People often say that travel in SF and Fantasy in general, but FTL travel in SF in particular, move "at the speed of plot" - getting people from one destination to another in exactly the right amount of time for whatever the story requires in terms of pacing. Nothing is worked out on the basis of scientific principle or even plain common sense. It's all just what's necessary for what needs to happen in the plot. If it needs to take ages to get from X to Y, it takes ages. If it needs to happen quickly, it happens quickly. If the characters need to arrive just in time, they do. If they need to arrive just too late, that's what happens.
This is undoubtedly true, and you can also extend it across other dimensions: size and scale.
I was thinking about while reading The Founding by Dan Abnett, a Warhammer 40k novel. I pick this example not because it is particularly egregious or unusual but because it is the opposite - a very ordinary instance of the way in which size and scale operate at the level of story rather than what might be realistic.
The opening section sees the action unfold in a battle on a planet whose population, we are told, is in the tens of billions - the tens of billions - which makes sense given that it is a densely populated industrialized world in the far future. War has been going on here for some time, so one would expect a reduction in population, but later on we are explicitly told that a single region of hills still houses a billion people.
But the action takes place at a scale which is, in that context, absurdly small: the absolute fulcrum of not just the entire battle, but the war on that planet - its Kursk, its Midway, its Amiens, its Gettysburg - unfolds on the scale of a couple of thousand men and about a hundred armoured fighting vehicles. (And it's important to emphasise that this is not just because Our Heroes manage to achieve the destruction of some vital MacGuffin which the enemies are using; the entire conventional action itself - the exploitation of a gap in "the lines" by a single armoured column - is thought of by the top General in charge of the entire campaign as the moment that will win the war.)
It's necessary to do this, because it's really difficult to write an exciting action novel about adventurous derring-do in which the actions of the characters can be felt to be decisive in a war in which there are presumably billions of combatants, unless you treat scale as being what's necessary for the plot, rather than what makes actual sense given what we know. (Or if you simply abandon any design on the actions of the soldier characters meaning much beyond survival or, say, acting in some moral and limited way to rescue civilians or whatever.)
Another scene. Later on in the novel, an assault takes place against an entire planet which is described as being not much more than the size of a moon. Here, the whole invasion force is counted at 50,000 men and, once again, the major action is fought by a unit of about 2,000. For the conquest of an entire world this is - which, even if it is not much bigger than our Moon would still make it comfortably bigger in landmass than Australia. Again, this is necessary for the purposes of the plot, which requires the unit in question to be at the apex of the conquest for reasons I won't go into to avoid spoilers, but it does not really reflect what would surely be the case given the factual circumstances.
It would be entirely possible to write a novel which treated the size and scale of intergalactic war in a more realistic way, of course, but if seeking to do it would not be a book about a group of soldiers actually affecting much at all.
It's perhaps reasonable to point out that Warhammer 40k books are a special case, because there's a strong incentive for authors to scale down operations to fit the skirmish-scale of the actual wargame and make it seem possible for conflicts of that size to actually matter in the grand scheme of things. But SF in general tends to operate the same way - think of Star Wars, where the fate of the rebellion hangs on what seems to be in the region of a hundred space fighters on one side and just the Death Star on the other. (Return of the Jedi isn't all that much more realistic in terms of scale.) In those circumstances of course logistics plays a factor as well - the special effects budget could only stretch so far after all - but the same will be true for most warfare in any SF novel or film you could think of.
And it's not just warfare, of course. SF in general - visual SF more than literary, of course - is highly reductive of the kind of complexity which would surely be implied by the circumstances. Klingons all speak Klingon and there is one Klingon Empire. Romulans all speak Romulan and there is one Romulan Empire. Cardassians all speak Cardassian and there is one Cardassian Empire. There aren't different Klingon ethnicities, different Klingon languages, or different Klingon Empires. Diversity sometimes exists for the fun of it as in Mos Eisley or on Ten-Forward where there are guys with blue skin and four arms playing craps against women with snakes for hair or whatever. But that's the extent of it. The stories necessitate keeping things simple for the audience: the size of the interstellar space, with all that implies, has to be squeezed down to fit the demands of narrative. (This is even more true of geography: Hoth is an ice planet, Tatooine is a desert planet, Endor is a jungle planet: what's Earth - that rare water/desert/ice/jungle/mountains/tundra/forest planet?)
I wonder if it is possible for somebody to prove that this is received wisdom, and write a book about intergalactic war which takes seriously the finance and logistics of conflict across the stars - or a book about exploring the galaxy in which other planets are as culturally and geographically diverse as Earth. Those books might not work, but they would certainly be different.
A related concept, which I've discussed here and there, is the *elastic formidableness of foes*. This crops up a lot in epics, where almost everybody's a mighty warrior, but some are peculiarly vulnerable to others for purposes of plot.
