Bad Analogies 101

At church we're going through an evangelism course called Way of the Master. I want to be clear up front that just because the course uses one tortured analogy doesn't make the whole course bad. It only makes the analogy bad. Indeed, the course could potentially be valuable. (How valuable? Too soon to tell. We've only had one week of it so far. Though, already, it has managed to set me thinking, and that in itself is not without value.) Still, I feel the need to vent about exactly how terrible this analogy is, so here we go.

The analogy is that a firefighter arrives at a house fire and proceeds to sit locked in the fire truck, listening to music on headphones, while the house burns to the ground around a family of five, whom he can see screaming and calling out to be rescued, which pleas he ignores. When questioned about his actions, he says he was testing the CD player that he'd bought as a gift for the fire chief, at great personal expense.

Aside from the obvious physical problems with the analogy (he can see the family from the truck, but they can't get out of the fire without help), the really broken part is the spiritual side of the picture. I don't know about you, but to my knowledge I've never had an unbeliever cry out to me for help with spiritual things. Ever.

Believe me, if somebody even *asked* me to explain salvation to them, let alone *cried out*, I'd be... willing isn't even the right word. Enthusiastic probably falls short of the mark as well. That's the kind of thing you daydream about, but it does not generally, you know, happen. On the contrary, people typically don't know the house is burning around them, and the few who do know it are usually convinced they cannot be helped.

Now, I'm not saying it's right for us to sit and do nothing just because unbelievers are content to stay that way. It's certainly not. But I *am* saying the analogy is flawed.

Here's another analogy: I'm not a firefighter. I'm a geologist. My geology degree is from an unaccredited college, which most people have never heard of, which has had to move across international boundaries numerous times as various governments have tried to shut it down. The government of my country officially tolerates the school, but you can tell they consider it an embarrassment.

So I have an unaccredited degree, and I call myself a geologist, but I am not employed as a geologist. I work some other job to pay the bills. The equipment I use is different from the equipment that other geologists use, too.

For the past few years I've been independently studying a certain mountain, and I have concluded that not only is it actually a stratovolcano (a fact which was previously unknown), but furthermore it is active, and is building up tremendous seismic pressure even as we speak and will soon erupt. It's impossible to know an exact timeframe, but with every passing month the pressure builds higher. There is a large bulge on the side of the mountain that has doubled in size over the last six weeks. It's going to go, soon, and furthermore it's going to be a very potent eruption. From the amount of pressure that's building up, my estimates say it could be bigger than Krakatoa, or at least comparable.

At the base of the mountain there is, of course, a town. When the volcano erupts, it will blow a large chunk of mountain, tens of thousands of tons of rock, down the mountainside and straight through the town. And on top of that there could be lava, volcanic ash, quakes, and so on, all the usual destructive stuff that goes with a major volcanic eruption.

I have to convince the people to evacuate.

People have been living in the town for generations. The mountain has never erupted in the past. The local news runs stories about what a crackpot I am. The local authorities, as well as the state government, are reassuring people that of course the mountain is an ordinary mountain, just like all the other mountains in the area.

But the people still need to evacuate. They're going to die if they stay. I know they're going to die, but I sit in my bedroom and make excuses for why I'm not talking to them about the volcano. I even post about it on my blog (which nobody reads), but I don't go out and tell people about the volcano.

Okay, so this analogy isn't perfect either. I think it's closer than the other one.

Book Review: A Thousand Splendid Suns

First off, let me preface this review by saying that this is pretty far removed from the kind of book I normally read. It's basically Romantic (in the older sense of that term) fiction. However, the setting sort of reached out and grabbed me: the book is set in the historical twentieth-century third world. When I discovered that the public library had it on audio, I went ahead and checked it out.

As historical fiction, however, I found the book disappointing. The book jacket information raves that "personal lives are inextricable from the history playing out around them", but I find this to be less than altogether true, as the main characters are two very reclusive women. During the bulk of the story they almost never leave the house and so have almost no opportunity to directly observe anything going on outside its walls. The history is reported almost entirely through the men in the story, who are really side characters, and through intermittent narration largely irrelevant to the story. We hear about the Soviets through Laila's father, and about the Mujahideen and the Taliban through Rasheed, a man so distant (and poorly detailed) that he is himself almost a part of the setting rather than a character. There are two notable times that the history really has a direct impact. One is when a stray rocket serves as a plot device to keep Laila from leaving the city with her family. Historical fiction is not a genre that I've read extensively, but in what I have read of it, the history was much more integrated into the story than this. (The other instance, admittedly, is better writing, if a bit macabre: the hospital conditions for the delivery of Laila's second child.)

