On government transparency, "conspiracy," and false idols: Axiom's End, by Lindsay Ellis

 Yes, I like to bash conspiracy theories.  Conspiracy theories annoy me.  Let's get a few things out of the way, right now.  People are too incompetent to pull off a real conspiracy.  All it takes is one person, blowing the whistle, or even just accidentally flapping his lips at the wrong time to the wrong person, and the whole thing falls apart.  Conspiracies don't work.  That's not to say people wouldn't try to pull off some conspiratorial vileness.  It's that they can't.  They don't have the intelligence to organize a conspiracy, nor the capacity to keep everyone quiet.  So conspiracy theories are bullshit.  Politically, we read about the failed attempts!  Trump attempted loads of 'em.  The Eastman Memo probably doesn't count, since it was all in the open, but the pressure Trump was applying to state election officials?  Oh, and the Ukraine phone call, with all of the associated pressure on Zelensky?  If I start talking about all of the shady shit Trump attempted, though, I'll never get this post started.  Point being, an effective conspiracy is damn-near impossible.  You hear about the failed attempts, made by half-wits, and those with mere fractions of a wit.  But the real deal?  Bullshit.  That doesn't mean it can't make for fun reading, nor does it mean we should not address issues of transparency, because corruption is real.  Sporadic rather than systemic, often driven by personality and hackery rather than the gears of a nefarious machine, but as the old saying goes, sunlight is the best disinfectant, and if only Trump understood the proper meaning of that, rather than trying to apply it to COVID like the total dipshit that he was... but oh well.  Anyway, transparency is often a very good thing.  Always?  No.  There are times when national security requires secrecy, but ceteris paribus, I like transparency.  Which brings us to Axiom's End, by Lindsay Ellis.  This is the first book in a series, although the second book hasn't been released yet.  Worth reading?  Probably, but it does have some fodder for Sunday morning grumbling.

So here's the deal.  In 1971, the American government discovers some aliens hiding out on Guam.  They cover it up, and hide the aliens, who can't communicate with humans.  Their physiology and hence, concept of language is too different.  So, a special agency is formed to hide them, but keep them basically safe.  In 2007, two ships land like meteor strikes, which to all outward appearances, they are, except that they hit the same place, which makes everyone say, what the fuck?!  The first is called "the Ampersand Event," so the alien in that ship is just called, Ampersand.  The second is "the Obelus Event," so the lead alien in that ship is called, Obelus.  (Points for cool CIA code names!)

The aliens found in '71 are part of a group that was basically ethnically cleansed from the alien species because of an ideological disagreement.  Ampersand is there to rescue the group in hiding.  Obelus is there to bring 'em all back to the Autocrat, for proper purging, and that's the short version of the backstory.

So what's goin' on on lil' old Earth?  POV character is Cora, who is the child of a Julian Assange-type.  Nils Ortega.  Ortega is the founder of a website that releases leaked documents, and he preaches transparency, after having fled the country to Germany because he does a lot of illegal shit in the process of leaking government secrets.  We'll come back to him, but he's basically just in the background throughout the novel.  That was actually a good move, from Ellis.  Good writing.

Anyway, Cora is a dumbass millennial.  It's 2007, pre-crash (a crash is coming, for completely different reasons), and despite having gotten herself into UC Irvine-- a damned fine school!-- she drops out for no fucking reason, moves in with her beleaguered mother to leach off of her, and does nothing with her life except take money from her mother under false pretenses and fuck around.

Get off my lawn.

Yeah, any time we oldsters say "get off my lawn," we are doing a kind of self-deprecation about how old we sound, thereby perhaps indicating a reversal of the previous statement, but seriously.  Cora sucks.  She's capable of getting herself into UC Irvine, and for no fucking reason, she drops out, moves in with her mother, takes money under false pretenses, and just throws away her life?  No.  Seriously, her mother is a drunken mess, and while that's understandable given Nils-- we'll get to him-- it means I can't really call her the hero of the story, but at the same time, I can't back Cora.

Anyway, you just know in a novel like this that your useless millennial twit is going to turn out to be a moral paragon and bizarrely competent in every situation that requires it, right?  Throw in some modern wokeness stuff, and... I'm not going to bother with the rest of the nitpicking on that.  Never mind.

She plays guitar.  Her taste in music is variable.  She worships Ani DiFranco, so major points for that.  Neko Case?  No.  Cliche, and it fits, so I guess that works as a writing thing, but no.  Ani?  Yes.  Neko?  Correctly written, but no.  At least it wasn't the Indigo Girls.

