posted by the staff at Superbrothers HQ 2013-06-11 posted by the staff at Superbrothers HQ 2013-06-11

readings & researches

"Write what you know" is the old adage but in this case we're going with "Research what you want to know and use those new perspectives to write something you can't conceive of right now."

Reading, researching and reflecting help us explore, discover, consider and eventually commit to creative concepts - we like to learn, and we like to build upon interesting things. This has always been true of our process, and of course some amount of research is a part of everyone's creative process to some extent. For this new project, with its broad thematic scope and epic science fiction ambition, ongoing readings and investigative researches are even more of a necessity. Many of these readings and researches involve books, others are investigating films and videogames.

This time around we're taking the opportunity to record and expose some of this process. We suspect this will be helpful in focusing our creative process, and even more usefully, it may improve our ability to effectively communicate to friends, advisors and contributors about where some of the concepts and ideas for this project are coming from, so that they can be more in-tune and, should the opportunity arise, contribute more effectively.

This project requires a long hard look at the future - tomorrow, next week, next year, next century. The project will look at the futures we all face as individuals - life, love, adventure, challenge, reproduction, participation in a society, aging and death. We'll also look at the future from outside the frame of the individual to get a glimpse of the sweep of history, the rises and falls of cultures and philosophies, the future of our species, of our planet and its systems, and our universe. To better look into the future we also need to look into our past, the distant past and beyond, into prehistory and the deep time that preceedes it. Reading science fiction can help us understand the alchemical craft of transforming some of these big ideas into tangible, engaging narratives. Reading about scienc, history and philosophy will help us dig deeper into the vast accumulation of wisdom, knowledge, experience and perspectives amassed by our civilizations. Reading and researching relevant videogames will provide a working library of reference points that will aid us in our conceptualization of this new project, suggesting opportunities and proven 'good ideas'. It's impossible to say what effect these researches will have on the project, but if nothing else the process will help shape the project's world, style and possible meanings.

These writings will remain private for the foreseeable future, so if you're reading this then we definitely appreciate your discretion. There are a few readings and researches linked at right, there'll be more as time goes on.

posted by the staff at Superbrothers HQ 2013-05-28 posted by the staff at Superbrothers HQ 2013-05-28

JJ ABRAMS & STAR TREK

JJ ABRAMS is a clever creator of smartly-made, often just-dumb-enough roller coaster style entertainment with character driven stories generally in action and science fiction genres. You might not love his priorities as a creator, but it's hard to not be impressed by his skill and craft. He has a huge body of work, much of it I'm unfamiliar with. I missed LOST in its initial run and while I had a fair amount of respect for the guy it took me until 2012 to genuinely warm up to what he does, and only in 2013 have I started to actively think about it.

Most of what I want to talk about revolves around the JJ Abrams Star Trek films, I'll maybe talk about LOST in a separate post at some point (I'm still watching it, currently in the midst of Season 2).

Star Trek (2009) is a Star Trek flavored blockbuster entertainment product. It's an action film in a shiny world of the future, it spends no time exploring or contemplating any science fiction concepts. The film has a character driven plot, various things happen so that characters can be in various locations saying various things. The events themselves don't seem to matter, there is no particular meaning to gleaned from the story.

My impression of JJ Abrams before seeing this film was informed by what little I knew of LOST, a show he co-created that is known for its uniquely mysterious vibe and strong characters. I had seen the JJ-directed Mission Impossible III (2006), his first feature as director, an unremarkable but capable action film. I had seen the JJ-produced Cloverfield (2008), a kind of first person monster movie, ingeniously made. My perception of JJ's work was that he's clearly a notable talent, who is immensely productive and whose output is generally very positively received, but I felt his output wasn't for me.

When I first saw JJ's Star Trek I was saddened by how little of what I valued about Star Trek and science fiction was represented in the film. The original show sought to push the envelope, and tackle interesting, thorny questions. Gene Rodenberry conceived of a setting where humanity had grown up and had overcome sexism (to a point) and bigotry and racism. Sure it was goofy, and sure it doesn't look super progressive in retrospect, but Star Trek was Martin Luther King's favourite TV show… and that's a big deal. Many of the stories involved characters being faced with perplexing otherworldly scenarios and then grappling with them, and the characters are put into situations where they have to broaden their worldview, where they are forced to evaluate their assumptions and shift their perspectives, creating little epiphanies and memorable, hopeful moments for the audience to be inspired by.

By contrast, this new film jettisoned these priorities in favour of presenting sexy, charming characters in shiny locations surrounded by constantly exploding spaceships. In terms of its gender, race and sexual orientation it was less progressive than the 60s show. As an action film, violence and combat is glorified without much in the way of self awareness, and the politics of the film are very much rooted in the 'who gives a shit' of the post-post 9/11 era. So in these ways, and in its conceptual vapidity or lack of epiphanic ambition, I was disappointed… but I could certainly see the film's high quality from an entertainment product perspective, and I certainly noticed that the film had managed to attract and engage a broad audience who had long since given up on Star Trek (the franchise was in disarray before this film). Still, I couldn't quite let the film into my heart and admit that I actually liked it.

A little later on I saw JJ Abrams's film Super 8 (2011), which is an accomplished imitation of an 80s Steven Spielberg film. It's charming, it's smart but also pleasantly dumb, and it has heart. Like Star Trek it's an imposter, it's jj abrams 'doing' 80s spielberg in the same way that he is 'doing' 60s star trek, replicating and re-inventing someone else's concept and style with a high level of craft and cleverness, but i enjoyed the film… and interestingly (to me), I warmed up to JJ's shiny lens flare heavy style. With Star Trek, my mindset being what it was, I thought it was too much, too garish, too much razzle-dazzle covering for a lack of anything substantive, and I think that's probably still true, but I started to really enjoy them anyways.

Having at this point finally accepted JJ's approach, I found myself re-watching Star Trek, this time with an open mind, my earlier criticisms noted but put aside. I enjoyed it. Sure it's still a noisy, vapid film that undermines Gene Rodenberry's vision while it seems to celebrate it… but that aside, I found myself fascinated by the way in which the film was put together, how it keeps things moving, how the characters are presented. I missed out on a lot of the last ten years of popular high-production-values character driven genre tv shows like Heroes and LOST, but re-watching Star Trek I felt like I finally started to 'get' why those shows worked. It's a very specific style, rooted in solidly-defined characters in various well understood conflicts and relationships. I was also able to perceive dozens of very smart touches sprinkled throughout, little nods and references for people like me with a history with the Star Trek franchise.

Above all though, the reason the JJ Abrams Star Trek film is interesting to me is because it was a blockbuster, a bona fide mass market hit, it wasn't offensive or bloodily violent, it pleased a lot of old timer fans, and a lot of people who knew nothing about the series. That's pretty impressive! I don't like a lot of what the film represents about the state of culture and entertainment, proof that I'm officially a curmudgeon, but as someone who aspires to create entertainment in the science fiction vein, entertainment that I fondly hope will resonate with a broad audience, not just the niche of people like me, I want to keep the example of JJ Abrams in mind, I want to learn from him and integrate these learnings into my own strategies.

