Too Like the Lightning (Palmer)
Jan. 24th, 2024 07:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnI had tried this back in 2016 when it came out (having read Palmer's blog on occasion) and got twenty percent in before grinding to a halt. I knew that a lot of what I couldn't deal with was the narrator Mycroft's voice, and when hamsterwoman posted about her Terra Ignota Yuletide gift, I thought, hmm, you know, I've always intended to try this out again, and now that I have several years of salon (working on year 5!) and a LOT more reading of Enlightenment sources under my belt... Also, I was spoiled for what Mycroft Canner had done
And I finished it this time! It did indeed make it rather easier that I now have a lot more experience with the Enlightenment and Enlightenment prose. (Also, I laughed when a salon showed up in the book, although sadly in this salon there was a lot less discussion of historical/literary/scientific ideas (there was a little) and a lot more sex.) I am also now much more used to reading primary documents without being the target audience and therefore not having the applicable context and only being given that later either by reading more or byselenak and mildred_of_midgard -- which is somewhat similar to the experience of reading this book, in that in-character-Mycroft is writing for an audience that is again Not Me but in the future. It's neat that Palmer is able to structure it that way.
I think it's an interesting book! I'm not going to talk about the gender stuff (it's interesting to see that eight years after publication it doesn't seem all that shocking or confusing, whereas I remember it being rather more so on first reading). The worldbuilding is interesting. I was definitely lost for most (maybe all) of the book. I was also warned that the book would end without tying up everything (though there's one very interesting revelation that does get made!) as it's really supposed to be half a book, which was good to know and I will follow up with the next half.
One worldbuilding thing that I was intrigued by: There are family-like units (the bash') that are in fact not families (though they can be) but groups of people who choose to live together (generally 3-6 plus a couple of romantic partners, I'm told by the wiki), sort of like a rooming group in college. (Every so often I dip my toes into a Rationalist blog, and I get the vague impression that they tend to do this kind of thing, especially as young adults? And Palmer herself is in academia, where I feel like this is more of a thing that can happen.) I must say that on one hand this sounds very appealing and on another hand it is really hard for me to see how it would work on a practical level (I feel it's hard enough to structure a household with one other reasonable adult plus kids!) especially without the whole thing evolving into hierarchical structures, but maybe that's just me/my getting stuck in 21st-C culture. I imagine the decoupling of romance and living together helps. I do really love about this future world that it seems to be structured in a way that in many aspects is more communal and more focused on community in general (I haven't even gotten to talking about the Hives!) than ours. I also loved how one of the big technological advances is that it's really easy and fast and cheap to travel anywhere in the world to anywhere else, so people have been essentially decoupled from location (which of course would be helpful, perhaps even mandatory, in things like being able to form a bash').
Palmer says in her blog that young people generally form a bash' in the college-to-young-adult years that they're on a Campus (the Campus being a sort of university-tradeschool-internship-gradschool-professionalschool kind of place where you stay for the number of years you need to do post-secondary schooling and professional training and internships). This also kind of makes me feel like I would be terrible at this, in the sense that during those years, although I did manage to make friends with individuals, I was very, very bad at joining groups of people, even groups where I more-or-less liked everyone in the group. (I still am bad at this, though now I am much better at faking it.) I like the idea of finding a bash' -- it's a very appealing idea to have a bunch of people to form a familial-like community with -- but I'm afraid I just wouldn't be able to find multiple people that I wanted to live with who also wanted to live with each other long-term. (Especially once kids are in the mix -- I feel like for this to work, everyone in the bash' would have to be on the same page parenting-wise, and I think that might be difficult except in a hereditary bash', and maybe then too -- there is a lot that my sister and I don't agree on, for example, in terms of parenting.) But maybe this would be different if everyone grew up expecting to do this and training on some level to do this -- for example, I did receive a lot of cultural messages about being a parent growing up, which in some cases I know could backfire, but in my case was actually very helpful in making sure that I did think in the back of my head about being a parent and the kinds of things I would want to do as a parent, years before I actually became one. Either way, though, I am sure that there are people who don't fit into a bash', or don't manage to find one, and I wonder how they navigate life in this society. And how does it work to "break up" with a bash'? And how often does that happen? (And I love that this book is making me think about this kind of thing!)
