Spore and the Simulation Argument

After a concerted campaign of savings, selling off unwanted possessions, and unusually long-range planning, Nick has acquired a copy of Spore, and is thoroughly enjoying it. This is one of his “God games” – he has been a huge fan of games like Pharaoh and Alpha Centauri for as long as he has been allowed on the computer. Spore, for those not familiar with it, allows one to guide the destiny of an entire species (or, properly, clade, I suppose) from a micro-organism in a tide pool to an interstellar civilisation.

The long-term planning part involved upgrading the PC graphics card, then the power supply (turns out the old power supply didn’t have enough volts to power the card, and in fact the new one might not as we still get artefacts – weird triangular blobs and streaks of colour on the display), before finally installing the game. He’s been up in the study playing it pretty much ever since, at least whenever we let him. I can hear the plaintive calls of his latest species as I type.

I was surprised how far these sort of games have come over the last few years – they’re not my cup of tea, and our hardware is about 5 years behind the curve now. Philosophically, I have to wonder at what point the simulated thoughts and feelings of the little sprites on screen cross over into actual intelligence and emotion. It really does make me think about the Simulation Argument. For those not familiar with that, let me quote the abstract of Professor Bostrum’s paper:

“ABSTRACT. This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed.”

I think we can rule out (2), given the number of PC games like The Sims. (3) offers possible answers to the question “If there is a Creator, why do pain and death exist?” – it might be educational for those running it; it might be research; it might be a game; or perhaps, like software modules, we are undergoing stress testing before release into the live environment. If the simulators exist, and if they are like us, it’s most likely a game of some sort – that’s what most of our simulations are.

Not that it will make much difference to how any of us live our lives; nor should it. Unless, as in The Matrix, someone offers me a red pill…

Malus Darkblade

Another foray into the world of Warhammer tie-in novels, this time the omnibus edition of the first three novels in the Chronicles of Malus Darkblade series.

The titular protagonist – one hesitates to call him a hero – is a dark elf, a minor nobleman of an evil race. Malus himself is thoroughly evil, indulging in countless acts of vengeance, murder, rape and torture, most of it thankfully off-stage. He has only two saving graces; his indomitable tenacity, and the fact that all the other characters are even more debased and corrupt than he is.

The central plotline involves Malus being possessed by a demon, who strikes a deal with him: Recover five powerful artefacts within a year, or lose his soul forever. And by the time this happens, towards the end of the first novel, you just know that both parties are just waiting for a chance to betray each other.

Hmm. Reminds me of some contracts I’ve worked on. But I digress.

The books look like novelisations of comic book stories – I think Malus originally appeared in the Warhammer Monthly comic – and are set in Games Workshop’s Old World, the setting for their renaissance fantasy wargames and RPGs. For this reason, the tone is dark, pulp fiction, heavy on action, especially combat; and that means that I can only read them in short bursts, because the fights come thick and fast, and there are only so many ways you can describe one character killing another with a sword.

I preferred the Gotrek and Felix stories, especially the early ones, which are laden with black humour. I will probably return to Malus later, largely because I want to see how the authors explain a society in which everyone is constantly trying to betray each other; I don’t yet see how that could be stable. However, these yarns are going to be library loans for me, not ones I would buy and keep on my shelves to reread in later years.

Polystom

This week, I ‘ave been mostly readin’ Polystom, by Adam Roberts. Yes, I know it was published about five years ago, but I picked it up in the local library to read in a Telford hotel.

The quality of Roberts’ writing is good. I say this because pretty much nothing happens for the first two thirds of the book, and I still carried on reading. The focus up until the final section is on the world and culture Roberts has created, and the plot crawls together slowly, in the background, until the last ten pages or so, when all is revealed.

The setting itself is intriguing, and posits a much smaller solar system, filled with breathable air, so that intrepid aeronauts can fly from planet to planet in biplanes. A culture reminiscent of ancient Greece has settled the various worlds, and has a technology roughly equivalent to that of Europe at the time of the First World War.

Roberts does a good job of evoking the casual disregard of the culture’s autocrats for their servants, making me wonder if I would treat them so harshly, had I grown up accustomed to being waited on.

Now with Added Links

I’ve added a links page today. I could put a link to it, but you can see a tab for it right up there, so…

Time for Bifocals?

For a while now I have noticed that my wargames figures aren’t painted as well as they used to be, and had put that down to shaking hands caused by advancing age.

It turns out it wasn’t that at all; I just couldn’t see the little beggars properly. For the moment I have liberated my wife’s sewing magnifying glass, which hangs around the neck from a cord and can be propped on one’s chest overlooking whatever the hands are up to; painting quality improved dramatically again, overnight.

I’m intrigued that not being able to focus my vision manifested itself as shaking hands; if I could remember enough feedback control theory from my youth, I’m sure the frequency of the shake would tell me something interesting.

