The Sword and Laser discussion

A Memory Called Empire finally came in off library hold. I'm at about the 12% mark right now. I've read some of the threads but not all. Feel free to come by and discuss to the point where I've read! I'll post updates as I go.

Okay, to this point: I can really see the comparison to the Aztec empire. The -atl construction made me flash on "Quetzcoatl" and the physical descriptions fit what I know of the populace. China fits as well with the emphasis on poetry and erudition, as well as status based on closeness to the emperor. Am not feeling Byzantium yet but we'll see as the book continues.

At first I thought the MC was an ambassador *from* the Teixcalaanli empire, not *to* it. The reality came out in, of all things, a language lesson on level of formality. A great way for this particular data dump! That's a concept that will make sense to any native English speaker who studied a European language. And maybe others as well, but my experience is in French and German. It made me flash on a French girlfriend I had in high school who had to remind me to use the "Tu" form with her since in class we mostly used "Vous."

The book took us out of everyday life and into the weird pretty fast. For me that shows a level of accomplishment for a genre book. I wanna see what's different to normal life and see it fast. That's one of the reasons I read SFF and not so much others.

The Imago concept is nicely used if a bit of a trope. "Remembered others" was in Dune which I read recently, as well as the Ninefox Gambit books. Probably a bunch of other places but that's what comes to mind fast.

With the introduction of the person from the Emperor's court the mystery deepens. Nice pacing so far.

They have a subway? One would think a high technological society like theirs would be post-scarcity or at least approaching that, and have individual vehicles, possibly controlled by a central AI. That they don't implies that the society is not as rich as it is portraying itself to be.

JUST TELL US WHAT YOUR TEXMEX NAME IS

I did have one lingering question. the city was ran by a AI and the sunlit were an extension of that. but we're they robots, cyborgs, or people who were a little to jacked into the city. they probably explained it but I think I missed it.

John (Taloni) wrote: "They have a subway? One would think a high technological society like theirs would be post-scarcity or at least approaching that, and have individual vehicles, possibly controlled by a central AI. ..."

Interesting. Personally, I wouldn’t regard extensive use of public transit as a sign of poverty, but of a well-designed, safe city.

Lee wrote: "I did have one lingering question. the city was ran by a AI and the sunlit were an extension of that. but we're they robots, cyborgs, or people who were a little to jacked into the city. they proba..."

I think they were meant to be ‘jacked-in’ humans but it was a little ambiguous.

I would also love to read some of the S&L members reviews. should I make a final thoughts thread for that. I have seen where I think it was Tamahome has posted links to member review I liked that.

you know even if you come by and stay you gave it 3 stars

Trike wrote: "JUST TELL US WHAT YOUR TEXMEX NAME IS"

IIRC the name generator had you take the number of SFF books read in the past year, then pick an item in an arbitrarily assigned category based on birth month. I was peeved to see I was in "plants" when astronomical concepts like Relativity or Singularity lay wasting.

Anyhoo, I don't keep track of exactly how many books I read in a year, but it's in the 40s or 50s. One of my fave weird spaceships is a stellated dodecahedron. A dodecahedron has twelve faces, a stellated one has vertices within those so it has 24 faces. So I'll take 24 for the number. Large numbers were said to be gauche, but there's a Nineteen close to the Emperor, so I feel safe with 24.

Then the plant. My fave Northeast plant from my youth was the milkweed, so that was a contender. But for significance, something from my martial arts years. The "Shoto" from "Shotokan" indicates the wind whistling through the pine trees.

I will therefore go with Twenty Four Pine.

Now, I also had trouble with the Tex... stuff and initially just mentally pronounced it "texicali". But with the explanations over the month, I think it comes out more like tesh-cal-anli. Which reminds me of a certain Eagles song. If you're not careful I just might filk! "Teixcalaanli...why don't you give up your empire, you've been dishing out hellfire, for way too long..."

I am really game for the discussion of AI control of various things, but may I gently remind that I am not at that point of the book yet. I know I brought up the idea but whatever is going on with the Sunlit, I just got introduced to them. I can't tell if the discussion of the Sunlit as possibly AI controlled is based on the early part of the book or a later reveal. It's not much of a spoiler and yes, I am lagging the whole group, but could we please keep discussion for this thread to where I am.

Which, at this point, is about 25%. Mahit has just met "Two Cartograph" nicknamed Map and Three Seagrass has gotten out of the hospital, meeting her at Nineteen Adze's place.

Regarding what cues mean: I suppose it is partially based on personal experience. As a young'un in Boston, I rode the subway plenty. I noticed it was used for convenience to get into the city, or by those without vehicles for everything. The well off lived in suburbs and used vehicles for travel unless they had to get to the city center. Even then there were parking lots for the really well off, so use of a vehicle was a scarcity issue. I now live in LA where everyone has a car but traffic is a common issue. Hence in my mind a well off society would have small autonomous vehicles for travel, whisking them away by AI so as not to cause traffic jams.