I recently saw the second JJ Abrams Star Trek film, it has the subtitle 'Into Darkness'. I went with my expectations calibrated and with an open mind, and while there were some decisions early on that rubbed me the wrong way, I ended up enjoying the film quite a bit. The story twists and turns and reveals itself pretty expertly. The tone moves around, it begins with a kind of over the top exuberant action scene, moves to a series of character building scenes some of which are light hearted, others are intended to tug at heart-strings, and then it bobs and weaves through romantic arguments and action scenes and anything else you could think of. It's constantly switching things up and for a while it seems as if the film doesn't know where it's going or what it's about but it turns out it knows exactly where it's going. The politics at the start of the film are very worrying, with a variety of post post 9/11 thinking on display, but this turns out to be kind of a ruse, and in a not-too-credible way the film ends with a rejection of this darkness a return to the more optimistic values Star Trek used to epitomize.

This was JJ's second and final Star Trek film, and he wanted to wrap it up, to celebrate the high notes of the franchise and end the film with an excited forward-looking spirit, and I would say he achieved those goals. JJ chose to revisit a beloved villain character and a plot line from the original series and movies, and he creates a plot structure that intentionally mirrors it, and amplifies it, and twists it. Many of these decisions made will fall flat with fans of the old series, but on the whole I thought it was all very well handled, even if it was all facade, lacking the depth, sincerity and intended meanings of the original stories (not that I'm claiming the original stories are literature, mind, but they were more sincere).

I realized that as absurd as the plot lines are, the characters are presented with a high enough degree of integrity, they are true to themselves. This isn't Shatner playing Kirk, but it is still very much Kirk. Spock comes across differently, he's a different Spock, but he's still Spock, and his relationship with Kirk seems genuine. Many of the supporting characters come through in a way that the original actors might be proud of. These are well cast films, in the same way that LOST was well cast, but much of the credit goes to the folks behind the scenes, thinking these characters through and then creating scenes and dialogue that feel right, setting things up perfectly for the actors.

So how do these Star Trek films relate to this new project? Here are some take-aways (writing is in progress).

1. lens effects. shiny sets, shiny materials.

I'm convinced that a lot of art direction effort in these directions will yield a very distinct and impressive look, and I believe that if we develop a language of lens effects we can use that language to communicate subtle things about the world and the player's status. So step one is to apply glows, flares, shines and anything else we can imagine to everything in the world to make it all pop. Step two would involve going back through and orchestrating these elements to better communicate aspects of the game. eg. Imagine a very specific and iconic lens effect representing sunlight. Now imagine this lens effect changing in character depending on time of day, angle, cloud cover and weather. The player depends on sunlight to see, and the player's ship depends on sunlight as a power source, so the player must remain aware of the power of the sun, and this lens effect, if designed correctly, will be an integral visual/information element.

2. moments of exuberance, silliness. moments that earn a beastie boys soundtrack.

Science fiction epics and space operas can slow down to a ponderous pace and inflate with self importance, weighed down by gravitas and big ideas. 2001 is unwatchable to many due to its grand, glacial pace. One of the best examples of this slow paced space opera syndrome is the original Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which drags on and on and on in an attempt to convey cosmic majesty. JJ's Star Treks move briskly along, and the films intentionally include moments of pure fun and exhilaration, giving the audience an opportunity to smile. Notably: In the first Star Trek we meet a young James T. Kirk, a boy, driving a stolen car across a desert with the Beastie Boys' 'Sabotage' on the radio. He is pursued by robot cops or some such. It's a funny scene, it tells us about young Kirk's attitude, and the Beastie Boys vibe keeps everything grounded. This ain't no space opera. It's a good contrast. Similarly in the second Star Trek, the film opens with an over-the-top caper in progress, with Kirk and Bones running through a bright red forest, pursued by white and yellow natives, while Spock is skydiving into a volcano to active some widget. It's basically an amped up Star Trek cartoon, and it's funny.

3. slow scenes are ok, so long as the audience can hit the 'action' button

Sometimes things need to slow down, but in all of Star Trek, and most noticeably in the JJ films, there's always some threat on the way that will interrupt whatever's happening and send the story in a new direction. In the second JJ Star Trek there's a scene where our heroes Kirk, Spock and Uhura are off on some top secret mission, piloting a spaceship into unknown territory, and a kind of comedic romantic argument erupts between Uhura and Spock, and argument that eventually ropes in Kirk. Just as this scene has played out, wouldn't you know it, they're under attack and off we go, evading baddies and flying through tight spaces. This interruption could've happened at any time. This seems like a useful device for an interactive experience! In a videogame there are sometimes 'cutscenes', scenes where the player simply watches and listens, and in many video games these 'cutscenes' are skippable, all the player has to do is press a button and boom they're back in the action. I like the idea of there being (optional) scenes that kind of slow down, get quiet, getting into some detail or some subtlety, maybe slowing to a snails pace, but with the push of a button the player can initiate something that gets things rolling again. I'll try and think this through and conceive of some specific examples.

4. characters with integrity. characters with a history together.

Star Trek has a leg-up because while the actors are new to their roles, their characters have a long history. I often wonder what it's like for someone unfamiliar with the series watching these films. I suspect that the way the characters have been handled in the JJ films, the audience knows enough about them, and they can intuit the history and the relationships. This history of the characters are an asset, deployed carefully. By contrast, the Star Trek film immediately preceding the JJ reboot, a film called 'Nemesis', was so mired in the history of the series that it was impenetrable, even to someone like me who knows way too much about the series. In that case, the history of the world and its characters was a serious liability, excluding all but the most dedicated fans.

I don't know how to concoct this kind of history for newly-conceived characters and world, but I guess a good first step is just thinking about this, carving them out conceptually, eventually finding people, maybe voice actors, to step in and 'be' those characters to some degree.

5. having a master plan

having a master plan, a story with twists and turns, many of which aren't revealed until late, twists that shake what you thought the story was about, that question some of the assumptions made in the early part of the story.

6. smart but dumb enough

stay true to our goals and sensibilities, but aim for big, simple explosive and satisfying mass market entertainment...

the result will be a mix

if we aim for smart, intellecutally interesting and subtle... we'll lose a lot of people

with sworcery we aimed for the biggest, broadest, most resonant thing we could think of

but the way it turned out, it had its own peculiar personality and sensibility

i think we want to keep some of this jj abrams star trek stuff in mind, keep the strategies in mind, keep the audience in mind

and i'm not worried we'll end up with anything derivative, because our philosophes are coming from such a differnt place

7. tackling some big idea

my primary criticism of the star trek films is that they aren't about anything, they aren't attempting to create an epiphanic moment, they aren't attempting to use a science and nature inspired concept to create an interesting morality play, and other than a few scenes late in 'into darkness' they seem completely unconcerned with the progressive humanism that so defined gene rodenberry's vision. so the takeaway is that for this project we do need the vision to be defined by a progressive humanism, we do need to engineer various epiphanic moments, and we do need to take science and nature inspired concepts to create interesting situations with various philosophical implications.

posted by the staff at Superbrothers HQ 2013-05-27 posted by the staff at Superbrothers HQ 2013-05-27

werner herzog

just watched aguirre: wrath of god. wowwwww

here's a clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO-spuGvsAU

here is werner herzog speaking to jian ghomeshi on cbc Q:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlbQF2ht2ic

here's another even longer herzog clip

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px4cPMMn2HU

i made my mind up a while ago that i'd buy and watch as many of herzog's films as i could, i started by getting the 6 disc 'herzog-kinski' box set

i'm on a bit of a herzog kick. over the years i've seen bad lieutenant, grizzly man, cave of forgotten dreams, fitzcarraldo and now aguirre, my best fiend, rescue dawn, maybe others

i own and will soon watch nosferatu, woyzeck, cobra verde

once i've seen those i'll be seeking out a few others, open to recommendations

posted by the staff at Superbrothers HQ 2013-05-20 posted by the staff at Superbrothers HQ 2013-05-20

YOU: A Novel

Excerpt from YOU: A Novel by Austin Grossman, for more about this book see the latest.