The final revelation:
It's funny, though -- in some ways now I know too much about the Enlightenment. For one thing, one of Palmer's clear secondary goals in this book is to teach people about the Enlightenment, so Mycroft will namecheck Diderot and then expound on Diderot and his Encyclopédie and I'll be like, OK, cool, so, can we go on to the next thing? That being said, I did learn things about de Sade (all of which have now retreated to my passive memory, so don't ask me, lol), whom we have not hitherto treated in particular detail in our salon. (I also feel like, if you were learning about the Enlightenment from this book, you would get a bizarrely skewed idea of it, where Voltaire and Diderot and Rousseau and de Sade, and possibly Madame Pompadour? would be the only main contributors -- though on the other hand, the Terra Ignota Enlightenment-based society does have politics and philosophy and science and so on all mixed in together, which is the same feel I get from salon, so I do think Palmer has done a nice job with that which I wouldn't have picked up on back in 2016.)
In Mycroft's narration, he says that his society treats Voltaire with especial relevance; he is the brilliant, witty, wise crusader-for-human-rights Patriarch and his ideas and writings are apparently the baseline of this society. And, like, Voltaire really was all that, but also he was a lot of other things too, so that my response is, "But what about Voltaire being an incredible troll?" (This may get picked up in subsequent books; Mycroft is clearly at least a bit of a troll and certainly an unreliable narrator, though whether he gets into Pamela levels of unreliable narrator (in brief, Voltaire actually rewrote his own letters to get revenge on Frederick the Great by trolling historians in the future -- THIS GUY!) is unknown to me at this point -- but Mycroft is writing for the future, so...) And also relatedly: "But what about Voltaire satirizing basically everyone he ever quarreled with, and also the part where he quarreled with everyone?" And also: in a world where Voltaire is the biggest of deals, what about his partner and philosophe/mathematician Émilie du Châtelet?? (I welcome spoilers here -- not specific ones please! but if you want to say "yup, Voltaire-style trolling is sure a big theme by the time you get to book 3!" I would love that!)
I think my biggest problem with the book is that, although I'm now OK enough with Mycroft's voice that I can read it, I still don't like Mycroft very much. This is kind of a problem, given that Mycroft is the narrator and a big driver of the action. (This is also distinct from spoiler thing -- it seems to be the case that he's not able to think in spoiler way anymore, whether this is because of a B5-like brain wipe or something else, and so I'm reserving judgment as to whether I should think of him as even the same person who spoiler.) He's either being annoyingly obsequious or patronizing, and I don't like either of those things!
Anyway, I very much enjoyed that the book made me think about things, I am definitely going to read the second book, and then we'll see whether I get more or less into the series!
hamsterwoman posted about her Terra Ignota Yuletide gift, I thought, hmm, you know, I've always intended to try this out again, and now that I have several years of salon (working on year 5!) and a LOT more reading of Enlightenment sources under my belt... Also, I was spoiled for what Mycroft Canner had done that is, that he was a serial murderer, though I did not know details
which helped me not throw the book across the room when I got to that part :)And I finished it this time! It did indeed make it rather easier that I now have a lot more experience with the Enlightenment and Enlightenment prose. (Also, I laughed when a salon showed up in the book, although sadly in this salon there was a lot less discussion of historical/literary/scientific ideas (there was a little) and a lot more sex.) I am also now much more used to reading primary documents without being the target audience and therefore not having the applicable context and only being given that later either by reading more or by
selenak and mildred_of_midgard -- which is somewhat similar to the experience of reading this book, in that in-character-Mycroft is writing for an audience that is again Not Me but in the future. It's neat that Palmer is able to structure it that way.I think it's an interesting book! I'm not going to talk about the gender stuff (it's interesting to see that eight years after publication it doesn't seem all that shocking or confusing, whereas I remember it being rather more so on first reading). The worldbuilding is interesting. I was definitely lost for most (maybe all) of the book. I was also warned that the book would end without tying up everything (though there's one very interesting revelation that does get made!) as it's really supposed to be half a book, which was good to know and I will follow up with the next half.
One worldbuilding thing that I was intrigued by: There are family-like units (the bash') that are in fact not families (though they can be) but groups of people who choose to live together (generally 3-6 plus a couple of romantic partners, I'm told by the wiki), sort of like a rooming group in college. (Every so often I dip my toes into a Rationalist blog, and I get the vague impression that they tend to do this kind of thing, especially as young adults? And Palmer herself is in academia, where I feel like this is more of a thing that can happen.) I must say that on one hand this sounds very appealing and on another hand it is really hard for me to see how it would work on a practical level (I feel it's hard enough to structure a household with one other reasonable adult plus kids!) especially without the whole thing evolving into hierarchical structures, but maybe that's just me/my getting stuck in 21st-C culture. I imagine the decoupling of romance and living together helps. I do really love about this future world that it seems to be structured in a way that in many aspects is more communal and more focused on community in general (I haven't even gotten to talking about the Hives!) than ours. I also loved how one of the big technological advances is that it's really easy and fast and cheap to travel anywhere in the world to anywhere else, so people have been essentially decoupled from location (which of course would be helpful, perhaps even mandatory, in things like being able to form a bash').
