War Games - A Review

Anvil, Christopher. War Games. Edited by Eric Flint. Riverdale, NY: Baen Books, 2008. 468 pages. $22.00.

War Games is a collection of stories with a theme, as indicated by the title. And yet, there are more motives here than just stories about war. The collection contains 18 stories, or, more precisely, a novel of about 200 pages and 17 shorter pieces, gathered into six sections. The dates of original publication range from April of 1957 to February of 1982, so even the newest story (“Top Line”) is more than a quarter-century old.

In my review of The Trouble With Aliens, I noted that Mr. Anvil’s fiction was influenced by the Cold War. The first three sections of this book also reveal the importance of that influence. The Peacekeepers’ Problems includes three stories, all with an ironic, or even a sardonic, bent. “Truce By Boomerang” reminds us that peacekeepers are most likely to be successful when they possess some effective means of sanctioning the other, more heavily-armed, parties. “A Rose By Any Other Name …” puts a twist on the old epistemological question of whether we can think about things we have no words for. “The New Member” is a humorous story, eschewing political correctness to lampoon the pretensions of some of the world’s newer countries.

There are four stories in the Washington’s Headaches group, of which “Babel II,” a fable (I think I’m using that word correctly) about the difficulties raised by overspecialization. As technology advances, could we reach the point that various specialist grouping would take on the significance of religious or ethnic groups? “The Trojan Bombardment” is a nice bit of farce. “Problem of Command” relates to some of the same problems raised by “Babel II.” When everything has become too sophisticated to be known, what is the right mix of technical knowledge and judgment to provide a level of understanding sufficient for control?

Moscow’s Dilemmas has the fine story “War Games,” in which the U.S. and the USSR manage to step back from the brink of war by going to … war. The other stories in the section are entertaining.

The Free Enterprise at Work section has four stories, of which “Top Line,” about technological innovation in the face of obsolescence and economic challenges is probably the best. “Gadget vs. Trend” is interesting, and Anvil has a good time making fun of academic views of real life.

The fifth and largest section has only two stories, “Ideological Defeat” and The Steel, the Mist, and the Blazing Sun, the latter of which was first published by Ace Books back in 1980. These are related stories, set in the same post-war (or is it?) world, in which the survivors in North America have been reduced to barbarism, while the remnants of the Soviet empire seem to have retained some of their sophisticated technology.

“Ideological Defeat” serves as an introduction to the novel The Steel, the Mist, and the Blazing Sun, bringing up the main characters, setting up the situation, and working through a conflict to reveal how this world operates. Arakal, the leader of the remnants of the old democratic regimes of North America is a well-drawn character, and the story revolves around his efforts to oppose a Russian invasion of his territory. The author is quite serious about the distinction he makes in the title between ideological defeats and other kinds of setbacks. Again, we see the Cold War influence at work in Anvil’s writing.

However, it is worth noting that “Ideological Defeat” was published in 1972, while The Steel, the Mist, and the Blazing Sun was issued eight years later. And while the novel embodies a confrontation between democratic and totalitarian principles, the purposes of the actors are not quite what you might expect them to be. Moreover, when the truth is revealed about the “war” that caused the destruction of both American and Soviet society, a considerable shift is required in one’s thinking about the roles of the characters one has met.

In fact, it might be fair to say that The Steel, the Mist, and the Blazing Sun is less about the opposition of “conservative” democracies and “radical” totalitarian states, and more about the totalitarians’ and democrats’ differing attitudes toward risk and innovation. Anvil is quite right that change, innovation, is inherently unsettling. This provokes two responses, which I might refer to as the defensive and the exploitative. In this novel, it is the rugged barbarians who see innovation as a means of solving some of their problems and, thus, something to seize upon, while the apparently more sophisticated servants of the security apparatus are actually playing the part of the French aristocracy in 1788.

The final section, Or Peace, has but a single story, “Philosopher’s Stone.” This is a very well-written story, very nicely set up around the problem of time dilation, which explores how a well-run state might encourage innovation. I was very pleased with this story, as it does a better job than many government programs at defining the right kind of incentives to stimulate the desired behavior.

