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| Why I Hate Glasslands | |
| Posted By: Train Dodger <tmesisrevenge@gmail.com> | Date: 9/17/12 10:22 p.m. |
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I guess hate is too strong a word, really. More like, it just doesn't sit well with me, for a number of very important reasons. To make a long story short, the main problem I have with it is that it makes the UNSC out to be like the Browncoats, when they're actually much more like the Alliance. I've been having a bit of an interesting back-and-forth with someone on Amazon about it, and I thought I'd share by cross-posting it so we could cover some of the points on here. This is the review they wrote, and our comments to it (I'm N. Stallman; B. Williams' writing is in bold to distinguish it from my own): B. Williams' Review: 4.0 of 5.0 Stars I just finished Glasslands and was incredibly surprised. I had read the reviews on Amazon before starting it and against my better judgement read it anyway, expecting nothing but high-minded ethical arguments throughout the entire book with little actual plot development. After having finished it, I can honestly say I have no idea what book all of these 1-2 star reviewers were reading. I'm not going to give a long drawn out synopsis of the book but I will say that the single argument between Halsey and Mendez didn't stretch throughout the entire book as some of the reviews make it seem like, but lasted for all of 2 maybe 3 pages max, seriously. I kept expecting for there to be more based on these reviews but there never was. I'm not sure if the angry reviewers are just teenage boys who don't pick up sci-fi books unless they are based off a videogame and expect nothing but knock down drag out action every other page, but I'm baffled at the reaction to this book. I also don't understand reviewer's reaction that people should just overlook the fact that Halsey kidnapped, brutalized, brainwashed, and experimented on young children. The way the Spartan program was set up has bothered me since Nylund's first book, and it bothered me even more that the whole unethical aspect of that was never addressed. In this book, for the first time, those concerns are addressed and Halsey pays for them as she should. The sudden animosity of Mendez towards Halsey in the book is perfectly sensible and explained after he looses one of his Spartan 3s and starts to freak out about it. I read a ton of sci-fi and have read all of the Halo books except for Greg Bear's, and I can say without a doubt that this one is a far more intelligent read than the "pew pew" books I've read in the series so far. The action is still tight, even though there is admittedly far less of it than in Nylund's work, and the characters are a lot more 3 dimensional than any in the series so far (Kilo-5 has a group synergy that seems like it was directly ripped out of a Joss Whedon project). All in all, this book was far superior to Ghosts of Onyx in just about every way. The only major complaint I have about the book is that the Spartan 3's are almost non-existent in this book compared to Ghosts of Onyx. All in all, if you like the blurb on the back of the book, are excited for Halo 4, and like reading sci-fi in general, then get this book. Its intriguing, adult and expands the universe like no other book before it. If you are a teenager who wants nothing but explosions and military jargon, could care less about intrigue, always believe "the ends justify the means", and will not stand for anyone challenging your preconceived notions of a videogame universe, then you might want to skip it, and then maybe start reading a wider variety of books. Seriously, I have no idea what the other guys were reading. I will be buying Thursday War day one. N. Stallman says: But the ones doing the punishing are the ones who ordered the experiments to begin with! Karen Traviss is pretending that Parangosky and the ONI brass were ignorant of Halsey's misdeeds and not complicit in them at all, when Nylund's books made it very clear that had Halsey not done as she did, she would have been replaced with a scientist willing to go to even MORE unethical lengths. That's the problem I have with this series. KT paints the UNSC's ruthless military intelligence arm as though it were willing to make amends, and that just doesn't square with the image they've presented in the past. The UNSC's Office of Naval Intelligence is NOT supposed to be a sympathetic organization. They're supposed to be cold, heartless, monolithic and - quite frankly - evil. By reducing Catherine Halsey to a cartoon villain and turning all of ONI against her, KT has essentially made what was once one of the most fearsome espionage organizations in fiction into a lousy bunch of hypocrites. Worse, she seems to display astounding ignorance of the canon itself. Karen Traviss paints a picture of the creation of the S-IIs as a crime against humanity, but leaves the S-IIIs untouched, in fact giving Mendez the moral high ground in every single argument he has with Halsey. See, Halsey at least tried to give her test subjects the most advanced augmentations and best armor possible, sparing no expense. The S-IIIs were mass-produced suicide squads, sent into battle by the hundreds to fight and die while they were barely out of puberty, wearing unshielded stealth armor that couldn't hold a candle to MJOLNIR. Later batches were given brain-scrambling mutagens to alter their fight-or-flight response and make them nearly invulnerable to shock. They were all war orphans who "volunteered" for it while they were too young to even know what that meant, and that's supposed to be better than just kidnapping them outright and replacing them with flash clones. They were completely disposable child soldiers. Literally. You're telling me KT is just going to ignore all that and keep pretending that the S-IIs - who were raised to think about their own survival first and foremost and given the best equipment and training possible - are somehow leaps and bounds more unethical? Maybe if Karen Traviss actually read up on the backstory of the universe instead of trying to reconstruct it from whole cloth like she proudly trumpets herself as being capable of doing, she would know that the Insurrectionists were not misunderstood rebels fighting against a cold-hearted regime. They were mostly led and inspired by defectors from the UNSC's military who wanted to live as warlords out on the fringes of society, running their own little kleptocracies while enjoying every possible form of contraband. They also nuked an arcology (that is, a self-sustaining city-sized structure) on the planet Mamore, killing two million people. Think 9/11, only with over six hundred TIMES more burnt corpses strewn about. The UNSC was facing the very real possibility of societal collapse and warring in the colonies with potential casualties in the billions, so they masterfully crafted a silver bullet to