The Sword and Laser discussion

While I do enjoy this book for its characters and ideas, I have no concept of any of what is happening.

Set aside the calendars, math and exotic effects, I don‘t even have an idea of how big the fortress is and how it is supposed to work. Is it more planet-like or is it like a big space shuttle, like the Death Star? How many people live there, how big are the wards, how are they separated? Same goes for the ships. All sizes and distances escape me, I‘m in for the story and characters, but, geez, it‘s hard when all the settings feel like a foggy blur of stuff happening somewhere at some point.

Granted, I‘m a fast reader, so I often read past details and with this book I decided to not dwell too much on missing explanations.

So I wonder, did I miss all these things and they are properly explained or are there other readers out there who have the same problems?

You did not miss them. Although I enjoyed much about the story, that was my main complaint - next to no physical description of the settings. I have zero idea of what the Fortress of Scattered Needles is actually like (just how to bypass its defenses).

It was a different way of storytelling, one that didn’t 100% work for me. Similarly, some of the action took place entirely off-page. Like when we read about an assassin preparing an attempt on that woman’s life, and only know how it turned out thanks to a later passing reference to a “failed assassination attempt” that took place.

Not surprised you have a hard time visualizing, Yoon Ha Lee has aphantasia--he can't visualize things: https://www.patreon.com/posts/on-writ...

Great link, thanks, that explains a lot. Now I wonder if I do have aphantasia as well or at least a mild form. I do have problems visualizing things when reading even when it’s described in detail and while I can‘t stand horror movies I have no problems with horror books.

David wrote: "Not surprised you have a hard time visualizing, Yoon Ha Lee has aphantasia--he can't visualize things: https://www.patreon.com/posts/on-writ..."

Thanks, David. Knowing about Lee’s aphantasia really explains a lot about the prose of this book.

Thanks, David, that was a really cool read - I had no idea!

Wait a second.... if I say to you "visualize an apple" you actually vividly SEE an apple?

Rick wrote: "Wait a second.... if I say to you "visualize an apple" you actually vividly SEE an apple?"

Yes. I saw a gorgeous red apple when you said that, also could sense the smell it would give off, and remember the taste of the last one I had. And the more I think about it, even the feel or the crisp sound it makes when I bite into one. However, it is very dependent on how solidly I have a memory of what you want me to visualize.

I'm guessing from your question, that is not something you sense?

I... really? So if I describe someone fictional... say a tall, Latino male, about 30, maybe a big under 6' with blue eyes and a thin moustache... do you see that? As if it was real?

Because, no, I don't vividly see an apple when I think of one. I know what one looks like and can see an image of the one in my kitchen, kind of. But it's nowhere near as vivid as actually seeing an apple with my eyes.

Rick wrote: "I... really? So if I describe someone fictional... say a tall, Latino male, about 30, maybe a big under 6' with blue eyes and a thin moustache... do you see that? As if it was real?”

Yes.

How do you do map directions? Is it just a list of words with no visual imagery attached to it? There’s no 3D simulation of the terrain in your head?

What about tasks that require putting many objects into a constrained space, like dishes into a cupboard or luggage into a car trunk? Or playing Tetris? Can you visualize how they will go in or is it just trial and error?

Wow, I had never heard of aphantasia before. The book’s style makes slightly more sense now. That link is very interesting, thanks for sharing.

I think I probably have hyperphantasia (if that’s a thing) ie an extremely vivid imagination. I can see (and smell, and imagine the crunch and taste) of that apple as if it’s in front of me, and the tall blue-eyed Latino man as well (minus the crunch). No wonder I didn’t get on that well with NFG.

For me it's not that I don't imagine anything at all, but it's very vague. For example I wouldn't see a fully fleshed out Latino male I would see something roughly person shaped. I would probably see an apple, but more because I know what apples look like and it's easier to imagine an apple than a fictional person.

I sometimes try to imagine characters as movie actors and actresses I know, because again these are actual people that I have seen and therefore can see in my head. It takes up a lot of energy and extra thought process to do that, so I usually don't.

The best example I can give is that I've heard other people saying that characters looked different in their head than they do in the movie (Harry Potter is a good example) and I just didn't have anything to compare it, too. It also seems like physical descriptions are lost on my, probably because I have no use for them and therefore my brain discards them right away.

Hard to explain, but I'm glad I'm not the only one. It always feels that there is something important missing that other people just take for granted.

Trike wrote: "How do you do map directions? Is it just a list of words with no visual imagery attached to it? There’s no 3D simulation of the terrain in your head?”

