon he would understand it–dog-fashion, by sight and smell and so on. There are no limits to his comprehensions, Howard, except the limits he does not and cannot ever experience.
“So how different are we? We’re mammals within the same broad compass of evolution, after all. Our forebrains are bigger, but the difference amounts to a few ounces. We can ask many, many more questions than your dog. And we can answer them. But if there are real limits on our comprehension, they would be as invisible to us as they are to Albert. So: Is there anything in the universe we simply cannot know? Is there a question we can’t ask? And would we ever encounter some hint of it, some intimation of the mystery? Or is it permanently beyond our grasp?”

This is the kind of science fiction that I love: the kind that brings me right up to the limits of human knowledge and makes me feel naked in the face of the unknown. The kind where the aliens truly feel alien, not like an unusually bizarre race of human beings. I want the aliens to surprise me–I want to feel that there’s something about them that is completely beyond my comprehension. Something sublime, something romantic.

In all of his books that I’ve read, Robert Charles Wilson captures this feeling spectacularly. So does Arthur C. Clarke, C. J. Cherryh, and Orson Scott Card. Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, John Scalzi and Alastair Reynolds are excellent writers, and I’ve genuinely enjoyed their books, but their aliens are too…understandable. Too clear cut, too defined. After a while, you don’t feel that there’s anything left to surprise you, anything that is so alien it’s beyond your grasp.

In some ways, I think this boils down to the author’s worldview. Those with a more positivist worldview believe that the world is fundamentally understandable, and that every phenomenon can be modeled and predicted, provided that we have a sophisticated enough understanding of natural law. The interpretivist worldview, on the other hand, posits that while truth may exist, there are limits to our understanding–that some things are inherently unpredictable and impossible to model.

I used to think that I was a positivist. Then I took Poli Sci 310 with Goodliffe, and it turned my world upside down. Genesis Earth is, in some ways, a product of that personal worldview shift. I don’t think I’m anywhere near on par with my aliens as Wilson, Clarke, and Card are with theirs, but I hope I’m on my way.

Hellish week (and I’m still crossing my fingers)

Holy cow, this week was insane. INSANE. Two papers (13 pages and 8 pages respectively) in one week, hours and hours wrestling with Sambanis’s Civil War dataset and Excel (I wish I knew STATA–it’s so much more useful for analyzing ginormous datasets), 33 tests to grade (of which I’ve only graded about 11), peer reviewing two research proposals, about half a dozen dense poli sci articles…

I could continue the list, but I think it would bore you. Suffice it to say that the Homework Alert Level has been on RED since Monday. Not good–and damnably frustrating, since it eats up all my writing time. Unsustainable.

However, by 3pm today, all the major hurdles were finished. Thank goodness! And I not only got some writing in, I finished reading a book. It was a pretty good one–I’ll review it sometime later.

But, in completely unrelated news, I just want to let you know…

The second round of honorable mentions for the Writers of the Future contest has come out. I’m not on the list.

I also have not received a rejection letter…yet.

Final polish

I mapped out all the major assignments for my capstone class for the next month on my calendar. Turns out I’ve got a lot more work than I thought I did. Because of that, I decided to start work on Genesis Earth 4.0 today.

This is the final polish before World Fantasy convention. Of all the stuff I’ve written, Genesis Earth is the only ms that I feel is ready for me to send to editors/agents. With this draft, I hope to smooth out the writing, make the text more readable–basically, make this book really shine. We’ll see if it succeeds.

It’s kind of nerve-wracking, in some ways, doing this final edit (inasmuch as any edit is “final”). Previously, whenever I did a revision, I knew that I had time to come back later and fix anything that I just couldn’t get to. Now, this is where it counts. The writing has to be perfect.

Imagine how horrible it was to find a grammatical mistake on page one. I’d forgotten to capitalize the first word of a sentence in the third or fourth paragraph. Thankfully, it was the only mistake I saw on that page, but it’s enough to make me nervous about those chapters I sent out to the editors from BYU’s Writers and Illustrators for Young Readers. I know how to write–really, I do! Please believe me!

