http://rmathew.com/rmathew.comRanjit Mathewrmathew@gmail.comhttp://rmathew.com/2023-12-12T20:26:51+05:30http://rmathew.com/2023/fivedys.html“The Five Dysfunctions Of A Team”2023-11-30T00:00:00+05:30
<p>
“<a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Dysfunctions_of_a_Team">The Five
Dysfunctions Of A Team</a>” is a small book by <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Lencioni">Patrick Lencioni</a> on
how to create effective teams. The author presents insights gleaned from having
worked with various CEOs and having coached them on how to build such teams for
their respective companies. There are some nifty insights for leaders in this
book.
<p>
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The author claims that teamwork is elusive because most teams fall prey to five
dysfunctions. These dysfunctions are inter-related issues, where one issue
leads to another. The author illustrates this model with a pyramid, where the
most fundamental issue is at the base of the pyramid and the final issue is at
the top.
<p>
In an interesting approach, the author presents a parable in the first part of
the book to illustrate their ideas and then presents their model in the second
part of the book. The parable takes up quite a big portion of the book, but I
found it helpful (if a bit contrived). The parable revolves around a fictional
technology company that is struggling, so the board hires an external CEO to
fix it, in the process pulling her out of her early retirement. The new CEO just
observes the workings of the company for a while and then organizes a series of
off-site retreats for her executive team to drill these ideas into them. It is
a difficult transition for the team and it does not emerge unscathed at the end
of it. I found it interesting that the CEO is shown having self-doubt and having
to take tough decisions with individuals in the larger interests of the company.
<p>
In the model presented by the author, the issues (starting from the base) are:
<ol>
<li>An <em>absence of trust</em> in the team because they are unwilling to be
vulnerable in front of each other, presenting a facade of invulnerability
instead.</li>
<li>This leads to a <em>fear of conflict</em>, so teammates avoid having
unfiltered debates based on ideas (and not personalities), choosing instead to
be guarded during discussions.</li>
<li>This in turn leads to a <em>lack of commitment</em> in the team and there
is no buy-in for decisions and plans of action as team-members feel that they
have not been able to express their honest opinions.</li>
<li>That results in a <em>lack of accountability</em> and teammates hesitate to
call out their peers on their execution.</li>
<li>That breeds a culture of <em>inattention to results</em> for the team and
team-members end up placing their individual goals before the outcomes for the
team as a whole.</li>
</ol>
<p>
After presenting the model, the author presents a quick diagnostic to help you
evaluate your own team, in the form of a set of questions (that you can also ask
your teammates to answer) and a scoring methodology. This diagnostic should help
you identify which kinds of issues your team suffers from. The author admits
that solving these issues take quite a lot of discipline and suggests a few ways
in which teams can approach resolving these issues.
<p>
I found the ideas presented here intriguing, but I am a bit skeptical about the
model itself. These are definitely issues that I have seen in various teams, but
these are not the only issues that I have seen. The number of issues here seem
to have been selected to match the title of another book by the author and both
seem to have a suspiciously pleasant and small number in their respective models
(like almost all self-help books). I am not saying this to dismiss these ideas,
but merely to wonder if these really are the <em>elemental</em> issues in
teamwork and whether they really are inter-linked in the manner presented by the
author here. In any case, this book presents good fodder for thought and for
action.
<p>
If you are a leader, read this book and reflect on the ideas presented here
based on your experience and the state of your team. It is a short book, so it
would not take up that much of your time. It would be interesting to see how
many teams have been helped by applying these ideas and how many could not.
http://rmathew.com/2022/deepwork.html“Deep Work”2022-09-16T00:00:00+05:30
<p>
“Deep Work” by <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cal_Newport">Cal Newport</a> is the kind of
book that is important for people whose work requires them to achieve long hours
of uninterrupted focus in order to get ahead in their field. For example, when
you achieve <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)">flow</a>
in your work, you feel very productive and can derive greater satisfaction from
it. Unfortunately the modern world seems to be set up in a way that is designed
to prevent you from achieving flow and thus personal growth.
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<p>
The author defines deep work as the kind of professional activities that are
performed with a distraction-free concentration and that push your cognitive
capabilities to their limit. This is in opposition to shallow work that is not
cognitively demanding, logistical in nature, and often performed in a state of
distraction. The author argues that the ability to perform deep work is
increasingly becoming rare at exactly the same time as it is increasingly
becoming valuable in our economy. As a software engineer cursed to work in
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_plan#Office_spaces">open-plan
offices</a>, I strongly concur.