He wasn't a a king but he might have been a king's vizier, a cunning man and master of many subtle arts. One of the ones who secretly lusts for power, and one day he betrays the king.

Why? It's hard to remember, just that every step seemed at the time like the logical and smart and easy way to play it. Maybe it wasn't before, but now it's what you do. It's your story.

. . .

You saw your moment. The king wasn't watching, and you stole the key to the royal aviary, in which there was a magic bird whose magic songs foretold the future. Of course it went wrong. You're not royalty and you're not the hero of the story. You're just a civil servant with a prelaw degree and a flair for languages. What made you think you could hang with the royals? Princes and kings have this kind of story in their blood.

When the king came back you panicked like a fool. Your sorcery lit the tower, but he tossed you into the moat anyways. It was the bird seed you bought, in the marketplace, the day you were wearing that disguise. It wasn't that good a disguise, was it? Who knew a king would have those kinds of connections on the street? If they'd enacted the educational reforms you'd asked for, those fucking urchins would have been in school, where they belong.

The townsfolk threw vegetables as you limped, dripping and sobbing, through town. The worst of it is, that king really liked you. He was a genuinely nice guy, never made you feel bad about the money thing from the first day you roomed together. As vizier you lived at the palace, ate with his family, played with his children, showed everybody magic tricks, and told stories from your early life, before the days of jewelry and fancy hats.

You pawned your sceptre of office for enough money to book passage out of the kingdom. No more dining on pheasant, no more carpets, no more starlit desert nights. You never wanted to see that place again. There are other lands, other kingdoms. You walked north until no one had heard of your crimes. You'll go as far as your movement points will take you.

. . .

You rode on barges, slept out on deck under the stars, bargained with men in their own tongues. At first your academic diction marked you as a stranger, but gradually you picked up their vernacular rhythms, dropped the subject and your fancy tenses. You crossed the continent's central desert in the company of a caravan, entertained their children with fire tricks from a first year alchemy class you dug out of your memory. In return, a wiry, tan man taught you the basics of fighting with a short blade by grabbing your arms and yanking them into position. You left the caravan at the foot of a mountain range, and you kept going.

. . .

In the mountains you learned another form of magic, whatever's fast and cheap. There was no time for a three-hour warm-up, and there was no place to get powdered peacock bone; there was only time to shout or make a rapid sketch in the dirt. You lay low by the fire, looking up at the stars, and your days at the academy, your days in the king's court, all of it seemed far off, which is what you'd like, really. Farther, if you could possibly get it.

On the far side of the mountain, the country was different. You met your first dwarves. They'd heard of your country, but maybe one in four could name the king, and none would speak the language.

You moved north through the forest lands while the long summer lasted, following the track of a lazy green river. At night you heard bats hunting in the warm air. You crossed a low stone wall that once marked the border of a farm. No one had lived there for centuries. You had never felt that alone, or that free. After weeks of travel you reached the northern ocean, and walked east.

…

In the darkness you thought again about who you were before this, a life you remember less and less well, but what you remember doesn't flatter you. You remembered lying to people about what you were thinking and feeling. You remembered constantly thinking about how unhappy you were. It was very different from the way you are now, before you wore a dagger and slept in forests.

You fell asleep trying to count days, trying to guess how many weeks are left before the snow will cut off the mountain passes. In the morning you learned how to negotiate with a sailor. You're not sure if you're here for forgetfulness or redemption, but you notice they're not calling you a vizier anymore. They call you a wizard.

posted by the staff at Superbrothers HQ 2013-05-20 posted by the staff at Superbrothers HQ 2013-05-20

radio sports, radio shows

RADIO SPORTS

Radiosports:

Wikipedia entry for this concept: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiosport

RADIO SHOWS

Clive Holden's Trains of Winnipeg

Wikipedia entry for this concept: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trains_of_Winnipeg

Joe Frank (radio):

Wikipedia enty for this concept: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Frank

posted by the staff at Superbrothers HQ 2013-05-20 posted by the staff at Superbrothers HQ 2013-05-20

ECOSYSTEMS, GAIA & DAISYWORLD

Queen of the Sun: What the Bees Are Telling Us

The website for the documentary film: http://www.queenofthesun.com

Wikipedia entry for the film: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_the_Sun

Daisyworld

Wikipedia entry for this concept: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisyworld

Youtube clip from NASA about Daisyworld: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkf0vPrN90U

What if, instead of dark daisies, we talked about dark tornadoes and atmospheric phenomna?

Youtube clip showing baby tornadoes or 'dust devils': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyjr3KgVJ04

Article on The Verge about tornado prediction: http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/23/4358728/the-science-of-tornado-prediction-moore-oklahoma

Gaia Hypothesis

Wikipedia entry for this concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis

BBC clip about James Lovelock and Gaia, Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl-OfHFLwWU

BBC clip about James Lovelock and Gaia, Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-v5UGK9Ajc

Bits and pieces from scientist James Lovelock and others, lifted from the BBC clips:

From Part 2:

"Nearly all scientists these days are slaves."

From Part 4:

"There's no morality about it. If the earth improves as a result of our presence, then we'll flourish. If it doesn't then we'll die off."

"I fear that not many of us will survive."

"Now... how they will die? It'll be starvation, by war, by disease. Who knows. The four horsemen, really, ride when conditions like that happen."

"I still think there's a lot to play for, but we will still see the face of the earth change."

"This isn't an easy subject, is it? People say to me, well you can say that kind of thing easily, because at your age it's not going to affect you anyways, you'll be dead before it all happens. And that's true...."

"...But I do have great grandchildren. And it's progeny that's the name of the game here."

The Gaia concept occurred to Lovelock while he was working with Carl Sagan at NASA, as they tried to work out how to scan Mars for lifeforms, and Lovelock realized that lifeforms could be detected by studying the atmosphere of Mars.

KAMIKAZE BROADCASTERS

Wikipedia entry for this concept: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiocordyceps_unilateralis

From the wiki:

Ophiocordyceps unilateralis is a parasitoidal fungus that infects ants such as Camponotus leonardi and alters their behavior. The ant falls from the tree where it normally lives, climbs on the stem of a plant, clamps its mandibles on a leaf and dies there, while the fungus consumes its tissues and grows outside it, releasing its spores. The infected ants are popularly known as zombie ants.This is a prime example of a parasitoid that alters the behavior of its host in order to ensure its own reproduction. Possessed ants march to their death and the fungus lives inside the exoskeleton.

The species can be identified at the end of its lifecycle by its reproductive structure, consisting of a wiry yet pliant darkly pigmented stroma stalk extending from the back of the deceased ant's head. The stalk has perithecia just below its tip. The fungus infects ants, most known as the carpenter ants, in which the fungus creates a single stalk arising form the dorsal neck region on which the sexual structures are borne horizontally, which creates the spores. Once infected with the fungus the ant will climb down from its normal habitat and bite down on the underside of a leaf. This is known as "the death grip" occurring in very precise locations.

Like other fungi pathogenic to insects in the Ophiocordyceps genus, O. unilateralis targets a specific host species, the Camponotus leonardi ant. However the fungus may parasitize other closely related species of ants with lesser degrees of host manipulation and reproductive success.

