A point most authors studiously ignore is that the real world is *complex*.
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@dereisenhofer There's even a term for this sort of sub-standard worldbuilding in genre criticism: the planet of the hats. ("You can tell they come from X'thrargh because those people always wear green ten gallon hats." And nobody else does.)
@cstross That's a good one. Pretty much describes my impression.
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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 Writers often ignore cultural complexity as well. It’s common in fiction that there’s only one language per planet, for example. And if there are different cultures on one planet there are usually just two of them. (I’m talking about you, Star Trek.)
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I remember an episode of Get Smart where he went undercover. At the end of the episode, he discovered that every one of the bad guys was an undercover agent, all from different agencies, and nobody knew they were all gathering intel on each other.
@davidtheeviloverlord That plot was nicked from G. K. Chesterton: "The Man who was Thursday". 1908:
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@cstross Despite the situation threatening the job of the head of MI5, arming the "private security" with G36s was going a bit far as was the upgrade to what one slow horse keeps handy for close encounters...
...and then unlike S4 the relevant book had more sense than to have anyone pull a smartarsed trick with a grenade that'll result in a chunk of the audience counting how long it's been since it was primed - and yeah, it does eventually go off
@flippac Firstly, I won't be watching it on TV. Secondly, I haven't gotten past book 1 yet.
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@flippac Firstly, I won't be watching it on TV. Secondly, I haven't gotten past book 1 yet.
@cstross Yeah, fair. It's worth saying that the TV adaptation's managed some excellent tweaks that I suspect Mick Herron had some involvement in, but that's not for "you should watch!" purposes.
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@cstross @flippac Understandable. Having finished “The Annihilation Score” a few days ago, and having read “The Rhesus Chart” right before that, I am now reading someone else’s book before next reading “A Conventional Boy.” Too much of one thing makes one’s brain less happy. Alternating authors is typically best. Somewhere I’ll be going from you to Deighton’s “Bomber,” which should be either a bit of a jolt, or a palate cleansing experience. Not sure which it will be, or in which direction.
@IanAMartin @cstross I once found myself at an informal academic event hosted by Credit Suisse and rebranded to "Fun[ctional Programming] in the Afternoon" to avoid confusing the rest of the wunch there, because the team in The Rhesus Chart bears a significant similarity (though it mashes things up for effect) to teams a bunch of people I've known have ended up on in fintech...
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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.
I can see the protagonists of your latest work taking full advantage of this to wreak havoc and sow confusion.
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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 @junklight Would that be a function of how long a planet might be colonised? Early on in the process, it's very likely to be a single government, but as it grows there's room for more diversity?
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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 i live in Northern Virginia. I bought my house from a *couple* that worked for the CIA (they had a pic w/ Leon Panetta on the wall when we first looked at it). My next door neighbor worked for the NRO. So many people I know hold cleared-but-otherwise-normal jobs. It's a strange place
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@cstross @junklight Would that be a function of how long a planet might be colonised? Early on in the process, it's very likely to be a single government, but as it grows there's room for more diversity?
@ndonegan @junklight Nope, not in that setting.
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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
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the REDACTED? -
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 just yesterday I calculated that since the first intelligence agency was set up, the US creates a new one every 8,2 years.
(I do, however, think that the US is a bit of an outlier here. Still good advise in general!)
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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.
Once upon a time I was in the middle east responsible for all of a specific type of activity conducted by the combined joint special operations task force. In the 9th month of our deployment, preparing to head home, I was still learning of the EXISTENCE of teams below me doing that activity; I'd no notion of WHAT they were doing, except that I knew beyond doubt that it wasn't being done right because it would've had to come through me.
Whole system is broke.
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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.
From Frank Herbert's novels:
"The protagonist of "The Tactful Saboteur" is saboteur extraordinary Jorj X. McKie, an employee of the Bureau of Sabotage (BuSab). BuSab is a government agency responsible for conducting dirty tricks "in lieu of red tape" to help slow down and regulate the vast galaxy-spanning bureaucracy of the ConSentiency"
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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?
The REALLY lazy planets have one climate (*cough* Tattooine, Endor, etc.)
I always wanted to parody this by writing settings where you would go to the circus planet, the concert planet, the grocery shopping planet, etc.
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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.
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@cstross That's a good one. Pretty much describes my impression.
@dereisenhofer @cstross
Or the classic "desert planet". As if anything planet-sized and and not frozen solid will have a uniform climate. -
I remember an episode of Get Smart where he went undercover. At the end of the episode, he discovered that every one of the bad guys was an undercover agent, all from different agencies, and nobody knew they were all gathering intel on each other.
@davidtheeviloverlord @cstross Now I need to watch Cypher again.
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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 ...and I thought Trevanian was exaggerating for effect in The Eiger Sanction, about CII being named for the 102 agencies that had been merged to create it.
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@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 ...
