Science fiction, politics and... the Post Office: On Charles Stross and Terry Pratchett
Just a few references today. I've been thinking about... the Post Office. And... schemes surrounding the Post Office. Today's theme: as reality gets more absurd, absurdism becomes ever more difficult to craft in literature. Or rather, as reality imitates absurdist literature, satire moves out of reach.
More succinctly put: life now resembles either a Terry Pratchett novel or a Charles Stross novel.
Let's start with Stross, who is probably best known for "The Laundry Files," which is a long-running series of novels that is a weird cross between The X-Files, H.P. Lovecraft and, um... Dilbert, I guess. Basically, if you perform certain dangerous mathematical calculations, you open the door to a universe in which Lovecraftian beasties come through and do bad things. "The Laundry" is a British government agency charged with handling supernatural phenomena that result, but it is an underfunded bureaucracy staffed with bureaucratic twits. That's the basic set-up.
Anyway, in The Delirium Brief, which is Book 8 in the series, you are introduced to one of the many agencies on the American side. The American occult intelligence agencies, we are told, are a mess of groups engaged in constant turf wars (like our regular intelligence agencies), and the big one-- the Operational Phenomenology Agency, AKA, the Black Chamber-- is basically "captured" by Lovecraftian beasties. ("Capture" is actually a term used in political science for when agencies charged with regulating an industry are overly influenced by the industry they are supposed to regulate.) The Black Chamber then starts trying to gobble up other occult intelligence agencies, including a minor, but important and bizarrely functional one.
There's one hidden within the Post Office, charged with tracking anything slipping through the mail, and the reveal of the OPA taking down that office within the USPS is how you know it's bad. When they go after the Post Office... it's bad.
Stross published that in 2017. Who knew?
Anyway, for the flip-side, let's have a little digression about my favorite Terry Pratchett book, Going Postal. (I guess I'm doing British authors today.)
Going Postal, like most of Pratchett's books, takes place on "Discworld," which is a flat world laying on the backs of four giant elephants, who themselves stand on the back of a giant turtle. What's beneath the turtle? Don't ask. (Yeah, it's the reference you think it is.)
Moving on, Going Postal takes place in Ankh-Morpork, where the best Discworld books take place (in my opinion). There is a postal system, but it has... been left to rot. In its place, a newer and faster communications system has arisen. A totally private engineering marvel: the clacks. It's a Rube Goldberg system of sending something like Morse code, tower-to-tower-to-tower, over long distances. But it's faster than the old-fashioned mail.
The problem comes about when a group of corporate raiders takes it over. This would be the group led by Reacher Gilt, whom I mentioned recently. He dresses like a pirate. Their goal-- extract the short-term profit that they can, and sell the rest off for parts when they're done. If that leaves everybody unable to function without any communications system... meh. That's their problem, right?
Well... that's a problem. Enter Havelock Vetinari, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork; a ruthless but kind of awesome dictator. Vetinari saves a guy who is actually, seriously named Moist Von Lipwig ("Lip-vig," because that's the name to pronounce differently) from the death penalty because Moist is just the con artist Ankh-Morkpork needs to save the Post Office.
Reacher Gilt destroys a functioning communication system for his own ends, forcing Vetinari to put Moist in a position to rebuild the Post Office. Where's Havelock Vetinari when we need him?
Anyway, the basic point is this. The idea of a plot to destroy the Post Office is the stuff of absurdist sci-fi or fantasy, in the tradition of Terry Pratchett or Charles Stross. When you recognize that we are living in a Laundry Files or Discworld novel... what do you do?
More succinctly put: life now resembles either a Terry Pratchett novel or a Charles Stross novel.
Let's start with Stross, who is probably best known for "The Laundry Files," which is a long-running series of novels that is a weird cross between The X-Files, H.P. Lovecraft and, um... Dilbert, I guess. Basically, if you perform certain dangerous mathematical calculations, you open the door to a universe in which Lovecraftian beasties come through and do bad things. "The Laundry" is a British government agency charged with handling supernatural phenomena that result, but it is an underfunded bureaucracy staffed with bureaucratic twits. That's the basic set-up.
Anyway, in The Delirium Brief, which is Book 8 in the series, you are introduced to one of the many agencies on the American side. The American occult intelligence agencies, we are told, are a mess of groups engaged in constant turf wars (like our regular intelligence agencies), and the big one-- the Operational Phenomenology Agency, AKA, the Black Chamber-- is basically "captured" by Lovecraftian beasties. ("Capture" is actually a term used in political science for when agencies charged with regulating an industry are overly influenced by the industry they are supposed to regulate.) The Black Chamber then starts trying to gobble up other occult intelligence agencies, including a minor, but important and bizarrely functional one.
There's one hidden within the Post Office, charged with tracking anything slipping through the mail, and the reveal of the OPA taking down that office within the USPS is how you know it's bad. When they go after the Post Office... it's bad.
Stross published that in 2017. Who knew?
Anyway, for the flip-side, let's have a little digression about my favorite Terry Pratchett book, Going Postal. (I guess I'm doing British authors today.)
Going Postal, like most of Pratchett's books, takes place on "Discworld," which is a flat world laying on the backs of four giant elephants, who themselves stand on the back of a giant turtle. What's beneath the turtle? Don't ask. (Yeah, it's the reference you think it is.)
Moving on, Going Postal takes place in Ankh-Morpork, where the best Discworld books take place (in my opinion). There is a postal system, but it has... been left to rot. In its place, a newer and faster communications system has arisen. A totally private engineering marvel: the clacks. It's a Rube Goldberg system of sending something like Morse code, tower-to-tower-to-tower, over long distances. But it's faster than the old-fashioned mail.
The problem comes about when a group of corporate raiders takes it over. This would be the group led by Reacher Gilt, whom I mentioned recently. He dresses like a pirate. Their goal-- extract the short-term profit that they can, and sell the rest off for parts when they're done. If that leaves everybody unable to function without any communications system... meh. That's their problem, right?
Well... that's a problem. Enter Havelock Vetinari, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork; a ruthless but kind of awesome dictator. Vetinari saves a guy who is actually, seriously named Moist Von Lipwig ("Lip-vig," because that's the name to pronounce differently) from the death penalty because Moist is just the con artist Ankh-Morkpork needs to save the Post Office.
Reacher Gilt destroys a functioning communication system for his own ends, forcing Vetinari to put Moist in a position to rebuild the Post Office. Where's Havelock Vetinari when we need him?
Anyway, the basic point is this. The idea of a plot to destroy the Post Office is the stuff of absurdist sci-fi or fantasy, in the tradition of Terry Pratchett or Charles Stross. When you recognize that we are living in a Laundry Files or Discworld novel... what do you do?
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