I also find the description of water waste interesting. Why would a space station have any issue with water? Ice asteroids must abound. In that case it also seems like they are not quite as well off as a spacefaring society ought to be.

I'm left to conclude that these are signs of a fall and recovery. People went to space, colonized planets, and then lost the capacity. They are coming back from that. Earth has so far not been mentioned, but it's not the City (which is also the planet.) The space station may have seen better days and better mining opportunities, or they wouldn't feel the need to Imago their pilots and preserve everything those pilots know. The planets have been apart so long that they've experienced genetic drift to the point where the definition of "human" might not include all descendants of Homo Sapien.

It's thematically similar to Foundation, without the two Foundations to mitigate the fall. They fell all the way down and are now clawing their way back.

Wait. The Emperor is named Six Direction? Does that make him a descendant of members of the band One Direction? As I think about it, I would more have expected him to go for a stability shape and different name. Given the Teixcalaanli adherence to tradition, I would have expected something like Four Boyz To Men, because it's so hard, to say goodbye, to yesterday.

John (Taloni) wrote: "Trike wrote: "JUST TELL US WHAT YOUR TEXMEX NAME IS"

IIRC the name generator had you take the number of SFF books read in the past year, then pick an item in an arbitrarily assigned category based..."

I thought it was divide the number of science fiction books you read last year by 2.

Yes, I meant to include that in the wall o' text. It's part of the calc tho, since I read 40-50something so picked a number that would fit that, 24.

Trike wrote: "JUST TELL US WHAT YOUR TEXMEX NAME IS"

One Enchilada

^ I was tempted to go with "23 Skidoo."

I'm at about the 75% mark right now, (view spoiler)[right after Mahit gets the later Yskander imago installed. (hide spoiler)] The breadth of the conspiracy is really coming to light. I'm yet to be convinced that Three Seagrass and Twelve Azalea are as they seem. It seems unlikely that the Emperor would let them out of his reach, so I keep expecting a larger conspiracy to become unveiled in which they will be shown to have been playing Mahit all along. Well, I suppose I'll find out in the next hundred pages or so.

One of the aspects I really like about this is the way Mahit keeps referring to analogies that would be normal for someone who lived in space. For instance, describing a headache: "By the time they reached the station, Mahit's headache felt large enough to devour small spacecraft that had flown too close to its center of mass."

You're at about the point I figured out how the story would end and where I realized that I wouldn't figure out what I really wanted to know (maybe book 2?). Spoiler for what I really wanted to know. (view spoiler)[I wanted to know why Mahit's imago was damaged. And why they so summarily requested a replacement ambassador. I might have missed the last one... (hide spoiler)]

so you have you gotten to the part (view spoiler)[ where Mahit and the Two Yskanders meet in her head and integrate. what did you think about that? best part of the book for me other that the ending. (hide spoiler)]

also I would be interested to know as a writer what you thought of the pace. felt like it slowed down 1/3 in and then raced to the end. like Gideon the ninth. wonder if authors do that on purpose. felt disjointed to me but I'm not a author.

terpkristin wrote: "You're at about the point I figured out how the story would end (snip)"

Not sure if you're saying you figured it out or are not sure? The reason for a quick summoning of Ambassador (view spoiler)[is that the Emperor wanted an Imago and that was the fastest way to arrange it. Or at least that's the way I take it. He can't just send a warship to take it because the Empire is all give-and-take and he would give away the gambit by doing that. (hide spoiler)]

I also liked both the reason and reasoning for the Imago damage. (view spoiler)[ A little scratch will do, apparently! Very delicate. Another indication of inherited technology that they may not fully understand, or they would have made it more robust. As for reasoning, one Councilor wants to sabotage relations with Teixcalaan while the other wants them to go around Lsel Station, protecting it while passing it by. (hide spoiler)]

As for the ending, hatchi matchi! Nope, I didn't figure it out in advance. (view spoiler)[ I figured we would be introduced to a greater conspiracy, where long-established figures would be shown as other than what they had been throughout the book. Nope, Martine played it straight. She also trusted her readers to remember the single discussion of temple self-sacrifice. Another author might have made multiple references to establish the theme with the reader. I am impressed that Martine did not. (hide spoiler)]

As alluded to above, I have finished. My reaction:

Lots to love about this book. It's the fall and rise of interstellar empires as in Foundation, but told through characters rather than using them as standup figures to advance the story. Love Foundation for its vast reach, but the characters tended towards the stereotypical. These you could believe were actual people.

For the empire, I can see the comparisons to China with the use of glyphs rather than an alphabet, and the obsession with literature. Plus the Imperial Exams. Aztec as well through the descriptions of the people. But really what I most got the sense of was Rome. An empire that, for all its vaunted wealth, still needed an endless conquest of outer regions to fund its operations. Emperors who had less influence than it seemed. Plus an emphasis on a "Pax Romana" as a good in and of itself, while ignoring the death visited on the outer regions.

