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Jan. 2nd, 2008 05:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackBujold's Barrayar and Komarr
Barrayar's only access to the galaxy is through Komarr wormholes. After Komarr cooperated with a Cetaganden invasion of Barrayar, Barrayar conquered Komarr, and has since been integrating the two planets.
Which leaves an interesting situation. It has many real world analogues, but you can't just say "if only they talked to each other, they could sort everything out", different reasonable viewpoints really lead to differences wide enough for armed conflict.
You can sympathise with either populace.
Now I think of it, I wonder how Komarr's sovereignty was enforced. Presumably they would if necessary block the wormholes to unauthorised traffic. Do they have any right to do so? But then do cities squatting at river mouths have any right to tax people passing through and taking no benefit from the infrastructure? Yet it can lead to great cities.
But the point is, a tragedy is when two sides fail to communicate and end up in a worse situation all round. But it's more so when it's not due to simple bad coincidences, but they genuinely can't -- a patten repeated in fiction set in civil wars, for instance.
If you were in charge, what would you do? Fight to free Komarr? Vote to free Komarr? Demand elections throughout the two planets? Put it to a vote on Komarr? If Komarr were separate, could you hold the wormholes separately? No solution seems universal.
(Of course, one of Bujold's wonderful strengths is painting enough background to specify what's necessary for the story, but leaving the underlying details unspecified. So our knowledge of the economics isn't complete.)
Vinge's out-of-phase perversion
The sun runs in extreme cycles, on for twenty years (ish), and then off one or two hundred. Most life hibernates in the dark.
The intelligent life, the spiders, breed just before. They've evolved to be more fertile here. Their embryonic equivalents are external, and it's normal to brush them off at unwanted times, like a first-month no-pain abortion.
Apparently, weaker babies die off in the hibernation. Except they don't exactly realise this, their impression is that children bred at the right time are more healthy (because other ones never get very far) and that children need the long dark to give them souls.
When rationalists actually challenge the cycle they find some children are slow, intelligent but with some problems. Previously accidental out-of-phase children are also often essentially unsalvageable, due to not being brought up and growing up wild.
Now the spiders find themselves in the position of staying awake through the dark with nuclear power. What should they do with breeding? No answer seems entirely satisfactory:
1. Turn their backs on scientific progress in general. Obviously reasons against.
2. Only breed in phase. Unsustainable, since they need population in the long dark. And anyway, knowing the true reasons, it wouldn't help if there's no cold and dark.
3. Breed out of phase. This is what they did start doing. Fortunately, with care and attention, the children who would have been weeded out were brought up successfully. Not quite the same as others, but healthy, useful and happy. But what if they really had been completely crippled?
4. Weed the unworkable embryos artificially. It feels very bad, although is only maintaining the status quo.
It sounds like an analogue to our situation with abortion, but it isn't really. The premises are sufficiently different I don't know what I'd do, especially if I bought into the souls-from-the-dark imagery (if not facts).
The point is, it's a throwaway line. But it sets up a true dilemma for the society, just from that.
Barrayar's only access to the galaxy is through Komarr wormholes. After Komarr cooperated with a Cetaganden invasion of Barrayar, Barrayar conquered Komarr, and has since been integrating the two planets.
Which leaves an interesting situation. It has many real world analogues, but you can't just say "if only they talked to each other, they could sort everything out", different reasonable viewpoints really lead to differences wide enough for armed conflict.
You can sympathise with either populace.
Now I think of it, I wonder how Komarr's sovereignty was enforced. Presumably they would if necessary block the wormholes to unauthorised traffic. Do they have any right to do so? But then do cities squatting at river mouths have any right to tax people passing through and taking no benefit from the infrastructure? Yet it can lead to great cities.
But the point is, a tragedy is when two sides fail to communicate and end up in a worse situation all round. But it's more so when it's not due to simple bad coincidences, but they genuinely can't -- a patten repeated in fiction set in civil wars, for instance.
If you were in charge, what would you do? Fight to free Komarr? Vote to free Komarr? Demand elections throughout the two planets? Put it to a vote on Komarr? If Komarr were separate, could you hold the wormholes separately? No solution seems universal.
(Of course, one of Bujold's wonderful strengths is painting enough background to specify what's necessary for the story, but leaving the underlying details unspecified. So our knowledge of the economics isn't complete.)