end the crisis. That was the series of SPARTAN Programs. In Glasslands, Karen Traviss diminishes both the cruel, calculating nature of the UNSC and the threat posed by the rebels by acting like the SPARTAN Programs weren't warranted at all. In fact, Parangosky's treatment of Halsey raises another question; if the UNSC's reputedly ruthless military intelligence branch is willing to bring so much reproach upon its most valued of war criminals, then why would there even be a need for rebels anyway? Surely, the United Nations Space Command is fair enough and reasonable enough that there shouldn't have been an insurrection in the first place. Instead of taking up arms, those colonists should be thanking their lucky stars that they have such an honest, well-meaning government with so much oversight and understanding. See? It doesn't make a lick of sense. In order for there to be rebels, the UNSC have to be jerks. If the UNSC are willing to tar and feather monsters like Halsey, then they're not jerks. If they're not jerks, then there shouldn't be rebels. It's a paradox. I shall remind people that Halo is, first and foremost, a space opera. A work of military science fiction. It is meant to be action-packed and romanticized rather than bitter and satirical. More like E.E. Smith's Lensman, less like Haldeman's The Forever War. That's the tone that the games and early novelizations set. That's what I wished that KT had stuck with. But she didn't. Instead, she wrote this drivel. I couldn't be more displeased. I'm noticing a common strain here where many of the positive reviewers can't help but throw in a jab about what they perceive as the immaturity of this book's detractors, claiming that they must be "teenagers", because they didn't like how "adult" it was. It wasn't adult. It was positively juvenile. It reads exactly like a bad fanfic where someone in ONI goes cuckoo and broadcasts the true nature of the SPARTAN Programs to the general public, so we get chapter upon chapter of running commentary from average Joes about just how awful it is that their government would do such a thing. Honestly, I must have read half a dozen that were exactly like that. That just wouldn't happen in Nylund's books, where the UNSC keeps its cards eternally close to its chest and uses AIs to police the flow of information to the public and lower-ranking military personnel. In Glasslands, they go from being totalitarian control freaks to wearing their hearts on their sleeves at the drop of a hat, and we're supposed to just gobble it right up. Sorry, not buying it. B. Williams says:
In the book, the head of ONI admits that she is just as culpable as Halsey is to Osmand but didn't know about the cloning program until way later. Mendez also doesn't claim to have the moral high ground with his child soldiers, but does rightfully say that offering a child with no home a choice is far better than kidnapping unwilling participants from their homes, brainwashing them, and replacing them with clones that die in a year. There was also a nod in the book to how Mendez's Spartans weren't much better so that's why the Spartan 4s were going to be all adult volunteers. All of this stuff is in the book we both read. Halsey is also not painted as a monster at all, but as a woman who did terrible things in the name of freedom and science and just finally has to pay for it. If she were supposed to be some heartless monster then she wouldn't have shown the regret that she did in the book. And no, a terrorist problem does not equal a campaign of genocide against the human race, so doing what had to be done to create the Spartan program for that was completely unwarranted. Once again, those things were kidnapping, experimenting on, and brainwashing young children. Not the sort of thing that doesn't come back to bite you in the ass years later. You need to re-read the book. Nothing in it is as black and white as you are making it seem at all, which was kind of what the book was about: moral grey areas and their consequences in a post war situation. Which in a nutshell is why this is different from the other books, because it is POST wartime. Compared to every other Halo book, this was very adult. N. Stallman says:
Osman spilled the beans right in front of a civilian and a bunch of grunts. Was Osman instructed by Parangosky to do so? Why did Black Box allow it if the AI was intended to assume a sort of supervisory role over the mission? At that rate, I was almost expecting her to start chatting with the Elites about the true nature of the SPARTAN Program, just to see how they reacted. It all felt very contrived, like Karen Traviss made her say it so that the rank and file would have something "weighty" to talk about. As soon as Osman did her little reveal, I began predicting that she would literally have to kill her underlings at the end of the mission to guarantee their silence. The Office of Naval Intelligence is THAT kind of organization, folks. It's not this cheery, buddy cop thing that KT is making it into. Speaking of which, doesn't it seem more than a little hypocritical that Osman and her crew would be flipping out about how unethical the S-II program was, while at the same time they're trying to mire the Sangheili in civil war and in-fighting in the hopes of permanently castrating their entire culture and rendering them into galactic misfits unable to ever challenge the UNSC ever again? So, they moan about how evil it was to abduct a bunch of kids and experiment on them, but at the same time, they're in the business of breaking up families and destroying lives. Non-human lives, yes, but lives just the same. The way I see it, the S-II program was roughly comparable to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was a sacrifice intended to avert a far greater catastrophe. Only, instead of killing a couple hundred thousand innocents in cold blood to save millions from an impending invasion of the Japanese mainland, the UNSC abducted children from 75 families in order to save billions from a galaxy-spanning civil war. A far more efficient weapon, but with a similar purpose. Cut off the head of the snake. If historians and commentators can paint a positive picture of real-world mass murder on such a grand scale, then why would fictional ones have any reason to see a program with such a high ratio of benefit-versus-cost in anything but positive terms, despite the incredible monstrosity of both? After all, history is written by the victors. And before you say something like "that was a war between numerous world powers; the UNSC was doing this to its own people", consider this: in the UNSC, there is no distinction between foreign and domestic policy. Because there is no foreign or domestic. There is only the UNSC and their colonial administration. They're the New World Order, basically. Plus, they drew recruits for the SPARTAN-II program from many distant colonies; some of these places harbored Insurrectionist sympathizers, and