The fungus's spores enter the body of the insect likely through the cuticle by enzymatic activity, where they begin to consume the non-vital soft tissues. Yeast stages of the fungus spread in the ant's body and presumably produce compounds that affect the ant's brain and change its behaviour by unknown mechanisms. The insect climbs up the stem of a plant and uses its mandibles to secure itself to a leaf vein, with abnormal force, leaving dumbbell-shaped marks on it. A search through plant fossil databases revealed similar marks on a fossil leaf from the Messel pit which is 48 million years old.

The fungus then kills the ant, and continues to grow as its hyphae invade more soft tissues and structurally fortify the ant's exoskeleton. More mycelia then sprout out of the ant, and securely anchor it to the plant substrate while secreting antimicrobials to ward off competition. When the fungus is ready to reproduce, its fruiting bodies grow from the ant's head and rupture, releasing the spores. This process takes 4 to 10 days.

The changes in the behavior of the infected ants are very specific, giving rise to the popular term "zombie ants", and tuned for the benefit of the fungus. The ants suffer from convulsions causing them to fall to the ground and preventing them from finding their way back to their canopy. The ants generally clamp to a leaf's vein about 25 cm above the ground, on the northern side of the plant, in an environment with 94-95% humidity and temperatures between 20 and 30 °C. According to David Hughes, "You can find whole graveyards with 20 or 30 ants in a square metre. This fungus has been known to wipe out whole colonies of ants. Each time, they are on leaves that are a particular height off the ground and they have bitten into the main vein [of a leaf] before dying". When the dead ants are moved to other places and positions, further vegetative growth and sporulation either fails to occur or results in undersized and abnormal reproductive structures.

CONSTANT GARDENERS

Wikipedia entry for this concept: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudomyrmex_ferruginea

From the wiki:

The acacia ant (Pseudomyrmex ferruginea) is a species of ant of the genus Pseudomyrmex. These arboreal, wasp-like ants have an orange-brown body around 3 cm in length and very large eyes. The acacia ant is best known and named for living in symbiosis with the Bull's-horn Acacia throughout Central America. The ant and the acacia exemplify a coevolution of a mutualistic system, as described by evolutionary ecologist Daniel Janzen.

P. ferruginea is an obligate plant ant that occupies at least five species of acacia. Its life cycle conforms to the claustral pattern of ants in general.

To repel herbivorous animals, various acacias protect their succulent leaves with one of several methods, including vicious-looking spines, repellent, noxious chemicals, and —as in the case of the bull's horn acacia— by developing a mutualism with the Acacia ant.

The symbiotic relationship begins when a newly mated queen gets attracted by the odour from the tree and starts nesting inside the large hollow acacia thorns. The queen nibbles into the thorn to lay 15-20 eggs to produce the first generation of workers. As the colony grows, more of the bulbous thorns get inhabited, and when the colony reaches some 400 individuals the ants start to act as gardeners.

As gardeners, the ants aggressively attack creatures of all sizes attracted by the acacia leaves, killing insects such as crickets and stinging the heads of mammals such as goats. Even other plants such as epiphytic vines are repelled and as little as an unfamiliar odour can cause the ants to swarm toward the potential threat. Additionally, the ants scout the ground around the tree for seedlings and destroy any competitors they find. In compensation, special glands at the base of the tree's leaves produce a nectar rich in sugar and amino acids, and the tips of the leaves sprout Beltian bodies, small nutritious packets of oils and proteins. However, not all is mutually beneficial: the ants relish the sweet honeydew produced by scale insects which suck the sap of the acacia and therefore protect them as well, effectively providing entry to diseases.

The development of myrmecophytism ("ant symbiosis") and spininess in African and New World acacia species was an adaptation to the presence of large faunas of effective browsing mammals. The ants' sting is very painful, causing a lasting burning and throbbing effect. The ants provide vital protection to the bull's-horn acacias day and night, and it has been shown that without the ants, Acacia cornigera suffer greater damage from attacking insects and tend to be overgrown by competing plant species.

Nuptial flight occurs in warm weather at any time of the year. If an acacia thorn has not been opened by a previous occupant, the queen gnaws a circular hole to enter the thorn cavity. She lays 15 to 20 eggs, rears her first brood while remaining secluded inside the thorn. The population of the colony then increases to 150 workers within seven months, to 300 three months later, to 1,100 in two years, and to over 4,000 in three years.

In young colonies workers leave the protective thorns to collect nectar and Beltian bodies, but only as long as necessary. At rare intervals they leave their thorns to occupy new ones. Males and virgin queens are produced during the second year. As the number of ants reach 50-100, workers start patrolling the open plant surface next to their home thorn, and as the population reaches 200-400 workers become more aggressive and attack other smaller nearby colonies, ward off phytophagous insects that make landing attempts near the thorn more effectively.

In old colonies the queen is physogastric (i.e. a swollen, membranous abdomen), heavily attended by workers, and accompanied by hundreds of eggs and young larvae.

The larvae are fed on unaltered fragments of Beltian bodies that are pushed deep into the larva's food pouch (the trophothylax, a pocket just behind the mouth). The larva then starts to rotate its head in and out of the pouch to chew the contents, while ejecting droplets of clear fluid possibly containing digestive enzyme into the pouch.

Fragments that protrude from the pouch are removed by a worker and redistributed. Regularly, workers force open the pouch to regurgitate droplets of fluid into it. The nature of this fluid is uncertain. It is possible captured insects constitute a secondary source of nutrition to the larvae.

MISC LINKS

"Glow in the dark cockroach and social media butterly named in scientists top ten new species": http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/23/4358412/scientists-top-ten-new-species

Earth Observatory "Pavlof Volcano, Alaska Peninsula" volcanic eruption from space photographs: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=81205

posted by the staff at Superbrothers HQ 2013-05-04 posted by the staff at Superbrothers HQ 2013-05-04

time, science fiction epic

I've been trying to zero in on the qualities that evoke the concept 'science fiction epic' or 'classic science fiction'... what do we mean by science fiction? What makes a classic, or an epic?

Science fiction as a genre points towards a genre of fiction sometimes written by scientists, often dealing with imagined technologies or speculative concepts, sometimes looking towards the future and asking 'what if...?'.

Science fiction has a healthy relationship with science. Jules Vernes's late 19th century stories about riding arocket to the moon inspired young people to take an interest in the topic, people like Werner Von Braun and X, who eventually succeeded in doing the impossible and making science fiction a reality.

The term 'hard science fiction' is sometimes used to refer to stories with a more exacting approach to known physical laws, stories that attempt to honor what is known to be possible. Science fiction also often refers to stories involving spaceships, flying cars, laser swords and rayguns, monsters and mayhem.

For a science fiction to be considered a classic it has to last for a while in popular memory, it needs to find an audience and engage them, and perhaps a true classic doesn't show its age too much, it can still be understood and can still resonate years later.

For a science fiction to be considered an epic it probably needs a broad ensemble cast, its story would include the broad sweep of history over the course of time, with events in a wide variety of locations, some of them vast. Above all, a science fiction epic needs to feel broad and deep, presenting a universe with a scope and a history all its own.

What are some relevant examples?

2001: A Space Odyssey is a pretty solid contender for 'science fiction epic'.

In the mid-sixties, the filmmaker Stanley Kubrick set out to create 'the proverbial good science fiction film'. He met Arthur C. Clarke, himself a scientist and an author of science fiction, and the two began to imagine a project that would eventually become '2001: A Space Odyssey'. This film is still considered a classic. I've admired it ever since I saw it on VHS in the 1990s, but I gained a newfound appreciation for the film when I saw it in the cinema with its original aspect ratio and at a size appropriate to the film's vision.

So... why is this film still considered a classic?