The two main characters are developed thoroughly and well. They are multi-faceted, dynamic, interesting, and reasonably realistic, and the reader can identify with them and feel sympathy for them. Most of the other characters, however, are relatively underdeveloped: flat, largely uninteresting, and in many cases static. The story suffers for this, particularly from the poor development of Rasheed. Here we have a major character, around whom the plot is wrapped like a glove, so that virtually everything that happens to the other major characters is a result of some action on his part, and yet he is so poorly developed, so distant, that I found myself completely unable to identify with him at all, unable to care at all what happened to him (for good or ill). The parents of the four women all also have important roles in the early part of the book, but of the four, only Jalil has more than one facet of his personality explored in any depth. Later, Aziza is a fairly important character, or could be, but we know almost nothing about her.

The plot writing is, in my estimation, better than the characters. Although it is predictable and even obvious at times, there are a number of unexpected turns. Most of these turns are created by actions taken by Rasheed, not by the "history playing out"; nonetheless the story has a satisfying complexity and completeness. This had to be difficult to achieve, with characters who spend nearly all of their time at home, but the author manages it surprisingly well.

Book Review: Born on a Blue Day

The opening paragraph of this book had me hooked right away. That's usually a good sign.

As the next few pages progressed, I began to worry that the entire book would be a loose collection of examples of synesthesia. Then the first chapter ended, and the second chapter began a chronological journey through the author's life. The book is indeed well organized.

I found this book rather interesting. It is well-written and engaging, and the main character (the author himself) is interesting to get to know. The reader can sympathize with him from fairly early in the book.

I do have a couple of caveats, however. In the first place, the cover is a bit misleading with the tagline, "inside the extraordinary mind of an autistic savant". The author is not, in fact, autistic, and never was. This becomes immediately clear upon reading the first pages of the book. He does have Asperger's syndrome, but although Asperger's is considered to be loosely related to autism, it is certainly not the same. It is a much milder disorder, much less debilitating, and much more common. It is normal for someone with Asperger's to lead a more or less normal life. Several major Silicon Valley CEOs have been diagnosed with it. There was an article on Wired a while back entitled The Geek Syndrome, which seems to cover Asperger's pretty well, at a layman's level, so I'm not going to detail it further here. Long story short, I consider this tagline disingenuous on the part of the publisher.

The more interesting thing about the author's mind is indeed (as was hinted from the first paragraph) his pervasive synesthesia, and it IS fascinating, particularly so because it is a first-person account. The first several chapters of the book, covering the author's early childhood, are particularly interesting.

The other caveat comes to light later in the book, when the author reveals he is a practicing homosexual. This is not by any means the focus of the book, however, and it does not appear to color the remainder. For a discerning adult, I would say that the book is still interesting and, indeed, valuable. But I thought I would be remiss if I did not mention it.

A third caveat, if it can be called such, is that I am writing this review without having actually finished the book. I am writing this now, but I may update it later if I come back and finish the book. Another book has pulled me away from it for the time being, but I intend to get back to it and at least read more of the account of the trip to Lithuania, which was only just starting where I left off. That another book was able to pull me away is not a significant criticism. In the first place, this happens to me all the time, and in the second place, the book that pulled me away is by one of my favorite authors. So this is more a caveat about my review, than about the book itself. Caveat lector.

I have little doubt that a significant portion of the critical acclaim this book has received is due at least in part to the fact that the author is homosexual. Nonetheless, it does not follow that the book does not deserve some significant acclaim. It is rare, in my opinion, to see a non-fiction book about a fascinating subject like this receive any significant attention in the kinds of sources where this one has been written up — library-oriented publications particularly. Normally they focus on much less worthwhile books: formula fiction (lots of this), inane autobiographies by celebrities who neither can write well nor have had interesting lives, incoherent political ramblings, vapid self-help books... in a word, drivel. This book is certainly not that, and although the critics may like it for the wrong reasons, they are not wrong to like it.

Born on a Blue Day

I saw this book at the library, and it looked interesting. Now I'm reading it, and it is interesting. So I've set Stone of Farewell on the back burner and am planning to finish this one first. I'll post a review when I finish it.

Map of Osten Ard

I've been rereading The Dragonbone Chair, and in the process I've been working on this composite map. There are maps in the books, of course, but there are several issues. First, each book only has some of the maps, so one would have to carry all three (rather thick) volumes around in order to have all the maps handy, and there can be a lot of flipping around to find them. Even if you photocopy all the maps from the books and keep them paperclipped together or something, it can still be a lot of shuffling to find something, because different maps, aside from showing different areas, also have different details. Also, some things on the maps sometimes go by other names (e.g., a Sithi name, a Qanuc name, ...), so having them labeled with both names can make referring to the map easier in some cases. Finally, there are a few instances in which the text of the story directly contradicts the maps (e.g., the location of Haethstad, which on one of the maps is placed where Hullnir is on my map, but the story clearly states its correct location for Heathstad is the northeast corner of the lake). So I've been putting it all together into one map.

I'm not done, obviously. (Some of the islands in the south aren't drawn in at all...) I'll be finishing up while I reread the other books in the series. Nonetheless, what I have is already good enough to be useful, so, here it is. Update: I've since added a preview of the completed version.