Moving on.  Cora's family is deep in this shit.  Nils leaks a government memo about the aliens being hidden.  "The Fremda Memo."  On top of that, her aunt, Nils's sister, works-- or, did-- for the agency that was hiding the "Fremda" aliens.  What the aunt did, and her relationship with Nils, is left vague.  So, Ampersand shows up at Cora's house trying to find information to lead him to the Fremda aliens, then government agents show up, and ta-da!  Cora is at the center of everything, plot ensues, all centering on a millennial twit who goes to too many Neko Case concerts instead of staying in school.

But at least it wasn't the Indigo Girls.

OK, I've grumbled enough.  We have some interesting politics here, or I wouldn't bother.  Let's have some discussion of Nils.  The guy in the background.  He's... a total, fucking douche.  Julian Assange?  He is not a good guy.  Whatever one thinks of any particular leak, Assange is an asshole.  He's a narcissistic asshole.  And that's really the model for Nils Ortega.  What Ellis did was take that narcissism and dial it up to 11.  Holy shit, is Nils an asshole!

Let me give you an example.  When Nils learns that his family had been picked up by the CIA, his reaction is basically-- awesome!  I can so use this as a public relations cudgel!  They picked up my kids?!  This will make great press!

Yeah, that's Nils Ortega.  Father of the fucking year.  Like, you're reading along, and there's Cora, talking about how much she hates him, and it may seem like it's just because he ran out.  At that point, you can make the case that it was fleeing the country, or going to prison, so maybe he didn't want to flee, but he just didn't have a choice, but then you learn, no, really, he was excited that his kids, including two young children, got picked up and detained by the fucking CIA.

Nils Ortega.

Basically, he's Julian Assange, but even shittier, and since Assange is kind of shitty to begin with, that's really shitty.

Yet that doesn't mean everything he does is wrong!  The concept of the book is to take a sort of X-Files alien thing, and overlay that on the politics of Wikileaks, so that instead of Mulder and Scully versus the nefarious plot to conceal the aliens, it's Assange.  OK, so the admission here is that I watched, like, the first season of X-Files decades ago, and then gave up, 'cuz.  Whatever.  But wasn't it just, like, a mess of incoherent alien conspiracies, 'n shit?  Whatever.  Point being, Mulder was presented as an upstanding good guy, fighting the good fight.  Assange is just an asshole, and kind of a fraud.  Yet that doesn't mean he is always wrong.  Sometimes, yes.  Sometimes, no.  That's the thing about frauds.

So here's Ortega.  He had this "plan."  In 2007, George W. Bush was President, and Ortega didn't like that.  Ortega knew about the Fremda aliens.  So, leak the Fremda memo.  That starts congressional hearings.  Congress subpoenas Bush to testify about the aliens.  He... complies (?!!!).  Bush lies, and says that he just learned about the aliens and the agency.  But Ortega had a tape of Bush talking about them years earlier, so he releases that, showing that Bush lied, resulting in bipartisan (?!!!!!) pressure on Bush to resign.

Um.... let that sink in.  Axiom's End was published in 2020.  Do I have to explain why all of this is bullshit?  Bush wouldn't have testified before Congress, and even getting caught lying about this, he would have claimed national security, the GOP would have backed him, the whole thing would have turned partisan, and no fucking way.  No fucking way.  Have we not learned our lesson, people?

Anyway, that's not my point.  My point is the underlying question of transparency here.  Nils sucks.  Is he also wrong?

The concept of a national security secret is an important one.  There are times when national security is endangered when information is released.  Ortega doesn't just fail to understand this-- he doesn't care.  He just cares about his own brand.  Yet those of us who think seriously about politics have to put two competing principles against each other.  Transparency versus what can, on some occasions, be damage done by the reveal of some information.  We don't, for example, release tactical, operational information from the CIA, NSA and so forth because that would defeat the purpose.  Go, agencies.  Go get the fucking bad guys.  If we revealed, even to ourselves what you are doing, you couldn't do that.

Would there be danger to revealing the Fremda aliens?  Initially, you don't know.  In fact, there was, within the novel.  First, Obelus, and then the revelation that the whole species is eventually going to come kill us if they understand that we are advancing technologically, and have had contact with them.  So actually, yeah, the revelation of contact would be dangerous.  Best for us would have been if they never showed up, or left with no trace.