3D simulation? What, no! What is this, brain wizardry?

This has the potential to become quite an interesting discussion -so let me throw in a few extra items.
My wife and I noticed a long time ago that she thinks in words , I think in diagrams and pictures. She does crosswords (serious cryptic ones!), I do number problems . . . but its not that simple, because when she does maths it is with numbers, but I convert maths to graphs.
Then about 10 years ago we met someone who explained to us about prosopagnosia (face blindness). My wife has a medium dose of this. People who have it seriously just don't recognise other people. You will see them at conferences, constantly peering at other people's name tags - and in a group of five people standing around with coffee, if the one with serious prosopagnosia does a twirl (e.g. showing off a new dress) she has a noticeably less than 100% chance of talking to the same person when she turns back (forgive the gender bias, but all the prosopgnosia cases I know of are female - I have no reason to believe that is a fair assessment). Difficulties with maps are also associated with this - my wife can read a map as well as I can (we both have degrees requiring this skill!) - but every time she looks up she must leave her finger marking where we are, because otherwise she must find our location again from scratch. And she has very limited visual memory for locations.
I, on the other hand, try (with a reasonable level of success) to carry a map in my head - its better than using a SatNav! Driving, I remember the appearance of a road and junction - but I can't remember street names. You can imagine the conflicts - she says "Turn left at Ewesley Road", I say "Is that the one going uphill with the post box on the right-hand corner and the camber running to the right?" and we find little common ground. I also have a fairly good memory for faces . . but can't put names or contexts to them. That awkward moment - "I know you from somewhere . . ." "Yes, we meet every morning walking the dogs, but I haven't got mine with me at the moment"
So: to what extent are aphantasia and prosopagnosia related? Any experts out there? And anyone else got any relevant stories?

Yeah, I'd say visually I am somewhere in the middle, so I can see the apple, because apples are very familiar, and I get an impression of a latino male, but mostly with that one my mind is grasping for famous people who fit that description and I'll see the bits described as parts, but not a whole - it's like Frankenstein's latino. Probably why I have no worries about the visuals in this book. I get images which are sometimes super clear, and, as I mentioned in another thread, anime-like, but I don't need super clear descriptions be be a part of my enjoyment. Also, going back to that apple, I can taste it and it is so good! Someone get me an apple!

For me when reading books, I find that it's more of a ... placeholder, like "oh, okay, Dresden is talking over here, and Murphy is to his right, and then the bad guys come." But I'm not visualizing Dresden with his exact description or Murphy either (though I know Dresden is much taller), just rough approximations of the scene itself.

I *can* visualize better, but not at my usual reading speed.

Jessica wrote: "You did not miss them. Although I enjoyed much about the story, that was my main complaint - next to no physical description of the settings. I have zero idea of what the Fortress of Scattered Need..."

That explains it ...

Thanks!

I too had never heard of aphantasia. That really puts this book into perspective. I totally visualize everything in my head when I'm reading, like a little movie. I just can't imagine not being able to do that.

I'm pretty sure I don't visualize things in my head. If you tell me to think about something I describe it with words or think about something I know looks like the thing, but I still don't see it.

For example, if you told me to visualize mountains, I'd either think about drawing upside-down-triangles with squiggles of snow on the top, or think about the fact that one of my credit cards has mountains on the front and the sky is blue and the mountains are gray. But I can't see it. I just know these as "mountain facts".

**EDIT** So yeah, I didn't have any issues with the amount or type of description in NG.

Misti wrote: "I too had never heard of aphantasia. That really puts this book into perspective. I totally visualize everything in my head when I'm reading, like a little movie. I just can't imagine not being able to do that...."

At first it seemed to me that not visualizing things would be like being deaf — missing out on so much! But then I remembered the decades where I could barely get through any novel because I was OVER-visualizing everything and trying to figure out how I would film the scene, which meant I was also adding a camera and lights and sound equipment and whether it needed a matte or bluescreen or rear projection or, or, or... argh.

I had to train myself to stop doing that, because it was getting in the way of the story. So in that sense I was being overwhelmed by the mental images, as if I were next to a construction site in a big city during rush hour. A little deafness might be nice in that instance.

Trike wrote: "But then I remembered the decades where I could barely get through any novel because I was OVER-visualizing everything and trying to figure out how I would film the scene, which meant I was also adding a camera and lights and sound equipment and whether it needed a matte or bluescreen or rear projection or, or, or... argh."

Frankly, this sounds exhausting.

Trike wrote: "Yes.