ReplyDeleteBut it's also quite pronounced in Tolkien. The best example comes from the uruks. On the one hand, they're fierce, strong, fast, heavily armoured, effective archers and well disciplined. On the other, they get slaughtered in their droves by Men at Helms Deep and the Pelennor Fields - and they're small: Gimli finds them easier to fight than the taller Dunlendings (during a scene that's a bit like the 40K thing you describe above, with a handful of fighters making a huge difference).
For that reason, it's almost impossible to fix the uruks in gaming terms: they appear formidable up close (e.g. in Moria) but if you extrapolate that to massed-battle situation with thousands upon thousands of them, a wargame would be very one-sided with no chance of replicating the outcome in the book.
That's why most people who write wargame rules for Middle Earth fudge things by creating a three-tier hierarchy of orcs that doesn't seem to exist in the texts, where there have been *whole armies* of uruks issuing from Mordor for hundreds of years. In Hordes of the Things terms, uruks are "warband" (fast fierce infantry) close up but "hordes" (ineffective but endlessly appearing infantry) when the story demands them to be.
I'd say something different is happening here - combat heroes approach demigodhood.
DeleteI think the "small numbers of warriors making a big difference" motif does make more sense in a pitched dark ages/medieval sort of battle.
DeleteI think the films are guiltier than the books. In the books I'm pretty sure uruks are just described as being man-sized and big in relation to other orcs, whereas in the films they are actually much bigger than the average human.
I think there's more of plot-required shift here than simple combat demigodhood. The uruk in Moria can knock over Boromir and swat Aragorn aside before spearing Frodo. But at Amon Hen, Boromir puts up much stiffer resistance. And by the time we get to Helm's Deep, the massed uruks are being carved up like so much kindling by Gimli and co. And then at the Pelennor, they're just faceless masses.
DeleteOr to put it another way, one uruk is a threat to Aragorn in Moria in a way that tens of thousands aren't on the Pelennor. That's why almost every RPG or wargame adaptation insists that the forces of Mordor and even Isengard must predominately be made up of lesser orcs, when the books imply the opposite: until Mordor is emptied for the assumed final triumph, the big fighting orcs do the fighting (see the Mordor tracker's complaint to his uruk companion).
The films are definitely guiltier, though: I don't think their orc fights make much visual sense at all. And yes, the uruks are *smaller* than Men in the book: it's the half-orcs that are "man-high". The two are somewhat clumsily combined in the films.
Another way of looking at it is that uruks are dangerous in the "novel" sections of the book (e.g. Moria) but much less so in the "epic" sequences (Helm's Deep, the Pelennor). I think that's an unusual species of "speed of plot" - with an internal genre shift requiring the heroes to become grander and the villains less dangerous.
I think you are not completely right.
DeleteIn Moria Aragorn and Boromir still "slew many" orcs. You can say that this were goblins, not uruks, but they were battle-goblins nevertheless, and I do not think they were much weaker then uruks from Isengard or Mordor.
And the orc in Moria, who speared Frodo, was not just uruk, but "orc-chieftain", orcish hero, such as Uglúk or Shagrat (or Lurtz in the film). It is as strange to measure combat efficiency of all uruks by him, as to measure efficiency of all gondorian warriors by Boromir.
What about battles at Helms Deep and the Pelennor Fields, Aragorn did not fight in them alone. He might kill tens of orcs in each battle (like Gimli and Legolas), maybe even about hundred, but not tens of thousands.
Yep, and Boromir also killed, if I remember, 200 or so orcs of different kinds at the beginning of The Two Towers? So killing lots of them at Pelennor of Helm's Deep doesn't seem all that strange.
DeleteI do not know, where you found 200 slain by Boromir. I do not find precise numbers - there were "many orcs slain", some of them were from Mordor, some - from Misty Mountains and four - from Isengard. So, I can guess, "many" is about ten or fifteen.
DeleteAnd the total number of orcs in this band was (by the words of Pippin) "a hundred ... at least". Then there are more precise numbers - "over a hundred" of mountain orcs, "four score" (80) Isengarders and "couple of score" (40) Mordor orcs, which came as reinforcements - so yes, Boromir was fighting alone against about 200 orcs, and this turned bad for him. And 120 Rohirrim killed this 220 orcs (plus some more, which came with Mauhur) - but lost 15 riders.
I think we can estimate the strength of orcs in LotR from these numbers.
Well, in the Chamber of Mazarbul, six of the Fellowship kill 13 orcs (the "many" killed by Boromir and Aragorn are among those). Most of those are indeed presumably smaller orcs (uruks *are* goblins, remember - they're explicitly described as such on more than one occasion). And Boromir kills "many" orcs including four Isengarders at Amon Hen; I think Anton's right to parse that as in double figures but not that many.
