On regulatory capture: Master of the Revels, by Nicole Galland

 Some novels require a sequel.  Some do not.  Some imply a sequel without requiring it.  Such was the case with The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O., cowritten by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland.  It was quite good, although keep in mind that I am a Neal Stephenson fanboy.  Nevertheless, I will acknowledge that some of his works fall short [cough cough, Diamond Age], and some could just use some editorial pruning.  Seveneves would have been improved by chopping off the last third, set in the far future.  That said, I do recommend The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.  The premise was as follows.  The universe follows the multiverse version of quantum mechanics, and witchcraft worked, past tense, because witches were able to reach across the multiverse and, for example, summon objects from other "Strands."  Why did it stop working?  As science progressed, and specifically, recording technology like photography, the wave form collapsed.  When Berkowski took his 1851 photograph of an eclipse, witnessed by so many people, that was it for witchcraft because of observation and recording.

Until a physicist started playing around with Schrodinger boxes, and the last living witch (whose last spell was a longevity spell) manages to meet up with him, thanks to a military-intelligence project.  The Department of Diachronic Operations.  They quickly arrive at the idea that the US government's primary interest is in time travel, since other governments might also be engaged in similar operations, so time war.

The limiting factor for D.O.D.O. is that they only have one witch, until they start bringing forward other witches, and they make the mistake of bringing forward a 17th Century Irish witch named Grainne (pronounced Gronya, with the Irish brogue).  Grainne plays along, at first, but she has no interest in helping D.O.D.O.  She wants to take over D.O.D.O., so that she can start messing around with time for her own purposes.  She wants to prevent the development of the technologies that put an end to witchcraft.  So, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. sees Grainne take over the operation, push out the original cohort and turn them rogue.  It ends with the main characters set up as a small, rogue agency committed to countering Grainne's moves.

That's what I mean by an ending that implies but does not require a sequel.  You know, generally speaking, where the plot goes, so you do not need to read it, but in principle, one might write it.  Galland did, without Stephenson.  I could not help but read it.  Really.  I had no choice.  There was no other choice.  I had no option.  Stop looking at me like that.

The plot is relatively straightforward, for a time war plot.  Grainne is trying to undo technology, so she is manipulating D.O.D.O. into sending operatives back in time, including herself, to change events to suit her, while also trying to ensure the preservation of magic.  There is an operation to prevent the birth of Leonardo da Vinci, an operation that, via the butterfly effect, would prevent Berkowski's photograph, and then there is the A-plot.  Grainne schemes to rewrite the "double double, toil and trouble" scene in Macbeth so that if magic starts to resurface in the future, there's a spell.  A real one.

The leader of rogue-D.O.D.O. and original founder of D.O.D.O., Tristan, goes back to 1606 to deal with the rewritten Macbeth, gets killed by Grainne, and then because reasons, his sister Robin, who is a theater kid, gets caught up, and goes back after him to set the script right and save Tristan.

This does mean that Robin has to pretend to be a man, and it is amusing for modern, political purposes that a) no one is buying it, but b) few people say anything about it, but let's let that sit there.

Anyway, that's really it.  There are some amusing sequences, and Galland is a skilled writer, but my primary critiques of the novel are that it is perfunctory, and directed at the obvious.

The perfunctory nature of the plot should be clear even from this brief summary.  One could easily extrapolate the general contours of where the story goes, merely from the end of the first book, so it is a matter of going through the motions.  From Galland's perspective, it made sense to write.  She got a big break, cowriting a very cool book with Neal Stephenson.  In the world of science fiction, he's as big as it gets.  Cash in.  The book just doesn't have many surprises.

Relatedly, in the first novel, the time travel stories dealt with tales like Christopher Marlowe.  In fact, the reason that Tristan was the one who first went to 1606 London was his experience dealing with 17th Century London.  At some point in your education, you read something by Marlowe, and perhaps remember a few tidbits about him.  He died in a bar fight.  That detail about him was important in the first book, because it is sufficiently famous that if something prevented it, badness would happen to the universe.  "Diachronic shear."  (Why doesn't rewriting the witch scene in Macbeth cause diachronic shear?  Um... no explanation given.  Plot hole.  Supposedly, you can make major changes if you do so indirectly, but that was direct.)  Point being, there is something interesting reading about Marlowe, not merely because he was interesting, as a guy who was potentially an Irish spy who died in a bar fight, but also because you know less about him.  Part of the fun of reading a Neal Stephenson book is the rabbit hole down which he sends you as you read about what is real, and what he made up.

Macbeth.  The "double double" scene.  Truthfully, unless you are a hardcore Shakespeare nerd, there is a lot in the novel that you do not already know, but it centers around one of the most famous scenes in one of the most famous plays in history.  Everyone knows it.  Now OK, that's actually relevant to the plot, but it still means that from a reader's perspective, it isn't as fun.  At least, not from my perspective.  I like the fact that a Neal Stephenson novel is also teaching me something, and going into detail on something about which I am less familiar than Macbeth.  Which I do think deserves its accolades, but still.  Macbeth, Leonardo, we are in familiar territory here, rather than fascinatingly unfamiliar territory.

