SM Stirling, Shadows Of Annihilation, Advance Reading Copy.
I said here that there were three potential sequels but have thought of more but they will not be discussed on the blog, at least not yet.
I both dislike and disapprove of at least one Black Chamber practice, torture. Dislike and disapproval are neither identical nor always conjoined. An expert witness in a court case, when asked to give an opinion on group sex, began by stating that he personally found the idea distasteful. The follow up question was, "So you disapprove of it?" to which he replied, "Not at all." I noticed this, first, because that is exactly what I would have said and, secondly, because I was concerned at the conflation of distaste and disapproval. But surely torture warrants both?
Back to Shadows Of Annihilation: does an important character act out of character at a crucial moment at the climax of the novel or is the ostensibly uncharacteristic behavior sufficiently accounted for by what has gone before? Read and judge. I think that everything holds together but that things are not always as they seem.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I'm a bit puzzled, isn't "distaste" almost the same as "disapproval"?
Hmmm, or maybe not. I can have a distaste for apple pie, but that doesn't mean I have to disapprove of it!
Your comments about torture brings up the issue of how aggressively even a man suspected of having urgently needed information can be interrogated. Can he be harshly questioned by one man playing "bad cop" and then more gently by another who's the "good cop"? I say yes. Can such a prisoner be interrogated in a chilly room while his questioners wear coats? Again, yes. Can the prisoner have his finger and toe nails pulled out? I say no. Or, can such a prisoner be interrogated by means of sensory deprivation? I give a qualified yes, if done with the care shown by Dominic Flandry to his prisoner in WE CLAIM THESE STARS.
Ad astra! Sean
Torture and agony are not the same thing. For example, really excruciating tortures of the fingernails type aren't the most effective. Various forms of suffocation -- waterboarding is one example -- are, counterintuitively, the most efficient of all.
The reason is not that they cause the most pain, but that they cause the most -fear-.
Fear of death is universal; the ability to work past it varies widely, not only between individuals but in any given individual at different times and under different circumstances.
Suffocation methods invoke the fear of death very powerfully and at a level that hits below the conscious mind and its threshold control mechanisms.
Being suffocated to unconsciousness (I've experienced it) -feels- exactly like dying, even if with your conscious mind you know you're going to revive.
Over time, it disorganizes the mind and shatters the will. Some people resist much longer than others, but everyone cracks sooner or later.
As a user said, there's the old saying that a coward dies a thousand deaths but a brave man dies only once, but waterboarding enables you to subject the brave to the coward's subjective experience.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
This is a very difficult issue. If you KNOW a prisoner you have knows where a nuclear bomb hidden in your city is located, it gets harder to refuse to water board such a person. WOULD it be wrong to water board that prisoner to find and defuse the bomb?
But I agree with Paul in disliking how the Black Chamber seems to use torture so casually. The issues involved in most of those cases are no where of such a ULTIMATE character. For THEM, sensory deprivation is more appropriate, when used with due care and restraint.
And of course I would absolutely rule out the use of torture on persons who are merely ordinary, every day criminals. A distinction should be made between terrorists and mere ordinary criminals.
Ad astra! Sean
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