De Romanicorum Theoriarum II

Thoughts upon speculative fiction, mainly—much like my life of late—concerned with Skyrim. If you not only have nightmares concerning Alduin Kingbane the World-Eater, but those nightmares have the Skyrim UI superimposed over them, you're probably playing too much.

• Turns out Arngeir didn't stop talking to you, but he does stop telling you where to find new Shouts. I think I got back on his good side, by siding with the Graybeards when the Blades ask you to kill your dragon ally (jerks). Sorry, Esbern, Delphine, but I like Arngeir, Borri, Einorth, and Wulfgar (and the aforementioned dragon, too) more than I like you.
  
  Speaking of, someone needs to sit the Blades down and explain about how, no, certainly a human couldn't expiate the crimes said dragon committed while he was one of Alduin's generals. But dragons are immortal. I figure a few millennia of prayer, fasting, and good works is sufficient penance, and St. George would agree with me (in some versions of the legend, he baptizes the dragon, rather than slaying it).
  
  Incidentally, the priest of Arkay who does the funerals in Falkreath used to be a Thalmor war-mage. He became a priest who ministers to the grieving to try and expiate all the grief he caused in the Great War. Do the Blades also want me to execute him? Assholes.
• The dragon language is awesome. It doesn't just sound good, it's got definite rules to its onomastics (word-formation). E.g., "alveolar or dental sound + u" seems to be a root having to do with power, and secondarily speech (for dragons, with their Shouts, the two are related). Thu'um is "shout", thur is "tyranny" and "overlord", su is "air", sul is "sun", suleyk is "power", zul is "voice" (as in "Way of the"), zun is "weapon"; by any indications su'um (mentioned at the beginning of the quest The Fallen) seems to mean something like "persuasion". It's not just fricatives, either—tu is "hammer", tuz is "blade", du is "devour" and dun is "grace".
  
  Just in general, Dovah doesn't have English grammar; aside from forming "shout" and "tyranny" from the same root, it also usually puts adjectives after the noun they modify (joor mey, "foolish mortal"). Also—as befits an immortal species who were sired by Akatosh the Time-Dragon—it hasn't got tenses. That might seem weird, but Proto-Indo-European didn't have tense, either, and most modern Semitic languages, among others, still don't. There are word-endings in Dovah that certainly seem to relate to aspect, though, e.g. kren "break" and krent "broken", krii "kill" krif "fight" kriid "slayer" (the -d in kriid perhaps a frequentive, i.e. "one who slays").
• Of interest to fantasy writers, and also to SF writers who use my particular software workaround of Lucas-Penrose, is the fact that, according to legend, one of the greatest Baalim Shem Tov (those rabbis who are so holy they know how to pronounce the Holy Name) had sufficient wisdom to create a golem when he was a child—I think before he was even a Bar Mitzvah (yes, a Bar Mitzvah, it means "son of the Law" and actually refers to the person, not the ceremony).
  
  Only, said rabbi refused to use that knowledge. There's a reason golems are most associated with filling buckets until they cause floods (the Sorcerer's Apprentice is actually about golems, though I'm pretty sure a Baal Shem Tov is just about the opposite of a sorcerer)—while a very wise sage might be able to create one, even the greatest human wisdom is finite, limited by the fact a rabbi can't be everywhere at once, and will eventually die, if by nothing else. Thus, the wiser course is not to make one—humans can barely handle the responsibility of begetting children, let alone tireless immortal children with the strength of the earth itself.
• They're making a movie of John Carter of Mars—the first ad for it was on during the Superbowl. I am not such a nitpicker as to object that nobody on Barsoom wears clothes, although they don't. And I will concede that that's not really science fiction (it's planetary romance—indeed, it's basically sword and sorcery that's light on that second one and set on a world that, coincidentally, shares a name and a surface gravity with one of Earth's neighbors).
  
  However, the real problem I have is that the Barsoom books would have to be rated R to truly capture the way that planet works. John Carter is the only man on Mars who laughs when we do; red, green, and especially white Martians only laugh sadistically. Not really Disney fare, is it (and guess who's producing the thing)?
  
