Thursday, October 20, 2011

REAMDE was disappointing for this Neal Stephenson fan

There is something particularly appealing about an author (or any sort of artist) who works hard to try new things.  A few weeks ago I attended a talk and book-signing by Neal Stephenson for the launch of his latest work, REAMDE.  During the question and answer section he said (I paraphrase) that he has always tried to ignore his publishers' pleas to write books like whatever his latest top-seller may've been.   All of his books that I've read have borne this out (a very early book, Zodiac, I've not gotten to yet).  Stephenson has covered ground from near-future dystopia to present-day techno-thriller to a trilogy written about the 17th century to an alternate-world thought experiment, and his readers and fans have been conditioned not to expect him to write sequels, revisit characters, or really even reuse themes.   REAMDE is also no sequel, and is certainly an entertaining adventure story written in his witty and engaging voice.  However, I doubt I'll be the only Stephenson fan who was disappointed in this book's lack of new ideas and lazy storytelling, and by extension disappointed in one of our favorite and most talented authors.

"Lazy" is not a term I throw around lightly.  At the REAMDE launch talk one of the questioners noted that the author had been producing, on average, an impressive 1000-or-so page book every 2 years since the mid 1990's -- certainly not lazy.  At another point in the talk Stephenson described his process as trying some ideas out and sometimes having to discard them if they didn't work.  That description of his process came to mind because there seems to be a grab-bag of unrelated ideas and plots that are mashed-up here; I will of course try to avoid any spoilers but given that the story is stitched together with three or so absurd coincidences and a couple of MacGuffin-style plot devices, it will be difficult.

The story starts focused on Richard Forthrath, a middle-aged former drug dealer turned video gaming magnate.   His creation is a very popular massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) called "T'Rain", a virtual world that sets the stage for us to meet a number of interesting characters involved in the game either as creators, players, or exploiters -- we discover very quickly that many of the players of the game have seen their computers infected with a malware/ransomware virus that gives the book its name, REAMDE.   The ideas Stephenson brings to light via this game and the virus are promising enough, touching on the mechanics of virtual worlds, the very real "gold-farming" economy of low-income Chinese who sell virtual items from MMORPG's to Westerners for real money, and a partially-developed subplot around players building alliances based on color pallettes.

In the meantime, the action in the 'real world' is initiated with the first set of very improbable coincidences.  To keep this vague and spoiler-free, it involves a Russian criminal organization, and shifts the action to Forthrath's niece Zula and a trip to China in pursuit of the first MacGuffin.   Just as that hunt is building to its climax, another set of incredibly improbable coincidences occurs and the original theme and pursuit are abruptly abandoned and for the second half of the book the reader is shifted into a completely unrelated and pedestrian story about Islamist terrorists and Zula becomes the MacGuffin; later in the story comes another set of slightly less improbable coincidences not worth describing that set up the action-packed climax and subsequent epilogue where every sympathetic character is happy, all possible couples are paired off, and any loose ends are tied up with a holiday bow.

Simply put, it felt like he started with one story, couldn't figure out where to go at a certain point, spliced another story idea he had laying around into the middle, and finished it off with a very long gun battle out of a Western he'd been working on.  I think the only other stories I've seen so many absurd coincidences in were Monty Python movies or possibly Star Wars Episode I.

Kidding aside -- while my description probably reads as if I hated the book, I actually enjoyed reading it.  Stephenson's descriptions of place bring locations to life whether in a formerly colonial neighborhood in a Chinese city or the depths of the Canadian wilderness, and his action scenes -- and there are lots of them -- are gripping, believable, and make the reader feel like they are part of the action.   These, and his lively and often humorous prose, are consistent strengths through all of his books.

Stephenson's consistent weaknesses are also apparent.   As in most of his previous work, the characters in REAMDE are static and in general do not grow stronger, weaker, smarter, more compassionate, crueler, weirder, or more mature at the end of the book than they were at the beginning.  Romantic relationships are announced rather than developed, and people decide immediately that they are best friends.

His books are usually able to rise above these drawbacks, but in REAMDE Stephenson is depending on character and relationship for most of the motivation.  Much of the action in the second half is driven by characters who having only met Zula briefly (one of them not at all) decide she is such a dear and important friend that they completely upend their lives and spend weeks in desperate circumstances trying to find and rescue her.   The motivations of the Russian villian in the first part of the book are never explained beyond that he is "unstable", and we get no insight whatsoever into what drives the Islamists who dominate the second half.

It is this lack of believable motivation, with the pasted-together plot, that are the core of my disappointment, because even with his weaknesses in character development and relationships, Stephenson has always been a writer who turns interesting ideas into motivation and plots that make sense.   Whether introducing us to the concepts of virtual worlds and memetics in Snow Crash, social structures and educational theory in The Diamond Age, the history and theory of cryptography in Cryptonomicon, the entire basis for modern economics and philosophy in the Baroque Cycle,  or complex logic in Anathem, he makes these ideas the core part of his works.   Ideas drive the struggles of both his protagonists and his villians and the reader comes away having learned something new.    

This is not the approach he has taken in REAMDE.   You can see a glimmer of potential ideas in the parts of the book around "T'Rain", but they are never developed.   Chinese "gold farming", MMORPGs, ransomware, Russian organized crime, and Islamist terrorists are all concepts that have been in the public consciousness for years.  For the first time I've read a Neal Stephenson book and not felt intellectually stimulated. 

