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SPOOKED

                                                     June 24, 2013


     It continually bugged me that            GETTING_WARM
     throughout his 40/50/60 series,
     Kim Stanley Robinson doesn't
     address the sheer amount of
     paranoia that would afflict the
     players in the multi-faction
     spook show he describes.

     I will let pass the fact that
     The Hero believes what the
     Beautiful Spy tells him
     implicitly... but during the
     long absences when she
     neglects to contact him, why    Much later, there's a
     isn't he ever afflicted by      Confrontation Scene, where the
     doubt, wondering if she's       bad guy-- her ex-husband--
     just playing him?               tries this line on him to try
                                     to shake him. This is okay:
                                     the bad guy has a plausible
                                     understanding of human fears.

                                     Wouldn't it make some sense for this
       And once the main             bad guy to be driven crazy with
       character realized            paranoia about the main character?
       the bad ugy was so
       worried about him,            His wife has an ally in this
       might there not be            *really* strange guy, who doesn't
       some way for him to           appear to have any intelligence
       use that?                     connections himself, but his
                                     government connections are complex
                                     and no doubt difficult to trace in
                                     any detail, and he behaves really
                                     strangely: hiding in the woods in a
                                     tree house; hanging-out with
                                     homeless guys; volunteering with the
                                     local zoo to watch for escaped
                                     animals; messing around with
                                     buddhist monks.

                                     There's a scene where the beautiful
                                     spy is trying to get away from her
                                     ex, and our hero engages in what is
                                     almost his only successful action:
                                     he leads her to safety by simply
                                     out-running the bad guys (who are
   There's a rule of thumb that      not at all athletes like our
   drama is heightened by            heroes)-- he also recruits a
   inflicting some serious pain--    troupe of homeless vietnam-vets to
   e.g. the bad guys could've        run interference: they go above and
   countered by killing the nest     beyond, and drive off the pursuit
   of homeless vets.  The actual     with gunfire.
   counter-moves the bad guys use
   are a very low-grade who-cares             This all would've driven the
   degree of harassment, like                 bad guys nuts: where did this
   cutting the battery cables in              armed backup come from, all of
   the hero's van.                            a sudden?

       Another point where                              (Could it be it was
       Kim Stanley Robinson's                           all a trap, an
       sanity gets in the way?                          exercise to get
                                                        them to overplay
                   GETTING_WARM                         their hands?)


                                               PRAISE_OF_ONES_ENEMIES


                                           I'm glad that KSR thought to
                                           include the Confrontation Scene
                                           because it's actually a
                                           necessity in this kind of story.
                                           It also works pretty well that
                                           our hero ignores the bad guys
                                           head games, and changes the
                                           script, asking obvious questions
                                           like "Do you love her?"

                                           Myself, I would've gone a little
                                           further and asked "What kind of
                                           world are you trying to create?"






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