<p>
The author presents a few rules to help you consistently achieve deep work. I
was pleasantly surprised to find a lot of my own tactics listed here. For
example, I have been carving out “focus time” chunks on my calendar
and have been trying to “defrag” my meetings as much as possible so
that I have at least some hope of getting around to doing the important things
in my job. (This is referred to as the “rhythmic” depth philosophy
in the book.) That said, I break the second rule in the book by being
constantly distracted via my smartphone (chiefly through <a
href="https://news.ycombinator.com/">Hacker News</a> and <a
href="https://twitter.com/">Twitter</a>).
<p>
In fact, one of the harder rules to follow in this book is about social media
and the Internet. The author asks us to apply the law of the vital few to our
Internet-habits – adopt a network tool (social media app, web-site, etc.)
<em>only if</em> its positive impact on core factors substantially outweigh its
negative impacts. This is in sharp contrast to the “any benefit”
threshold of using a network tool that most of us employ. We tend to use such
network tools if there is any benefit to using them (e.g. connecting with our
friends from school, keeping up with the careers of our professional colleagues,
etc.). Note that this is <em>not</em> about completely quitting all social media
and web-sites, but about being extremely intentional in which network tool you
use and how you use it.
<p>
Three of the four rules in this book are essentially variations on being less
connected and being more intentional with your time. The author repeatedly
insists that deep, meaningful work that advances you professionally is quite
possible to achieve, while having a healthy work-life balance. The key is to
drain out the shallows (the mindless distractions that we engage in throughout
the day and at any hint of boredom) and carving out time for focussed work.
<p>
As I have noted above, I have already been trying to adopt some of these habits
with some success, even before having read this book. Most folks in my
profession already recognize the value and the rarity of deep work. This makes
me think that the advice in this book is reasonably plausible and therefore
good. I shall certainly be revisiting this book time and again and hope to
benefit more from the advice herein. Highly recommended.
http://rmathew.com/2022/icfpc22.htmlICFPC 20222022-09-06T00:00:00+05:30
<p>
I took part in <a href="https://icfpcontest2022.github.io/">ICFPC 2022</a> the
past weekend. It was another “classic” no-nonsense ICFPC <a
href="https://icfpcontest2022.github.io/specification/">task</a> this year,
continuing the fine precedent set by the contest <a
href="../2021/icfpc21.html">last year</a>. This was especially awesome
since the contest almost did not happen this year due to the initial trouble in
<a
href="https://old.reddit.com/r/icfpcontest/comments/uv9pyr/looking_for_organizers_for_the_2022_contest/">finding
organizers</a> for it. Thankfully that was resolved in time. Unfortunately,
that did not mean that I had better luck in solving the problem this year.
<p>
Once again, this was my yearly refresher in coding in <a
href="https://golang.org/">Go</a>, since my day-job mostly involves C++. I find
Go to be a nicely productive and fairly performant programming language that
has an especially nice, but somehow still compact, standard library. For the
task this year, this standard library came in particularly handy since it had
functions for loading and saving PNG images, drawing and clipping images,
decoding JSON files, etc.
<p>
The task this year was fairly straightforward: you have to emit a program for a
computer-controlled painting-robot (“Robo Vinci”) so that it can
transform a given canvas into a given painting. The instructions for this
computer comprised manipulating blocks on the canvas (splitting blocks, coloring
blocks, swapping blocks, and merging blocks). The score your are awarded depends
on the similarity of the output of your painting-program to the target-painting
and the cost incurred while executing the program.
<p>
For example, one of the target paintings was this masterpiece by Johannes
Vermeer:
<p>
<img src="pearlgirl.png" width="400" height="400"
style="display: block; margin: auto;"
alt="The Girl With The Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer.">
<p>
When you compare it with the result below from my brute-force and desperate
attempt at finding a solution to this problem, you can get a pretty good idea
of how I fared this year:
<p>
<img src="icfpc22.png" width="400" height="400"
style="display: block; margin: auto;"
alt="The output of my brute-force solver.">
<p>
While the problem was quite straightforward to comprehend, I just could not
figure out how to even <em>begin</em> trying to solve it. I got stuck pretty
hard in this “programmer's block” for a couple of days of this
three-day contest. As a form of active procrastination, I wrote an interpreter
for the given language that could emit a painting and compute the expected score
for it by comparing it with the target painting.
