Null States

Null States

by Malka Older, 2017

Book two of Malka Older’s Centenal Cycle. It’s the second half of the 21st century, and most people live in centenals: political units of 100,000 people each, who democratically elect their chosen government every 10 years from a panoply of choices.

The Centenal Cycle has gotten under my skin -- in a good way -- more than most fiction works I’ve been reading lately. Its world of centenals, and global governments that compete for the right to govern them, feels like something new, not just familiar extrapolations from current geopolitical trends. It’s like a very well-done thought experiment, but Older’s succeeded in populating the world with well-written characters that fully inhabit it.

(By the way, I have not yet opened book three, State Tectonics, and so every bit of this post is written in perfect ignorance of what happens in it.)

Two years after the events of Infomocracy, we begin in Darfur, where emissaries of the planetwide network known as Information have arrived to meet with a local governor, but find themselves witnessing an assassination instead. Our main protagonist is Roz, an Information agent who’d been a prominent secondary character in the first book. The investigation into the murder involves untangling the political situation in Darfur: who wanted the governor dead?

Meanwhile, two of the stars of Infomocracy are crisscrossing Eurasia. Mishima used to be a full-time Information employee, but now she’s doing freelance analysis work based out of Saigon. Ken was a Policy1st operative, but he’s left his old organization now that it’s the global Supermajority -- the most powerful government worldwide. Now they’re both hopping round the hemisphere, with only time for an occasional romantic rendezvous, dealing with the residual scandals of the old Supermajority government Heritage and the ramifications of an expanding war in central Asia.

Of course, everything is connected, and Mishima and Ken find themselves drawn into the expanding Darfur investigation. Something low-key that I like about this series is that our main protagonists are primarily analysts. There’s some old-fashioned violence, and a couple of action scenes, but Older is very clear that our heroes spend a huge amount of their time bent over screens, and they are all very competent at their jobs, and while we never get too deep into the number-crunching aspect of what they do, the narrative never loses sight of it either.

A few months ago I read and wrote about Infomocracy, and I am embarrassed to re-read that post now, as what I didn’t think worth mentioning then is exactly what becomes important in the subsequent book. “Imagine there’s no countries,” I said in my flippant way, but I shouldn’t have, as the world of The Centenal Cycle still has some traditional countries. Saudi Arabia’s one, as we learn in the first book. We see in the second book that Switzerland’s another. And there’s still a rump Chinese state, with its capital at Xi’an. And there are still nation-states in Central Asia -- Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have gotten into a shooting war that threatens to spiral out of control and drag surrounding centenals in.

These are the null states of the title. At least, that’s how Information sometimes refers to them, a bit snarkily. In my review of Infomocracy, I called Information “an independent entity that has apparently replaced the news media”. That’s not wrong, but it’s also much more than that.

The people of this world are so connected that we humans of the 2010s look ridiculous by comparison, with our clumsy, clunky “smartphones” and other “gadgets”. These people are plugged into the online world to such a degree that it borders on telepathy, as they wear miniaturized computers 24/7 that they can control with eyeball movements and they tap out messages with their fingers onto virtual keyboards. AI has become good enough to understand real-time speech with all the nuance, and honest-to-goodness universal translators that actually work well are now standard.

And they are constantly plugged into Information. Reading something -- anything -- in the “real” world? If you like, Information will helpfully annotate it with explainers, context, and fact-checking. Need video of something that happened in a public place? Fortunately, we’re all under constant Information surveillance. This is why the surviving old-timey states are nicknamed null states -- Information doesn’t have its usual level of sophisticated data on them.

This is likely to sound horribly dystopian to many of us, but we readers aren’t being pushed to see it as such. Older never insists that this world should be seen as a dystopia. All of the viewpoint characters are so accustomed to Information and this hyper-connectivity that they see it as the natural order of things, and so we readers will find ourselves doing so as well.

Within the narrative there are “outsider” characters who resist Information’s panopticon world, vindicating those readers who see it as nightmarish. For instance, there’s one very small government in this world that has ideological objections to Information surveillance, and one of its citizens is a minor character who gives her land’s point of view a voice. I can think of many ways the Centenal system is better than what we’ve got right now, and many arguments why Information as presented here is a positive thing. And yet, the downsides are real, not least the potential for malfeasance. Bad people can exploit this system in so many new and ingenious ways.

