Treason as a plot device

I have yesterday watched Battlestar Galactica episodes “The Oath” and “The Blood on the Scales”. They were two best episodes since the very first “Miniseries” - the story of original Cylon attack on the Colonies. I realized that to a large extent this was due to the fact that it deals with insubordination and treason. But to make it even more moving you cannot help but feel sympathy or at least understanding to the traitors.
The Battlestar Galactica is a show with powerful, memorable characters. Each has an agenda, personal beliefs and some dirty secret. There is a lot of filler episodes that are not so interesting but help build the story arc and highlight some issues that will spring characters to action no matter the consequences. I think that there is something incredibly wicked in creating a plot where we see characters that we care about do something abominable because they firmly believe that this is the only way to save the day. And then watch as their hopes are crushed and they see how they were fooled by unscrupulous villains.
The treason or betrayal was always something the kept me turning the pages of the book or stare at the screen with an unmatched consequence. Especially, when traitor's think they do a good thing. I was so emotionally invested in the story of BSG as I was in Vernor Vinge's “A deepness in the sky” for the similar reasons. I couldn't stop myself waiting for a resolution of story – the day of reckoning. To watch the bravery and sacrifices of people that lost everything, but had a will to carry on and ensure that the justice will prevail.
I am now preparing to run “Burning Empires” RPG again and the nature of this game makes it so easy and so tempting to use similar themes. Who nows, perhaps even create such an incredible emotional tension.
If you have not seen “BSG” - these two episodes alone are worth to watch the whole thing. As great as the series is - I think these are unmatched. If you are for some more intellectual and even more gripping story – do yourself a service and read “A deepness in the sky”

Honor Harrington for president!

I have just finished reading the fourth book in “Honorverse” series by David Weber. It is entitled “Field of Dishonor” and takes place directly in the aftermath of the “Short victorious war”. I have a special place in my heart for Harrington series. I am fully aware that it will never take a place in the SF hall of fame and Weber's creation is far below the pinnacles of Science Fiction literature such as works of William Gibson's, Neil Stephenson, Asimov, Heinlein et cetera. Yet, I feel such a sheer joy and excitement while reading about brave captain's exploits that I cannot stop myself from picking up consecutive books in the series. The whole cycle tells a story of Honor Harrington, a woman serving in Royal Manticoran Navy as a captain of space warships. She is a larger than life figure – a genius strategist, brave leader, loved by her soldiers, an honest person among scheming politicos and admirals. In a way she reminds me Paul Atreides from Frank Herbert's “Dune” - there is no way such a virtuous person could possibly exists, yet if she did people would sacrifice a lot for her – as they do in these books. She opposes villainous, colorful enemies such as Pavel Young – corrupt nobleman that disregards other humans as toys to be played with and discarded when used, as well as numerous enemies of her kingdom's archenemy – The People's Republic of Haven. The setting is rich in both political intrigue and spectacular battles, full of interesting characters and societies. It is not exactly my favorite type of science fiction – it does not deal with social consequences of technological development. It does, on the other hand, use few scientifically impossible concepts to create a believable basis for a setting and then rigorously sticks to it. So yeah, FTL works, and the drives have a weird side effect that enables return to XVIII-XIX century naval tactics to the cosmic field of battle – but this scientific impossibility is a small price to pay for such a nifty setting. It is a series that will be a pure pleasure for people interested in military, less so for the rest of people. I myself was never particularly interested in war stories but I cannot help but enjoy adventures of Harrington. As a side effect – Harrington's seems to me to be the most awesome female character I ever read about – in the “She kicks ass on the massive scale” sense of awesome, so I guess it makes me a bit less of a male chauvinistic pig with every book I read, which can only be a good thing.
If you are not afraid of high adventure in space – read David Weber!

Origin of Species

After much struggle I have finished reading "Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin. It took me over a month to go through ~360 pages of the text. True - I read mainly while commuting but still I feel a bit ashamed that I needed so much time and effort to go through a book that started modern life science. In my defense I will say that I am much worse biologist than Darwin was - I know a lot about how a cell work, how the DNA carries out genetic information but I suck when it comes to systematics, botany or zoology. On the other hand, Darwin lacked the knowledge of genetics so his arguments regarding heredity where hard to follow - with understanding of genes things became much simpler.
I feel a deep respect to this book and the man who wrote it. Although it was dry at places and sometimes plain boring, I admire the simple well presented arguments for the theory of modification with descent, as Darwin called theory of evolution. If not for my lack of knowledge, that must have been obvious for a well educated person from that era, this book is popular science plain and simple. Much different from the way scientific works are written nowadays.
Now I need to give a try to the "The Voyage of the Beagle". Before I will do that I need some downtime - I am going to read Wolves of Calla by Stephen King.