<p>
In the end, I resigned myself to a brute-force and greedy approach of just
applying point-cut and color moves to approximate the target painting, while
reducing the incremental cost at each step. This solution worked by comparing
the cost of painting a block of the canvas with an averaged color of the
corresponding block in the target painting to the cost of sub-dividing the block
into quadrants with the respective averaged color of the individual quadrant. If
the former cost is lower, you stick with it; otherwise you recurse into each of
the quadrants applying the same greedy heuristic.
<p>
I managed to get solutions to the first 25 problems using this approach, but it
completely broke down for the subsequent problems as they started with an
initial configuration that had more than just a single default block covering
the whole canvas. Of course, even the solutions that I did get were horribly
expensive compared to the scores from other contestants that I could see on the
score-board, but it was somewhat better than having <em>nothing</em> to show for
three days of effort.
<p>
Despite my miserable performance, I really liked the task this year for the
simplicity of its description combined with the complexity of coming up with a
solution for it. Impressively, it could be done entirely on your local machine
(well, except for the last few problems that required you to download an image
from the Internet) without requiring constant access to some external server
that might not remain up for long, using virtual machines, relatively uncommon
programming language environments, etc.
<p>
While the specification was short and sweet, it did have some frustrating
ambiguities. For example, it did not specify whether the RGBA tuples it used
were pre-multiplied by the alpha-value or not (in the Go
<code>image/color</code> package, <code>RGBA</code> uses pre-multiplied values
while <code>NRGBA</code> does not). As another example, it did not specify what
was meant by rounding a floating-point value using <code>Math.round()</code> (or
even which programming-language this was referring to). I found by some trial
and error that it was using rounding away from zero (rather than the usual
rounding towards even). There were also some gotchas in the Go standard library
(e.g. that <code>Rectangle</code> uses half-open bounds rather than the usual
closed ones) that combined with the ambiguities above to make it take much
longer for me to recreate the scores produced by the organizer's web-site.
<p>
The source-code for my attempt this year can be found <a
href="https://bitbucket.org/rmathew/icfpc/src">on Bitbucket</a>, <a
href="https://github.com/rmathew/icfpc/">on GitHub</a>, and <a
href="https://gitlab.com/rmathew/ICFPC">on GitLab</a>. You can find some other
write-ups on <a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/icfpcontest/">/r/icfpcontest</a>
or <a href="https://icfpcontest2022.github.io/writeups/">on the contest
web-site</a> itself.
http://rmathew.com/2022/sacredgames.html“Sacred Games”2022-08-15T00:00:00+05:30
<p>
At 900+ pages, the tome <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Games_(novel)">Sacred Games</a> by <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikram_Chandra_(novelist)">Vikram
Chandra</a> seemed daunting enough for me to put off reading it for many years,
despite having heard good things about it from trustworthy sources. When it was
recently adapted into an acclaimed <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Games_(TV_series)">TV-series</a> that
I wanted to watch, I decided to read it before watching the eponymous series.
The epic saga here turns out to live up to all the hype in the blurbs listed in
the first 12(!) pages of the book.
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<p>
The novel tells the story of the rise and fall of Ganesh Gaitonde, a criminal
mastermind and a gang-leader in the Mumbai of the 1980s and 1990s. Interleaved
with his story is that of Inspector Sartaj Singh, who is mysteriously tipped off
about the whereabouts of this notorious gangster and gets a chance to make a
high-profile arrest. Things quickly take a bizarre turn and the Inspector is
left trying to piece together various clues to solve an intriguing mystery. The
novel also features a variety of characters, from a film-star to a god-man, and
does a fair job of fleshing out these characters.
<p>
The book reads like a well-made film and manages to hold your attention
throughout. The intricate plot unravels at a delicious pace across the book.
Each of the characters is flawed in their own way and many are relatable. The
book is divided into several chapters, each of which can be finished in a single
sitting of about an hour, which roughly alternate between telling the stories
of Ganesh Gaitonde and Sartaj Singh. Each chapter is further sub-divided, though
not delineated very clearly, into sections that tell a self-contained part of
the overall story. In between some of the regular chapters are the so-called
“inset” chapters that tell one or more stories from an entirely
different place and/or time, but which still relate to the overall story. I
really liked the overall story-telling technique of the book.
<p>
There are some minor quirks of style here that are a tiny bit distracting. For
example, the author seems obsessed with telling us about the number of rings
(usually one or two) after which a character picks up their phone. As another
example, they always remark how Sartaj Singh swings their leg over their bike.
I also noticed some weird use of common and seemingly made-up swear-words that
was a bit jarring. Finally, I have never heard ordinary people or policemen
referring to criminals as “apradhis” in regular conversation. As I
noted earlier, these are really minor irritants and might not even bother most
people.