they were probably killing two birds with one stone by selecting the finest genetic stock from their enemy's homeland. If those would-be Spartan kids had been left to grow up with their own families instead, many of them would have likely become very dangerous Insurrectionist leaders. Why, this very book hints at that possibility. Naomi's father became a prominent Insurrectionist figure. Who's to say whether or not his daughter would have become one as well? Terrorism IS a serious problem when you have your population packed in cities like sardines and a single commercial-grade asteroid-mining nuke can kill millions. A response like the S-II program WAS warranted, because it was either that or the UNSC would be forced to conduct a campaign of genocide against their own population, in order to ironically "save" them. Also, I don't like the idea that Parangosky didn't know anything about the flash clones, because ONI are the ones who authorized the budget for it, and they had all of Halsey's files. Nylund gave us the impression that the flash clones were part of a deliberate coverup by ONI, whereas KT depicts it as Halsey's own personal conscience-easing whim. That's totally against canon. B. Williams says: I really don't know what to say to you as EVERY single problem you have with this is addressed in the book. Osman didn't "spill the beans" in front of a civilian and a bunch of grunts, she told Kilo-5 a top secret ONI Spec Ops team, the team she is grooming to be her go to be people when she becomes the head of ONI, not just a random assortment of people that will all head back and tell everything to the public when she's done. These were the people she was grooming to be the go to guys for the head of ONI, not a pick of the week. Vaz and Mal are also just as mystified as you are when they here the classified intel because they don't know they are being groomed for this role, that's why they start to suspect that its a psych test. They do not take all of this classified intel in stride as you suggest as all. The biggest security risk of the bunch, Phillips, is talked about a number of times by BB as being an easily dealt with security risk should he even think about telling anyone else what he knows, as a matter of fact they are pretty straight forward with him that BB will kill him on sight with a poison injection if he became a security risk at Sanghelios. As for why Osman told them about program in the first place they go over that SEVERAL times in the book, its to make sure they don't do exactly what you are doing and freak out like Halsey is a saint when they either have to arrest or kill her, at this point in the books the Spartan program is seen as the savior of all humanity so she has to be sure her people will do as she says. There is absolutely no comparison between the Spartan program and Hiroshima, that is just ridiculous. One was our own children one was a foreign country that attacked us, how can you even possibly even parallel that? Also, you need to brush up on your history, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not just targets selected for their population densities but were also factory centers for the war effort, it was a strategic target. You are also saying that its mostly OK that the UNSC kidnapped children because they grew up in areas that had terrorists... this is probably the single scariest sentiment I've ever seen in a book review before. I'm also a little stunned that you think kidnapping, brainwashing, and experimenting on children is somehow comparable to power destabilization of a military threat that hates humanity and is capable of wiping it out (and almost did). One is something we arrest people for in modern society, the other is something that the CIA has been doing since its inception. The only reason Master Chief managed to end the war was by destabilizing their power and throwing the Covenant into civil war, not by being superman and putting Lex Luther in jail. Of course the UNSC wants to see that it stays unstable for the time being. Any real world agency would do the exact same thing. There are many other things that you have said that the book clearly explains but I'm not going to go over them. The fact that you seem to be still thumbing down and arguing with reviewers in thousand word essays a year after you made your on review pretty much says it all. Every single point I have made has been said in the book, not just implied or inferred by the reader, it is in the book that we both read. Seriously, its been a year. Either re-read the book that you apparently skimmed the first time or do yourself a favor and let it drop. N. Stallman says: But no part of the book makes it obvious that Osman had been given proper clearance to disseminate such information to her aides, especially given that her pick of underlings seem less-than-loyal (Vasily Beloi actually wanted to kill Halsey, in direct defiance of his orders; if he's willing to do that, he's quite possibly also willing to leak information). ONI is like the CIA; they have their own highly-trained personnel. If Osman wanted a Spec Ops team, why did she pick a ragtag bunch of troops and a civilian instead of drafting them from the ranks of ONI? Actually, the disclosure would have been believable if they had all been stripped of their previous posts and given an actual job within ONI, because then they would have had to pass a bevy of tests to prove that they're not an emotional bunch of twits who are going to pull a Bradley Manning the next chance they get. Understand, we're talking about a top-secret program the details of which are not only damaging to the UNSC, but also contain sensitive information about the procedure that could be used by Insurrectionists to develop their own super-soldier program. The Innies had already been known to do such things as shooting themselves up with potent drug cocktails just to enhance their prowess in combat (read Midnight in the Heart of Midlothian in Halo: Evolutions). Who knows what the Innies would do if information about the SPARTAN Program's enhancements was leaked? Perhaps nothing, given that the cost of the program is beyond their means. Or, maybe they'd figure out a way to make it cheaper. A way to perform the enhancements for pennies on the dollar (or credit, if you will). Maybe they'd end up maiming hundreds of their own people with dangerous augmentations just to produce a few dozen elite troops. Also, I think you're confused about how a military is meant to work. Soldiers are supposed to follow orders. To the letter. In real military forces, superior officers do not feed troops classified information in order to ensure their loyalty by swaying their hearts and convincing them that they're doing the right thing. They give them an order, and then they are obligated to obey without question. It's run like a prison. Very simple. I used the comparison between the SPARTAN Program and the atomic bombings to illustrate the