The Emperor's New Mind

I have recently finished a lecture of “The Emperor's new mind” by Roger Penrose. The book deals with the consciousness from the point of view of mathematician and physicist turned philosopher.
It starts by examining an idea of artificial intelligence. Is it possible to build a computer that will be intelligent? What are the criteria for deciding if such mechanism is truly intelligent? Penrose is doubting that a real SI can be constructed. The reason for this is that a computer works according to the rules of classical physics, hence is only able to follow an algorithm. The brain, on the other hand, allow as to jump to the conclusion, without following an algorithm. There are mathematical theorems whose truthfulness cannot be decided upon by following strict rules invoked by a well defined algorithm. Yet mathematicians are able to achieve this. How is it possible? What could be a source of indeterminism driving non-algorithmic operation? Penrose want's to convince a reader that the source may be hidden in quantum effects that are happening in our brain.
The rest of the book serves as a detailed explanation of this, highly controversial, position. It is interesting, yet challenging journey. Penrose starts it from a discussion of Turing machine, as a theoretical model of a classical computer, the Godel theorem then goes to fractals, classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, theory of relativity and finally quantum gravity.
As I said the book was a real challenge to me. I am a wet lab biologist. I learned basic physics and math, that is needed in my work, but the complexity of the topic was mind-boggling. That being said I feel that Penrose was doing generally a good job in explaining the inherently complicated physics and mathematics needed to follow his argument. I would certainly need to re-read “The Emperor's new mind” to get a better understanding of the subject but I am quite happy that I did work my way through it. It was not easy, but I think it was well worth it. Even if I still suck at quantum physics, or all physics for that matter, at least I got a good refresh from my days as a freshman at the university. At worst, Penrose ideas can serve as a pot of tasty ideas for some good science-fiction story. If I am not mistaken, some similar concepts can be find in Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. On the other hand Vernor Vinge would probably argue with the premise of Penrose's book as it kills his Singularity idea.
I will finish by saying that I believe it is necessary to crawl out from one's professional niche once in a while and give a try to some idea from other parts of science. Even when one is getting a serious headache trying to figure out lambda calculus and multidimensional space.

Polish Sci-Fi&Fantasy

After a long break caused by writing of my PhD thesis, I can at last read books for fun. The other day I was in "Empik", which is a large media store full of really cool things, books included. I spent most of the time there contemplating two bookshelves filled with Sci-Fi and Fantasy books. One was devoted to foreign literature, mostly coming from the USA. The other one, was packed with works of polish writers. It was a pleasing view, especially when I compared the sizes of these shelves. They had similar amount of books! Now, of course USA produces astonishing amount of Sci-Fi and Fantasy, so for an American this might be unremarkable, given the fact that you can make only so many translations per year.

Therefore, to explain my enthusiasm I must go back in the history. When the communism ended, Poland was drowned under waves and waves of American books. Nobody wanted to release books by Polish writers and it seemed that they would not stand a chance on such saturated market. The things have changed a lot since that times, it looks like prophets of doom were utterly wrong. I have recently read in "Science Fiction, Fantastyka & Horror" magazine that many people say that they want to read just a polish Sci-Fi & Fantasy. I think it is great. It is marvelous. When I consider the sheer number of books on the shelves I came to conclusion that even if I wold devote more time to reading I would not be able to deal with all the books and short stories produced by Polish writers.

Of course, there is a matter of quality. As with everything, I presume, there is a lot of rubbish and few precious stones. I am not saying that polish literature is better but I would frequently pick polish book over American one. I find that polish authors are very innovative and at the same time, their books ring a familiar tone. It is very different from US fiction and so Polish that I simply cannot stop enjoying it.

I have just finished reading "Lód" by Jacek Dukaj - a huge, to be sure, but gripping and beautiful book. It stands out from the crowd, not only because of its sheer size, but most of all due to its incredible story. “Lód” deals with a world where there was no World War I nor Bolshevik revolution. The Earth was struck by the Tunguska meteorite, but unlike in a real history, this event have caused the enormous changes to the world, spreading scraps of the weird metal caused tungetite across Siberia. After the explosion, a permanent winter started, covering land with ice, that slowly spreads from Siberia to european part of Russia and further into Europe. The reason for this phenomenon are most likely uncommon physical properties of tungetite. When it is struck with a hammer it cools down instead of heating up, when particles of tungetite are burnt they emits anti-light, which are called shlight. This anti-light casts spooky anti-shadows, so tungetite saturated candles are becoming an instant hit among the spiritualist crowd. To make it even more complicated ice is inhabited by a strange entities, “Lute”, which are moving assemblage of ice and matter caused by extremely low temperatures. Are Lute intelligent? Why they move toward cities? Why they seem to be able to predict the future events and appropriately modify their routes?

“Lód” is a very uncommon book. It is not something that you would read overnight. It forces you to devote your time and brain to dig in and understand the incredible concepts presented in the book. Firstly, physics within ice works differently. At first it is unintuitive and you really need to wrap your mind around its strange new concepts. Secondly, the book deals with philosophy, logic and history. There are Russian philosophers, described to the main character, while he travels to Siberia, suggesting that something is deeply wrong with their world. The ice and the new “black” physics induced by Tunguska event have “frozen” the history. This is a motif similar to that from P.K. Dick's “Man in the high Castle”.

The land covered by ice, “Winter”, is a world of pure Aristotelean logic as opposed to “Summer”, the land of constant “maybe” and unlimited possibilities, ruled by Kotarbiński's logic. In consequence, the ice changes people living in “Winter”. There is no maybe... Characters are saying the truth or lying. They are good or they are evil, without shades of gray. The catholics now with an absolute conviction that orthodoxes are heretics and vice-versa. “Lód” is also casts interesting light on Polish-Russian relationships. It is true that Poles are dreaming about death of Tsar and freedom for their country. It is also true that Russians despise Poles for their vanity. But “Lód” is not a story about good Poles and evil Russians. Quite on the contrary. It shows noble and selfless Russian military officer and traitorous polish journalists. Piłsudski, father of the nation in the real history, here is a charismatic terrorist, that seems to be no better than Tsar. I think this Poland-Russia aspect of the book was for me one of the most interesting problems discussed in “Lód”.

The last thing I have to mention is a writing style used by the author. “Lód” is written in XIX century polish, now archaic and strange, but ensuring that the reader immerses itself in the world described by the book. I firmly belive that “Lód” is an excellent example, why it would be great if more of the Eastern European Sci-Fi & Fantasy was translated to English. World does not end on the eastern side of Odra river, it just takes on different, fascinating colors.