A book I remember fondly from when I was reading science fiction in my pre-teen years was Isaac Asimov's Foundation. It's a slim volume, less a novel and more a collection of brief interconnected short stories. I remember the book for its approach, its structure, its big ideas... and much of this comes from its time-skipping structure. Each story revolves around a protagonist and a series of events he (and in this book it is always a 'he') witnesses or is involved in, but then the story ends, and those events are a part of the historical record, and the next story is maybe fifty years in the future. We may follow the same character, but he is no longer a young man, and his role in the world has shifted in interesting ways. Often we are introduced to an entirely new character who is responding to or dealing with events set in motion in a previous story. With this structure we follow a population of scholars who are initially tasked with creating the 'encyclopedia britannica', who are exiled to a faraway planet at the edge of a galaxy. As we skip ahead in time we see in the background a galactic empire decay and fall, and we watch the colony of the scholars, known as 'the foundation', shift from meager colony, to a lone democratic city in a chaotic world, to the seat of a religion that masks modern technolgoy as mystical sorcery. The book ends before reaching any particular conclusion.

Time and space. But not time travel.

posted by the staff at Superbrothers HQ 2013-05-03 posted by the staff at Superbrothers HQ 2013-05-03

evolution

Below are excerpts from The Selfish Gene (1976, 2006 paperback) by Richard Dawkins. Before he was a strident and at-times condescending proponent of athiesm, Dawkins was a bright-eyed science writer and an enthusiastic zoologist. His first book, with the unforunate title 'The Selfish Gene', is certainly worth a read, it offers a very readable introduction to the fascinating mechanisms of Darwinian evolution, a process I broadly understood but had spent very little time studying and contemplating the details of.

pg. viii the selfish GENE, from the introduction to the 30th anniversay edition

The best way to explain the title is by locating the emphasis. Emphasize 'selfish' and you will think the book is about selfishness, whereas, if anything , it devotes more attention to altruism. The correct word of the title to stress is 'gene' and let me explain why. A central debate within Darwinism concerns the unit that is actually selected: what kind of entity is it that survives, or does not survive, as a consequence of natural selction. That unit will become, more or less by definition, 'selfish'. Altrusim might well be favoured at other levels. Does natural selection choose between species? If so, we might expect individual organisms to behave altruistically 'for the good of the species'. They might limit their birth rates to avoid overpopulation, or restrain their hunting behavior to conserve the species' future stocks of prey. It was such widely disseminated misunderstandings of Darwinism that originally provoked me to write the book.

Or does natural selection, as I urge instead here, choose between genes? In this case, we should not be surprised to find individual organisms behaving altrusitically 'for the good of the genes', for example by feeding and protecting kin who are likely to share copies of the same genes. Such kin altrusim is the only one way in which gene selfishness can translate itself into individual altrusim. This book explains how it works, together with reciprocation, Darwinian theory's other main generator of altrusim.

pg. xiii

Unwriting a book is one thing. Unreading it is something else. What are we to make of the following verdict, from a reader in Australia?

Fascinating, but at times I wish I could unread it... On one level, I can share in the sense of wonder Dawkins so evidently sees in the workings of such complex processes... But at the same time, I largely blame The Selfish Gene for a series of bouts of depression I suffered from for more than a decade... Never sure of my spiritual outlook on life, but trying to find something deeper - trying to believe, but not quite being able to - I found that this book just about blew away any vague ideas I had along these lines, and prevented them from coalescing any further. This created quitea a strong personal crisis for me some years ago.

I have previously described a pair of similar responses from readers:

A foreign publisher of my first book confessed that he could not sleep for three nights after reading it, so troubled was he by what he saw as its cold, bleak message. Others have asked me how I can bear to get up in the mornings. A teacher from a distant country wrote to me reproachfully that a pupil had come to him in tears after reading the same book, because it had peruaded her that life was empty and purposeless. He advised her not to show the book to any of her friends, for fear of contaminating them with the same nihilitic pessimism (Unweaving the Rainbow).

If something is true, no amount of wishful thinking can undo it. That is the first thing to say, but the second is almost as important. As I went on to write,

Presumably there is indeed no purpose in the ultimate fate of the cosmos, but do any of us really tie our life's hopes to the ultimate fate of the cosmos anyway? Of course we don't; not if we are sane. Our lives are ruled by all sorts of closer, warmer, human ambitions and perceptions. To accuse science of robbing life of the warmth that makes it worth living is so preposterously mitaken, so diametrically opposite to my own feelings and those of most working scientists, I am almost driven to the despair of which I am wrongly suspected.

pg.1 why are people

Intelligent life on a planet comes of age when it first works out the reason for its own existence. If superior creatures from spae ever visit earth, the first question they will ask, in order to assess the level of our civilization, is 'Have they discovered evolution yet?' Living organism had existed on earth, without ever knowing why, for over three thousand million years before the truth finally dawned on one of them. His name was Charles Darwin. To be fair, others had had inklings of the trugh, but it was Darwin who frist put togethr a coherent and tenable account of why we eist. Darwin made it possible for us to give a sensible anseer to the curious child whose question heads this captuer. We no longer have to resort to superstition when faced with the deep rpbolems: Is there a meaning to life? What are e for? wha is man? after posting the last of these questions, the eminent zoologist G. G. Simpson put it thus: 'The point I want to make now is that all attempts to answer that question before 1859 are worthless and that we will be better off if we ignore them completely.'

pg. 12 the replicators

Darwin's 'survival of the fittest' is really a special case of a more general law of survival of the stable. The universe is populated by stable things. A stable thing is a collection of atoms that is permanent enough or cmmon enough to deserve a name. It may be a unique collection of atoms, such as the Matterhorn, that lasts long enough to be worth naming. Or it may be a class of entities, such as rain drops, that come into existene at a sufficiently high rate to deserve a collective name, eveni f any one of them is short-lived. The things that we see around us, and which we think of as needing explanation - rocks, galaxies, ocean waves - are all, to a greator or lesser extentet, stable patterns of atoms. Soap bubbles tend to be spherical because this is a stable configuration for thin films filled with gas. In a spacecraft, water is also stable in spherical globules, but on earth, where ther is gravity, the stable surface for standing water is flat nad horizontal. Salt crystals tend to be cubes because this is a stable way of packing sodium and chloride ions together. In the sun the simplest atoms of all, hydrogen atoms, are fusing to form helium atoms, because in the conditions that prevail there the helium configuration is more stable.Other even more complex atoms are being formed in stars all over the universe, ever since soon after the 'big bang' which, according to the prevailing theory, initiated the universe. This is originally where the elements on our world came from.

(...)

At some point a particularly remarkable molecule was formed by accident. we will call it the Replicator. It may not necessarily have been the biggest or the most complex molecule around, but it had the extraordinary property of being able to create copies of itself. This may seem a very unlikely sort of accident to happen. So it was. It was exceedingly improbable. In the lifetime of a man, things that are that improbable can be treated for practical purposes as impossible. (...) But in our human estimates of what is prbable and what is not, we are not used to dealing hundreds of millions of years.

(...)

pg. 18 'living'

Should we then call the original replicator molecules 'living'? Who cares? I might say to you 'Darwin was the greatest man who has ever lived', and you might say 'No, Newton was', but I hope we would not prolong the argument. The point is that no conclusion of substance would be affected whichever way our argument was resolved. The facts of the lives and achievements of Newton and Darwin remain totally unchanged whether we label them 'great' or not. Similarly, the story of the replicator molecules probably happened something like the way I am telling it, regardless of whether we choose to call them 'living'. Human suffering has been caused because too many of us cannot grasp that words are only tools for our use, and that the mere presence in the dictionary of a word like 'living' does not mean it necessarily has to refer to something definite in the real world. Whether we call the early replicators living or not, they were the ancestors of life, they were our founding fathers.