As I noted in my review of the first book, Older never delves into how we got from our world to the Centenal system, and I think it's wise of her to present this world to us readers as a fait accompli. If I were to speculate, I suspect some elites might be receptive to such a radical re-organization of political power as long as they’d continue to be the elites under the new system, but they’d have to be spooked into doing so under threat of chaos and violence and annihilation. Older does make a brief fleeting reference to large-scale wars that took place in the final years of the pre-Centenal system -- and so I wonder if there are bustling cities in our universe that our globe-trotting heroes in the Centenal Cycle never visit because they are now radioactive rubble.

I read Null States shortly before the local elections here in Taiwan, and so I naturally pondered what sort of government I’d be living under in this universe. I imagine there’d be some sort of patriotic Formosa government, but as I live in a politically very “blue” area of Taipei, they probably wouldn’t win my centenal. There’s a good chance my area would go for the global technocrats of Policy1st, but I could also see the center-right Heritage government doing very well here, at least before they sank under scandals at the end of Infomocracy. (The Heritage-built Tokyo-Taipei tunnel in that book implies they had a presence here.) Or the commercially-oriented Chinese-dominated government called 888 would also be a strong possibility. They wouldn’t be my first choice, but I would deal with it. On the other hand, if my centenal elected 1China, I would be very unhappy. Actually, I’m very curious how cross-strait relations have evolved in this universe.

Oryx and Crake

Oryx and Crake

by Margaret Atwood, 2003

Grim end-of-civilization fiction.

Our protagonist Jimmy grows up in a world, a few decades hence, where the super-rich live and work in vast corporate-owned gated communities and everyone else lives in the world outside. Jimmy’s dad has a sweet corporate job working in the lucrative and rapidly developing field of genetically modified organisms, and Jimmy’s childhood friend Crake turns out to be a budding genius in this field.

But we know from the start that everything’s doomed. Chapters that describe Jimmy’s childhood alternate with chapters about Jimmy’s later life. Civilization has collapsed and nearly all humans are dead. Jimmy lives near a settlement of people called Crakers, genetically modified humanoids who live an Edenic existence, pure and innocent and ignorant of all trappings of civilization. They call Jimmy “Snowman”. Crakers are the creation of Jimmy/Snowman’s old buddy Crake.

Oryx and Crake describes how we get from point A (Jimmy and Crake’s childhood) to point B (planetwide apocalypse).

This is Margaret Atwood at her most science fictiony. I know Atwood pushes back against calling her books ‘science fiction’. Frankly, I see that as a cynical attempt to not get pigeonholed into what she sees as a literary ghetto, and since I’m not her literary agent I can call her book what it obviously is all I want.

In this sci-fi world (oooh, I’m calling it not just ‘science fiction’ but ‘sci-fi’), humans are reshaping the animal and plant kingdoms: “chicken” meat that grows on tree-like organisms; porcine creatures called “pigoons” with human-like physiology, perfect for growing transplantable organs. This tampering with nature, as we can surmise early on, eventually helps lead to the collapse of human civilization.

I’m sure some see this as a grim warning of the dangers of genetically modified organisms, while others see it hysterical anti-GMO alarmism. Personally, I don’t think the biotech of Oryx and Crake necessarily needs to be interpreted in either of these ways. Atwood is clearly fascinated by this technology, and she’s engaging in the time-honored science-fictional tradition of extrapolation. People who choose to read it as a big unsubtle moralistic message about GMOs are, of course, free to take it in whatever way they want; I choose to read it differently.

I haven’t mentioned the enigmatic Oryx (half the title!), because she’s weird and I’m still not sure how to think about her character. Keeping this spoiler-free, I can say that it’s hard for me to get into her head, and if Oryx and Crake were written by a generic male author rather than by the great Margaret Atwood, he’d be mocked over how he wrote the novel’s most prominent female character.

But my wife has advised me that Atwood is playing a long game here, and I should read the remainder of the MadAddam trilogy before rushing to judgement on Oryx. OK, that’s fair.

Oryx and Crake is a self-contained story, but it ends on something of a cliffhanger, and I’m genuinely interested in what happens next. We have the second book in the trilogy on our bookshelves -- I’m interested to see how The Year of the Flood expands on this universe.