<p>
While it is not high-brow literature, the book is thoroughly enjoyable and
counts as good literature in my opinion. I wonder why it did not sell that well
in India – perhaps it is the intimidating heft of the book. I, for one,
can heartily recommend this book to anyone. I am looking forward to watching the
TV-series now.
<p>
http://rmathew.com/2022/soulmach.html“The Soul Of A New Machine”2022-07-31T00:00:00+05:30
<p>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracy_Kidder">Tracy Kidder</a> manages to
achieve in “<a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine">The Soul Of A New
Machine</a>” what most writers of popular non-fiction would shy away from
– narrate the story of a team of hardware-engineers racing against time to
build a 32-bit mini-computer to maintain the relevance of their company in the
crowded marketplace of the computer-industry of the late 1970s. It is a gripping
story in computer history that would have been forgotten, were it not for this
wonderful book.
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<p>
It is the late 1970s and <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_General">Data General</a> is lagging
behind its arch-rival <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Equipment_Corporation">DEC</a> and
its successful <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAX">VAX</a> line of
mini-computers in bringing a next-generation 32-bit mini-computer to its current
and prospective customers. Its aging <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_General_Nova">Nova</a> and <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_General_Eclipse">Eclipse</a> series of
computers are not enough for the expanding needs of such customers. It decides
to make a clean break with the secretive “Fountain Head Project”
(FHP) computer, first sequestering the team of super-stars in a different office
in the same city and then in another office in a different city altogether.
Those who are not selected for this effort or who can not migrate to a different
city are left to work on the legacy systems.
<p>
Fighting against these odds, one of the folks left behind manages to convince
the leadership of the company to invest a little in expanding the legacy Eclipse
series to a 32-bit architecture in a way that maintains backward-compatibility
with the 16-bit software written by its customers. This charismatic yet
eccentric leader, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_West">Tom West</a>,
then tries to assemble a team of engineers to build this system from scratch
(code-named “Eagle”) in just a year. The engineers are
understandably reluctant to work on what they consider to be a kludge of a
system and is not a clear priority for the leadership. Tom manages to convince a
few of them, but largely staffs the new team with fresh college-graduates who
are willing to work a lot more for a lot less and who are happy to be working on
something challenging right away that they perceive to be important to the
company.
<p>
The unrealistic deadlines of the overly-ambitious project results in a <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_march_(project_management)">death-march</a>
that takes a heavy toll on some of the team-members. They suffer burn-outs,
ruined personal-relationships, health-issues, etc. However, most of them tell
the author that they would gladly suffer it all over again for even less pay.
They bring the new computer to life by pouring their own souls into it. The
computer is finally released as the <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_General_Eclipse_MV/8000">Eclipse
MV/8000</a> after slipping its initial schedule by about six months. The
competing FHP system on the other hand keeps slipping and is finally cancelled.
The team does not, however, reap much rewards as a result of its heroic endeavor
and in fact disbands shortly thereafter. Sad.
<p>
As a computer-programmer, I found the many tales of debugging in this book quite
fascinating, especially the bugs that were hard to reproduce. The vicarious joy
of seeing a system come to life after many long and arduous battles by the team
makes this book a wonderful read. However, it is hard to overlook the clearly
exploitative behavior of the leaders and unreasonable pressure on the team from
having arbitrary deadlines imposed on them. In fact, Tom West proclaims to
practise the “<a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushroom_management">Mushroom Theory Of
Management</a>” (“keeping them in the dark, feeding them shit, and
watching them grow”). Cringe.
<p>
That said, war-stories of people overcoming great odds to deliver something of
quality makes for great reading. The author, a writer by profession, manages to
convey hard technical ideas like instruction-pipelining, multi-level
cache-coherence, memory-protection, etc. in a way that lay readers should be
able to follow along to appreciate the challenges faced by the team. This is a
remarkable achievement. The Pulitzer Prize the author received for this book is
entirely justified, as far as I can tell. Bravo!
http://rmathew.com/2022/sapiens.html“Sapiens”2022-06-30T00:00:00+05:30
<p>
“<a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapiens:_A_Brief_History_of_Humankind">Sapiens</a>”
is a book on the history of humankind by <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuval_Noah_Harari">Yuval Noah Harari</a>. It
tries to show why humans, and not any of the other animals on Earth, came to
dominate the planet, sometimes to the detriment of other species on the planet
that are driven to extinction. It is a reasonably engaging work of non-fiction,
but I am surprised that it has become so popular.
