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Notes -
So, what are you reading?
I've finished Al-Ghazali's Prophetic Ethics, the rather slim 20th volume of his Revival of the Religious Sciences. Most of it is a recounting of Hadith, and somewhat threadbare, since the previous 9 books had apparently dealt with the issues presented in detail. The best parts are all when Al-Ghazali speaks in his own voice, which happens rarely near the end. I suspect I'll be pouring over this one occasionally neverthless, looking for lessons to be drawn from its structure and focus.
Book 2 of The Expanse. Probably a third of the way through.
There’s a certain predictability to the side characters, where you can kind of sum them up in one phrase. Distraught biologist father. Traumatized but vengeful marine. Unassuming career bureaucrat.
By taking certain character beats and setting details for granted, it implies what I want to label a conservative worldview. Of course the bureaucrats hold all the real power. Of course they push the authentic men and women, the soldiers and pilots, around like chess pieces, then get surprised when they act out. Of course the unassuming grandma among them is the most effective, and of course she blames her male colleagues for letting testosterone rule their decisions. There’s a single paragraph about how the fertility crisis didn’t survive contact with universal basic income. This is kinda plot relevant but also reveals a lot about the author.
Maybe I’m just calling it conservative because it reminds me of Tom Clancy. People show up, perform their story-function, and leave. Sometimes they’ll expound a bit of background. If they’re heroic, they’ll be demonstrably skilled at their area of expertise, and they’ll probably get to show moral or technical superiority over an outsider. If villainous, they’re played completely differently. Still competent in a scary way, only failing if a protagonist is around.
I can’t exactly say this is a bad thing. I kept rolling my eyes for the first few chapters, but by this point, I’m committed. Axiomatic worldbuilding is good. Leaning on tropes makes the story run smoothly. Above all, the Expanse benefits from the strength of its main cast, who embody the space-opera traditions.
Good fun. 7/10 so far. We’ll see if it holds up.
Yeah, it's interesting, the authors are very much redditors but within that worldview they're sort of small-c conservative of it. I will say characterization gets much better as the books go on (I hear Books 3/4 are rough in that respect, some unfortunate teething pains with bad POV characters, I skipped them since I was coming from the show). I've made this argument here before, but it's a rare case of the show being better than the books in the early seasons, since the writers had time to go back and write what they would have written if they knew where the story was going, plus polishing up some rough patches.
I recently encountered this not-a-review about Crichton.
I suspect that the same is true for what I was calling “conservatism.” Tropes, even Boomer or GenX tropes, reduce the narrative friction. We readers get to model Avarasala or Bobbie with minimal cognitive overhead. Very practical, very effective for a thriller, since we want to move from plot point to plot point.
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