Palmer says in her blog that young people generally form a bash' in the college-to-young-adult years that they're on a Campus (the Campus being a sort of university-tradeschool-internship-gradschool-professionalschool kind of place where you stay for the number of years you need to do post-secondary schooling and professional training and internships). This also kind of makes me feel like I would be terrible at this, in the sense that during those years, although I did manage to make friends with individuals, I was very, very bad at joining groups of people, even groups where I more-or-less liked everyone in the group. (I still am bad at this, though now I am much better at faking it.) I like the idea of finding a bash' -- it's a very appealing idea to have a bunch of people to form a familial-like community with -- but I'm afraid I just wouldn't be able to find multiple people that I wanted to live with who also wanted to live with each other long-term. (Especially once kids are in the mix -- I feel like for this to work, everyone in the bash' would have to be on the same page parenting-wise, and I think that might be difficult except in a hereditary bash', and maybe then too -- there is a lot that my sister and I don't agree on, for example, in terms of parenting.) But maybe this would be different if everyone grew up expecting to do this and training on some level to do this -- for example, I did receive a lot of cultural messages about being a parent growing up, which in some cases I know could backfire, but in my case was actually very helpful in making sure that I did think in the back of my head about being a parent and the kinds of things I would want to do as a parent, years before I actually became one. Either way, though, I am sure that there are people who don't fit into a bash', or don't manage to find one, and I wonder how they navigate life in this society. And how does it work to "break up" with a bash'? And how often does that happen? (And I love that this book is making me think about this kind of thing!)
The final revelation:
Spoilers!
So I loved that there's this evidence that the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash' is killing a small number of "unimportant" people to prevent war and therefore save a much larger number of people. I mean, part of my head is like "does that really make sense??" (...does any individual person, especially a non-visibly-important person, really affect that much?" and "if it does affect that much, wow, they must have really good modeling to be able to figure out the effect of killing non-visibly-important individual X on war Y") but it's a great reveal and the philosophical questions are really interesting and I'm excited to learn more!It's funny, though -- in some ways now I know too much about the Enlightenment. For one thing, one of Palmer's clear secondary goals in this book is to teach people about the Enlightenment, so Mycroft will namecheck Diderot and then expound on Diderot and his Encyclopédie and I'll be like, OK, cool, so, can we go on to the next thing? That being said, I did learn things about de Sade (all of which have now retreated to my passive memory, so don't ask me, lol), whom we have not hitherto treated in particular detail in our salon. (I also feel like, if you were learning about the Enlightenment from this book, you would get a bizarrely skewed idea of it, where Voltaire and Diderot and Rousseau and de Sade, and possibly Madame Pompadour? would be the only main contributors -- though on the other hand, the Terra Ignota Enlightenment-based society does have politics and philosophy and science and so on all mixed in together, which is the same feel I get from salon, so I do think Palmer has done a nice job with that which I wouldn't have picked up on back in 2016.)
In Mycroft's narration, he says that his society treats Voltaire with especial relevance; he is the brilliant, witty, wise crusader-for-human-rights Patriarch and his ideas and writings are apparently the baseline of this society. And, like, Voltaire really was all that, but also he was a lot of other things too, so that my response is, "But what about Voltaire being an incredible troll?" (This may get picked up in subsequent books; Mycroft is clearly at least a bit of a troll and certainly an unreliable narrator, though whether he gets into Pamela levels of unreliable narrator (in brief, Voltaire actually rewrote his own letters to get revenge on Frederick the Great by trolling historians in the future -- THIS GUY!) is unknown to me at this point -- but Mycroft is writing for the future, so...) And also relatedly: "But what about Voltaire satirizing basically everyone he ever quarreled with, and also the part where he quarreled with everyone?" And also: in a world where Voltaire is the biggest of deals, what about his partner and philosophe/mathematician Émilie du Châtelet?? (I welcome spoilers here -- not specific ones please! but if you want to say "yup, Voltaire-style trolling is sure a big theme by the time you get to book 3!" I would love that!)