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<p>
The author attributes the success of humankind to four major
“revolutions” in its history: the Cognitive Revolution, the
Agricultural Revolution, the Unification Of Humankind, and the Scientific
Revolution. The Cognitive Revolution started around 70,000 years ago and allowed
humans to develop imagination, to invent language to communicate with each
other, and to live in tight-knit communities. The Agricultural Revolution
started around 12,000 years ago and made humans give up their nomadic
hunter-gatherer ways and permanently settle into larger and larger communities
like villages, towns, and cities. The Unification Of Humankind started around
5,000 years ago and made humans invent money, create more sophisticated
religions, and build large empires. The Scientific Revolution started around
500 years ago and saw humans make technological leaps to conquer the planet,
explode in population, converge on capitalism, and live in nuclear families.
<p>
The book is certainly ambitious for the breadth of topics it covers and its wide
sweep over history, science, economics, biology, etc. However, for the most part
there are no new insights that a modern well-read reader would not have come
across otherwise. Where there <em>are</em> bold new claims, there is not much
evidence to back them except hand-wavy assertions. For example, it is not at all
obvious to me that the lives of the nomadic hunter-gatherers was better than the
lives of the later farmers. As another example, it is not that clear that a
willingness to admit ignorance among the Europeans is what led to the scientific
revolution and the consequent technological progress that made Europe leap-frog
other continents in development and reign supreme over them.
<p>
The author does not shy from broaching sensitive topics like religion, race,
gender, sexuality, colonization, climate-change, etc. while discussing why some
set of humans seem to have succeeded more than others. However, they end up
discussing these topics in a way that seems to pander more to
political-correctness than to having a dispassionate scientific discourse backed
by incontrovertible evidence. This was off-putting even when I agreed with the
assertions of the author.
<p>
The book is much longer than it should have been. The author keeps making the
same points again and again in slightly different ways. On the other hand, the
book has copious <i>in situ</i> illustrations and photographs that enliven the
prose. It also provides bibliographic notes at the end of the book for each
chapter in the book so that curious readers can enter their own rabbit-holes of
further research. The last chapter of the book is its weakest, with wild
speculations about the evolution of humans involving genetics, bionics,
artifical intelligence, etc.
<p>
In short, I do not get why this book has become so popular and has been praised
so much by so many famous people. It is not a bad book, but it is not a great
book either. It is an enjoyable read if you do not expect too much from it.
http://rmathew.com/2022/serpentine.html“Serpentine”2022-05-30T00:00:00+05:30
<p>
“<a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serpentine_(book)">Serpentine</a>” is
a (really short) novella by <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Pullman">Philip Pullman</a>. It is
set some time after the events described in the “<a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Dark_Materials">His Dark
Materials</a>” trilogy, but before those in the “<a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Dust">The Book Of
Dust</a>” trilogy. It is a richly-illustrated book containing a short tale
that is unlikely to be of interest to anyone except for the fans of this series
of books.
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This novella is a tale describing the uneasy tension between <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyra_Belacqua">Lyra</a> and her daemon
Pantalaimon. They had been separated towards the end of the first trilogy, which
was quite painful for both, especially for Pantalaimon who felt betrayed by
Lyra. However, they never got around to having a frank discussion about this
uncomfortable topic, so the tension simmers and leads to a growing disaffection
and consequent alienation. Can they overcome their inhibitions and become as
close to each other as they were before?
<p>
The book, such as it is, seems to have been released to keep fans excited about
the upcoming series of books in the new trilogy. There is not much substance to
it. Even fans of the series might not find that much to be excited about in this
particular book (I, for one, certainly did not). As far as I can tell, it does
not add to the enjoyment of the second trilogy and does not contain anything
particularly revealing or insightful.
http://rmathew.com/2022/deathsend.html“Death's End”2022-05-18T00:00:00+05:30
<p>
In almost every trilogy of books that I have read so far, the quality of the
books invariably goes down after the first book. Not so for “<a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death%27s_End">Death's End</a>” by
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Cixin">Cixin Liu</a>, the last book
in the “<a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_of_Earth%27s_Past">Remembrance
Of Earth's Past</a>” trilogy of science-fiction books. This book is the
best in the series with an <em>astounding</em> scale (of both space and time),
as well as containing some poignant tales. This was a pleasant surprise after
reading the disappointing <a href="../2022/3body.html">first</a> book
and the decent <a href="../2022/darkforest.html">second</a> book.