Taiwan, China. Taiwan, Province of China.

This is Air Canada.

This is the website of the IELTS exam.

This is an official form on the website of my home state in the USA.

Imagine how you would feel if, every time you had to fill out an online form, you had to cross your fingers because you knew your country’s name might be twisted in a insulting way.

There are some people who will say “It’s technically correct”. Well, I am something of a persnickety pedant myself. And I wrote this post to express exactly what I think of claims that it’s “technically correct”.

It's fine to not be an expert in East Asian geopolitics. No one is an expert in everything. So here is a brief explanation of why we are so angry about this.

Q: Isn’t “Taiwan, China” technically correct?

A: You’re thinking of the “Republic of China”, the official name of Taiwan’s government. (Why is it the Republic of China? Long interesting story, well worth reading up on, but I won’t insert a history lecture here.) If Taiwan were designated “Taiwan (Republic of China)” or “Taiwan (ROC)”, there would be no anger and outrage. At worst, there would be some eye-rolling, as the Republic of China is a contentious issue here in Taiwan and I can assure you many Taiwanese people have strong opinions on this matter.

But none of the screenshots above say "Taiwan (Republic of China)".

Q: So why is “Taiwan, China” so offensive?

A: First, ask yourself this. When someone hears the word “China”, do they think of the Republic of China, de facto capital Taipei, population 23 million? Or do they think of the People’s Republic of China, capital Beijing, population 1.4 billion? Most people outside of East Asia aren’t even aware that there’s an entity called the “Republic of China” that’s separate from China. The Chinese government is well aware of this and uses it to its advantage.

I’m not going to mince words here. The government of the PRC would like nothing more than to take over Taiwan and incorporate it into their territory (and it’s easy to see why -- geopolitically it would be a wonderful strategic prize). This is not the ranting of a conspiracy monger -- China isn’t even trying to hide its intentions. Publicly at least, they won’t rule out the use of military force to conquer Taiwan. But as that would be extremely risky, they would much rather wear Taiwan down, demoralizing it so that its people see annexation as the inevitable choice.

Whether China takes Taiwan by force or by “peaceful” coercion, it doesn’t want the rest of the world to see it as a larger country taking over a smaller, less powerful country. That would look very bad. Instead, China wants the rest of the world to see Taiwan as a recalcitrant part of China that needs to be brought to heel. That’s why (among many things) it’s got people pushing to change “Taiwan” on those drop-down menus to things like “Taiwan, China” or “Taiwan, Province of China”. It’s all about changing the world’s perception of Taiwan so that if Invasion Day comes, the rest of the world doesn’t see a large aggressive country invading a smaller country.

And every airline that lists Taiwan as China and every educational institution that forces students to declare their country as “Taiwan, China” is complicit in this. With Beijing -- not politically neutral.

As I said above, imagine if you knew that every time you filled out an online form, there would be a moment of uncertainty before you learned if you would be forced to render the name of your country in a deliberately insulting way, And the hopelessness you would feel if you knew that it wasn’t an aberration, but rather fast becoming the norm.

Incidentally, in two of the three examples above that I provided screenshots for (all but Air Canada), Hong Kong, which is actually ruled by China, is just “Hong Kong”, not “Hong Kong, China”. I suppose there’s no need to insist on adding the word “China” if it’s actually part of China.

Q: What about “Taiwan, Province of China”?

Well, everything I wrote above applies to the weird variant “Taiwan, Province of China”. But for everyone who says “It’s technically correct if you assume ‘China’ means ‘the Republic of China’, I have something to show you.

The Republic of China does indeed include an administrative area called “Taiwan Province”. And here are its borders, courtesy of Google Maps:

“Taiwan Province” covers part of the main island of Taiwan, but not the parts under the administration of the largest cities: Taipei, New Taipei, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung. So someone living in Taipei or Taichung does not live in any “province,” no matter how generous and flexible the interpretation of “Taiwan, Province of China”.

Of course this is all somewhat beside the point; I’d be mad as hell if I lived in Hualien or Hsinchu and an online form forced me to say I lived in “Taiwan, Province of China”.