Trying to look for Osten Ard maps on the internet doesn't appear to turn up anything this good or detailed, so I figure making it available to the public is a (small) service to Tad's readership. It's available in larger resolutions and in vector formats (SVG or eps (update: or PDF)) upon request. To request a copy now that this blog entry is no longer current, contact jonadab AT columbus PERIOD rr PERIOD com and be sure to put the words Osten Ard in the subject of the message. I've been answering one or two of these requests each month.

Please note that leaving a comment here does not automatically give me any way to contact you or send you the map. So if you want a copy, you need to follow the above instructions.

Hollywood Gets Everything Wrong

There's a pretty good writeup over yonder about the ways in which Hollywood always gets computer technology wrong. The thing is, they get other subjects even wronger. I used to think that movie makers were particularly messed up when it came to the subjects I knew best, particularly Bible topics and to a lesser extent math and science. Later when I studied computer science I found out how badly they mangle that too. But I've since taken a more critical look and have become convinced that Hollywood actually gets all subjects wrong without discrimination. Medicine, law, foreign cultures, perhaps even movie-making, I'm now convinced they mung everything until it's no good.

Whatever you think you know because you learned it in a movie is probably wrong, possibly very wrong.

Terry Pratchett Reprise

Most sci-fi and fantasy authors publish their best books first, and then once they've made a name for themselves and gathered a crowd of readers who are fans of their characters and universe, they just keep writing stories in that setting, which usually are not as good as the first ones.

Terry Pratchett appears to be an exception here. The first book I picked up, Guards! Guards!, was significantly better than the second book I picked up, The Light Fantastic, which being only the second Discworld book was published much earlier. I expected it to be better, because the first couple of books an author manages are often his best, but it was very disappointing in that regard. When I wrote my previous assessment, I hadn't finished it, but its ending (the last third of the book or so) was terribly anticlimactic and, I thought, boring. I barely made myself finish it. This is in contrast to Guards! Guards!, which was a little hard to get into at first but then captured my attention better as it went.

Now I'm reading Mort, which was published later than TLF and shows every sign of being rather better. (I can't compare it to Guards! Guards! yet, maybe when I'm further into the book.)

Maybe it's Rincewind and Twoflower I don't like. They're not very interesting characters, and they're not really sympathetic characters (i.e., ones the reader can easily identify with) either. Actually, of all the characters in The Light Fantastic, Cohen and the university Chancellor (the one who got whacked by Twoflower's luggage) were the only major characters I thought were really well-written and interesting. Well, and maybe the Gnome, but that's really a minor character. (There were also cameo appearances, as it were, from a couple of other potentially interesting characters, e.g., Death's daughter, who as it happens seems likely to show up in the book I'm reading now. But these did not have a very large role in the book.)

Terry Pratchett

After years of hearing people rave about the Discworld novels, I've finally given in and am reading a couple of them. They are interesting enough to read through without risking serious boredom, but they are in many respects rather disappointing.

In the first place, the author just doesn't have enough restraint. He hints too strongly and too often about what is going to come, so that what might have been interesting or surprising twists become expected and mundane. For instance, the first of the books that I picked up was Guards! Guards!, and it starts out with an explanation of where the dragons went, in short, that they did not die off but are dormant. Now, a good author, after introducing a little explanatory nugget like that, would have proceded to let it simmer in the back of the reader's mind for a while, distracting him with other aspects of the story, so that when a dragon shows up in the storyline eight or ten chapters later, it comes as a bit of a surprise, even though the reader knew it was possible. Pratchett doesn't handle it that way. The characters are talking about dragons, and plotting to summon one, a mere eleven pages later.

Then there's the satire. Satire is supposed to be subtle. Pratchett's satire is about as subtle as flashing neon lights.

Perhaps the most annoying thing is the way Pratchett treats the fourth wall. A lot of authors, even some quite good ones, occasionally break the fourth wall and speak to the reader, but Pratchett charges through it repeatedly to pester the reader, which after about the third time in a single paragraph gets rather old. The best example I can think of is in The Light Fantastic (the second Discworld book, and coincidentally the second one I picked up to read), when he is describing the heroine whom Trymon sent to find Rincewind. First he mentions the writer and the cover artist, then he mentions the narrative itself, and discusses a specific action the writer might take. Then he editorializes about the sort of writing that results and about the character. Then he pretends to get back to the story and actually describes the character, only to go off again with a metacomment. At this point the gag, neither very interesting nor very funny in the first place, is Officially Worn Out(TM), but Pratchett isn't done. Next he pretends once again to get back to the story, briefly describing some additional characters, only to say that they don't need much description because they won't last long in the story. Then he directly addresses the reader in the second person, offering to let the reader make a decision about the attire of the characters.

It isn't that Pratchett isn't capable of interesting writing. He is, and occasionally he even does a little of it. (Cohen, for instance, is an interesting character.) But the author continuously makes such a nuissance of himself that I want to put the book down in disgust.

I checked out three of his books from the library, and I'll probably read the third one (Mort) when I finish the second. But I'm unlikely to check out any more. The people who compare Pratchett favorably to Niven are on drugs.