  Incidentally, "laughter=cruelty" was the actual scientific theory at the time those books were written; you can find Chesterton sneering at the concept. ScienceMarchesOn—now we're pretty sure that laughter=fear. Or rather, laughter=an interrupted fear response, that our species came to value because resisting the fear response produced by cognitive dissonance is necessary if you're going to learn to innovate. Laughter, that is, is essentially courage—which, I think, would make Chesterton happy.
• Speaking of Chesterton (and I apologize that this is only tangentially related to SF—but economic theories do inform science fiction), most of the people who think they are Chestertonians haven't read enough of his work. Neither have they read any Belloc—and Belloc was the brains of their movement, fail to understand his work and you have no right to claim to be a Distributist. Agrarian back-to-the-land movements are all well and good, and corporate capitalism is a subpar method of organizing business. But what people like Rod Dreher and Mark "Saddam's rape-rooms are fine by me" Shea do not understand, is that you cannot have technological innovation without concentrations of capital.
  
  Maybe if so-called Distributists spent less time with the League of the Long Bow or the Napoleon of Notting Hill—or getting their views on the War on Terror from the far-left MacArthur Foundation, via Harpers' Magazine, Mr. Shea—and more time with Belloc's Servile State and Path to Rome, they would understand that. Belloc understood that a modern society cannot exist without industrialism, and both he and Chesterton had nothing but contempt for anyone who didn't like the great achievements of modern technology. No, Belloc's problem with capitalism was the one trait that it's already partly lost, the fact only a few people own the capital, and the rest are mere proletarians—which, newsflash, is just a rude word for "employees".
  
  Why Path to Rome, of the Belloc books? It is, admittedly, one of those incredibly rambling little stream-of-consciousness things he liked to write, much like Cruise of the Nona. But amongst those ramblings is this:

  This is indeed the way [artistic] things should be done, I mean by men doing them for pleasure and of their own thought. And I have a number of friends who agree with me in thinking this, that art should not be competitive or industrial, but most of them go on to the very strange conclusion that one should not own one's garden, nor one's beehive, nor one's great noble house, nor one's pigsty, nor one's railway shares, nor the very boots on one's feet. I say, out upon such nonsense. Then they say to me, what about the concentration of the means of production? And I say to them, what about the distribution of the ownership of the concentrated means of production? And they shake their heads sadly, and say it would never endure; and I say, try it first and see. Then they fly into a rage.

  Choke that down, Shea, you useful (though not to any good purpose) idiot.
• It's funny to me how people say the AT-AT walker is the stupidest idea in SF ever. No, it's a brilliant idea. It's just that it's used by a straw Empire, and thus cannot be allowed to unleash its unmitigated awesome.
  
  You know what the AT-AT looks like when it's done right? Well UNSC naval intelligence codenamed it "Scarab"—its proper name is "Type-47 Ultra Heavy Assault Platform"—and I damn near shat myself when the first one I ever fought climbed down off a building in Halo 3. You know how the AT-AT can't turn its head more than 80° to either side? Well, admittedly, a Scarab's head only turns a little further than that. But...the whole body can turn 180° faster than you can circle it on a combination turbo-jet/attack helicopter. I've tried, believe me—someone has to distract the thing before you can do that (in a Banshee, you can just jet straight over it, then spin around and get in a few shots before it turns to face you). Even if you get behind it, the secondary turret, on its rear, can rotate 360° and (on Legendary) will destroy a tank in about five hits. That's the secondary gun, remember.
  
  The legs, unlike those of an AT-AT, are in crab-walk layout, rather than dog-with-arthritis; they can swing from side to side as well as back and forth. This means, aside from the aforementioned fast turns, that not only can it stomp on you, it can stick its face (with the main gun, the one that makes an AT-AT's lasers look like popguns) into anything you happen to hide in. It can also, by a combination of turning its head and rearing up on its forelegs, shoot pretty much straight up above itself, and significant arcs all around that. I assumed, after years of Metal Gear fighting, that I knew how to kill giant robots. But you try that "run in a circle and shoot its vitals with missiles" strategy on a Scarab, the UNSC's gonna have to find a buyer for some second-hand Mjolnir armor.
• I have a low tolerance for parody at the best of times, but the issue is compounded by the fact that good parodies, in pop culture, may pretty much be counted on the fingers of one ear. And do you know what the worst is?
  