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The initial events described in the book overlap some of the events described
in the second book, but then the book quickly moves on to describe events from
vastly bigger time-frames as well as distances. While some of the characters
from the first and the second book are present here, the main characters are
entirely different. The aliens from the Trisolaris system who were launching an
invasion on Earth in the first and the second book now collaborate harmoniously
with the humans (after a suitable deterrent is set in place by humans, that
would cause the destruction of both the systems by other aliens in the
universe).
<p>
However, the peace is relatively short-lived and the aliens soon show their true
face. They ruthlessly attack cities on Earth and force the entire human
population to resettle in Australia, killing a lot of humans in process. They
recruit some of the humans to control the other humans and force the resettled
humans to give up electricity, modern agriculture, decent living quarters, etc.
Can humanity survive this crisis? Can the universe itself survive aliens even
more advanced and more ruthless than those from Trisolaris? You will have to
read the book to find out.
<p>
The book takes the “Dark Forest” theory from the second book to its
logical extreme, in the process producing some surprising and dark results. As
in the other two books, it describes in a matter of fact manner disturbing acts
of humans towards each other when faced with extreme existential crises.
Interspersed among the descriptions of different dimensions, multiple universes,
vast distances, incredible time-spans, insane speeds, etc. is a good old story
about unrequited love that is deeply moving. If nothing else, the book is
certainly an ambitious undertaking in more ways than one.
<p>
That said, as with the other two books, the language is quite unnatural and the
style is quite dry and stilted. This book is once again China-centric in an odd
way. (I realized while reading this book that the three books only talk about
China, USA, Russia, Australia, and some parts of Europe – there seems to
be no mention of India, the Middle East, Africa, etc. – as if the rest of
the world is of no consequence whatsoever to the evolution of the human race.)
<p>
This book has redeemed the entire trilogy for me. I can recommend this series of
science-fiction novels to fans of this genre if they can look past its oddities
of language and characters. The books lean more towards the
“science” part of science-fiction than the “fiction”
part, sometimes annoyingly so (as some of the science here is quite dubious,
while the author takes great pains to explain some bits). Lovers of general
fiction in English might therefore not find these books to their taste.
http://rmathew.com/2022/seccmn.html“The Secret Commonwealth”2022-05-02T00:00:00+05:30
<p>
I wish I had not read “<a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Commonwealth">The Secret
Commonwealth</a>” by <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Pullman">Philip Pullman</a>, the
second book in “<a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Dust">The Book Of
Dust</a>” trilogy of books. Well, I wish I had not read it <em>now</em>
and had waited for the final book to be published. This is because this book
ends on a cliff-hanger and I do not know when the final book will be published.
That is quite frustrating.
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The problem is that after having read “<a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Belle_Sauvage">La Belle
Sauvage</a>”, the first book in this new trilogy, <a
href="../2021/labelle.html">late last year</a>, I just could not wait
very long to read the second book. This trilogy of books is set in the same
universe as the “<a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Dark_Materials">His Dark Materials</a>
trilogy of books. This second book describes events about twenty years after the
events of the first book (and therefore about ten years after the events of the
first trilogy of books).
<p>
The heroine <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyra_Belacqua">Lyra
Belacqua</a>, now known as Lyra Silvertongue, has grown into an adult. She has
kept it a secret that she and her <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A6mon_(His_Dark_Materials)">daemon</a>
Pantalaimon can separate, which is considered abhorrent in their world. She also
feels alienated from her daemon, who decides one day to abandon her in order to
get her “imagination” back, as he feels she has lost it after
reading a couple of dangerous books by malicious authors. When she learns of the
disappearance of Pantalaimon, Lyra decides to find out where he has gone and to
persuade him to come back.
<p>
As a single woman traveling without a daemon, this is a difficult task.
Complicating it even further are political developments that lead to a
power-grab by certain religious authorities, a consequent unrest among the
people, and then their oppression. At the same time, there is a series of
unsettling events linked to a certain kind of mysterious rose that grows only in
a particular desert in Central Asia. The oil from this rose somehow allows one
to see <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_(His_Dark_Materials)">Dust</a>, which
undermines the dogma of the religious authorities. They try to suppress trade in
it and covertly attack the people cultivating it.
<p>
Trying to help Lyra in various ways are Malcom Polstead, Alice Lonsdale, and
Hannah Relf, as well as the secretive Oakley Street group of operatives, all of
whom also appearead the first book in the trilogy. Since Lyra sets out alone on
her own quest and since there is an unhinged Olivier Bonneville (son of the
villainous Gerard Bonneville from the first book) trying to track her and kill
her to avenge the death of his father, Malcom must try to find and protect her.