I think my biggest problem with the book is that, although I'm now OK enough with Mycroft's voice that I can read it, I still don't like Mycroft very much. This is kind of a problem, given that Mycroft is the narrator and a big driver of the action. (This is also distinct from spoiler thing -- it seems to be the case that he's not able to think in spoiler way anymore, whether this is because of a B5-like brain wipe or something else, and so I'm reserving judgment as to whether I should think of him as even the same person who spoiler.) He's either being annoyingly obsequious or patronizing, and I don't like either of those things!
Anyway, I very much enjoyed that the book made me think about things, I am definitely going to read the second book, and then we'll see whether I get more or less into the series!
no subject
Date: 2024-01-25 05:16 am (UTC)I don't think it's in book 2, but you do eventually get to stretches of narration that aren't from Mycroft -- I mean, longer ones than what we get in the first book -- if that helps. I will also say that Mycroft grew on me over the series, to the point that I found myself missing him when he wasn't narrating for a while. This came as a surprise, so maybe he'll annoy you less, too, as you go along?
I don't know enough about the Enlightenment to comment on what Palmer is doing by highlighting certain figures, but, Mycroft is a very unreliably narrator, as you note, so I'm not sure the grand pronouncements he makes about his society are necessarily always true? I mean, they might be! But also he's got a lot of his own weirdness, so I never fully trusted him to be an objective guide, you know?
Bash'es are such a neat idea, aren't they, but like you I'm also not sure whether I'd want to live with MORE people or how I'd go about finding them. I think probably part of what makes it possible is that logistics (and maybe population density?) are such that, outside of parenting responsibilities (which are presumably shared and so a bit easier), people have whatever time to themselves they need? There's the 20 hour work week, and kitchen trees, and very fast commutes, so I'm guessing people are less stressed in general, compared to our times?
There's extensive worldbuilding AMAs from Palmer, but I don't remember if the questions you ask about bash'es or people who don't feel the need to live with others are covered there. (In any case, they are full of spoilers, so you probably don't want to go looking at them.)
And there's definitely more to come about the final spoiler and the moral implications :)
Anyway, I'm very glad you enjoyed it enough to keep going at least into Seven Surrenders/the second half. IIRC that was when it really took off for me (or maybe the end of book 1, with the spoiler), so I hope your journey from here will also be satisfying!
no subject
Date: 2024-01-25 05:58 am (UTC)There's the 20 hour work week, and kitchen trees, and very fast commutes, so I'm guessing people are less stressed in general, compared to our times?
That makes sense! Not having to squabble about how to partition the scarce resource of time would make a difference, I'm sure. And the fast commutes, of course, would obviate the particular squabble about how to coexist geographically!
Something that also just occurred to me is that the pendulum may have swung the other way and child-rearing is much more relaxed in this future than it is present-day, lol. (I feel like child-rearing now, at least in my socioeconomic stratum, requires a lot more thought and energy than it did when I was growing up! Which is better in some ways, and less good in others.)
(But I still am not sure about living permanently with multiple other people!)
no subject
Date: 2024-01-25 04:49 pm (UTC)You know, I think you must be right! We don't get to see a ton of ordinary children under ordinary circumstances, but that feels right? Because I think a lot of the pressure of parenting today is that the stakes feel really high -- are we doing everything we can to prepare our children for the future, be successful, be safe? And the world of Terra Ignota seems pretty safe for children -- no harm to them is a universal law, and there are trackers on everyone. It is a post-scarcity world that has "solved" climate change. And the Adulthood Competency Exam I think means that children can take their time figuring themselves out, so I'm guessing there's less pressure to conform to a timetable of milestones, because children aren't being left behind, they're taking their own path. (In theory; I'm sure there's still parental angst, because these people have a lot of free time in which to fret about things if they so choose.)
(I suspect you can also kind of see it in the way Bridger reads younger than his age to some readers. And one certainly shouldn't extrapolate from Bridger, nature or nurture, but I either heard Palmer herself say this or saw this suggested as an explanation by a reader -- it makes sense for TI children to have a sort of extended childhood, because there's so much less pressure to grow up and start earning their living -- similar to how today's 13-year-olds are different from ones that had to go work in factories.)