“Taiwan, Province of China” was never an attempt to be “technically correct”; rather, like “Taiwan, China” it’s just trying to denigrate Taiwan in the eyes of the world and make people think it’s already in some way under the thumb of Beijing.

Q: Hey, wait. You’re making out Taiwan to be a separate country, but didn’t I hear somewhere that the Taiwanese government sees itself as the rightful government of all of China?

A: You’re just not letting me get away without giving a history lecture, are you? Look, back in the 1950s and 1960s, the rulers of Taiwan were the same guys who ruled China before Mao took over in 1949, and they absolutely saw themselves as the rightful rulers of China and produced loads of official propaganda to that effect. They also headed a terribly unpleasant military dictatorship and Taiwan is much better off not being ruled by them any more. There are still a few “retake the Mainland!” guys around, but today few people under the age of 80 seriously think the Republic of China ought to retake its old territory.

The Taiwanese government’s claims on China are a relic of an earlier age. They still maintain them because the Chinese government has threatened war if Taiwan makes a break with its past -- that would, in China’s eyes, mean Taiwan was officially taking steps away from eventual unification. It’s possible that China is bluffing. But it’s awfully easy to say Taiwan should call China’s bluff when you’re not the one with missiles pointed at you.

Yes, a minority of Taiwanese genuinely want Taiwan to be a part of China. This is because human beings are capable of holding a variety of political positions, and Taiwan is a free country where people can be open about their political beliefs. It’s not the opinion of most Taiwanese.

Q: But aren’t Taiwanese people (culturally/ethnically/linguistically) Chinese anyway?

A: OK, there is a lot that can be said here, from the fact that this is an extremely reductionist and ridiculous way to decide if a country should legitimately exist or not, to the fact that not all Taiwanese have Chinese ancestors. But I’m just going to make an observation.

According to Wikipedia, nearly three quarters of the population of Singapore is of Chinese heritage. But no Singaporean is afraid that they’ll have to start telling foreigners that they’re from “Singapore, China”.

Singaporeans, and the millions of people in Thailand, Malaysia, etc. who also self-identify as Chinese, have a luxury that Taiwanese people lack. They can call themselves Chinese all they want and no one will think that de-legitimizes their actual native country. Beijing’s not putting out disinformation that Singapore is a wayward Chinese province. As far as I know, Beijing doesn’t have missiles pointed at Singapore to keep them from acting too independent.

Q: Who are you? You’re not even Taiwanese, are you?

A: I’ve lived in Taiwan since 2007. I try to play a role in the civic life of the country where I’ve had legal residency for the past eleven years, though I admit I’m not always as active as I know I should be.

Currently, in my day job, I work with Taiwanese students who want to study abroad in English-speaking countries. Therefore, I am angry that both IELTS and TOEFL, the two biggest international English proficiency exams, both have switched online designations to “Taiwan, China”.

Q: So why don’t we hear from Taiwanese people, rather than a Westerner like you?

A: Taiwanese people ARE speaking up. But let me point something out, just as an example.

In August, as I said before, the TOEFL exam changed Taiwan’s designation to “Taiwan, China”. The protest from Taiwan was impressive, with “an open letter that claimed to have the backing of more than 5,000 students”.

As of today, TOEFL hasn’t changed anything. Honestly, can you blame Taiwanese people if they are becoming fatigued at fighting the same battle, again and again, and nothing happens?

Incidentally, I sincerely hope no one reads this post as "Westerner explains to Taiwanese how they should feel about their own country". It is absolutely not my intention to tell Taiwanese how they should feel, and in fact I hope Westerners seek out Taiwanese voices on this issue. Rather, my intention is to counter to any Westerner who thinks "Taiwan, (Province of) China" is in any way "technically correct", and is anything other than an insult.

Note: This post began life as a rant directed specifically at IELTS when they changed Taiwan to “Taiwan, China”. People seemed to like it, so I reposted it after making it more general in focus, and adding a bit more on “Taiwan, Province of China”.

Voting

As Election day nears in the US (and another Election Day is coming up in three weeks here in Taiwan), I have some thoughts on voting.

Some people say you should go out on the street and protest rather than vote. Some people say you should organize rather than vote. Some people say you should riot rather than vote. But these are all false dichotomies -- they should read “and”, not “rather than”. Except perhaps for the rioting one. I’m not sure rioting is a productive idea, but who knows what the future will bring. I may change my mind on that.