OK, I had to do the grumble.  Now let's talk about some social science.  Let's address the topic of regulatory capture, in which a regulatory agency becomes so intertwined with a group that it is intended to regulate that it can no longer perform its functions.

Regulatory capture can happen for a variety of reasons.  Begin with the culture of the agency, comprised of individuals who will vary in politics and type from agency to agency.  Those who choose to work at the FBI, contrary to paranoid delusions held by those in the Republican Party these days, are not leftist radicals.  They are mostly traditional, law and order Republicans (emphasis on traditional, and law and order, hence the newfound partisan tension).  Those who choose to work at the EPA are more likely to lean left and have environmental preferences that line up with the Democratic Party.  But that's just a base-level condition, which can affect susceptibility.  When you think of lobbying, you think of campaign contributors cozying up to Members of Congress.  Actually, a lot of "lobbying" consists of industry representatives-- lawyers and researchers-- providing research to regulatory agencies.  How responsive they are to that research will vary, but they have incentives to take into consideration what the industry says because if you are trying to regulate an industry, and you have limited enforcement power, cooperation helps.

That also puts you on a setting in which you share information.  How cozy you get will vary.  Get too cozy, and you're in regulatory capture territory.

This is a very brief explanation, but the core point that you need to keep in mind is the necessity for cooperation between regulators and an industry.

Within the universe, or multiverse of D.O.D.O., the government is trying to manage a potential time war, and that means managing witchcraft.  When magic was more of a thing, witches did not actually care about time travel, because they considered it pointlessly clunky.  You cannot just go back in time, kill Sarah Connor once, and be done with it.  Besides the risk of "diachronic shear" (the kaboom that happens when you undo a major event), time course-corrects, so to create a change that sticks, you have to keep going back, over and over again, until the change sticks.  It's only the government that would be that fucking inefficient.

But once they get the ball rolling, and Grainne sees what's in store for witchcraft, it's that or nothing.  She either has to change her 17th Century mind about time travel and use it for her own purposes, or witchcraft will be doomed.

So D.O.D.O. is trying to manage time travel, and that means managing witches.  The problem is that the organization is completely dependent on witches, creating a scenario for capture.

In the first book, it looks very much like Grainne has completely taken over D.O.D.O. as an agency, which may have worked for narrative purposes, but one of the nice things Galland does is undercut that in Master of the Revels by showing how hard it is to have that kind of grasp on a sprawling agency, or even to maintain that kind of control over one person.  (Even witchcraft isn't enough, I suppose.)  More to the point, though, the funny thing about a regulatory agency is that there is always competition.  Whatever your interests are, someone else wants a cut too.

Enter the Fuckers.

Sorry, that's "the Fuggers," but by Erszebet's pronunciation, that's "the Fuckers."  The Fuggers were, as it turned out, a real banking family.  Stephenson & Galland made them the financial movers and shakers behind the scenes in the first book.  Here's a question.  If you are a witch and you conjure and make changes and things, why not perform alchemy?  Why not make gold?  It would destabilize the global economy, and then the Fuggers will come for you.  The Fuggers know.  The Fuggers know everything, and while they are basically just a bunch of very rich bankers, that's enough.  Don't fuck with the Fuckers, or they'll fuck you right back.

And when witchcraft comes back, the Fuggers are still around, still rich, still powerful, more quiet, and still just interested in stability.  There's a Fugger at the highest level of the intelligence apparatus, and he does not want Grainne fucking things up.

The Fuggers, of course, are the ones funding rogue-D.O.D.O. anyway.

Trying to explain everything going on with the Fuggers would get quite tangled, but my basic, simple observation is that Grainne really has two problems.  Or three.  And an almost fanatical devotion to Grace O'Malley.

First, she has to try to keep the personnel at D.O.D.O. either in line, or unaware of her moves.  That's hard enough, but that's the basic story of regulatory capture.  Secondarily, she is making countermoves to deal with rogue-D.O.D.O., set up by Tristan and funded by the Fuggers.

But that's her real problem.  The Fuggers.  The Fuggers have every interest primarily, yes, in stopping Grainne from undoing technology, but in more narrow and specific terms, in stopping her from gaining control of D.O.D.O., which is why Constantine Rudge, their man in the intelligence game, is really her most important adversary.

And here is the broader point about regulatory capture.  Any agency that can be captured can be captured by multiple actors, creating the kind of tension that you rarely think to observe.  This is actually pretty smart.  Intentional?  Just plotting?  Whatever.  It works.

One more for Jeff Beck.  I don't know that this is precisely right, but it feels right.  "Greensleeves," from Truth.