relative disparity in loss of life and actual human cost versus the benefits gained, which were immeasurable. Besides, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were barely strategic targets as it is. Japan was already crippled, and the production centers in those locations barely had any continued effect on the war effort. Their supply chain was already faltering. Without the proper raw materials and funding, a factory is just another building. Also, I didn't say that it was okay that the UNSC kidnapped children because they grew up in areas that had terrorists. I said it was okay that they kidnapped children because those children had the potential to grow up to become part of an organization that had already killed millions of people. Millions. Of. People. To put things in perspective, when the Insurrectionists bombed that arcology on Mamore, they killed enough people to match the death toll of the Vietnam War in the span of a few seconds. If you don't think that merits an extreme response to prevent repeat incidents, then I don't really know what to say. Remember, we're talking about a tiny handful of kidnappings in order to save millions or even billions of people from being barbecued in nuclear fire. That was precisely what was at stake. Sure, it's really not okay to kidnap kids and turn them into super-soldiers, but I'm sure you'll agree that the alternative was far worse. Mind you, space operas don't tend to be subtle on the details. Everything is always in extremes. "If we don't do X, then MILLIONS WILL DIE", that sort of thing. Trying to lend a "real" edge to that by writing a pseudo-mockumentary like Halo: Glasslands doesn't do the genre any service. And, as much as the Sangheili and the rest of the Covenant were capable of wiping out humanity, so were the human rebels. They were a threat almost comparable to the Covenant, the only caveat being that whoever won that war would be human, and willing to repopulate worlds scoured clean by atomic bombing. So, to make a long story short, the UNSC had a nearly equal stake in destabilizing both the Covenant and the Insurrectionists. Which, again, is what warranted the SPARTAN Programs. As I've said before in other threads, I think people seriously put way, way too much faith in their governments not to do nasty, unethical things to them. I've previously compared the SPARTAN Program to the CIA's MKULTRA experiments and the US Public Health Services' Tuskegee Experiment, neither of which brought any reprimand or prosecution upon those who carried them out. The CIA ran brothels where they gave non-consenting adults hits of LSD just to see what would happen, and the PHS injected hundreds of non-consenting adults with syphilis just to see what would happen, both of which were arguably far less productive than kidnapping children and turning them into nigh-unstoppable cyborg commandos. The way KT wrote Glasslands, you would have expected Sidney Gottlieb and Oliver Wenger to be made to stand trial. But they weren't. Because we don't live in some kind of utopian cartoon fantasy-land where people who do evil things for their government have their necks stepped on by that very same government, for doing the job they were instructed to do. Funny that you should say "by being Superman and putting Lex Luthor in jail", because that's precisely what the Spartans were trying to do. Just before the Battle of Reach, they were arming and equipping themselves for a deep-strike mission into Covenant territory to capture a Prophet and use him as a hostage to force an armistice. Then, when Reach fell, the survivors from that aborted operation fled and stumbled across Halo. Then, Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 blew it up by using the Pillar of Autumn's engines as a huge bomb. And then, scant months later, he assassinated a Prophet Hierarch. So, yeah, he didn't put Lex Luthor in jail. He killed Lex Luthor, and then watched as his entire organization crumbled. Did I say watch? I meant he continued taking them apart piece by bloody piece even as they fell apart on their own. Even Superman wouldn't have had the guts to do that. And yes, the fact that I keep periodically checking back to this book's page to write these essays DOES say it all. It says that I'm a dedicated Halo fan who has shaken hands with the developers and been to gatherings, launch parties and conventions. It says that I've been a Halo fan since the Macworld 1999 demonstration, 13 years ago. You could say it's a valued part of my childhood, and that I hate to see what the Haloverse is becoming; a pedestal for bleeding-hearts like Karen Traviss to satirize and criticize the fiction through their own writing. Throughout Glasslands, all I got from it was this feeling that I was being condescended to by someone up on a soapbox, constantly affirming the notion that the fiction that I like is bad and that I should feel bad for liking it. Glasslands was an absolutely nauseating read for me, precisely because of that. I would have much preferred it if the moral grey areas in the canon had been left grey, so as to let the readers form their own conclusions instead of setting things in stone. Besides, the people that Karen Traviss has standing on a moral high ground above Halsey did MORE EVIL THINGS. Mendez worked on a project to create huge suicide squads of child super-soldiers, and Parangosky ordered assassination, disinformation, psy-ops, spying and sabotage missions on a regular basis as part of her duties as head of ONI. Parangosky criticizing Halsey for being immoral is like Emperor Palpatine criticizing Darth Vader for being immoral. It's completely ludicrous. In Nylund's books, the Spartans were geniuses, or at least incredibly gifted. They could derive trigonometry and calculus in their heads to determine things like the terminal velocity of objects in specific gravities and atmospheres. In Glasslands, they've been reduced to whiny little children. Catherine Halsey, once cold, unfeeling and manipulative enough to worm her way out of anything, was turned into some kind of crazy, hysterical grandma. Nylund's Parangosky was a cruel spymaster that made men quake in their boots, and Karen Traviss's is some kind of hippie who wants to expose a project that she helped create, lest she carry the guilt to her grave (yeah, as if ONI doesn't assassinate people wholesale whenever they feel like it; what's 75 kidnappings when they've killed thousands and orphaned many more by the much simpler method of bullet-to-head?). The characterization clashes way, WAY too much with established canon. It comes across as more of a cartoony caricature than anything Nylund ever wrote. Also, apparently the comparison went completely over your head, but there's a reason why I said Halo should be more like Lensman and less like The Forever War. It's because Lensman, much like early entries into the Halo canon, was romanticized. I don't think people fully appreciate what that means. It