A point most authors studiously ignore is that the real world is *complex*.
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Now, I'm currently grappling with a space opera set in a mid-sized interstellar empire governed by backbiting aristocrats/planetary despots, with 8000 star systems, multiple settled worlds/habitats per system, and travel times measured in weeks to months. Multiple governments per planet aren't unusual.
How many intel/secret police forces do you think *that* setting requires? Just saying "it's an empire, duh!" elides all the complexity a glance at the history of John Company would reveal.
@cstross
Never mind all non-governmental organizations big enough to need/want their own security or intelligence apparatuses. Apparatii?Huge multinationals; drug cartels; resistance movements ...
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PS: I'm not making this up. More about the US Intelligence Community here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Community
"The Washington Post reported in 2010 that there were 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies in 10,000 locations in the United States that were working on counterterrorism, homeland security, and intelligence, and that the intelligence community as a whole would include 854,000 people holding top-secret clearances."
@cstross That makes them roughly ten times larger than the Stasi.
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@cstross That makes them roughly ten times larger than the Stasi.
@pndc Much larger population under surveillance, though. But the GDR didn't have internet and modern coms so the surveillance mostly couldn't be automated. It's a "how many stagecoaches does it take in 1830 to cover the workload of a double-decker inter-city bus driving on a modern motorway?" comparison.
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Now, I'm currently grappling with a space opera set in a mid-sized interstellar empire governed by backbiting aristocrats/planetary despots, with 8000 star systems, multiple settled worlds/habitats per system, and travel times measured in weeks to months. Multiple governments per planet aren't unusual.
How many intel/secret police forces do you think *that* setting requires? Just saying "it's an empire, duh!" elides all the complexity a glance at the history of John Company would reveal.
@cstross maybe there is a reason a lot of scifi lazily has one government per planet
This has actually bothered me in the past - like how come everyone on the planet all suddenly agree with each other? haven't you ever been in a room full of people?
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PS: I'm not making this up. More about the US Intelligence Community here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Community
"The Washington Post reported in 2010 that there were 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies in 10,000 locations in the United States that were working on counterterrorism, homeland security, and intelligence, and that the intelligence community as a whole would include 854,000 people holding top-secret clearances."
Holy crap!
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@cstross maybe there is a reason a lot of scifi lazily has one government per planet
This has actually bothered me in the past - like how come everyone on the planet all suddenly agree with each other? haven't you ever been in a room full of people?
@junklight My *first* space opera books had >1 govt/planet. And as Rachel Mansour said in "Iron Sunrise", "when I visit a world with a single planetary government, I start looking for the mass graves in the empty patches on the map."
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Now, I'm currently grappling with a space opera set in a mid-sized interstellar empire governed by backbiting aristocrats/planetary despots, with 8000 star systems, multiple settled worlds/habitats per system, and travel times measured in weeks to months. Multiple governments per planet aren't unusual.
How many intel/secret police forces do you think *that* setting requires? Just saying "it's an empire, duh!" elides all the complexity a glance at the history of John Company would reveal.
@cstross Layer upon layer of counterintelligence...
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@junklight My *first* space opera books had >1 govt/planet. And as Rachel Mansour said in "Iron Sunrise", "when I visit a world with a single planetary government, I start looking for the mass graves in the empty patches on the map."
@cstross I wonder if reading those back in the day made me aware of the issue in other books!!! (such a long time and so many books a go I can't remember BUT 1 govt/planet stories definitely jar :- )
(which of course brings this full circle with me remarking on a point you made me aware of in the first place......!!)
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RE: https://wandering.shop/@cstross/117110021420097079
A point most authors studiously ignore is that the real world is *complex*.
Take spy thrillers. An American one might feature the CIA or, in extremis, the NSA. Up against one rival agency.
But in reality, there's a civil service clearinghouse called the United States Intelligence Community that has nineteen stakeholder members, each of which is an intel agency. Its job is to keep them from stomping on each other's toes.
