A point most authors studiously ignore is that the real world is *complex*.
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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 Well, Grand Fenwick's secret services are just Peter Sellers in different outfits
(I know you don't watch movies: this was a 1959 anti-nukes comedy where a tiny country ends up with a planet busting bomb; Sellers played 3 leading roles)
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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 Some nations' bureaucracies are presumably simpler if only because they are tiny and can't afford that much stuff, but that also kind of cuts them out of high level, high tech spying games.
The Tuvaluan Intelligence Service consisting of one person (which I'm sure doesn't actually exist) would be a really fun book or film premise though.
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@cstross Well, Grand Fenwick's secret services are just Peter Sellers in different outfits
(I know you don't watch movies: this was a 1959 anti-nukes comedy where a tiny country ends up with a planet busting bomb; Sellers played 3 leading roles)
@bazzargh I don't watch *21st century* movies: eyeballs can't handle 'em. 1950s are another matter.
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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 DMing a Traveller game for a while, I feel this very much. Most settings for planets I read were like film sets for a specific genre, not a world description. I had to come up with lots, even if I only prepared a single region.
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@cstross Some nations' bureaucracies are presumably simpler if only because they are tiny and can't afford that much stuff, but that also kind of cuts them out of high level, high tech spying games.
The Tuvaluan Intelligence Service consisting of one person (which I'm sure doesn't actually exist) would be a really fun book or film premise though.
@Exilian Smaller nation bureaucracies aren't necessarily simpler, they're just smaller and less effective (no economies of scale). Usually. Israel is small but nobody sane considers Mossad to be a negligible threat ...
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@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.
@cstross The exact ratio of depressing to other stuff's particularly high early on as well, and while there are good arc reasons for it there's a lot about one character's alcoholism for several books
I still prefer them overall to the TV series, though the adaptation's managed to tone down one thing it had started to escalate a bit far compared to the books again
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@cstross DMing a Traveller game for a while, I feel this very much. Most settings for planets I read were like film sets for a specific genre, not a world description. I had to come up with lots, even if I only prepared a single region.
@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.)
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@cstross The exact ratio of depressing to other stuff's particularly high early on as well, and while there are good arc reasons for it there's a lot about one character's alcoholism for several books
I still prefer them overall to the TV series, though the adaptation's managed to tone down one thing it had started to escalate a bit far compared to the books again
@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
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@cstross Some nations' bureaucracies are presumably simpler if only because they are tiny and can't afford that much stuff, but that also kind of cuts them out of high level, high tech spying games.
The Tuvaluan Intelligence Service consisting of one person (which I'm sure doesn't actually exist) would be a really fun book or film premise though.
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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.
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.
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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 mean, most other nations are definitely simpler, because the US is a fucking bureaucratic nightmare nation.
But there are a lot of them.
If someone is a double agent, they're probably a quadrillionth agent as well, feeding plausible bullshit to half the world, because hey, it's a living.
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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