How do you do map directions? Is it just a list of words with no visual imagery attached to it? There’s no 3D simulation of the terrain in your head?

What about tasks that require putting many objects into a constrained space, like dishes into a cupboard or luggage into a car trunk? Or playing Tetris? Can you visualize how they will go in or is it just trial and error? ”

..."
Well shit... I don't see that at all, not in the same way that I see something with my eyes. I mean, I can very vaguely know that those things look like but even if I close my eyes I don't *see* them appear as if they were in front of me.

Directions - This might explain why I have a crap sense of direction. If I've been down a road before I can visualize that a bit and obviously I recognize it as I approach a corner etc, but if you tell me 'turn right at the Shell station' I don't see it in my mind really. It's hard to explain. I kind of see the Shell sign etc but it's very much a flicker of an image vs anything that I could compare to actually seeing that sign.

The other stuff... I don't really visualize those. That is, I don't pre-plan how I'll put things away. When I look at the things and the space into which they need to fit I can easily do that efficiently but that's different than seeing something that is only in my head. I can look at, say, luggage and know that it won't fit in a given car trunk but I don't imagine the pieces arranged in the trunk. Tetris etc is the same. I can see the game and so can easily say to myself "Oh this needs to go here..."

Basically, I can vaguely call to mind images of things I've seen and very vaguely construct an image of someone fictional but it's *nothing* like actual sight, not even close.

The funny thing is that I'm excellent at pattern recognition, esp given sparse data. Just... not visual imagination.

Rick, I'm curious about how dreams are for you. Are you visual then, or something else? I have a hard time building a clear picture in my mind when awake, but my dreams are vivid.

Dreams are very vivid. I've had dreams where, on waking, I'm unsure if that was a dream until I wake fully and occasionally dreams that are so vivid that they provoke strong emotional reactions when I wake up. I don't often recall my dream for very long on waking but I think that's relatively common. Maybe.

From what I read about aphantasia, it only affects conscious attempts at visualizations, not dreams.

This is from the Wikipedia article regarding a study: „In the same paper, it was identified that aphantasia characterizes only voluntary visualizations; the aphantasiacs were still able to have involuntary visualizations (i.e. dreams).“

What do you mean Rick you don't recall your dreams for very long, everyone else does. ;-)

Just joking, learning of one difference is enough for today. I think it is exactly the opposite where those that can remember their vivid dreams for a long time are the special ones. Although, I have heard you can train yourself to be better at it. And of course there is the old writing it down just after you wake up trick.

Anne wrote: "aphantasiacs were still able to have involuntary visualizations (i.e. dreams

I wonder if there is some cross over here then. If I try to build an image in my head, for example, if I read a character description then attempt to build, in my mind, a picture of what they look like, it is really hard to get anything beyond vague, blurry snapshots, nothing like actually seeing, but the images I do get when engrossed in a book, images I don't always realise I am seeing, form, unbidden, of their own accord.

We are all on a spectrum of visualisation. From bad to good.
I'm a reasonable visualiser. But for some things I do think in abstracts. I don't normally put faces on characters in books, unless I've seen the movie version first.

Even when viewing something with our eyes, what we see is how our brain interprets that input. Which is why we all experience visual Pareidolia. Seeing things that aren't there. (Shapes in the shadows, ghosts, etc) or seeing Jesus/Mary on toast, in clouds, paint blobs etc.

It's why eye witness accounts are the least reliable of evidence used in trials. We see what our brain interprets and the further away from the events, the less reliable our memory becomes and the more open to outside influence. Even to the point of remembering details that didn't happen. We all have false memories.

John (Nevets) wrote: "What do you mean Rick you don't recall your dreams for very long, everyone else does. ;-)
..."

NOOOOO.... :)

Think visual.

https://youtu.be/wTBzovQFAtM

Like a few others said, I too can visualize an approximation of Latino man or, more clearly, an apple--but no, it's nowhere near as clear as actually seeing with your eyes.

I too see a movie in my head when I read a novel. I can't imagine not putting faces to the characters!

And LOL at Frankenstein's Latino.

It was not a bad book, but it was not a good one for me either. His ideas were different, but unsure whether it was Science, telepathy, magic or something else. Not for me.

Phil wrote: "His ideas were different, but unsure whether it was Science, telepathy, magic or something else."

Why does that matter? This keeps coming up and it's a shallow, banal criticism. Why is it at all important if it's 'magic' or a different reality from ours with different rules?