Vinge's out-of-phase perversion
The sun runs in extreme cycles, on for twenty years (ish), and then off one or two hundred. Most life hibernates in the dark.
The intelligent life, the spiders, breed just before. They've evolved to be more fertile here. Their embryonic equivalents are external, and it's normal to brush them off at unwanted times, like a first-month no-pain abortion.
Apparently, weaker babies die off in the hibernation. Except they don't exactly realise this, their impression is that children bred at the right time are more healthy (because other ones never get very far) and that children need the long dark to give them souls.
When rationalists actually challenge the cycle they find some children are slow, intelligent but with some problems. Previously accidental out-of-phase children are also often essentially unsalvageable, due to not being brought up and growing up wild.
Now the spiders find themselves in the position of staying awake through the dark with nuclear power. What should they do with breeding? No answer seems entirely satisfactory:
1. Turn their backs on scientific progress in general. Obviously reasons against.
2. Only breed in phase. Unsustainable, since they need population in the long dark. And anyway, knowing the true reasons, it wouldn't help if there's no cold and dark.
3. Breed out of phase. This is what they did start doing. Fortunately, with care and attention, the children who would have been weeded out were brought up successfully. Not quite the same as others, but healthy, useful and happy. But what if they really had been completely crippled?
4. Weed the unworkable embryos artificially. It feels very bad, although is only maintaining the status quo.
It sounds like an analogue to our situation with abortion, but it isn't really. The premises are sufficiently different I don't know what I'd do, especially if I bought into the souls-from-the-dark imagery (if not facts).
The point is, it's a throwaway line. But it sets up a true dilemma for the society, just from that.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-03 12:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-03 01:03 am (UTC):) Of course, good point.
I'm automatically in favour of democracy, of course I agree. However, come to think of it, in this case, I might hold back after all. I trust elected representatives more than most forms of government but Gregor more than elected representatives :)
For that matter, it only just occurred to me to consider Aral's motivation. He said (and I believe him, and believe the same applies to Miles) that he swore to uphold the current system. Then the question is, is it better to betray a trust for a higher goal? He wouldn't be who he was if he thought so, though if it's the right thing to do, it's hard to argue against (he would have overthrown a *bad* emperor).
no subject
Date: 2008-01-04 01:24 am (UTC)2) Out-of-phase: I doubt I'd be the first to try, or even close. I'm not a great truster of crackpot theories. I'd like to think that I am rational enough to be convinced by evidence - but I've found it hard when my own beliefs were confronted, even when I have the momentum of society against me.
I had a fairly secular upbringing, given the our largely Christian institutions. I've had a scientific education, so I've been taught to respect rationality. Meritocracy has worked fairly well for me, as has the welfare state. It's hard to tell how much of a Sheeple I'm being, and how much is society agreeing with my conclusions :)
no subject
Date: 2008-01-04 01:47 pm (UTC)2. Well, sticking with tradition is a good start. In fact, this is showing it's never as clear cut as you'd like, in that tradition is right in many respects, and you might assume it's *just* superstition but it isn't. And gambling with the next generation is always a tricky place to start.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-05 04:51 am (UTC)As you say, tradition is often there for a reason. The difficulty arises when circumstances change - because the reasons for the traditions are not clear, it is hard to tell which traditions (if any) are invalidated by a particular change.
I've finally thought of an analogue to Out-Of-Phase - parents who pass on a genetic disease/disability. Deafness and refusal to 'fix' their deaf children. IVF gender screening to prevent some recessive disorders. Similar ideas, anyway.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-05 06:05 pm (UTC)The difficulty arises when circumstances change - because the reasons for the traditions are not clear, it is hard to tell which traditions (if any) are invalidated by a particular change.
Exactly.
I've finally thought of an analogue to Out-Of-Phase
That works.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-15 04:37 pm (UTC)That most of the characters we meet in the novels are reasonably nice people obscures how unpleasant a society it must be to live in for everyone else. Bujold is a liberal and tries to be even-handed but her sympathy always ends up being with her characters, however much they deserve to be sent off to re-education camps when the inevitable revolution comes.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-17 12:16 am (UTC)She does very well show societies good and bad sides, at least I always feel both pleased by and exasperated by all of Barrayar, Beta, Komar, Cetaganda, and sympathetic with all.