means that world-building is placed before character development. It means that there is very little room for the characters wallowing in doubt and self-pity just to make some kind of point to the audience. It means that the author can put a positive, upbeat spin on just about anything, even crashing an antimatter planet at relativistic speeds into another planet to kill everyone living there (but it was okay, because the countless victims were part of a galaxy-spanning criminal organization and therefore EEEEEVIL). It means that the author can actually think in black and white and shades of grey as the situation demands. It means that the mission of the protagonists is endowed with a sense of optimism and nobility, no matter what they did to achieve it. I liked Nylund's work because it was subtle. Because, despite them having all the trappings of your typical military science fiction novel, his entries in the canon allowed the reader the opportunity to fill in the blanks as needed instead of beating them over the head with the author's ideas. Karen Traviss takes an epic about transhuman saviors and tries to turn it into some kind of tired "science is bad" Aesop that's been done a million times before by better writers. I don't read genre fiction to read about people and their problems, like some kind of talk show. I read genre fiction to read about places to be and things to see, not the messy personal lives of human beings. If I wanted that kind of meandering, preachy pap, I'd pick up a piece of literary fiction instead of something with jetpacks, power armor and tank-killing laser beams. Surely, you understand. That's why my review has over ten times as many upvotes as downvotes. It's because ten out of eleven Halo fans agree with me on this. B. Williams says: "If Osman wanted a Spec Ops team, why did she pick a ragtag bunch of troops and a civilian instead of drafting them from the ranks of ONI?" Osman didn't pick them, Parangosky did. The same 90 year old spymaster that everyone fears because of her calculating intelligence, and the person directly grooming Osman to be her replacement. Picking a group directly from the ranks of ONI would have been counter to her mission of seeing that no one but Osman took her place. ODSTs and Spartans aren't grunts, they're used to handling top secret missions and you know that. Phillips was the only calculated risk, but as I said before, they stated clearly many times in the books that they had ways of ensuring that he kept operational security. "In real military forces, superior officers do not feed troops classified information in order to ensure their loyalty by swaying their hearts and convincing them that they're doing the right thing. They give them an order, and then they are obligated to obey without question. It's run like a prison. Very simple." This was right after a war that almost destroyed humanity but was miraculously saved by the Spartan program, and these were all troops that saw the battle up close who would be dealing with something that none of them were ever told about. IN THE BOOK, Osman says the reason she's giving them the information is to make them trust her and gel as a team that will be her go to black ops team for the rest of her career as chief of ONI, so her giving them the intelligence makes perfect sense. Also, your description of the military being run like a prison is a little counter to your philosophy that the UNSC are supposed to be the happy go lucky good guys and not a totalitarian regime. The book goes in depth SEVERAL times about Mal wondering whether or not his mission counts as lawful orders, which are the only ones anyone in any military are supposed to follow, not just in KT's book. "I used the comparison between the SPARTAN Program and the atomic bombings to illustrate the relative disparity in loss of life and actual human cost versus the benefits gained, which were immeasurable. " Still not even remotely the same. One is targeted at our own children, the other an enemy nation. I can't believe you're sticking by that one. "Also, I didn't say that it was okay that the UNSC kidnapped children because they grew up in areas that had terrorists. I said it was okay that they kidnapped children because those children had the potential to grow up to become part of an organization that had already killed millions of people." That is the SAME EXACT THING. The children had the potential for being terrorists according to you simply because they grew up on colony worlds. "As I've said before in other threads, I think people seriously put way, way too much faith in their governments not to do nasty, unethical things to them. I've previously compared the SPARTAN Program to the CIA's MKULTRA experiments and the US Public Health Services' Tuskegee Experiment, neither of which brought any reprimand or prosecution upon those who carried them out." The world in which MKULTRA and Tuskegee took place is vastly different from the one in which we live in now, where 24hr news media slams everything into everyone's face incessantly. Do you seriously think that they would get off scott free in our current society? No. They wouldn't because we don't live in the same idealistic "ends always justify the means in wartime" society that we used too. If that happened today, they would have had public trials and/or just been "disappeared" like they do with Halsey in the book. We wouldn't even have another Hiroshima or Nagasaki for the very same reason, even though those were wartime bombings. Drawing analogies from history only works if the same social principles apply, and they just don't for this sort of thing. "Throughout Glasslands, all I got from it was this feeling that I was being condescended to by someone up on a soapbox, constantly affirming the notion that the fiction that I like is bad and that I should feel bad for liking it." I understand the feeling you describe, but I don't understand why you feel like that at all towards this book. Adding depth to the story doesn't invalidate the series at all, and all of the moral grey areas are still grey, its just that for the first time in all of the books, someone is pointing out how messed up the situation is. And it is a messed up situation. " Nylund's Parangosky was a cruel spymaster that made men quake in their boots, and Karen Traviss's is some kind of hippie who wants to expose a project that she helped create, lest she carry the guilt to her grave (yeah, as if ONI doesn't assassinate people wholesale whenever they feel like it; what's 75 kidnappings when they've killed thousands and orphaned many more by the much simpler method of bullet-to-head?). The characterization clashes way, WAY too much with established canon. It comes across as more of a cartoony caricature than anything Nylund ever wrote. " Again, not what capturing Halsey was about at all. Halsey went renegade and stole military assets during a time of war. Parangosky used it as the means to finally