And just on a purely practical, logistics level, not having to drive your kid around because they can just summon a flying car to take them to their Junior Scientist Club meeting or archery practice or whatever is I'm sure a huge load off parents' back. And ditto for a lot of household stuff... (now I'm wondering if kitchen trees come with parental controls so your bash's children can't just fill up on junk food continuously...)
Anyway, I think between the generally utopian zeitgeist you get in TLTL and the time/labor-saving technology, child-rearing probably is a lot easier than in our day.
(It's funny, I think you are the first parent that I've discussed these books with, which is making me think about implications of the worldbuilding that I hadn't really thought about before, which is really neat!)
no subject
Date: 2024-01-25 06:00 pm (UTC)All right. This is definitely a utopia, sign me up right now :PP :D
Also, I like what you said about the post-scarcity world. I suppose the post-scarcity nature of the world where not so many people are vocateurs makes it less intense -- a lot of the intensity I see here is upper-middle-class parents trying to make sure their kid Wins the Game of Life. I imagine that for most people in the post-scarcity world there's not such a game any more, but I bet for some people there is, still...
Hopefully they've also fixed mental health... a lot of my time, I feel like, is spent figuring out how to manage E so that she grows up as a reasonable human being (I think/hope it will happen! But gosh it is a lot of work), and also when she was younger, before she figured out emotional regulation, I don't think anyone else would have wanted to live with us :P
(It's funny, I think you are the first parent that I've discussed these books with, which is making me think about implications of the worldbuilding that I hadn't really thought about before, which is really neat!)
Yeah, this is very cool!
no subject
Date: 2024-01-25 06:17 pm (UTC)Right? :D (B was on driving duty throughout the rodents' childhood, and we were in walking/public transit distance of all their things, so I had the easy mode version of this, and STILL that feels so utopian to just not have to devote any brain cycles to children's transportation logistics. XD
a lot of the intensity I see here is upper-middle-class parents trying to make sure their kid Wins the Game of Life. I imagine that for most people in the post-scarcity world there's not such a game any more, but I bet for some people there is, still...
It is the same in my experience re: present-day intensity, and yes, I think Winning the Game of Life is not as much a consideration for denizens of TI and/or it looks different enough for different Hives that it's not such a head to head competition. I'm sure Humanists are still very intense about it just on principle (I can just imagine Humanist mommy, or, I guess bapa blogs XD) and maybe Mitsubishi are still doing their corporate thing, so I can imagine success in a Mitsubishi bash' looking somewhat similar to today's -- but the stakes are lower (ambition rather than survival), and I think even if you're a Humanist or Mitsubishi bash', there's probably some recognition that there are other paths that may suit your kid better...
Hopefully they've also fixed mental health...
That... is harder to gauge. They definitely don't seem to have fixed it universally, but it is possible that the cases we see where it is decidedly not fixed are extreme outliers for Reasons.
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2024-01-25 12:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-25 05:24 pm (UTC)I suppose that if Mycroft likes Voltaire, and learned trolling ways from him, that this is a totally consistent reading!
no subject
Date: 2024-01-25 05:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-25 05:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-25 02:23 pm (UTC)but also: I guess I live in a bash' lol. and it's great. you could call it intentional community, or a polycule living together, but at the end of the day it's four adults who are not all dating each other plus one tiny baby, sharing a house and living lives that are interconnected to various degrees while also having separate personal space to retreat to when one wants to be alone. It took some work to get our household community, like, emotionally functional. But these days we are stable and secure and it is the best and I wouldn't want to live any other way!
no subject
Date: 2024-01-25 05:51 pm (UTC)I love that you live in a bash' and am super jealous too :) It sounds amazing and the best! I just think I'd be really bad at it. (For example -- when I was in college, we had to form groups that were sorted as a block into different dormitories in a way reminiscent of the Sorting Hat. All my other friends in college were very close to their blocking group, made sure to get either large rooms with them or all live very close together, and have stayed in touch with them. Whereas I actually managed to drift away from mine even during college itself, except for the one girl I was roommates with (the two of us do still keep in touch). It's not a problem with making friends -- but I do seem to have some difficulty with gelling with groups.)
It took some work to get our household community, like, emotionally functional.