Malcom also discovers that he is falling in love with her.
<p>
The book is quite a gripping read, but feels incomplete due to the way it leaves
many open threads and ends on a cliff-hanger. It has been about three years
since it was published and there is no sign yet of the next book, so this is a
frustrating experience. While waiting for the next book to be published, I will
try to keep the spark alive by reading the remaining novellas and watching the
final season of the TV-series based on the first trilogy (whenever it is
released).
<p>
As an aside, in line with the maturing of the heroine, the book deals with more
and more mature topics (similar to the evolution of the Harry Potter series of
books). It is not a book for children. Some readers might be triggered by the
descriptions of sexual assault here, so beware.
http://rmathew.com/2022/darkforest.html“The Dark Forest”2022-04-25T00:00:00+05:30
<p>
I had low expectations from “<a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Forest">The Dark Forest</a>”,
a science-fiction novel by <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Cixin">Cixin Liu</a>, since I had been
<a href="../2022/3body.html">disappointed</a> by the first book in the
“<a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_of_Earth%27s_Past">Remembrance
Of Earth's Past</a> trilogy of books. The only reason I started reading this
book was because I am a sucker for closure – I <em>had</em> to read the
rest of the books in the trilogy once I had started reading its first book. I
am happy to report that this book turned out to be <em>much better</em> than I
had expected.
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<p>
The book is set in the so-called “Crisis Era” on Earth in the near
future, that follows the revelation from the first book of a fleet of alien
ships from the nearby Trisolaris system that is headed towards Earth in order to
destroy the human civilization. Due to vast distance between the two systems,
the fleet of alien ships would take about four centuries to arrive here, giving
humans some time to prepare themselves for the impending invasion. Their efforts
are constantly thwarted by sub-atomic computers called “sophons”
that have been sent to Earth by the aliens as well as an organization of humans
sympathetic to the aliens that calls itself The Earth-Trisolaris Organization
(ETO).
<p>
Despite these obstacles, the humans are able to make a lot of progress towards
their defence and, for a while at least, look to have gained an upper hand on
the incoming fleet of aliens. This delusion of the humans proves to be
short-lived when a single, tiny probe from the aliens manages to destroy almost
the entire fleet of spaceships from Earth in a spectacular display of the
technical superiority of aliens. Is humanity doomed to perish after all? You
have to read the book to find that out.
<p>
This book presents the central idea of this series of books based on what it
calls the axioms of cosmic sociology. Given the finite resources in the
universe, the imperative for life to survive, and the explosive pace of
technological growth in a civilization, any contact between two civilizations in
the universe is bound to result in the destruction of one of them due to a chain
of suspicion (as the book calls it). This is its answer to the famous <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox">Fermi Paradox</a> of
extraterrestrial life.
<p>
Somewhat coincidentally, Kurzgesagt released <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAUJYP8tnRE">this video</a> recently on
why we should not go around looking for aliens. Imagine my delight when I came
across the same idea in the book that I was reading. However, I feel that they
do not give proper credit where it is due. Only in a (pinned) comment on the
video do Kurzgesagt acknowledge the origin of this theory in this book, which I
found a bit odd – I would have expected this information to be prominently
presented in the video itself or at least in the description of the video.
<p>
You have to have read the first book to make sense of this second book in the
series, even though I found it to be far more interesting. Like the first book,
I found the prose in this book quite stilted and the extreme China-centric
narrative and the plethora of Chinese characters somewhat disorienting. As I
noted earlier, the former might be an artifact of translation and the latter is
a critical reminder of the typical US-centric narratives in popular culture.
<p>
After a break, I am looking forward to reading the last book in this trilogy.
http://rmathew.com/2022/mirrnlt.html“The Mirror And The Light”2022-03-30T00:00:00+05:30
<p>
I would admit right away that I struggled to finish “<a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mirror_and_the_Light">The Mirror And The
Light</a>” by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Mantel">Hilary
Mantel</a>, the last book in the “<a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Hall">Wolf Hall</a>” trilogy
based on the life of <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Cromwell">Thomas Cromwell</a>. I had
immensely enjoyed <a href="../2012/wolfhall.html">the first</a> book
and had also liked <a href="../2013/bupbodies.html">the second</a>
book, so this is a little painful to admit.
<p>
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<p>
“Even more of the same” would be an appropriate description for this
book and I <em>do</em> mean that in the sense of it being repetitive and thus
tedious. A wiser person would have abandoned this book long before the
approximately two months that I wrested with this book, but then I have seldom
acted wisely when it comes to “finding closure” in reading books,
watching long-winded TV-series, etc. So I finally managed to finish reading
through the more than 750 pages of this book, but I am not too happy about it.