put Halsey on a permanent leash as a pet scientist for ONI. The overtures she and Osman made to putting Halsey on trial were and are never going to happen, its just what they threaten Halsey with and used to justify bringing her in. As for why she asked Halsey about the clones in the end of the book, its because she didn't like her and wanted to make Halsey suffer, something she refers to relishing many times in the book. " It means that world-building is placed before character development. It means that there is very little room for the characters wallowing in doubt and self-pity just to make some kind of point to the audience. It means that the author can put a positive, upbeat spin on just about anything, even crashing an antimatter planet at relativistic speeds into another planet to kill everyone living there (but it was okay, because the countless victims were part of a galaxy-spanning criminal organization and therefore EEEEEVIL)." Think about that statement. You are arguing in favor of paper thin characters who don't react in realistic ways to their circumstances. How is that even fun to read? "I don't read genre fiction to read about people and their problems, like some kind of talk show. I read genre fiction to read about places to be and things to see, not the messy personal lives of human beings. If I wanted that kind of meandering, preachy pap, I'd pick up a piece of literary fiction instead of something with jetpacks, power armor and tank-killing laser beams." I think this is really the problem in a nutshell. I love sci-fi and have read it forever. Science fiction is supposed to make you think about the human condition and big themes, not just starship battles and space aliens. Sure there is that out there if you are in to just mindless space battles, but most of what is lauded as good sci-fi is not just explosions and pew pew. I'd urge you to read something like Frank Herbert's Dune or Dan Simmons Hyperion and Illium to give higher minded sci-fi a shot. Sci-fi can be enriching if you just give it a chance. N. Stallman says: "Picking a group directly from the ranks of ONI would have been counter to her mission of seeing that no one but Osman took her place." I didn't mean officers. I meant assassins. Saboteurs. The real-world CIA has a group called the Special Activities Division, composed of elite operators who work under the tightest of secrecy. We know that ONI have similar agents at their disposal already, along with Smart AIs to do all the language work, so why would they bring along ODSTs and a civilian interpreter on such a sensitive operation? For that matter, why would they be using a modified corvette-class ship instead of a specialized Prowler? "IN THE BOOK, Osman says the reason she's giving them the information is to make them trust her and gel as a team that will be her go to black ops team for the rest of her career as chief of ONI, so her giving them the intelligence makes perfect sense." Yeah, I remember that, and I remember specifically not liking the wording that she used. "Gelling". It's like they're a band of mercenaries, or privateers, or something. This kind of writing wouldn't seem out of place in an episode of Firefly. But it's not an episode of Firefly, it's Halo. And they're not privateers; they're professional military. Fraternization - das ist verboten. Are they really such an undisciplined bunch that their Captain has to curry their favor with tidbits of information about a black project that ONI deliberately kept buried for decades? Then they don't belong on an op like that, nor are they fit to be groomed as "go-to people" for a would-be spymaster. "Also, your description of the military being run like a prison is a little counter to your philosophy that the UNSC are supposed to be the happy go lucky good guys and not a totalitarian regime." That's the very opposite of what I wrote. In the very first post, I said "The UNSC's Office of Naval Intelligence is NOT supposed to be a sympathetic organization. They're supposed to be cold, heartless, monolithic and - quite frankly - evil." My point was that Karen Traviss recasting them as the "good guys" willing to make amends and right past wrongs in Glasslands ran counter to established canon which depicted the entire organization as a den of poisonous snakes, willing to use even the most unscrupulous means to enforce the UNSC's dominion. "That is the SAME EXACT THING. The children had the potential for being terrorists according to you simply because they grew up on colony worlds." Well, not exactly. Like I said, it's hard for the UNSC to make a distinction between foreign and domestic policy when there really is no clear dividing line between the two, because they represent a unified interplanetary government. It's clear that they don't play by our rules, nor do they have the same social contracts as we do. Do they even have a constitution like that of the United States? What's their human rights record? The story really never goes into detail about any of that, aside from giving us a few very obvious hints about the depths of depravity to which they are willing to sink. For all we know, their citizens have barely any rights or bodily autonomy at all compared to today's progressive states, and they only use coverups to save themselves from bad PR that could pour oil on the fires of rebellion. Personally, I view the UNSC as being roughly on-par with South Africa under the Apartheid as far as their image goes. Which is to say, not good. KT seemed to be presenting them in a much more positive light, as though they were willing to turn over a new leaf and stop being so awful to their own people. I didn't really like that, because at this juncture, it only makes them look weak and incompetent. I preferred Nylund's UNSC precisely because of how sinister and heartless they were. Maintaining that image would go a long way towards keeping intact their original mystique as totalitarian bad guys who fight genocidal aliens. "Do you seriously think that they would get off scott free in our current society? No. They wouldn't because we don't live in the same idealistic "ends always justify the means in wartime" society that we used too." Actually, we do. I've been over the leaked Afghanistan War Logs. The search and destroy missions, the informants, the cloak-and-dagger spec-ops task forces, the targeted killings. All the ingredients are there for an ends-justify-the-means society. The fact of the matter is, the CIA is probably doing things right now that would make our hair stand on end if we knew about it. What about their operations in South America, what with the way they've supported regimes that menace their own people with death squads? What were they doing in Libya last year? See, what upsets me so much about KT's portrayal of Parangosky as being above such depravity is that it makes it look like we - the audience - are supposed to see the world through rose-tinted glasses. She basically assumes