NGOs, organization and funding: The Kaiju Preservation Society, by John Scalzi

 Time for a science fiction diversion.  According to John Scalzi's comments in the Afterwards, he wrote the novel under post-2020 stress as something of a diversion anyway, so I may as well make my comments at least partially escapist.  I cannot help but comment on politics, and gripe a bit, but while some of Scalzi's novels are more pointed than others, he is mostly known for writing witty banter, and he rarely fails to deliver that.  The Kaiju Preservation Society has its share of witty banter, a few interesting things about which a political science professor can expound, and some obligatory wokeness because this is 2022.  Ironically, Scalzi did it better when he wasn't trying.  I'll explain along the way.

So here's the deal.  Way back in the before-times of early 2020, as COVID was just starting to change the world, Jamie Gray gets fired from a Grubhub-type start-up by his megadouche boss, who fired him on a bet.  In need of cash, he takes a job delivering for that company as a... wait for it... "deliverator."  Megadouche has a thing for plagiarism, professing ignorance of the source material.  After a few deliveries to an old acquaintance who actually got the reference, that acquaintance offers him a job with the "KPS."  It requires long stints of work away from friends and family, but pays well.  Jamie takes the job.

The job is working for the titular organization.  After WWII, atomic tests started thinning the barrier between our world and another Earth where some protozoan flapped its pseudopods and sent evolution off in a different direction, or something.  Fuck off, I'm a political scientist.  Anywho, that world is very different, and has kaiju, like the Japanese monster movies.  They started crossing over here when the barriers thinned, following the atomic energy, and that's the source of Godzilla, Gamera and the rest, and fuck yes, I watched MST3K.  Anyway, the nuclear test ban was, at least in part, about keeping that barrier up to stop the kaiju from invading our world, but there are a few doors that the KPS manages for scientific purposes.

Wackiness ensues, idiots try to import a kaiju, the heroes win, the end.

It isn't about plot, it's about witty banter.  It's a Scalzi novel, and honestly, not among his best.  If you want his best, go read Redshirts.  Some of the Old Man's War series is pretty fucking good, and the first two books in the Interdependency Trilogy are awesome.  You want serious thought?  Read Lock In.  This is not his best, but you can count on Scalzi for witty banter, even at his worst.

Funny I should mention Lock In.  I'll get to that.

Remember how I have to grumble before making any real points?  This is the part where I grumble about the fact that every modern sci-fi book is pointlessly, cloyingly woke.

Lock In was not woke, exactly, but in subtle ways, it was the most interesting commentary on gender I have ever read by not commenting on it.  The main character was Chris Shane.  Chris was an FBI agent, investigating a complex crime involving... OK, this is complicated, which I suppose is repetition.  Here's the deal.  There is a disease at the center of the book, called Haden's Syndrome.  A small number of people infected with Haden's get "locked in," which means total paralysis, and so the world has developed technology to allow them to connect their brains to robot bodies, via neural links.  Their physical bodies lay in beds with tubes 'n stuff, while their robot bodies-- "threeps," (as in, C3POs)-- walk around, as part of the world.  The case is a conspiracy involving the software for those links, and... fuck, go read the book.  It's great.  One of Scalzi's best.

Anyway, Chris is locked in.  Have you noticed something?  I didn't tell you if Chris is a man or a woman.  Neither does Scalzi.  In two books.  Cool writing trick, right?  Scalzi writes in first person, and nobody else uses a pronoun in Chris's presence.  For those who like audiobooks (personally, they never worked for me, but whatever floats your boat), there are two versions.  Remember: first person.  One is read by Wil Wheaton, and one read by Amber Benson.  Chris is not precisely nonbinary.  It's just that you don't know, and it doesn't matter.  Yet, if you don't realize that it is happening, you will probably assume that Chris is male, and that brings in a whole other set of commentaries!   It's very cool.  The coolest thing I have ever read about gender, and Scalzi doesn't say a fucking thing about gender.  Wokeness wasn't really a thing yet.

But it is now!

Jamie's roommates back in New York are an absentee woman, and two gay guys, one of whom is trans because of course, but then we get into the contrast I'll draw with Chris Shane.  Niamh.

Niamh is the most over-the-top masculine character in the novel, with the possible exception of Jamie's douche-bro boss from the tech startup, but Niamh isn't evil.  Niamh is written to be a "fan favorite," and if you draw a gender spectrum, and read Niamh's words and actions, then put a mark on that spectrum indicating the level of masculinity or femininity demonstrated by such words and actions, that mark will be as far to the masculine side as you can go.  Why?  Constant belligerence, temper, preening egotism, all with a shoulders-back, chest-thrust-out attitude that only doesn't alienate the reader because Niamh is funny.