DeleteBut I'd still maintain that the relative threat of an orc shrinks as the book moves into epic territory. By the time you get to Gimil killing 42 at Helm's Deep, we've clearly moved beyond the plausibilities of a single night's axe-wielding into high epic.
Now, I'm not criticising Tolkien for this in the slightest. In fact, I think it's a very effective technique, and I really like the way the book moves between novelistic sections (bits with hobbits and orcs close-up, in the main) and epic segments (those with the 'high' heroes and major baddies). The Moria sequence is a peerless bit of tense action writing (rather squandered in the film once the orcs break in, I reckon), and that wouldn't work if the heroes were able to slaughter orcs endlessly as they can do in later sections.
And yes, the "huge" orc chieftain is (presumably) the biggest individual uruk we encounter in the books. But he's shorter than a man and can't be much bigger than the "hugest orcs" massed outside the Hornburg - among whom there are doubtless many chieftains/captains of the Ugluk sort.
So, when it comes to estimating the strength of orcs - or statting them up for games - I think we're onto a loser from the start. We know that whole armies are composed of uruks ("black orcs of great strength"), and that an individual uruk is remarkably strong: think of how Grishnakh can run with a hobbit clamped under each arm; hobbits may be child-sized, but they're a good deal portlier, I imagine; and orcish mail and weapons are more than once described as "heavy". And we know that they've got superhuman endurance - "trained to move at great speed for long distances"; "they do not tire". We also know that they're fairly disciplined and brave. Against that, they're small in stature (not great against shieldwalls, according to JRRT in UT) - but they're effectively super-fast, untiring heavy infantry equipped with bows.
And yet ... stat them up for a wargame or RPG like that and the orcs will beat the good guys every time. To game the Pelennor Fields, you have to make the orcs less formidable than they appear close up in the books. So the superhuman strength and endurance go out the window, and they become the cannon fodder that they appear to be in the "epic" sequences of the book. It's a feature of the book, not a bug - but it does become a bit of a bugbear in gaming terms.
(Incidentally, I think the Rohirrim mopping up the orc-raid is one of the more realistic sequences; the horse-archers pick off many of the orcs, cause the smaller ones to route and then mop them up. The bigger ones try to break for the forest and do manage to fight their way through the horsemen at first, but then get overwhelmed.)
I think the numbers kind of make my point on their own, actually:
Mazarbul - six heroes kill 13 orcs (+1 very big chieftain); Amon Hen - one hero kills a fair few orcs (20ish?), including 4 big ones; Helm's Deep - Gimli kills 42 of the biggest orcs. And by the time we get to the Pelennor, no one's counting any more!
Sci-fi writers should never be allowed anywhere near numbers.
ReplyDeleteNot that fantasy writers are much better. 90% of the time, you can take any number of years and remove one zero, and you will get something much more plausible. People just don't realize than ten thousand years is all of human history from the first settlements to the present.
The best example that pops to my mind of doing things "right" is Legend of the Galactic Heroes, since the story operates with characters on the "strategic" level. You can't take out a cruiser without a hundred people dying horribly, and losses in battle reach into the millions easily enough. Tactics matter, but so do logistics; politics is a constant thorn in the back. The near-uniformity of language is explained pretty heavily, and the small population sizes of planets (in the Empire at least) at least has a reason to it. Plus, no arbitrary themes. Of course, the nature of the story also means there's not much room for cultural exploration.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I think that sci-fi stories that focus on the "small" scale tend to be more consistent. Firefly and other "space western" stories tend to do this fairly well, albeit with regards to the "distance" component, where they tend not to even mention things unless absolutely required.
Really, though, I think the scale comes down to the demands of the fiction. If you're writing stories about admirals, it's easy to keep things on the bigger picture. If it's about a specific company of men, then things change a lot, for the sake of keeping it all "engaging".
Trying to think of counter examples:
ReplyDelete-The Demon Princes by Vance. Really gives space a sense of vastness. For example it's a plot point that to hide your base on a random planet you just have to...hide your base on a random planet since the haystack is so big that nobody will ever find the needle.
-The Stone City by George R.R. Martin (surprisingly enough considering his "throw a big number at it and not worry about the details" approach to world building in ASoIaF) in which the humans have an incredibly fast space ship but space is so big and there are so many alien races.
-The Dragon Never Sleeps by Cook for the sheer scale of the space battles. In a lot of them the action centers around a relative handful of spaceships but the spaceships are incredibly huge and powerful, think fleets of Death Stars. Also bonus points for having humanity being the decadent and declining hegemonic race instead of the scappy underdogs.
Getting this sort of thing right matters to me (or at least not giving me numbers that don't make sense) since if EVERYTHING is happening "because plot" then the only way to predict what's going to happen next is to think of things in terms of narrative logic which takes you right out of the story. It's like those indie games in which your PC runs into two dozen guys about to shoot you with automatic rifles, it's hard to give a shit when you know that the weapons are just flavor and don't do any more damage than punches and the mook rules are in effect so you probably won't get any more than your hair tousled a bit.