So yes, I am saying “voting is good”. I am saying “as many people voting as possible is good”. I bet many of you have cynical things to say in response to that. Be aware I’ve probably heard it all before.

I think I've been swayed by the literature I’ve read this year. Yes, I did read Achen & Bartels’ Democracy for Realists earlier this year (scroll down if you follow the link), which argues that aggregate voters are really really bad at making coherent choices. But I also read The Dictator’s Handbook by Bueno de Mesquita & Smith, which argues that it’s good for the country if the electorate is as large as possible, so the government is accountable to as many people as possible. The arguments the two books make do not actually contradict each other -- you can agree with both at once.

Just because you vote does not mean you shouldn’t participate meaningfully in your democracy in other ways as well -- I’m talking about getting out there and protesting, or donating money to organizations, or just becoming more aware of what’s going on (TV news is bad for this, by the way). I won’t shame people who don’t do any of this (we all have our own busy lives to lead) but I’m absolutely flabbergasted at those who love to denigrate people who show their dissatisfaction after an election -- they say things like “Your side lost, get over it”. As if they were talking about a sports game rather than something with real-world consequences. As if politics only happens when there's an election. There’s nothing wrong with cheering for your “team” when watching election returns (even if I did disapprove, it’s still probably human nature, ingrained into most of us), but it’s important to remember that democracy doesn’t end when the election is finished.

Civic engagement is what a democracy runs on, whereas voting is what we should all be doing anyway. The more I think about this, the more infuriated I get at voter suppression. The government should not throw up unnecessary barriers to make it more difficult for some people to vote. This simply should not be happening.

My parents both voted several days ago at their local town hall at a time of their convenience. I voted absentee, and when I had doubts whether my ballot had been accepted, I emailed my state government and I quickly heard back from a real person who wanted to help me make sure my vote would count. This should be the norm everywhere, but unfortunately it’s not.

To summarize, we should all be voting, AND we should also remember that there’s much more to civic engagement than voting. I don’t live in the USA, but the country where I do live seems to be on the front lines of democracy versus authoritarian tyranny. I can’t vote here, but I ought to make up for it with more civic engagement. My wife is good at that; I am less so. I should do better.

x

Look to Windward

Look to Windward

by Iain M. Banks, 2000

My standard description of Iain M. Banks’s Culture books goes like this: The Culture is an advanced and enlightened interstellar society where everyone lives a life of ease and gets to develop their potential. That makes for boring fiction, which is why the Culture stories are actually about the Culture’s incredibly problematic foreign policy.

The Culture is very good at covertly interfering in other nations. In fact, they’ve elevated the practice to an art form. Just a few years ago, for instance, they interfered in the politics of a powerful spacefaring people known as the Chelgrians, rigging elections, manipulating the media, and basically doing everything that we Earthers in 2018 are all too familiar with, only far more subtly and with a much defter hand.

And yet.

The Minds -- the powerful superbeings who rule the Culture -- were astonished and dismayed when their actions unexpectedly triggered a massive Chelgrian civil war that killed billions of people. (Yes, billions. One thing you can say about Iain M. Banks: he didn't think small.) The chastened Culture publicly admitted their role in starting the war and brokered a peace deal, essentially saying “Our bad. Usually when we interfere we make things better. We have no idea what happened this time. Oh well, apologies and all that.”

Apparently some Chelgrians are still mad at the Culture, even though the war’s been over for more than a year and the Culture already said they were sorry. (I know, right? Totally inexplicable! Why don’t they just get over it?) This is how things stand when we join the action of Look to Windward.

Look to Windward has a fairly large number of viewpoint characters, but unlike Excession, the action here is firmly centered on a few core characters and one primary setting: the gigantic Culture orbital Masaq’. The Culture is far too vast a civilization to limit itself to puny little planets, and Masaq’ is an artificial habitat that is home to over fifty billion Culture citizens, along with a fair number of foreigners, one of whom is a Chlegrian composer named Ziller. A musical celebrity whose fame spans the galaxy, Ziller became disgusted with his own people years ago and has been living in self-imposed exile ever since. He watched his native culture’s self-destructive frenzy from the safety of his home on Masaq’, and he has no desire to return any time soon, if ever.