Now ask yourself if any other nation's bureaucracy is plausibly simpler.
@cstross I know where AO3 is, of course, but I'd like to read "the Slow Horses stumble into a Laundry op"
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@cstross I know where AO3 is, of course, but I'd like to read "the Slow Horses stumble into a Laundry op"
@cstross (or the other way round works too and might be even funnier)
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@cstross (or the other way round works too and might be even funnier)
@cstross "Have I read the Official fucking Secrets Act? I was shitting copies when you were in nappies!"
"sigh If you'd read this version you'd have breached it all over the place every time you went for a curry" -
@cstross I know where AO3 is, of course, but I'd like to read "the Slow Horses stumble into a Laundry op"
@flippac I haven't read enough Slow Horses to write it myself (got stuck 25% of the way into the first book, don't watch TV) but if I find myself with a surfeit of writing time, maybe keep an eye on the Laundry fanfic corner of AO3
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@cstross "Have I read the Official fucking Secrets Act? I was shitting copies when you were in nappies!"
"sigh If you'd read this version you'd have breached it all over the place every time you went for a curry"@cstross "If I told you I'd have to recruit you. And I'm guessing you've already got an agency you're dedicated to pissing off."
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@cstross I know where AO3 is, of course, but I'd like to read "the Slow Horses stumble into a Laundry op"
@cstross Oh god. Belated entry to the old HR contest: the aftermath of Shirley managing to kick the shit out of something it should've been physically impossible to kick the shit out of on account of being too eldritch to shit in the first place.
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RE: https://wandering.shop/@cstross/117110021420097079
A point most authors studiously ignore is that the real world is *complex*.
Take spy thrillers. An American one might feature the CIA or, in extremis, the NSA. Up against one rival agency.
But in reality, there's a civil service clearinghouse called the United States Intelligence Community that has nineteen stakeholder members, each of which is an intel agency. Its job is to keep them from stomping on each other's toes.
Now ask yourself if any other nation's bureaucracy is plausibly simpler.
@cstross To build on @flippac’s suggestion of Slow Horses / Laundry cross-over, Mr Aaronovitch’s specialist team as part of the Met crossing paths with the Laundry might actually be fairly harmonious. Sure, the people at The Folly are using incantation majik, as opposed to maths, but both teams are at least trying to deal with daemons.
Has this — in either direction — ever been discussed between the two of you? Is it a possibility that one team might appear in the other’s novel?
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@cstross To build on @flippac’s suggestion of Slow Horses / Laundry cross-over, Mr Aaronovitch’s specialist team as part of the Met crossing paths with the Laundry might actually be fairly harmonious. Sure, the people at The Folly are using incantation majik, as opposed to maths, but both teams are at least trying to deal with daemons.
Has this — in either direction — ever been discussed between the two of you? Is it a possibility that one team might appear in the other’s novel?
@IanAMartin @flippac Ben and I actually discussed a Folly/Laundry crossover about a decade ago but concluded the magic systems were too antithetical to make it fly.
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@IanAMartin @flippac Ben and I actually discussed a Folly/Laundry crossover about a decade ago but concluded the magic systems were too antithetical to make it fly.
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@IanAMartin @flippac I'm finished with the Laundryverse *for now*, not necessarily forever—but I'd been doing little else for a decade and need a few years off.
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@flippac I haven't read enough Slow Horses to write it myself (got stuck 25% of the way into the first book, don't watch TV) but if I find myself with a surfeit of writing time, maybe keep an eye on the Laundry fanfic corner of AO3
@cstross If it's not too big a risk of upsetting others, what was the balance between "not for me" and "not while I'm writing the Laundryverse" for you?
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@cstross If it's not too big a risk of upsetting others, what was the balance between "not for me" and "not while I'm writing the Laundryverse" for you?
@flippac I only got to it after I finished writing the Laundryverse: I just wasn't in the right headspace for spy thrillers at the time.