Initially, though, nobody knew that.  What do you do with something like this, in the absence of knowledge?

You don't know the risk.  In this case, the government couldn't have known the danger because they couldn't communicate with the Fremdans.  Communication wasn't possible at all until Ampersand showed up, with his magical computer algorithm and babel fish gizmo, implanted in Cora's ear.  So they erred on the side of secrecy, which happened to be the right side.

Nice twist.  Particularly when Ortega is such a shit.

And as this is happening, we have occasional political discussions over the release of "UFO" documents.  OK, let's just... no silliness.  The "U" stands for, say it with me, "unidentified."  As in, if it's a plane, but you don't know that, it's still, technically, "unidentified."  It does not stand for, "unterrestrial," or some other such shit.

As long as I'm rambling about this, fuck it.  I'm a statistician.  Fermi's Paradox.  The universe is bigger'n big.  Statistically, there should be intelligent life out there, somewhere.  So why haven't we found evidence of galactic empires 'n stuff?

Fermi's paradox actually plays into the novel, and that's what the titular axiom is all about, but I'm not getting into Ellis's discussion, mainly because I think she fumbled it.  Never mind.  Anyway, is there life out there?  Somewhere?  Statistically, the likelihood of there not being life out there, somewhere, is very low.  Universe is too big.  Intelligent life?  Big, big universe.  The likelihood that we are the only intelligent life in the universe is very low.

So why haven't we found it?  Fermi.

I'm going Einstein on this.  Why would you expect to find it?  Here's the thing.  Speed of fucking light.  In order for any of the cool, sci-fi stuff that I like to read, or alien contact, or any of that shit, we kind of have to be wrong about physics.  Might we be?  Sure.  There is certainly something about which we are wrong, but we must default to our current understanding.

And right now, that means Saint Al of the Crazy Hair and the Mind-fucked Math.  (He didn't even have the excuse of barber shops being shut down for a pandemic!)  Speed of Fucking Light.  OK, aliens, where are you going, and how are you going to get there?  A generation ship?  That doesn't violate our understanding of physics, but it is a major engineering challenge, and you have the materials problem, and so forth, but... why, until you get to the point of your star going nova?  Can you terraform (or... whatever-form) whatever planet you expect to find in the however-many eons it takes to get wherever?  With a limited genetic sample?

Impossible?  No, but not in any way a way to build a galactic empire, nor a likely means of alien first contact.  We cool, Enrico?

What, wormholes?  At that point, you're blurring the Arthur C. Clarke technology/magic boundary.  Can I rule out some alien buggers out there makin' wormholes?  No, but if that's the assertion-- the justification for Fermi-- we're crossing statistical lines because we've approached the Clarke boundary.  I'll make the same case for subspace/hyperspace/whatever-space and any other imagined technology that my favorite or your favorite writer can concoct.

In Axiom's End, at one point, Cora asks Ampersand to point out his star.  He says he can't.  It's within a Dyson sphere.  You can't see it.  Dyson spheres are already way beyond our engineering capacity, but they are at least a theoretical possibility.  But it would also mean you wouldn't see it, if the sphere is complete.  And, living within the sphere, the species wouldn't be venturing out.  The weird thing here is that the aliens in the novel are still limited by that light speed boundary, so the whole contact thing... I'm sayin' no.  Still...

If you're waiting for alien contact or anything like that, I can't say that it is an absolute, mathematical impossibility.  But remember Occam's razor.  Any explanation for any phenomenon you see here, on Earth, that posits aliens here, on Earth, generally also posits a violation of our current understanding of physics.  That's not going to be the simplest explanation.

It is highly unlikely that there are aliens.  (Here.)  It is highly unlikely that there is any successful cover-up of anything.

But the question of secrecy, in the face of an Assange-type character, is actually an interesting one.  He forces us to confront the observation that there really are, and should be limits.

And just as it was a mistake for anyone to look at Assange, the man, as any kind of hero, it is a mistake in the novel for anyone to look at Nils Ortega as a hero.

Ain't no fuckin' heroes.  Principles, not heroes.  With the understanding that the world is complex, and sometimes you need to balance competing principles.

Randall Bramblett & Geoff Achison, "See Through Me," from Jammin' In The Attic.  Randall's original version is from the album of the same name, and it was cool enough, but here, he plays with one of the most impressive guitarists around.  Achison is a legitimate choice for "greatest guitarist you don't know."  Great stuff.