"Niamh," for anyone who doesn't know, is a Gaelic name, and a feminine name.  Scalzi uses "they" pronouns for Niamh.  The only thing that makes any sense of "they" pronouns for Niamh is the fact that the name is feminine.  Beyond that, literally every character in the book, except possibly douche-bro boss, is more feminine, including all of the CIS dudes.  And douche-bro doesn't out-male Niamh.  Douche-bro is just a douche.

Non-binary, my CIS-male ass.

You see how that's a "male" thing to say?  It's also the tone of everything Niamh says, but Niamh is funnier because Niamh has Scalzi providing lines.

And the point of referencing Lock In is that Scalzi can write characters that truly are ambiguous in a way that would work, today, as a characterization of someone who would claim the label of "non-binary."  Debates are held about Chris Shane.  (Personally, I lean slightly towards "Chris is a woman," but the point is that the characterization would work.)

But Niamh does not come across as anything other than very, very masculine.  Chris didn't.  Readers assumed Chris was male, largely because of the gender role assumptions of "FBI agent," and such, but Chris really wasn't particularly "masculine."  That was why it worked.  Here, though, Scalzi just had different goals, and it led to a characterization that made no logical sense in the context of the political goals he had for including the character, and yes, this really was just "oh, it's 2022, I need a non-binary character."  Well, then write one!  Niamh is not non-binary.  I call writing-fail.

OK, now that my grumbling is out of the way, let's make a real point, although it will probably be smaller.  That was a lot of grumbling about, well, basically a failure of characterization.

The Society itself.  It is a "non-governmental organization," which is exactly what the name implies.  So how is it funded?  Governments give it money, as do private organizations, and certain wealthy donors.  Unfortunately, of course, that includes megadouche, but here's the basic issue, and it is a real one.  The nuclear test ban is a treaty-- an agreement across national boundaries.  We have a few of those, and they are difficult to arrange.  Some countries will always be holdouts to treaties, but what happens when there are threats and concerns that simply recognize no national boundaries?

Like, an alternate Earth filled with gigantic, fuckin' monsters that could, under the right/wrong circumstances, cross over and wreak havoc?  Someone ought to handle that.  If such a concern existed entirely within a national border, it would be a national concern, and could be handled as a purely governmental matter, but once you see issues that recognize no national borders, you are in different territory, because there isn't really much in the way of international law.  Within the novel, the test ban treaty is sort of a frontline defense, but the KPS still has other measures in place to protect our Earth from the kaiju, and to protect them from people doing stupid shit like... well, like the obvious thing that has to happen.

So where does the money come from?  There is the obvious point.  There is no tax collection authority at the international level, so while national governments can kick in some cash, the more they kick in, the more that risks revealing what is happening.  If you are talking about anything "normal" (i.e., not gigantic monsters like from Japanese stop-motion animations), that only becomes a problem if it creates domestic appropriations backlashes, which granted, can be real, but add in the need for secrecy, and you have another layer of problems, requiring funding from private sources, which a lot of NGOs take, which the KPS takes, which is, of course, the source of the problem because megadouche is, obviously, the big villain of the book when he tries to import a kaiju.

Dumbass.

But this is an organizational politics issue!  The fact that Kaiju Earth must be managed internationally means that the KPS must be constructed and funded through means other than normal taxation, since there is no international tax collection mechanism.  That allows too much information to flow to people you really wouldn't want to find out about the kaiju-- Scalzi doesn't so much "foreshadow" this as fore-beat-you-over-the-head with it.  So you have a tangled mess of problems with no obvious solution.

Kaiju Earth needed to be kept secret.  It also needed to be managed.  That required funding.  All of that required international organization.  With no international tax collection mechanism, you have a collective action problem at the international level unless you rely on donors, and... yeah, that's a problem.

If I'm picking this apart on a dollar-for-dollar basis, as an accountant, could I find a way for the US government and a couple of others to hide it?  Probably.  The bases on Kaiju Earth are really not all that high tech, and it is mostly about transportation through the gateways, but that could be managed.  I suspect that an accountant would look at this and say, come on, this could be hidden and funded far more easily, but the organizational problem is real.  So there's that.

And witty banter.

Which is more than I can offer, so instead, here's some music.  Ling Tosite Sigure, "MONSTER," from i'mperfect.  I could do without the vocals from this Japanese math rock group, but if you study music theory at all, just try picking this apart.