<p>
There is only so much that you can read about the inner monologue of a person,
the craziness of medieval England, the inane machinations of the Tudor royal
court, etc. The first two books gave you a pretty good idea of these things, so
this book could have been slashed by <em>at least</em> two-thirds of its current
length without loss. So I do not agree with all the starry-eyed reviewers
praising this book due to its pedigree and with star-struck editors who shirked
from their job in cutting out the fluff. Sorry.
<p>
The pacing of the book is quite irregular – for a large part of the book,
pretty much nothing interesting happens, making it hard to remain attentive, and
then towards the end things happen rather haphazardly and the book ends somewhat
abruptly. Some good editing would have done wonders for this book. All the silly
verse interrupting the prose at odd intervals throughout the book do not help
matters much either.
<p>
The book is not entirely boring though. As before, there are flashes of genius
in the writing, which retains the accessible linguistic style employed by the
author throughout the trilogy. The author continues to excel in making history
interesting and in making historical characters come alive for the modern
reader. In particular, I really admire the author for not succumbing to using
archaic English, peppering the text with untranslated French or Latin, or
employing a pretentious writing-style – all characteristics that ail so
many works of “serious literature”.
<p>
If you have read the first two books in the trilogy, you would probably want to
read the final book in the trilogy as well. However, be warned. I found my
closure all right, but in the process ruined my appreciation for the entire
trilogy. For shame.
http://rmathew.com/2022/3body.html“The Three-Body Problem”2022-01-31T00:00:00+05:30
<p>
When I started reading the science-fiction novel “<a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three-Body_Problem_(novel)">The
Three-Body Problem</a>” by <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Cixin">Cixin Liu</a>, I had great
expectations from it. It had been nominated for, and had won, many awards. It
was praised highly by not just the usual suspects, but even folks like Barack
Obama, George R. R. Martin, et al. In hindsight, I was bound to be disappointed
by going in with such high expectations. The book turned out to be good, but
not great.
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<p>
The story starts with the horrors of the Chinese <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution">Cultural
Revolution</a> as experienced by physicist Ye Wenjie, progresses to her
forced participation in the environmental destruction done in its wake, and then
describes a top-secret project at the time in China to make <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_contact_(science_fiction)">first
contact</a> with an alien civilization in which she ends up playing a crucial
part. The message sent via the project is actually received by people on
Trisolaris, a planet caught up in a devastating three-star system with a
civilization that is repeatedly almost completely wiped out by the extreme
conditions in the system. The aliens then plan to invade and occupy Earth with
the help of discontents on Earth and with a devious plan to stall scientific
progress till their actual arrival more than four centuries later using
ingenious devices called “Sophons”.
<p>
The author does not shy from venturing into theories in physics and their
impliciations. They examine how traumatic experiences change the moral compass
of individuals and can cause fatal disaffection in them. They also explore how
the very prospect of first contact with an alien civilization affects human
behavior and shapes civilization on Earth without the contact even having taken
place. I therefore feel that there is a good balance of “science”
and “fiction” in this science-fiction novel unlike many books in
this genre. That said, if you have read the classics by Asimov, Clarke, et al
this book does not break new ground as far as I can tell, despite all the
flowery praise seen in the blurbs on the back-cover as well as the inside of
the book.
<p>
I also felt the language of the book to be a bit stilted and awkward, perhaps
due to the translation from the original Chinese into English. I found it
amusing that almost everything and everyone of significance in this book is in
China – this is a nice counter to the usual US-centric perspective in
such books and films, but that does not make it any less jarring. I actually
found it pleasantly surprising that so much implied criticism of the Cultural
Revolution made it past the censors in China.
<p>
I like science-fiction, but I am not an ardent fan pursuing the genre across
various kinds of media. Given that, I liked the book in general and would
recommend reading it, albeit with few expectations and discarding all the hype
around the book.
<p>
When I started reading the book, I did not know that it is merely the first
volume in <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_of_Earth%27s_Past">a trilogy of
books</a>. Now I am wondering whether I should pursue reading the other two
parts of the trilogy or whether I should just let it be. (Since I generally
liked the book, and since I am a sucker for closure, I very well might read all
the books in the trilogy anyway.) Apparently there is a film as well as a
TV-series planned to be produced as adaptations of these books, continuing the
glorious modern tradition of milking an “asset” for all it is worth
via franchises.