I'm not attacking you per se, Phil, you just spurred this because several others have brought it up as if it's an important point and I can't see why it is. I'm NOT saying that people who didn't like the book are shallow, etc. You can certainly criticize it on plot, world building characters etc. But to say, essentially, "I can't fit this into a neat slot in my subgenre scheme, so it's not good" seems a silly way to dismiss a book.

I read this topic before I started the book, so I've been on a bit of lookout, but this is the first real physical description of the Fortress that I've noticed so far:

"It resembled a swollen moon with six underground chambers, each holding 40,000 to 60,000 people, each differently structured. Defensive ribs held the Fortress together."

It is on page 73 (of 317), and that is its entirety. This is after the Fortress has already been mentioned many times, as well as become the central focus of our characters. The description itself is just used to transition the scene back to Cheris and Jedao after a section of unrelated text.

This is just an example, but it really does make it clear that providing detailed description is just not this author's focus at all. It certainly is an unusual way of writing sci-fi, a genre which tends to have more details and explanations simply because of the prevalence of things that don't exist in our world and therefore need explaining. I would guess that Lee's aphantasia has a lot to do with this, but you could almost call this style of science fiction 'heretical'...

Regardless, this surprisingly hasn't bothered me personally and I am enjoying the book so far, despite the slightly unusual style.

Rick wrote: "Phil wrote: "His ideas were different, but unsure whether it was Science, telepathy, magic or something else."

Why does that matter? This keeps coming up and it's a shallow, banal criticism. Why is it at all important if it's 'magic' or a different reality from ours with different rules?"

Phil isn’t saying it’s bad because its magic, he’s saying it wasn’t for him because he was unsure of what it was. Maybe you like that vagueness. A lot of capital-L Literature that employs SFF tropes engages in that sort of vagueness, and if that’s your style, that’s fine. But not liking a story BECAUSE it is vague and refuses to choose a lane is just as valid.

You keep acting like those who don’t like this book spanked your kid. That is what’s truly silly.

Rick wrote: "Phil wrote: "His ideas were different, but unsure whether it was Science, telepathy, magic or something else."

Why does that matter? This keeps coming up and it's a shallow, banal criticism. Why i..."

I didn't get that Phil was trying to classify the book into a sub-genre from his comment. I thought he was going through the same thing a lot of others did and that was trying to understand and classify the mechanics of how the calendrical system worked and not being able to put it into a framework had some affect on his enjoyment of the book. The same thing happened to me until I just decided not to worry about it but until I did I was not enjoying the book as much. Anyway that's how I interpreted his comment.

Rick wrote: "Phil wrote: "His ideas were different, but unsure whether it was Science, telepathy, magic or something else."

Why does that matter? This keeps coming up and it's a shallow, banal criticism. Why i..."

No i wasn't trying to classify it, I just felt the author relied upon something he could not explain as a plot device. For me it weakened the storytelling. There was some good stuff in the book, but overall not as brilliant for me as many others found it.

FWIW I had an odd reaction to this book. I didn't particularly like it, but it was good enough to want to read the other two. Yet as I read another book, I keep flashing back to this one. It's compelling if not a particularly interesting read, if that makes any sense.

John (Taloni) wrote: "FWIW I had an odd reaction to this book. I didn't particularly like it, but it was good enough to want to read the other two. Yet as I read another book, I keep flashing back to this one. It's comp..."

Sure. It’s like seeing a crazy person ranting on the street. You can’t look away but you don’t want to invite them over to your house for dinner.

David wrote: "Not surprised you have a hard time visualizing, Yoon Ha Lee has aphantasia--he can't visualize things: https://www.patreon.com/posts/on-writ..."

I first came across this issue a few years ago when I read an article by one of the founders of Mozilla, Blake Ross, on how he was "Blind in his mind" as he put it.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-...

This was nightmare-horrific to me.

I would just like to say that people have told me I’m just weird or making things up but I’m honest when I say that I'm at the other extreme, and that while I am glad that I do not have aphantasia myself, being at the other end can have it’s problems. If a book is even slightly good, two sentences in I'm utterly blind to the world around me - I'm 100% in the scene. My brain fills in the gaps - we're talking 3D smellivision.

If the book is gripping I'll have moments of honest confusion as a person speaking to me will seemingly materialise on whatever planet I'm on at that time. It actually can take a few seconds to "shift gears". I'm not exaggerating - the shift from book-world to real world actually happens piecemeal, imagine sections of the real and fictional world overlapping even as I turn my head and look around. I used to think this was normal until people told me I was crazy.

If I’m really invested I can even have issues remembering where I am and that I’m not really orbiting a distant sun, or lost somewhere in the pliocene.

