The Privy Council was anxious to discover who had incited him to commit the murder [of the Duke of Buckingham], suspecting the ‘Puritans’, but Felton insisted that he had acted alone and had not told anyone of his intentions. In the face of this insistence William Laud, then Bishop of London and emerging as an influential anti-Puritan, threatened him with the rack. But Felton was clearly made of stern stuff, and even though he was a ‘person of little stature’ he had ‘a stout and revengeful spirit’. In these tense moments he demonstrated considerable sang froid, replying that if he were put to the rack:

he could not tell whom he might nominate in the extremity of torture, and if what he should say then must go for truth, he could not tell whether his Lordship (meaning the Bishop of London) or which of their Lordships he might name, for torture might draw unexpected things from him.

After this there were no more questions for the prisoner.

- Michael Braddick, God’s Fury, England’s Fire

As plot devices go, super thieves and con men are the non-scary equivalents of serial killers: Endlessly fascinating but overused and implausible. There are some in real life, but once you’ve seen fifty variations of the Super Awesome Heist story, or the Brilliant Psychopath Plays Mind Games With Detective story, the spell breaks.

I almost like Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora. It’s a Super Awesome Heist story in a fantasy setting. It’s well written and intelligent, thus passing a test most fantasy doesn’t. It begins strong, and stayed there for the 220 pages I read.

But then I asked myself what it was that I liked about it. It wasn’t the characters. I still haven’t got a clear idea about Locke Lamora, the con man whose intricate plans to ruin a nobleman appears to be the main plot here. He’s just a name on a page. The city is interesting – but that got me thinking about Lankhmar, Fritz Leiber’s city of prototypical sardonic thievery, and I remembered how much better in every way his stories were than this. I thought: Why am I reading this? I want to reread Leiber!

I realized that the only thing I enjoyed about this novel was the Super Awesome Heist story, which is just too awesome, too perfect, (although clearly headed for a sudden Complication), and from there it all fell apart. It could have been different. This is the kind of novel I might have read in one sitting on a hot summer day. But it’s not to be.

Jeg har ikke vært fristet til å lese Stieg Larsson før jeg leste denne kronikken i Aftenposten, hvor Olav Elgvin anklager hovedpersonen, en kvinnelig hacker, for å være et kapitalistisk mannsideal i kvinnekropp. Dette er et spørsmål som fascinerer meg. Vi tar forfatteren på ordet når de påstår at en karakter er mann eller kvinne, men hvis du som leser “lukker øynene”, og bare følger med på hva karakteren sier og gjør, får du gjerne et annet inntrykk.

Er Sigourney Weaver i Aliens en kvinnehelt og et feministikon, eller en tradisjonell mannshelt med et politisk korrekt ytre, skapt av mannlige manusforfattere for et mannlig publikum? Går det an å være begge deler? Hva hvis den kvinnelige actionhelten er skrevet av en kvinne, men fremdeles oppfører seg som en tradisjonell mannshelt, som i Mary Gentle’s ASH?

Dette gjelder ikke bare kjønn, men også alder: Tenåringene i Veronica Mars ble spilt av 20-somethings, og snakket som middelaldrende manusforfattere. Og bakgrunn: Jeg vet bare om én TV-serie hvor nerdene faktisk snakker som nerder.

Hva er ekte? Hvem gjemmer seg bak masken? Hvem styrer John Malkovich i dag?

Og er det egentlig så farlig? Jeg vil svare: Nei, ikke så lenge man er klar over det. Jeg tror uansett ikke på det klart definerte skillet mellom kjønnene, som feministen Elgvin siterer ser ut til å ønske å opprettholde, og som, i den grad det finnes, forsterkes av stereotype forbilder. Jeg sier derfor ja til det komplette kaos av umulige helter, (og kommer med en anmeldelse av denne Larsson-fyren om ikke så lenge.)

Saturn’s Children is Charles Stross’s attempt at writing a late-period Heinlein novel: “The older Heinlein, despite the weird icky fetishes and the barking political rants and the self-indulgent shit was nevertheless a more interesting writer than his younger self”. Besides, everybody else was doing early-period Heinlein.

The novel Stross pays homage to is Friday, from 1982, a favourite of mine. I’ve read it three times, and will read it again. I won’t reread Saturn’s Children, because even a good homage is a shadow of its inspiration. But it is a good homage. Stross has recaptured what made Friday work as a spy thriller, including Heinlein’s more charming quirks. But he also does sly jokes at Heinlein’s expense, and a major one at Asimov’s.

Humanity has gone extinct, and left their robot servants behind. Programmed to obey, the robots have subverted human corporate law into a foundation for aristocracy and slave labor. The Friday in this story is Freya, a sex bot who works as a courier for a secret organization, and gets involved in a rather complex identity confusion plot involving soul backups and robot clones. Those who have read Glasshouse will know what to expect. Here, Stross takes the confusion a little too far.

There’s no point in reading Saturn’s Children if you haven’t read (and enjoyed) Friday – you’ll miss all the fun. And I’m not sure why it’s a Hugo award nominee – isn’t anyone doing anything new? This is just an enjoyable tribute.

Why do countries fail? In Wars, Guns and Votes, Paul Collier uses statistics to analyze the factors that influence stability and instability:

- In poor countries (<$7 income per day) democracy makes society more dangerous, not less. Democracy requires accountability and legitimacy to do any good, elections alone are too easily manipulated by powerful leaders.

- Peacekeeping forces are a relatively cheap and effective way to promote stability. So is promises of military aid in case of unrest, such as France used to give to its former colonies.

- Security scales well: Large countries are more stable than small countries.

- Multiethnic countries can be stable if they take care to build a common identity that rises above ethnicity. (Btw, “you should all become just like us” is probably not the right way to do this.) Ethnic voting is one of the chief reasons why democracy fails.

- 40% of all aid indirectly goes to military spending.

- Coups could potentially be very useful, because they may be the only real threat to an incompetent government’s power, but in practice they rarely do much good.

- Civil wars cause further civil wars, coups cause further coups.

This is a remarkable book. I had no idea these data were available – and yes this is all based on data, with only a few and clearly marked instances of speculation. I hesitate to recommend Wars, Guns and Votes to pundits, though, because they’ll inevitably reduce its careful analysis to partisan talking points.