that each Halsey-like mad scientist figure will, without fail, receive their comeuppance in due time, when history shows that is clearly not the case. In fact, as I've said before in other threads, eggheads tend to get a break from governments in spite of their eccentricities. Like Operation Paperclip, for example, where the US recruited Nazi scientists to help us build our moon rockets and ICBMs. Their records were wiped clean, and they were given a fresh start. Someone like Halsey would be just as valuable to the UNSC as Wernher von Braun was to the United States, and yet Parangosky does nothing to build a rapport with her, or even allow Halsey an opportunity for redemption. Besides, Parangosky shouldn't care about what Halsey did in the first place. ONI are supposed to be unrepentantly evil, to the point where they're spoken of in whispers by people constantly glancing over their shoulder to make sure they're not being stalked by one of their assassins. That's their whole shtick. I cannot reiterate this point enough. Without that essential trait, they're just a copy of Nick Fury's S.H.I.E.L.D. by another name. "Halsey went renegade and stole military assets during a time of war. Parangosky used it as the means to finally put Halsey on a permanent leash as a pet scientist for ONI." When Halsey kidnapped Kelly-087, there was barely a functioning command structure for her to operate under in the first place. Vice Admiral Whitcomb was there, sure, but he was just as out-of-the-loop as everyone else. They were out on the fringes of UNSC space with no support and very few backup plans, so things were bound to get chaotic anyhow. I admit that it makes for a fairly good reason to bring her in, but the problem with that idea is that she's practically never criticized in the book for stealing valuable war materiel; rather, everyone uses that incident as an excuse to criticize her for her other misdeeds (which, I might add, Parangosky technically authorized from the very beginning). Parangosky should have known about the flash clones before they were even made. There's no way Halsey could have kept that secret from her; Halsey had no way to create and deploy them without calling upon other ONI assets, who would have made files that Parangosky would have had direct access to as head of ONI. If Parangosky didn't know about it, then she's not doing her job as head of an intelligence agency. Which is to say, her job is to be as omniscient as is reasonably practicable, especially about the organization's internal affairs and what they're spending their budget on. If anything, Parangosky should be kicking herself for being so incompetent as to not know what Halsey was doing with all that money, all those resources, and all the broad-reaching carte blanche the latter was given. "As for why she asked Halsey about the clones in the end of the book, its because she didn't like her and wanted to make Halsey suffer, something she refers to relishing many times in the book." Why would Parangosky want to make Halsey suffer, when her S-IIs single-handedly won them the war and her kidnapping of Kelly helped to lead the survivors on Onyx to a technology cache in a hidden Forerunner Shield World? Parangosky should be kissing Halsey's feet for that. Besides, if Parangosky didn't know that Halsey made flash clones of the S-IIs, then how did she ever find out about Kelly-087's kidnapping? Was it during the Spartan debriefing after the impromptu Operation: FIRST STRIKE? Did the Chief and the rest of the survivors from Reach and Installation 04 really rat her out like that? If John-117 was willing to keep Sergeant Johnson's medical files from ONI to keep them from dissecting him to find out how to prevent a Flood infestation, then he'd probably be willing to keep the kidnapping a secret from ONI too. The S-IIs basically fawn over her as a mother figure, after all. "Think about that statement. You are arguing in favor of paper thin characters who don't react in realistic ways to their circumstances. How is that even fun to read?" It's not quite as simple as that. In fact, I'd argue that Nylund's characterization of the Spartans as stoic, silent warriors who used hand-gestures to communicate emotion was - in many ways - more nuanced than what Traviss's book offers, which was a motley bunch of characters that were united primarily by how much they reviled Halsey. Nylund's characters seemed like actual people to me. Traviss's were like sock puppets. They all had the same voice, the same line of reasoning, the same characterization. There was very little differentiation between any of them. They all spoke with the author's voice, not their own. If anything, they were - by far - some of the most one-dimensional characters I've ever seen in any work of fiction that I've ever read. With the exception of Evan Phillips, Black Box and Nylund's characters (who, altogether, are the only reason why I gave this book two stars instead of one), they are all completely indistinct and forgettable. I had a hard time just keeping their names straight, they were so bland. Really, I'm not joking. "I think this is really the problem in a nutshell. I love sci-fi and have read it forever. Science fiction is supposed to make you think about the human condition and big themes, not just starship battles and space aliens. Sure there is that out there if you are in to just mindless space battles, but most of what is lauded as good sci-fi is not just explosions and pew pew. I'd urge you to read something like Frank Herbert's Dune or Dan Simmons Hyperion and Illium to give higher minded sci-fi a shot. Sci-fi can be enriching if you just give it a chance." That's true, but I think I'll stick with things like E.E. Smith's Lensman, Heinlein's Starship Troopers, David Weber's Honor Harrington, Niven's Ringworld, Eric Frank Russell's Wasp, and so forth. That last one is perhaps one of my favorites. Now THAT'S what a book about destabilizing an alien empire should read like. Both entertaining and informative. I think I'll read it again and write a review of it. I'm glad we're having this discussion, actually. It's always nice to have an intelligent talk about the fundamental aspects of storytelling in science fiction. [Phew! That was long. Sorry about that. Hope you guys are all still awake. We could have cured cancer with all those lost man-hours writing these essays. Any thoughts?]
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| Replies: |
| Why I Hate Glasslands | Train Dodger | 9/17/12 10:22 p.m. |
| I agree with Williams, but I can see your points. | Rice | 9/17/12 10:41 p.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | General Battuta | 9/17/12 10:42 p.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | General Battuta | 9/17/12 10:44 p.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | Train Dodger | 9/17/12 11:54 p.m. |