(...)

pg.19 struggling

There was a struggle for existence among replicator varieties. They did not know they were struggling, or worry about it; the struggle was conducted without any hard feelings, indeed without feelings of any kind.

The process of improvement was cumulative. Ways of increasing stability and of decreasing rivals' stability became more elaborate and more efficient. Some of them may even have 'discovered' how to break up molecules of rival varieties chemically, and to use the building blocks so released for making their own copies. These proto-carnivores simultaneously obtained food and removed competing rivals. Other replicators perhaps discovered how to protect themselves, either chemically, or by building a physical wall of protein around themselves. This may have been how the first living cells appeared. Replicators began not merely to exist, but to construct for themselves containers, vehicles for their continued existnce. The replicators that survived were the ones that built survival machines for themsevles to live in. The first survival machines probably consisted of nothing more than a protective coat. But making a living got steadily harder as new rivals arose with better and more effective survival machines. Survival machines got bigger and more elaborate, and the process was cumulative and progressive.

Was there to be any end to the gradual improvement in the techniques and artifices used by the replciators to ensure their own continuation in the world? There would be plenty of time for improvement. What weird engines of self-preservation would the millennia bring forth? Four thousand million years on, what was to be the fate of the ancient replicators? They did not die out, for they are past master of the survival arts. But do not look for them floating loose in the sea; they gave up that cavalier freedom long ago. Now they swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control. They are in you and in me; they created us, body and mind, and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence. They have come a long way, theose replicators. Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines.

posted by the staff at Superbrothers HQ 2013-05-03 posted by the staff at Superbrothers HQ 2013-05-03

ghenghis khan

Drawing by Superbrothers staff of the actor who played Temujin/Genghis's wife Borte in the film Mongol (2007), the film was inspired by the book excerpted below. Next to her are a couple Spirit Banners. As the Genghis Khan type character is adapted and re-built for the new Superbrothers project, the character's gender may switch (creating an interesting symmetry with The Scythian) or the character's gender may remain ambiguous or undeclared.

Below are relevant excerpts from "Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World" by Jack Weatherford (2004, paperback). The book describes itself as 'The startling true history of how one extraordinary man from a remote corner of the world created an empire that led the world into the modern age.' It's an excellent book, well-written, fascinating, highly recommended. I read this book on my honeymoon in summer of 2011 after unplugging from the internet following the initial launch of Sword & Sworcery. Some aspects of the histories and concepts in this book have stuck with me and have been woven into the lore of the new project.

pg. 32-34 the sacred mountain, the three rivers, a pivotal decision

Hiding in the forest of Mount Burkhan Khaldun, Temujin faced the pivotal decision of his life: deciding what to do about the kidnapping of his wife. He could have chosen to abandon any hope of recapturing Borte, and that would surely have been the expected course, as his small group could not possibly take on the much more powerful Merkid. In due time, Temujin could find another wife, but he would have to kindap her, as his father had done to his mother, because no family would voluntarily bestow their daughter on a man who had already lost one wife to more powerful men.

In the past, Temujin had relied upon his quick wits to fight or flee, but these decisions had been spontaneous ones in response to a sudden danger or opportunity. Now he had to think carefully and devise a plan of action that would influence the whole of his life. He had to choose his own destiny. In the belief that he had just been saved by the mountain where he was hiding, he turned to pray to the spirit of the mountain. Unlike the other steppe tribes that had embraced the scriptural and priestly traditions of Buddhism, Islam or Chistianity, the Mongols remained animists, praying to the spirits around them. They worshipped the Eternal Blue Sky, the Golden Light of the Sun, and the myriad spiritual forces of nature. The Mongols divded the natural world into two parts, the earth and the sky. Just as the human soul was contained not in the stationary parts of the body but in the moving essences of blood, breath, and aroma, so, too, the soul of the earth was contained in its moving water. The rivers flowed through the earth like the blood through the body, and three of those rivers began here on this mountain. As the tallest mountain, Burkhan Khaldun, literally "God Mountain," was the khan of the area, and it was the earthly place closest to the Eternal Blue Sky. As as the source of three rivers, Burkhan Khaldun was also the sacred heart of the Mongol world.

The Secret History relates that Temujin, grateful for having escaped death at the hands of the Merkid, first offered a prayer of thanks to the mountain that protected him and to the sun that rode across the sky. He made special thanks to the captured old woman who had saved the others by hearing like a weasel. To thank the spriits around him, as was Mongol practice, he sprinkled milk into the air and on the gorund. Unwinding his belt from his robe, he hung it around his neck. The sash or belt, traditionally worn only by men, was the center of a Mongol man's identity. For Temujin to remove his sash in this way was to remove his strength and to appear powerless before the gods around him. He then removed his hat, put his hand on his breast, and dropped down onto the ground nine times to kowtow before the sun and before the sacred mountain.

For the steppe tribes, political, wordly power was inseperable from supernatural power since both sprang from the same source, the Eternal Blue Sky. In order to find success and to triumph over others, one must first be granted supernatural power from the spirit world. For his Spririt Banner to lead to victory and power, it had to first be infused with supernatural power. Temujin's three days of prayer while hidng on Burkhan Khaldun marked the begining of a long and intimate spriritual relationship he would maintain with this mountain and the special protection he believed it provided. This mountain would the source of his strength.

Rather than merely giving him the power, Burkhan Khaldun seems to first test himself with a difficult choice. Each of the three rivers that flowed out from the mountain offered him an alternate choice of action. He could return to the southeast, downstream to the Kherlen River, where he had been living on the steppe, but no matter how many animals or wives he managed to accumulate as a herder, he would always risk losing them in another raid to the Merkid, the Tayichiud, or whoever else came along. The Onon River, along which he himself had been born, flowed to the notheast and offered another option. Beacuse it meandered through more wooded and isloated land than the Kherlen Riber, the Onon offered more shelter, but it lacked pastures for animals. Living there would require the group to scrape by, as in his childhood, while fishing, trapping birds, and hunting rats and other small mammals. Life on the Onon would be safe but without prosperity or honor. The third option was to follow the Tuul River, which flowed toward the sourthwest, to seek the help of Ong Khan, to whom he had given the sable coat. At that time, Temujin had declined the offer to make him a subordinate leader under Ong Khan's authority. Now, only a year later, with the life he had chosen instead shattered by the Merkid raiders, Temujin still seemed reluctant to plunge into the internecine struggle of khan against khan, but there seemed no other way to get back his bride.

Though he had sought to create a quiet life apart from the constant turmoil of steppe warfare, the Merkid raid had taught him that such a life was simply not to be had. If he did not want to live the life of an impoverished outcast, always at the mercy of whatver raiders chose to swoop down on his encampment, he would now have to fight for his place in the hierarchy of steppe warriors; he would have to join in the harsh game of constant warfare he had thus far avoded.