Meanwhile, Major Quilan of the Chelgrian military is on a collision course with Ziller. Quilan has been utterly traumatized by the loss of his wife in the war, he has nothing more to live for, and he would very much like to die -- a mental state that his his government’s special forces division found that they could make use of. Now Quilan is on his way to Masaq’ to persuade Ziller to return to Chelgrian space. That is absolutely the real reason Quilan is traveling to Masaq’, and it is a very believable story that everyone should believe. Why shouldn’t they believe it? After all, no one else can see the high-ranking military officer residing non-corporeally in Quilan’s head, whose mission is to make sure Quilan does what he’s supposed to do, which has nothing to do with persuading Ziller to return home with him. Ziller tells people that Quilan's been ordered to kill him, but maybe he's got an inflated sense of his own importance. Maybe Quilan's orders are to kill far more people than just one galaxy-renowned musician.

As for the fifty billion Culture natives living on Masaq’, we never really get inside their heads, or get to know any of them terribly well. The only viewpoint character who’s a native of the Culture is a solitary researcher named Uagen studying bizarre giant creatures in a surreal environment far away from Masaq’, who stumbles across evidence of the Chelgrian plot and tasks himself with getting a warning to the Culture in time. Uagen is the only one who can save the people of Masaq’! It’ll certainly be unfortunate for Uagen if the author has a taste for dramatic irony...

Masaq’ society is seen through the eyes of the two Chelgrian characters (and an amiable alien named Kabe who befriends both of them). The people of Masaq’ perform death-defying feats of aerial acrobatics flying through vast cloud environments, and they ride ceramic boats down rivers of lava. They passionately take sides over whether to string up an utterly useless cable car through an artificial desert, and the debate goes on for years.

In short, the people of the Culture have a LOT of free time on their hands, and another author would get all preachy about their luxurious, frivolous lifestyle, but fortunately Iain Banks is not that author. Really, who among us wouldn’t want to live a sweet, cushy life in the technological wonderland that is the Culture? The Chelgrians are bemused that these urbane fun-loving aesthetes are the same society that put their own society through such horrific trauma. The political allegory at the heart of the Culture novels is clear without being simplistic.

There's a sense among Banks aficionados that Look to Windward closes out the main cycle of Culture novels. (After an eight-year break, Banks would go on to write three more novels set in this universe, which I’ll get around to reading sooner or later.) Eight hundred years have passed since the sequence began with Consider Phlebas. The epic war between the Culture and the Idirans that was the setting of Consider Phlebas bookends the saga -- the war is now long consigned to history, and yet the lingering effects of the war are remembered throughout Look to Windward. The Mind that runs Masaq’ is a traumatized veteran, still dealing with guilt over atrocities it committed centuries ago, and it ends up playing a key role in the story’s climax.

Now that I’ve reached the end of the initial run of Culture novels, I appreciate what Banks has accomplished. The Culture is a wonderful place to live, but a supremely uninteresting place to set stories (‘May you live in interesting times’ applies here), which is why the focus is always on the Culture’s relations with societies that aren’t quite so damn perfect. The Culture is a high-tech socialist-libertarian paradise, where everyone is free to live the life they want, and the whole thing is ruled by near-omnipotent Minds who can and will commit horrific acts to ensure the society keeps running smoothly. Nothing’s simple in this universe.

I can see where the Culture novels might not be everyone's cup of tea. He doesn't even try to make his universe scientifically plausible (which is better than trying and failing), though I see that as painting boldly, without restraint, across a magnificently broad canvas. Also, Banks was clearly more confident writing male characters than female ones -- this includes the no-middle-initial Iain Banks novels I've read, not just Iain M. Banks. And I could imagine people turned off by his liking for grotesque violence (somewhat toned down in Look to Windward, apart from a nightmarish Culture assassin we meet near the end) and shocking plot twists late in the game (present in Look to Windward, though not remotely on the same level as, say, Use of Weapons).

But the man could write, and write engagingly, and write scenes that stay in my mind long after the book is finished. Even Consider Phlebas and Excession, which I found slightly more of a chore to get through than the others, are full of incredibly engaging stretches and highly memorable bits. It's easy to see how this particular Scotsman found so many readers, among SF fans and non-fans alike.