| On second thought... | Train Dodger | 9/18/12 6:24 p.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | ZackDark | 9/17/12 10:49 p.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | SonGoharotto | 9/17/12 11:24 p.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | Chewbaccawakka | 9/17/12 11:29 p.m. |
| Correction. | Quirel | 9/18/12 12:10 a.m. |
| Got it | ZackDark | 9/18/12 12:26 a.m. |
| Re: Correction. | Chewbaccawakka | 9/18/12 1:12 a.m. |
| Re: Correction. | Quirel | 9/18/12 1:34 a.m. |
| Re: Correction. | Chewbaccawakka | 9/18/12 1:48 a.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | General Battuta | 9/17/12 11:32 p.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | Beckx | 9/18/12 9:40 a.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | General Vagueness | 9/18/12 7:26 p.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | Train Dodger | 9/18/12 12:28 a.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | Quirel | 9/18/12 12:32 a.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | ZackDark | 9/18/12 12:49 a.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | Quirel | 9/18/12 12:55 a.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | bluerunner | 9/18/12 9:05 a.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | ZackDark | 9/18/12 9:41 p.m. |
| Total war | Flynn J Taggart | 9/18/12 12:36 a.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | SonGoharotto | 9/17/12 11:19 p.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | Jaydee | 9/18/12 12:12 a.m. |
| On Halsey being demonized. | Rice | 9/18/12 12:32 a.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | TDSpiral | 9/18/12 12:33 a.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | Hawki | 9/18/12 1:49 a.m. |
| Projecting guilt | scarab | 9/18/12 2:44 a.m. |
| Re: Projecting guilt | Jaydee | 9/18/12 3:01 a.m. |
| Re: Projecting guilt | Hawki | 9/18/12 3:12 a.m. |
| Re: Projecting guilt | scarab | 9/18/12 3:52 a.m. |
| Re: Projecting guilt | Train Dodger | 9/18/12 4:25 a.m. |
| Re: Projecting guilt | Quirel | 9/18/12 9:41 a.m. |
| Re: Projecting guilt | Harmanimus | 9/18/12 3:39 a.m. |
| Re: Projecting guilt | scarab | 9/18/12 4:07 a.m. |
| Re: Projecting guilt | Hawki | 9/18/12 4:46 a.m. |
| Re: Projecting guilt | Harmanimus | 9/18/12 3:00 p.m. |
| More like projecting Quilt | bryan newman | 9/18/12 4:52 a.m. |
| Re: More like projecting Quilt | Hawki | 9/18/12 5:23 a.m. |
| Re: More like projecting Quilt | bryan newman | 9/18/12 5:28 a.m. |
| Re: More like projecting Quilt | Hawki | 9/18/12 5:34 a.m. |
| Re: More like projecting Quilt | scarab | 9/18/12 1:20 p.m. |
| Re: More like projecting Quilt | Hawki | 9/18/12 4:36 p.m. |
| Best Line of the Whole Debate | Hoovaloov | 9/18/12 2:09 a.m. |
| Re: Best Line of the Whole Debate | Hawki | 9/18/12 2:12 a.m. |
| Re: Best Line of the Whole Debate | Quirel | 9/18/12 2:16 a.m. |
| Re: Best Line of the Whole Debate | Hoovaloov | 9/18/12 2:22 a.m. |
| Re: Best Line of the Whole Debate | Train Dodger | 9/18/12 2:25 a.m. |
| Re: Best Line of the Whole Debate | Hoovaloov | 9/18/12 3:01 a.m. |
| Re: Best Line of the Whole Debate | bluerunner | 9/18/12 8:59 a.m. |
| Re: Best Line of the Whole Debate | Hawki | 9/18/12 2:28 a.m. |
| Agree with all but the last sentence! *NM* | Lurono | 9/18/12 2:43 a.m. |
| Re: Best Line of the Whole Debate | Hoovaloov | 9/18/12 2:48 a.m. |
| Re: Best Line of the Whole Debate | Lurono | 9/18/12 3:12 a.m. |
| Re: Best Line of the Whole Debate | Hoovaloov | 9/18/12 3:29 a.m. |
| Re: Best Line of the Whole Debate | Lurono | 9/18/12 9:35 p.m. |
| This: *NM* | thebruce0 | 9/18/12 9:01 a.m. |
| D'oh, attempt 2 :) This: | thebruce0 | 9/18/12 9:06 a.m. |
| Re: Best Line of the Whole Debate | Hoovaloov | 9/18/12 2:18 a.m. |
| Re: Best Line of the Whole Debate | Train Dodger | 9/18/12 2:40 a.m. |
| Re: Best Line of the Whole Debate | Lurono | 9/18/12 2:55 a.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | scarab | 9/18/12 3:22 a.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | Train Dodger | 9/18/12 3:54 a.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | Archilen | 9/18/12 3:38 p.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | Train Dodger | 9/18/12 11:45 p.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | Archilen | 9/19/12 9:14 a.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | Train Dodger | 9/19/12 11:36 a.m. |
| Corollary | Train Dodger | 9/19/12 11:52 a.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | Archilen | 9/19/12 2:36 p.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | Train Dodger | 9/19/12 4:07 p.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | SonGoharotto | 9/19/12 5:01 p.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | Train Dodger | 9/19/12 5:04 p.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | General Vagueness | 9/19/12 7:15 p.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | ZackDark | 9/19/12 7:19 p.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | Train Dodger | 9/19/12 7:56 p.m. |
| This is why Gameplay/Canon Segregation exists. *NM* | Rice | 9/19/12 11:56 p.m. |
| Nope. | uberfoop | 9/20/12 12:05 a.m. |
| To be fair to the UNSC... | SonGoharotto | 9/20/12 12:19 p.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | Quirel | 9/20/12 1:02 p.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | Gravemind | 9/20/12 2:17 p.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | Train Dodger | 9/20/12 6:11 p.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | General Vagueness | 9/20/12 9:32 p.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | Train Dodger | 9/20/12 11:13 p.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | General Vagueness | 9/20/12 8:36 p.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | General Vagueness | 9/20/12 9:09 p.m. |
| Parangosky in GoO. | Rice | 9/25/12 4:19 a.m. |
| Also | Rice | 9/25/12 5:26 a.m. |
| On matters of execution | davidfuchs | 9/25/12 7:07 a.m. |
| Re: On matters of execution | General Battuta | 9/25/12 2:46 p.m. |
| The Halsey Jaw Punch | Rice | 9/26/12 2:26 a.m. |
| Re: The Halsey Jaw Punch | Subtank | 9/26/12 5:06 a.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | General Vagueness | 9/19/12 7:41 p.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | SonGoharotto | 9/19/12 7:48 p.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | Train Dodger | 9/19/12 8:08 p.m. |
| Update To Original Thread | Train Dodger | 9/18/12 9:04 p.m. |
| Re: Update To Original Thread | SonGoharotto | 9/19/12 3:54 p.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | vlad3163 | 9/23/12 2:27 p.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | bryan newman | 9/24/12 1:17 a.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | Archilen | 9/24/12 9:04 a.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | General Vagueness | 9/24/12 3:20 p.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | General Vagueness | 9/24/12 3:04 p.m. |
| Re: Why I Hate Glasslands | Tsudico | 10/30/12 2:22 p.m. |
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