So today, every hour of the day was jam packed with classes, work, homework, and obligatory social activities. I only had two hours to write, and in that time, I only wrote about 500 words for Genesis Earth (though, to be fair, I’m measuring it by comparing documents and only counting the words that changed). Ouch. Not sustainable, if I want to finish Genesis Earth and Bringing Stella Home (I need to change that title) before World Fantasy. I made up for it by writing for half an hour just now in Stella, but still…

And this is where I hope I don’t mess things up. Every time I’ve tried to juggle two projects at once, I’ve found it very hard to do so. It’s something I’ll probably have to learn, if I want to write professionally, but it’s still very hard. I hope my writing quality doesn’t suffer because of it.

If worst comes to worst, I’ll focus on Genesis Earth until it’s done to my satisfaction. Shouldn’t take more than a couple of weeks, even with school. But I’m still keeping my goal to finish Stella before World Fantasy.

In unrelated news, in my political philosophy class today, Professor Hancock mentioned Huntington and I said, under my breath, “that guy was so full of crap.” Well, it turns out that Professor Hancock is quite the admirer of Samuel Huntington and his clash of civilizations theory. This is going to make class…interesting, to say the least. After studying this stuff my entire college career, I really do believe that Huntington’s theories are utterly full of crap.

Oh, and I had a great idea for a comic: Plato’s Republic, as a cartoon! Okay, maybe I’m just a geek, but seriously, if it were done well, it could be really, REALLY cool. Really cool.

Busy busy AWESOME day

I had an awesome day today. Totally awesome. If every day this semester is like this one, I’ll be dead tired before Thanksgiving but so happy it won’t even matter.

It started at 7am. Woke up, worked out, read a galley from Dragon Moon Press for Leading Edge while working out. The book wasn’t that bad, either.

Showered, ate breakfast, read 1st Jacob chapter 1 in Arabic. Great scripture study. Read “The false gods we worship” by Spencer W. Kimball on the walk up to school. Powerful. President Kimball was a Prophet with a capital P.

Met with Dr. Bowen to discuss the TA job she wants to hire me for. It’s going to be a LOT of fun! I’ll be doing all kinds of interesting research on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and making a sort of game / role play for the students in the class…and getting paid good money to do it. Fun fun fun.

Classes were awesome. I love my capstone. Professor Christensen is a blast. Talked about spatial voting and why political parties in America tend to be identical. Made fun of Provo/Orem municipal elections. Good times.

After classes, met with Professor Kramer to discuss the other TA job I’ll be working. He was incredibly happy to have me on board. Out of the hundreds of papers he read for PL SC 201 last year, he still remembered mine. Holy cow. I’m shocked.

Proceeded to run through a series of bureaucratic hoops to get all the paperwork filled out for both TA jobs. I was so giddy about working I didn’t mind the hassle. Dr. Bowen at one point said “What’s the other job paying you? Eight something? Well, we can do better than that!” Man, I’m going to earn so much money this semester.

Went home, cooked up some locally grown corn and spaghetti. Mmm, corn on the cob! Delicious. Talked with my roommate Ben Crowder about all the stuff he’s done since graduating. Dude, he is a renaissance man, through and through. Awesome guy.

Leading edge was a total blast. The editors threw a start-of-semester pizza party, and we had almost a dozen new people show up to read slush. Plus, Peter was there–he’s always fun. Talked about spaceballs and Big Bang theory (the movie), how Arrested Development is funnier than The Office, violence in fiction, crazy story ideas, and all kinds of stuff. Good times.

So then, after finishing my homework, I was sitting in the library when I realized I only had an hour and a half before the library closed. An hour and a half, and I had not written a single word in my WIP that day. In order to keep up with my self-imposed deadline, I needed to write 1.2k words. 1.2k words…in 1.5 hours.

I didn’t really think I could do it, but I decided what the hell and gave it a shot. Turned off the music, avoided the email and twitter, and just focused on the work.

An hour and a half later, lo and behold! 1.2k words! And just as I realized that, the HBLL closing music comes on…and it’s Dropkick Murphies!

Let me just say, there is no better way to end an awesome day than with some good outro music. So let me end this post with tonight’s awesome outro music, courtesy the Harold B. Lee Library.

That’s the news and I AM OUTA HERE!