It matters to me as well - will check out The Dragon Never Sleeps. Sounds interesting.
DeleteIt reads really differently than most Cook books. Much more dense. There was some miscommunication with his publisher and he thought they only wanted a standalone book instead of a series so he jammed a trilogy worth of plot into one book. Feels really parallel to 40k in a lot of ways and a great read if you can enjoy the 100 pounds of plot in a 50 pound bag aspects.
DeleteAlso some incredible battle scenes.
First, your blog is one of my favorites these days. Thank you for the consistently interesting reading. :)
ReplyDeleteSecond, I fear the 40k franchise is woefully abused by its owners considering the themes it has to work with. But they do have minis to sell while there's still a market for the things.
Third, total agreement. Love to see something along those lines, but I suspect it's hard to break the grip Herodotus has on the Western concept of grand epics. They must always turn on the clever thinking of a small group of heroes rather than the boring matters of economics and the grinding battle of attrition.
Thanks for saying!
DeleteCheck out Consider Phlebas in"The Culture" series by Banks which deals in warfare of galactic scale involving billions of people.
ReplyDeleteBillions die. It takes centuries to end in victory for one side. Entire planets full of sentient beings are destroyed left and right (though mostly 'offscreen'). Small characters matter in the way that the book is mostly about a MacGuffin, in that the humans are trying to prevent the aliens from recovering just one of their advanced AI processors which could lead to a turning point by eroding their technological advantage.
Another decent series that deals in large scale warfare is Revelation Space, by Alastair Reynolds. It is a very baroque and grimdark future but in a Fermi-Paradox way rather than just trying to be edgy. In these books, ships will battle while they are thousands of miles away from each other and their 'projectiles' might take years to actually arrive on target. The galaxy is vast yet populated by humans who are extremely diverse as travel takes so long that it is inevitable that they diverge due to isolation.
My big pet peeve about writers for books/games/movies is that everyone throws around words like 'battallion/regiment/division/' without any idea that these words mean things other than 'group of armed dudes' which is the size the plot requires it to be.
I've read some Alastair Reynolds books but not those ones. Will have to get around to it sooner or later.
DeleteI enjoy stories the most when authors prop up something outlandish, then manage to build a believable case for it. In the 40K book you mention I'd be intrigued if the story even dived a tiny bit into the logistics of such an immense population, but I am probably in a minority. It's mostly when the author proposes something outlandish then doesn't add a dash of verisimilitude that it becomes a problem.
ReplyDeleteOn the Klingon/Romulan/monculture situation, I always felt like that was a author-shorthand for "we know this is not realistic, but we only have 45 minutes to tell this story." Also...point earlier being that for most people, it's probably a non-issue if the story doesn't slow down to explain that there are other Klingon cultures and languages, so for purposes of tale telling these things get delegated to the niche corners of the IP, if at all.
Like trollsmyth says though, you've been writing some great and thought provoking posts! I'm always looking forward to them.
Yes, the idea of fighting a conventional war in which there are potentially billions of solders involved is really kind of interesting - you could take 40k in a very different direction with a bit of imagination.
DeleteThis sounds like a particularly interesting book, "a book about exploring the galaxy in which other planets are as culturally and geographically diverse as Earth"
ReplyDeleteThis, "a book about intergalactic war which takes seriously the finance and logistics of conflict across the stars", really does not. At least not to me. I may be alone in this but an epic tale of fiscal reports and defense budgets just doesn't get the blood pumping.
That, in and of itself, may be why we don't see it. Those viewing novel submissions may well be receiving a dozen manuscripts a day about how bureaucrats and accountants control the fates of billions of sophonts; I'd wager their office garbage pails are full of them. It's a fascinating idea but a very hard sell to large scale book retailers. The audience is considerably more niche.
It's not necessary for a book to be ABOUT finance and logistics for those things to MATTER in the story.
DeleteFor example: "Alright men, this far out on the asshole of nowhere the sister-fucking locals use bits of dead tree for money Confederation bank notes are being shipped in to pay them. They're already a month late since it's a bitch to ship anything out here and we think we know the route the shipment will take. The plan is to either blow it up to keep the enemy grunt from being paid for send some sneaky bastards in to get some kind of contact poison onto the money. Here's the plan..."
What David said. I'm not making a plea for novels about logistics. The point is that dealing with those issues could be made into exciting and interesting plot points.
DeleteThe irony being that a kafkaesque story about a plucky unit of soldiers fighting and dying only to find that their epic offensive was just one of a hundred meaningless red herrings to hide the actual decisive thrust would suit the setting much better. Oh well.
ReplyDelete