Aside from all the issues of politics, hierarchy, and spiritual powers, Temujin showed how desperately he missed Borte, the one person in a short and tragedy-laden life who brought him happiness. Despite the emotional reserve that Mongol men were expected to show in public, particulaly in the presence of other men, Temujin made a strong emotional affirmation of his love for Borte and of his pain without her. He lamented that not only had the attackers left his bed empty, but they had cut open his chest, broken his heart. Temujin chose to fight. He would find his wife, or he would die trying. After those three difficult days of pondering, praying, and planning on the mountain, Temujin followed the Tuul River down to search for the camp of Ong Khan and seek his help.

pg.66 steppe coronation

Like most successful rulers, Genghis Khan understood the political potential of solemn ceremony and grand spectacle. Unlike most rulers confined within the architecture of buildings such as palaces or temples, however, the installation of Genghis Khan took place on the vast open steppe, where hundreds of thousands of people participated.

pg.67-68 lawgiver

Most leaders, whether kings or presidents, grew up inside the institutions of some type of state. Their accomplishments usually involved the reorganization or revitalization of those institutions and the state that housed them. Genghis Khan, however, consciously set out to create a state and to establish all the institutions necessary for it on a new basis, part of which he borrowed from prior tribes and part of which he invented.

He rewarded men who came from lowly black-boned lineages and placed them in the highest positions based on their achievements and proven loyalty to him on and off the battlefied.

In order to maintain peace in this large and ethnically diverse set of tribes that he had forged into one nation, he quickly proclaimed new laws to suppress the traditional causes of tribal feuding and war. The Great Law of Genghis Khan differed from that of other lawgivers in history. He did not base his law on divine revelation from God; nor did he derive it from an ancient code of any sedentary civlization. He consolodated it from customs and traditions of the herding tribes as maintained over centuries; yet he readily abolished some practices when they hindered the functioning of his new society. He allowed groups to follow traditional law in their area, so long as it did not conflict with the Great Law, which functioned as a supreme law or common law over everyone.

Genghis Khan's law did not delve into all aspects of daily life; instead, he used it to regulate the most troublesome aspects. As long as men kidnapped women, there would be feuding on the steppes. Genghis Khan's first new law reportedly forbade the kidnappings of women, almost certainly a reaction to the kidnapping of his wife Borte.

Aside from fighting over lost animals, the steppe people argued frequently over hunting rights for wild animals. Genghis Khan codified existing ideals by forbidding the hunting of animals between March and October during the breeding time. By protecting the animals in the summer, Genghis Khan also provided a safety net for the winter, and hunters had to limit their kill to what they neeeded for food and no more.

In addition to sex, property, and food, Genghis Khan recognized the disruptive potential of competing religions. In one form or another, virtually every religion from Buddhism to Christiantiy and Manichaenism to Islam had found converts among the steppe people, and almost all of them claimed not only to be the true relgion but the only one. In probably the first law of its kind anywhere in the world, Genghis Khan decreed complete and total religious freedom for everyone. Although he continued to worship the spirits of his homeland, he did not permit them to be used as a a national cult.

pg. 86 nomad

Crossing the vast Gobi required extensive preparation. Before the army set out, squads of soldiers went out to check the water sources and to report on grass conditions and weather. A Chinese observer remarked how the advance group scouted out every hill and every spot before the main army arrived. They wanted to know everyone in the area, every resource, and they always sought to have a ready path of retreat should it be needed.

The Mongol was ideally suited to travel long distances; each man carried precisely what he needed, but nothing more.

pg. 170 the tree at the center of the universe

Envoys to Mongke's court at Karakorum reported the working of an unusual contraption in his palace. A large tree sculpted of silver and other previous metals rose up from the middle of his courtyard and loomed over his palace, with the branches of the tree extending into the building and along the rafters. Silver fruit hung from the limbs, and it had four golden serpents braided around the trunk. At the top of the tree, rose a triumphant angel, also cast in solver, holding a trumpet at his side. An intricate series of pneumatic tubes inside the tree allowed unseen servants to blow into them and manipulate them to produce what seemed to be acts of magic. When the khan wanted to summon drinks for his guests, the mechanical angel raised the trumpet to his lips and sounded the horn, whereupon the mouths of the serpents began to gush out a fountain of alcoholic beverages into silver basins arranged at the base of the tree. Each pipe discharged a different drink - wine, black airak, rice wine, and mead.

The four serpents on the Silver Tree of Karakorum symbolized the four directions in whih the Mongol Empire extended, as did the four alcoholic drinks derived from crops of distant and exotic civilizations: grapes, milk, rice and honey. Trees were rare on the steppe, but they had a more important role in the homeland and origin of the Mongool family of Genghis Khan. In their oral history, the first ancestor to try to unite the Mongo tribes had been made khan nunder a tree on the Khorkhonag steppe, and it was in this same area that Temujin and Jamuka had taken the oath as andas after the Merkid battle. The whole contraption offered a spectacular and pungent remidner of the Mongol origins and of their mission to conquer the entire world in all four directions. Mongke accepted the obligation to bring everything under the rule of the Mongol state that stood like one massive tree at the center of the universe. Mongke Khan took that command as the literal destiny of his nation and as his responsibility to achive.

pg.172 - 174. the envoy and the theological wrestling match

After making the French envoy wait for many months, Mongke finally received him officially in court on May 24, 1254. Rubruck informed the officials that he knew the word of God and had come to spread it. In front of the assembled representatives of the various religions, the khan asked Rubruck to explain to them the word of God. Rubruck stumbled over a few phrases and stressed the importance to Christians of the commandment to love God, whereupon one of the Muslim clerics asked him incredulously, "Is there any man who does not love God?"

Rubruck responded, "Those who do not keep His commandments, do not love Him."

Another cleric then asked Rubruck, "Have you been in heaven that you know the commandments of God?" He seized upon the implication of what Rubruck was saying to them about God's commandments and challenged him directly: "By this you mean that Mongke Khan does not observe God's commandments?"

The discussion continued for some time, and according to Rubruck's own account, it was obvious that he did not fare well in the sometimes acrimonious arguments. He was unaccustomed to debating with people who did not share his basic assumptions of Catholic Christianity. Evidently, Mongke Khan recognized the problems he was having and suggested that all the scholars present take time to write out their thoughts more clearly and then return for a fuller discussion and debate of the issues.

The Mongols loved competitions of all sorts, and they organized debates among rival religions the same way they organized wrestling matches. It began on a specfic date with a panel of judges to oversee it. In this case Mongke Khan ordered them to debate before three judges: a Chrisian, a Muslim, and a Buddhist. A large audience assembled to watch the affir, which began with great seriousnes and formaility. An official aly down the strict rules by which Mongke wanted the debate to proceed: on pain of death "no one shall dare to speak words of contention."

Rubruck and the other Christians joined together in one team with the Muslims in an effort to regute the Buddhist doctrines. As these men gathered togetehr in all their robes and regalia in the tents on the dusty plains of Mongolia, they were doing that no other set of scholars or theologians had ever done in history. It is doubtful that representatives of so many types of Christianity had come to a single meeting, and certainly they had not debated, as equals, with representatives of the various Muslim and Buddhist faiths. The religiohs shcolards had to compete on the basis of ehir beliefs and ideas, using no weapons or the authority of any ruler or army behind them. They could use only words and logica to test the ability of their ideas to persuade.

In the initial round, Rubruck faced a Buddhist from North China who began by asking how the world was made and what happened to the soul after death. Rubruck countered that the Buddhist monk was asking the wrong questions: the first isue should be about God from whom all things flow. The umpires awared the first points to Rubruck.

Their debate ranged back and forth over the topics of evil versus good, God's nature, what happens to the souls of animals, the existence of reincarnation, and whether God had created evil. s they debated, the clerics formed shifting coalitions among the various religions according ot h topic. Between each round of wretingly, Mongol atheltes would drink fermented mare's milk: in keeping with that tradition, after each rund fo the debate, the larned men paused to drink deeply in prepartion for the next match.