One can easily see Emperor Six Direction as a fictional Marcus Aurelius, caught in a web of obligation and intrigue, doing his best to keep the Empire stable and in peace.

One oddity for me was that the characters were all pretty much what they appeared to be. I kept expecting a reversal, a betrayal, a sudden reveal to a greater conspiracy. Nope, Martine played it straight. If anything, the Emperor revealed himself to be a better man than he appeared.

Nice touch at the end, having Mahit just want to go home. Oh, I think she'll be called back soon enough. Just in time for the second book...

I basically apparently missed the rationale for the quick summoning. I dunno, I guess I expected it to be deeper. And similarly, I expected the rationale for the damage to the imago would be deeper, too.

I guess I was looking for depth where there was none.

I found the book enjoyable enough but not sure I care enough to go to a second book.

^ Yeah, I kept expecting / wanting twists and twists within twists, but just about everything was played straight. The worldbuilding is enough for me to show up for the sequel though.

Seeing as this is the author's first book I'll give her some leeway. She may have been too subtle in a few spots. She's not alone; I recall the "Southern Reach" books starting with "Annihilation" as requiring an excruciating level of attention to detail to fully understand, and I really just wanted to sly through those books.

By way of analogy this is more Heinlein's "Methuselah's Children" than "Stranger in a Strange Land." Asimov wrote "Foundation" early in his career and that's the obvious comparison. Much as I love Asimov, I have to admit to some clunkiness in both Foundation and the Robot books. I'll show up for the second Texicalaan book.

Lee wrote: "also I would be interested to know as a writer what you thought of the pace. felt like it slowed down 1/3 in and then raced to the end. like Gideon the ninth. wonder if authors do that on purpose. ..."

That's always the question, isn't it? How to pace the novel, where to place major events, how to work in the minor ones. The Imago implant could easily have gone in at about where either of the two assassination attempts occurred.

This particular event takes us from "outside," where we don't know much of what is going on, to "inside," comparatively late in the book. By way of comparison, Paul Atreides has his time sense set free at about the 1/3 mark of Dune. The remaining events of the book are "inside," and allow a more leisurely development of events.

I'm not sure the choice of timing is deliberate though. Some authors are "pantsers" and work without an outline. Even with an outline the book can speak to you in unanticipated ways and grow in unexpected directions. In this book the assassination attempts provide action and Martine may have felt that was sufficient, keeping the reveal to later. But, since this is a story of characters against the backdrop of Empire, I would have liked to see the full cast sooner.

For me part of the intrigue of the book was Yskander solving his own murder. Since he went silent for so long, that aspect was shoehorned into a short section. I would have preferred it go on longer.

However, I can't even say that is deliberate. I know that because I've done it myself. One of my stories included a workplace so horrific that the bosses would just as soon you died so they could hire back your zombie to work 24/7. The editor I sold it to pointed out that the MC solved his own murder. I had intended mainly to make a sardonic comment on large companies, but after he pointed it out I could see that part.

I don't find the timing of the Imago surgery to be wrong, but yes, I would quibble that it could have been moved up so that the reader could have been fully immersed in the world sooner. It's more of a missed opportunity than an error. Either way, I find the book well enough done to show up enthusiastically for the sequel.

This is the best reaction video I've watched in a while.

Thank you for the author's insight john. As layman the more I read I wonder about the mechanation and mind frame of authorship. I hope my question was not to presumptuous.

I also agree to your point about this being her first novel and her coming from abbackground in another field. she deserves a little leeway. her Career shows alot of promise.

I am currently reading a 23 book series by one of my favorite authors. Where the author was basically a fan of Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey series and wanted a land based version, he could not find one. So he wrote it himself the first installments are very basic action adventure. but he developed as an author while the series progress. He is know debatively the most popular historical fiction author today. with several best selling series. It's fastinating to see that growth.

A virtual event scheduled for Wednesday, Jul 29, 6:00 PM via Zoom

Arkady Martine - A Memory Called Empire and Vivian Shaw - The Greta Helsing Trilogy

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I've been reading the Dune books and noticed something interesting in Children of Dune: Use of the term Imago. In context it's the memories of someone else as accessed by the host, so it's pretty close to the use in Memory Called Empire. Children of Dune also involves an interstellar empire and regular mentions of shades of meaning through different languages, so I start to think that Martine got the term and some inspiration from Dune as well as the more obvious Foundation.

Here's the mention, from about 100 pages in: "Hours passed and still Ghanima's body trembled and twitched with the inner battle, but now his sister's voice joined the argument. He heard her talking to that imago within, the pleading."

Interesting -- I've read the Dune books multiple times, so knew about the shared memories, but it had been long enough that I didn't recall use of the term "imago".