  Spaceballs. Mel Brooks is annoying even at his best; in that movie—and Robin Hood: Men in Tights—he pretty much negates his service in World War II (see also the children's books by RAF ace pilot Roald Dahl). Spaceballs, like the Seltzer and Friedberg "Something Movie" series that people often compare unfavorably with it (honestly, they aren't any worse), doesn't actually know its source material; half the time it simply ignores being a parody in favor of stupid dick jokes. And even when Spaceballs remembers it's supposed to be a parody, half the time it parodies sci fi tropes that Star Wars specifically repudiates. Star Wars, for instance, is not set in the future. It's set in a space version of the Hyborian Age.
  
  Finally, many legal theorists agree that mentioning that execrable "ludicrous speed" bit, in an actual discussion of FTL, is the only known means of formally renouncing one's human rights.
• Incidentally, speaking of Star Wars and its straw empire, according to various interviews with Lucas, the Rebels are Che Guevara and the Ewoks are the Viet Cong. The Rebels' guns are Sturmgewehr 44s without their magazines for the very simple reason that the StG44 was ripped off to make the AK-47. But, uh, I don't think the Rebels are more racist than the Empire (Guevara, like most of the Cuban revolutionaries, habitually referred to black people as "monkeys", among other things), and I know for a fact they don't go in for torture, gang-rape, the occasional indulgence in cannibalism, or any of the other things the Viet Cong were into.
  
  Then again, by this time it should be obvious to everyone that Lucas has no damn clue what his own freaking movies were about. And since I'm on the subject, I get that he made Han shoot second because (much like Ron Paul), he stupidly believes you're only allowed to retaliate against an aggressor. Only, Greedo already has a gun shoved in Han's face. Ask any lawyer, outside the UK anyway: at that point, the criteria for self-defense has been met.
• Speaking of Ron Paul, he claims that his asinine policies won't weaken our defense, because he'd be perfectly willing to, again, retaliate against an attack like Pearl Harbor or 9/11.
  
  Only, what? Is he actually that stupid? 1, "Having a huge, well-equipped standing army" is a major deterrent to getting attacked. And 2, those of us who shouldn't, according to the actuarial tables, have been dead several months ago, have a little expression called "Zerg rush". It refers to attacking an opponent decisively, before he can get his defenses up. It's especially popular with Starcraft players from Hong Kong, the Republic of China, and, especially, South Korea. I guarantee you, I know more about East Asia than Ron Paul does, and I can tell you: the Zerg Rush is equally appealing to generals from mainland China and North Korea.
• Yet a third point against Paulbots, and their Dear Leader's ludicrous claim that Islamic terrorism is "because we're bombing them", is that there actually isn't a choice, as to whether there will be what they, and the unspeakable regimes they unwittingly aid, call "Imperialism"—and a rational person calls "having a proactive stance towards military involvement, vis-à-vis both foreign allies and enemies". The only choice is, who's going to be the Imperialist? You know who else opposes American "Imperialism"? China, Russia, and Iran.
  
  Or as Imperial soldiers in Skyrim occasionally say, "What the Stormcloaks forget is that the Empire's the only thing keeping the [Thalmor] Dominion out of Skyrim." If it weren't an insult to Ulfric Stormcloak, murderer though he be, to compare him or his followers to Paulbots.
  
  Yes, I realize those last two were actually just about politics: but in SFional terms!
• I was thinking about my scene where the felinoid dude flips a car, because those guys are freakin' built, and the humans' cars of the 24th century are light, to save battery, but...hang on. Everyone knows the cars in the future will be really light, right? We make the cars now outta plastic, and they used to make them out of metal. Only...did you know that a sub-subcompact car nowadays—say the 2002 Mini—weighs 2500 lbs? The 1962 Mini weighed 1400. What's the difference?
  
  Fuel injection. Our engines are vastly more efficient now, so they can get better fuel economy from a car 79% heavier. And increased weight tends to equate to improved safety, but cars were not that much more dangerous in the 1960s. Interestingly, though, if we went back to 60s car-sizes (though I do believe our engines are bigger), we'd probably make our cars a hell of a lot more fuel efficient. Weird, huh?
  
  Incidentally, the 24th century's cars, though much lighter than ours, are actually even safer, even though they go well over 150 kph (90+ mph) on their highways. There's two factors; one is ultra-hyper-awesome strong materials, developed for space travel. And the other is that, for many purposes, they leave the driving to computers. Obviously not the same computers that do the driving in Halo (honestly, I've been rammed by Warthogs at least as often as by Ghosts or Wraiths), but still, computers.