No side seemed to convince the other of anything. Finally, as the efects of th alcohol became stronger, the Crhsistians gave up trying to persuade anyhtinone with logiucal arguments, and reseorted to singing. The Muslims, who did not sing, responed by loudly reciting the Koran in an effort to drown out the Christians, and the Buddhists retreated into silent meditaiton. At the eof hte dbeate, unable to convert or kill one another, they conlucded the way most Mongol celerations concluded, with everyone simply too druink to continue. pg.172-173

A few days after the debate at Karakorum, Mongke Khan summoned Rubruck to dicharge him and send him back to his home country. He took this occasion to explain to the priest, and through him to the rulers of Europe, that he himsel belonged to no single religion, and he lectured Rubruck on Mongol beliefs about tolerance and goodness: "We Mongols believe in one God, by Whome we live and Whom we die and toward Him we have an upright heart." He then explained, "Just as God gave different fingers to the hand so has He given different ways to men. To you God has given the Scriptures and you Chsitians do not observe them. " He cited as evidence that the Christians eagerly placed money ahead of justive. He thien explained that instead of the Scriptirues, God had given the Mongols holy men, their shamans. oin daily life, "we do what tehy tell us, and live in peace "with one another.

p.129 reflections of an elder

His voice comes through as simple, clear and informed by common sense. He ascribed the fall of his enemies more to their own lack of ability thatn to his superior prowess: "I have not myself distinguished qualities." He said that the Eternal Blue Sky had condemmed the civilizations around him because of their "haughtiness and their extravagant luxury." Despite the tremendous wealth and power he had accumulated, he continued to lead a simple life: "I wear the same clothing and eat the same food as the cowherds and horse-hearders. We make the same sacrifices, and we share the riches." He offered a simple assesment of his ideals: "I hate luxury,
and "I exercise moderation." He strove to treat his subjects like his children, and he treated talented men like his brothers, no matter what their origin was. He described his relationship with his officials as being close and based on respect: "We always agree in our principles and we are always united in mutual affection."

Drawing by Superbrothers staff of the actor Mako in one of the Conan films, included here to represent an older Genghis Khan.

posted by the staff at Superbrothers HQ 2012-07-06 posted by the staff at Superbrothers HQ 2012-07-06

PROTEUS

PROTEUS (PC) is perhaps the purest "Just Walking" experience. Exploring the geography of PROTEUS at one's leisure provokes expressive shifts in soundscape & world state.

type: videogame, music
style: "Just Walking"
cost: less than 10$
platform: electric computers
recommended: yes
creators: Ed Key, David Kanaga.
vendor: visitproteus.com

//////////////////////// RESPONSE FROM C

"...it started to seem like we could pilot capably with our eyes closed, using sound cues to judge our craft's orientation, velocity, altitude, status and position."

PROTEUS represents something pretty profound to me, in that the concepts it explores have been with me for years. These concepts - absolute discoverability, soundscapes authored for particular times & spaces - are foundational for the new Superbrothers project, and consequently Proteus has been high on my list of 'videogames to study' for a while now.

Years ago, Patrick & I explored similar concepts using sounds from Jim Guthrie & I Am Robot in a 3-D flight-inspired prototype. Skate along on the surface of water or ground (ie: flying below a particular altitude) to provoke a funky/fun ground effect loop, go faster and the ground effect loop would switch gears to something a little bit more energetic & louder. Skate up a hillside & launch up into the sky high and the ground effect loop sounds would fall off, fly high enough into the sky and all sounds will fall off leaving a subtle, expansive tingling sound. Glide down to the ground and as your craft nears the surface a cello plays a series of suspenseful notes, quiet at first but rising in volume and intensity as the surface rushes up to meet you. At the moment of impact, your craft automatically switches back to skate mode - you're safe and whizzing along the surface at speed accompanied by a funky, fun ground effect loop. We were loving these concepts like crazy and we explored even more in this direction, adding musical sounds to structures and locations in the world, to the point where it started to seem like we could pilot capably with our eyes closed, using sound cues to judge our craft's orientation, velocity, altitude, status and position.

PROTEUS explores similar territory and the result is magnificent. There is one soundscape for travelling over water, a new set of sounds for travelling over land, yet another set of sounds kicks in while exploring the tops of hills. PROTEUS has a day/night cycle as well as dynamic weather systems, and particular times of day and conditions have their own sonic soul. These concepts have existed in open-world adventure videogames for ages but in PROTEUS they are foregrounded and are often exquisitely expressive.

"It's just walking?!"

With the original prototype for Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP my aim was to create an exploratory short story beginning in the grey hour before dawn, progressing by stages through a pink dawn. Jim Guthrie's song "Under a Tree" provided the structure & the progression, and the song directly lead to the series of locations that now constitute Side B. In this prototype there was no overt narrative or quest, the player was free to poke, prod and direct The Scythian along the paths, while each new location introduced a new phrase of the song, revealing new moods. In a particular location a character known as The Grizzled Boor would appear and run off, in another location he would appear again but only briefly, and much later he would be seen hiding inside a titanic tree. It was up to the player to investigate inside the tree, a decision that would lead to a combat encounter, which in turn would lead to a moral choice. It was equally valid for the player to ignore The Grizzled Boor and the titanic tree and continue up the path to a hut, where the song resolved itself in a dreamy, hazy drone as dawn broke in the sky above.

It was this prototype that was playable at the Independent Games Festival pavillion at GDC 2010, and while the prototype met with a very positive response, when it was shown to Baiyon he responded a little incredulously, blurting out the exclamatory question "It's Just Walking?"

In truth, it was... or at least, 'just walking' was a core concept for the kind of low-stress, discoverable story-world I had in mind for Sword & Sworcery... however, due in part to the sudden interest in the project we felt a duty to create a more substantial and maybe slightly less experimental videogame experience, so while many of the above-described elements survived in the final release for Sword & Sworcery in Session II, the simplicity and vision of this initial composition did not. While I discreetly mourn the loss of what could have been in this particular case, in the end Sword & Sworcery became precisely what it ought to have been: a strange patchwork quilt of 'just walking' and more traditional adventure mechanics shot through with moments that stir the soul.

In any case, with PROTEUS it is possible to experience a 'just walking' style videogame in its purest form. It presents a world populated by discovereable a/v ideas, a world whose mood changes depending on where you are, what time of day it is, what the weather is up to. In my first proper session with PROTEUS in the summer of 2012 I found myself spell-bound for a day, a night and yet another day... at length, however, I became conscious of an inclination to do something, or to discover something else, for some new concept to be revealed.

Still, the PROTEUS experiment is to me a resounding success, it confidently proves out a great many concepts that are near and dear to me and it has a soul and a vision all its own.

/////////////////// TAKE-AWAYS FOR THE FUTURE

What we'll do that Proteus also did:

pure simplicity from the get-go
absolute discoverability
soundscapes designed for particular spaces & times
soundscapes for particular terrain, velocities
dynamic systems > photo-realistic representations (eg: blocky sprite-based clouds behave like real clouds)
the whitecap wave representation style is along the lines of what I have in mind for surfacing

What we'll do that Proteus didn't do:

motion will have a feel that will evoke skating, carving & gliding
after a day & a night & a day, introduce a new system to deepen the player's engagement
a story concept with characters and a science fiction narrative arc will emerge eventually

Once our concept is further along it may be worthwhile for us to reach out to Ed Key and/or David Kanaga, probably separately, as our efforts might be of interest to them.