One could theorize that Stephenson intentionally departed from big ideas in this book.  He may have been responding to the mixed reaction some readers (myself included) had to his last book Anathem, which got so deep into trying to instruct that it ended with a 24-page appendix of complex logic puzzles.   Another possibility is that by not trying to teach, he is trying to stretch as an artist -- writing a pure action thriller is a departure, and doing it well is not easy.  

Unfortunately, even with a coherent plot, a good action thriller needs a hero who grows to meet his challenges and a developing and believable romance (often ending in heartbreak).  Stephenson has written characters who grow and change in The Diamond Age, and the Baroque Cycle saw a reasonably plausible romantic relationship develop.  All of his previous work was strongly plotted.  Its disappointing to see none of those elements here.

I'm sure I'll buy Neal Stephenson's next book.  I've bought, read, and (from Snow Crash forward) reread all of his books at least once for the terrific prose, entertaining plots, and thought-provoking ideas they contain.  But I doubt I'll reread REAMDE.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

I strongly support Occupy Wall St. because I'm a CAPITALIST.

There has been a lot of talk about how the "dirty, bongo-playing hippies" in Zuccotti Park have a "muddled message".   I went down to the protest this weekend to look around and listen and I did indeed see a lot of drumming, and some of the uniformly polite and peaceful people there could've used a shower and clean change of clothes.  There was certainly a rainbow of different causes being pushed -- everything from Anarchism to something I didn't hear but I'm sure starts with the letter Z.  

That said, there were two core messages that most of the people there seemed to be solidly behind: they're angry that there was no accountability on Wall Street for the financial collapse of 2008;  and they're angry that while the wealthiest 1% of Americans own over 40% of the nation's wealth, there seems to be no prospect for any tax increases on that 1% to help fund the public sector services (education, public safety, health, and infrastructure) that the other 99% depend on and are being slashed due to reduced tax revenues and wholesale Federal budget cuts.

Sure, I'm a liberal and I'm very sympathetic on moral and human grounds to their demands, but I'm also somebody who has made money from investing capital in the housing and stock markets and is currently working to open a small business.  And as a hard-eyed capitalist I can see only an upside to reforming the financial sector and requiring the wealthiest to contribute more towards maintaining our economy.

The protestors' call for consequences for Wall Street is more than justified, it is necessary for the return to healthy operations of our capitalist system.  Capitalism isn't really that complicated; investors put money into an enterprise, and we investors (and "we" are the over 50% of Americans who own stock either directly or through mutual funds) expect the people we've hired to manage the enterprises that we own to follow a simple mandate -- "increase shareholder value".    Regardless of complexities like stocks vs. bonds and short-term vs. long-term value,  the core goal is to connect capital with enterprises for the benefit of the investor.   While many investments lose money, this isn't a zero-sum game where there's always a loser;  improved productivity from capital investment creates new wealth overall.

But instead of bringing together investors and entrepreneurs to create new businesses, new jobs, and new wealth, Wall Street has been rigged by self-dealing insiders to rip off the taxpayers and shareholders and shift that capital into exorbitant executive pay, overleveraged buyouts, or crazy schemes like the derivatives and CDOs that were the actual cause of the 2008 financial collapse.   This isn't capitalism, it's embezzlement, and as an investor who is looking for a level playing field I don't trust those insiders to handle 'self-policing.' And without accountability for at least some of these insiders, policing is a hollow threat and Wall Street will continue to betray the shareholders it is supposed to serve.

The case for asking the wealthiest to pay a bit more in taxes to maintain the public sector has an even more plain and simple capitalist justification.  A cold-eyed capitalist sets aside concerns about fairness -- the U.S. has the greatest wealth disparity of any major industrialized country, and even greater wealth disparity than plutocracies like China, Russia, and Iran -- or how our top income bracket taxation is almost the lowest it has ever been and significantly lower than it was during most of the Reagan years.  The first rule of a successful business is 'Protect your investment'.  The wealthiest 1% own over 40% of the nation's wealth, so maintaining the value of the nation's assets -- including the workers and infrastructure -- means that the wealthiest 1% have the most to lose from letting their investment lose value.

The U.S. has the most productive workforce in the world -- in manufacturing, U.S. workers are eight (8!) times as productive as workers in China -- and this productivity is based on the education of our workers, the police and firefighters who keep them safe at home and in the workplace, the health care system that keeps them healthy enough to stay at the workplace, and the transportation infrastructure that gets them to and from the workplace and makes moving goods and services around the country so efficient.  Refusing to pay to keep these valuable assets maintained is not as stupid as refusing to pay to change the oil in an exotic luxury car and ruining the engine -- it is much stupider because we do not depend on the exotic car for creating future wealth. 

Some of the most successful investors, Warren Buffett being the best-known example, are calling exactly for higher taxes on millionaires.  A recent poll found that 65% of millionaires would support higher taxes on themselves

So this all comes back around to why there are people camping out next to Wall Street.  If you see the markets as an opportunity for wealth creation instead of a casino where 'the house always wins', an entrepreneur looking for capital to build your business, an investor who wants to protect your investment and maximize your returns, and you really believe, as I do, that capitalism has been and will continue to be part of what makes this country great, then I suggest that you walk down to  Zuccotti Park or whatever 'Occupy' is near you. 

And if you just can't stand drum circles, call your Senators and Representative.  They listen to people like us.