On the up-side this means that switching to an ereader wasn’t a challenge, I genuinely don’t see the book so the format isn’t that big a deal.

On the other hand, while I consider myself lucky enough to have the closest thing to a Holodeck currently available, I've learnt to be careful. I once went on a major Pern marathon while in college and ended up seriously sunk into the world, extreme even for me ... in the college common room. The people around me started to get freaked out about how oblivious I was to everything, (apparently they were shouting my name for some time) and they ended up throwing a glass of water over my head. Unfortunately this materialised in my “Holodeck”, utterly confused me, and then my addled brain interpreted it as “Thread” (think: acid rain from hell), at which point I rolled under the chair screaming . Please try to understand that in that moment I really thought it was real. This took some time to live down.

I’ve since learnt to limit my reading sessions – especially in public.

(btw. If anyone will understand this I guess it'll be S&L readers, but still, please be kind)

William wrote: "On the other hand, while I consider myself lucky enough to have the closest thing to a Holodeck currently available, I've learnt to be careful."

Wow, and I thought *I* had a vivid imagination!

This whole topic is really interesting as I think most of us tend to assume our level of phantasia is “normal” but actually (as with everything else) there’s a huge variation across different people.

William, I can't say that, visually, I can relate, because my visuals are more fragmented than you describe, but in terms of immersion, I understand. For me, it's less that I am seeing another world than that the real world goes dark. For this reason, I have trouble reading in public, since I find it difficult, from a safety point of view, to let go that much. Safety aside, there is also the embarrassment factor. I can recall times at school when I would be oblivious to people laughing at me while I sat, zombie-like, staring at the book in my hand, sometimes not even turning the page because my brain had taken some flight of fancy, which doesn't help combat the 'Ruth is an idiot' rhetoric. I read best in my room, where no one can see me staring, slack-jawed and moronic, at one page for too long.

Regarding visuals in terms of this book, somehow, perhaps because my brain sees fragments rather than a whole, this book is actually working really well for me. I can never really 'see' large landscapes or such, so issues of these kinds of details and scale aren't a problem, but this book has a number of quick images that really grab me. One, particularly graphic, example that I noticed last night is "A lot of blood and stray body parts, too, like a human jigsaw upended". To say the author cannot visualise, he paints quite a picture.

I think one thing positive we can take away from this discussion is: We all enjoy different things in our reading and read in our own way. In turn this allows us to discuss our books and share opinions. There may be a book I dislike that you love or vice versa, but that does not make either opinion less valid.

Yeah I'm finding this an interesting discussion. I really enjoyed these books, and I absolutely don't develop visuals while reading. The threads where people ask "what actors did you envision as these characters" seem insane to me. There's no mental picture that forms while i'm reading.

Brendan wrote: "The threads where people ask "what actors did you envision as these characters" seem insane to me."

Brendan casts Lord of the Rings:
👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤

Brendan casts The Magnificent Seven:
👤👤👤👤👤👤👤

Brendan casts The Shining:
👤👤👤👥👤

Trike wrote: "Brendan wrote: "The threads where people ask "what actors did you envision as these characters" seem insane to me."

Brendan casts Lord of the Rings:
👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤

Brendan casts The Magnificent Seven:..."

Considering we know that Brendan could not pick those actors based solely on their looks, we should probably then assume he picked them based entirely on some other factor, right?

Perhaps something like... acting ability?

Ruth (tilltab) Ashworth wrote: "...this book has a number of quick images that really grab me..."

I was noticing this too, and because we’ve been discussing things like visualization and his aphantasia and how it all relates to his writing style, I was thinking this was basically just another example of that. Then it hit me. These quick images are actually him inserting snippets of poetry into his novel. I just googled it and sure enough, Yoon Ha Lee is very much a poet. He pretty much has more published poetry than longform pieces. Now I'm not at all suggesting he literally copy-pasted lines from other work, but this explains NG a lot for me.

https://www.yoonhalee.com/?page_id=318

This is all so fascinating and explains a lot about why I'm not able to call up pictures of people's faces in my brain until I've looked at them a lot. I'm realized I can't "make" a visualization....I appear to have to pull an image from a catalogue of memories. I also have a hard time "saving" those images if I'm experiencing intense emotion, so I've actually had times in the past when I couldn't picture the face of the guy that I had just started dating.

There's a new post up at Tor.com which deals with what we see when we read a book. The comments are very like those in this thread with visualization grades ranging from "I see a movie" to "I see nothing at all".

https://www.tor.com/2019/02/13/how-do...