Tropes, Cliches and Topoi

This is an intriguing idea from a recent conversation with my daughter Anna, who is also of a literary bent – although she very rarely reads anything written after 1830, which doesn’t appeal to me ‘cos they don’t have rayguns.

Tropes are those ideas that crop up again and again in literature. The Dark Lord, for example, is a classic fantasy trope. The proud feline warrior race is a classic SF trope. The burned-out maverick cop is a detective story trope. A trope can be a character, a place, an object, a plot, anything.

Tropes that get overused become cliches. The damsel in distress, for instance. Cliches are so obvious that even inverting them is a trope. Have you noticed how recently in supernatural movies the chick kicks ass and the hero is the weedy nerd? That’s a trope in its own right now, because the previous square-jawed hero with a helpless female sidekick became a cliche. (That’s at the top of my mind because I just watched webisode 2 of Sanctuary.)

With me so far? Good. Anna’s observation was that the topoi never become cliches, however often you use them; these are the tropes that get used all the time, and never get old. The classic one is the arming topos, which is several thousand years old now; that scene just before the climactic fight, where the hero tools up with armour and weapons.

These things seem to be hardwired into our storytelling below the conscious level. There’s a nice list of them here. Delve into the mysteries of the Five Man Band and the Smurfette Principle, and enjoy.

New Tropes Please!

Off Armageddon Reef is the latest David Weber to land on my bookshelf, albeit briefly. I like most of Weber’s stuff, but this one was read, dithered over, then donated to a charity shop. Why? It felt too familiar.

The main character is almost exactly like his signature heroine, Honor Harrington. I like the Harrington novels, although personally I felt once the war with the Republic of Haven was over Weber should’ve moved on to another milieu. Anyway: Here we have another heroically capable female space navy officer. (Incidentally, why are so many military SF protagonists female these days? Harrington, Serrano, Starbuck in the new Battlestar Galactica… the list goes on. Not complaining; just curious.) I could see no reason for her to be female, other than having to agonise over disguising herself as a bloke fairly early on.

We have the daring defence against alien hordes overrunning mankind (hmm, been there before too, in Weber’s earlier Heirs to Empire series and The Apocalypse Troll, both of which I enjoyed to be fair).

We get the marooned-spacer-introduces-improved-technology riff (which is also seen in Heirs to Empire). This allows Weber to write about the Napoleonic sea warfare he clearly loves, but I’ve just read this idea too often now. Flint and Drake’s An Oblique Approach; Drake and Stirling’s Raj Whitehall stories; Flint’s 1632 – I can go on, how long have you got?

We get the corrupt Church trope (already examined exhaustively in the Honor Harrington series and again in Heirs to Empire).

No, this one just doesn’t do it for me I’m afraid. I shall read the Bahzell and Honor Harrington stories again, and wait for Weber’s next series.

What I Read On My Hols

This summer I reverted to carrying actual paper books with me; reading them on a PDA is starting to hurt my eyes. Perhaps the new eInk technology in the Sony Reader will help, assuming I splash out on one. Maybe when the lottery numbers come up. Anyway…

• The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross. The latest I have read of Stross’ sci-fi horror stories; the premise is that the Cold War was simply a cover-up for what is really going on. Imagine Len Deighton’s anonymous protagonist from The IPCRESS File and other spy novels investigating the Cthulhu mythos of H P Lovecraft; however, in this one we move more into James Bond territory, with a mysterious femme fatale and an evil villain with a secret base in the Carribean. I love these. If you’re new to them, start with The Atrocity Archive.
• The Family Trade by Charles Stross. Here, Stross tries to do something different; and it is different, but I don’t like it as much as his other works. Essentially a cross between Roger Zelazny’s Nine Princes in Amber and H Beam Piper’s Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen; the heroine discovers that her family are powerful traders able to cross between their own mediaeval parallel world and present-day Earth, and use this ability to gain an edge in their mercantile activities. Very obviously the first in a series, as none of the main plotlines are resolved.
• Caiaphas Cain: Hero of the Imperium by Sandy Mitchell. A pleasant enough airport read; passes the time, but it isn’t great literature. Think “Flashman in Space” and you’ve about got it.
• Sandokan by Emilio Salgari. My sister-in-law is very fond of this, like millions of people in Meditteranean countries. It’s the story of a Malaysian pirate and his fight against British invaders in the mid-19th century, complicated by his falling in love with an English girl. I haven’t finished this yet; maybe it’s the translation, maybe it’s the melodramatic 19th century writing (of which I am not a huge fan) but I’m finding it hard going. Not science fiction (unless you count the anachronistic machineguns – goodness knows where he found those in the 1840s) but seemed promising.

New blog!

After a long break from such things, I’ve restarted my blog, and here it is. As before, it’s intended as a non-intrusive way for colleagues, family and friends to keep up with what I’m doing – read it as and when you’re interested, without me clogging up your inboxes.

I’ve moved to WordPress because it’s easy to use, forgiving of mistakes in input, and allowed me to merge the blog and my website into one entity. Later I’ll try adding some photographs too.