Altogether, War Games is a most enjoyable reading experience. It includes some very good stories, and I was glad to see a book-length work by Christopher Anvil. I was beginning to wonder if he had every tried longer forms. Now I know he has tried the novel form, and that he was quite successful at it. A good collection that will repay the reader’s time and … well, I won’t say effort, because you won’t have to expend much to get through this collection.

Musicophilia - A Review

Sacks, Oliver. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. New York and Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007. xiv + 381 pages. Acknowledgments. Bibliography. Index.

Oliver Sacks is a neurologist who has published many essays on his speciality. A number of these have been collected into books. I read and enjoyed The Man Who Mistook His Wife for His Hat some time ago. Musicophilia pulls together a number of essays with a common, rather broad theme: how the brain affects our hearing and enjoyment of music, and vice versa. It should be noted that Sacks doesn’t deal much in the normal brain, but rather with cases of abnormalities due to disease, trauma, genetic accident, or aging. These cases can be very useful at illuminating normal brain function by showing exactly what happens when something goes wrong.

So, what Sacks provides are case studies of patients with particular problems. Despite the almost mind-numbing number and variety of these cases, Sacks never loses his compassion for these people and their families. This books leaves one with the impression of a kind man who is often frustrated by his inability to help people. His joy at the occasions on which he is able to help, through music therapy or other means, is apparent.

The first story in the book is that of Tony Cicoria, a surgeon who was struck by lightning and acquired an “insatiable desire to listen to piano music.” Cicoria started listening to lots of recorded piano music, then he took up the piano after a hiatus of 30 years. While he has continued to practice as a surgeon, he has become a very accomplished pianist, as indicated by a public performance of Chopin’s B-flat Minor Scherzo, together with a piece of Cicoria’s own composition.

Clive Wearing suffered a herpes encephalitis that left him with a memory span measurable in seconds. This case, with some others Sacks mentions, brings up the very interesting distinction between “episodic” memory and “semantic” memory. Clive can carry on a conversation, or at least appear to do so, because he has in his semantic memory a little repertoire of conversation pieces. But he can remember nothing that happened five minutes ago, and has, in fact, the impression of constantly awaking from a state of unconsciousness.

Like several other people here, Clive remembers quite a bit of music. There is one case of a woman who practiced for days to sing at an event at her hospital, and when led up to sing commented that she wished she’d had some notice. She remembered the song perfectly, but she had no memory of the practice sessions, or even that she had been told of the event in advance.

All this with semantic memory reminds me of something I was told when learning French at the Foreign Service Institute: Learning to speak a language is a physical, not an intellectual, exercise. One can’t think about speaking and carry on a normal conversation. Rather, like a game of catch, a conversation is a series of transactions in which one party “tosses” something, and the other has to “catch” it and return it. This answers for me the question of how people can lose their memories almost completely, through Alzheimer’s or other diseases, strokes, or accidents, and yet they can still speak. I suppose that if I reach the point at which I am unable to recognize my children, I’ll still respond “Good morning, and how are you?” when they say “Hi, Dad.” And, in fact, if they were to say “Bonjour,” I’ll probably answer, “Bonjour.”

Another very interesting article has to do with Williams Syndrome, of which I had not heard until I read this book. Williams Syndrome was identified in the 1960s, and its possessors have, like those with Down Syndrome, a particular look. They also have IQ scores in the 40s and 50s, and their brains are about 20% smaller than those of the average person. Despite this, they are capable of learning complex musical arrangements, and they are eager to perform. One Williams Syndrome person, with an IQ of about 49, is a professional singer of opera and art songs. They are articulate and social, but their spatial relationships and drawing abilities are deficient.

Sacks is a good writer, and these are entertaining, sometimes fascinating stories. He seldom attempts to draw conclusions in the higher realms of epistemology or philosophy. About as far as he goes is to state that every mental condition he’s ever seen has a physical source. But that is very important for those concerned with dualism, the mind-body question, and questions of consciousness. Sacks provides me with many, many instances of how the brain not only provides a general substratum for mental processes, but how relatively minor, and very specific changes to the brain are followed by similarly specific changes to knowledge, skills, attitudes, memory, and perceptions.

(Note: I previously published this review on my Knight's Castle blog. I think Musicophilia has some rather interesting implications for the more philosophical bent of Cafe Third Edition.)