I bet it did! I'd love to hear about that sometime if you're interested in talking about it (and if it doesn't invade anyone's privacy). I can see though that it's the kind of thing that would take a lot of work up front and then pay a lot of dividends (which is rather how I feel about my relationship with my spouse, for that matter).
no subject
Date: 2024-01-25 07:33 pm (UTC)my household jokes that when we bought our house together it was a bigger commitment than getting married, and it requires some maturity and experience to be able to figure out how to make it work. The thing is, out of the people I live with, not all of them are people I would be close friends with if we didn't live together! "mesh perfectly as friends" and "good at making a communal household together" aren't perfectly overlapping circles. I think it's more about finding people who want similar things out of communal living, have similar values, who you like and respect and trust.
some of the things that go into making it work well for us at this point, imo:
- all of us are committed to it as a long-term thing as much as possible
- multiple of us went to extensive personal therapy to get a better handle on our own mental health problems and how they manifested in interpersonal relationships
- we figured out how to do regular monthly household meetings in a way that met our needs
- and possibly the most important thing which seems stupidest in retrospect.... the fifth member of our household broke ties with us and moved out, and we had sudden retroactive realisations of how much they had been manipulating all of us to trust each other less, without us knowing it. none of us would have guessed that they were what was making everything so difficult. but they left and all of a sudden everything in our household dynamics improved drastically!
no subject
Date: 2024-01-27 06:04 am (UTC)Anyway, all of that was to say, if I had been sort of practicing for forming a bash' instead of practicing romantic relationships, maybe I would have tried more possibilities and taken group dynamics more seriously, who knows. As it is, I definitely feel like I've been slower than most to viscerally understand how community works and communal kinds of things (and actually even now probably get it cerebrally more than viscerally; my church community is really tight-knit and although I participate way more than when I was in college, I still don't really fully enter in to the communal aspect the way that a lot of people in my ward do).
I think it's more about finding people who want similar things out of communal living, have similar values, who you like and respect and trust.
This is really interesting and makes a whole lot of sense! I definitely have friends where I know it would be disastrous if we lived together... How do you meet people who fit this criteria but aren't necessarily close friends?
multiple of us went to extensive personal therapy to get a better handle on our own mental health problems and how they manifested in interpersonal relationships
...this seems like a really good idea in general :P :)
the fifth member of our household broke ties with us and moved out, and we had sudden retroactive realisations of how much they had been manipulating all of us to trust each other less, without us knowing it.
Wow, that's something else!
no subject
Date: 2024-01-25 11:48 pm (UTC)My blocking group was literally "four introverts from the hyper-accelerated freshman math class" -- the three women among us roomed together through college, but weren't super-close -- I stay in touch with the one who was also my freshman roommate, but only very sporadically. (And the fourth member I barely talked to -- we had a blocking group social get-together my freshman year, and it was awkward because we didn't have the collective social skills to keep conversation going.) I think I would find bash' formation stressful, particularly the "friendship/wanting to live together is not transitive" aspect, but there are probably bash'es I could work with.
no subject
Date: 2024-01-27 06:23 am (UTC)There was a blocking group formed from the freshman accelerated physics course I took that I could probably have joined instead, and I do wonder if I would have had an easier time socially with them (I was friends-though-not-particularly-close with a lot of that group through college, but didn't stay in touch afterwards) although I guess your experience shows that this isn't necessarily the case, which I appreciate.
I think I would find bash' formation stressful, particularly the "friendship/wanting to live together is not transitive" aspect, but there are probably bash'es I could work with.
Yes! Same here.
no subject
Date: 2024-01-27 11:45 am (UTC)(Also have you read Elif Batuman's books? Sounds like you were there at the same time, and they certainly give a stronger sense of college life than Zevin (though I didn't feel a strong sense of place specifically).)
I was surprised too (and very pleased) by my assignment of freshman year roommate! (Actually there were two roommate pairs out of the 10 students in the class (+ 2 more students who were cross-reg'd), clearly there was a freshman dean not working by the usual playbook. I mean I came in as a prospective math concentrator and she came in as a prospective physics concentrator, but that's not really much difference.) The problem sets that year, though tricky, were not super-long, and my roommate and I were both well-prepared for the class, so we didn't end up with the usual level of bonding over problem sets that comes out of that class. (Also I have a tendency to lol slightly at the level of hype/discourse the internet generates over that class -- my hot take is that it exists to keep the obnoxious hyper-competitive people out of the slightly less accelerated version of that class, where the future mathematicians are -- this may be an exaggeration but the two classes seem about equally good at producing future math professors.)
(You probably predated for the student who wrote a musical about the accelerated physics class -- which both of us also took -- but it's fun and I think available on youtube.)
And yes, I had Core classes -- the administration spent most of the time I was there arguing about what to replace them with, and towards the end of that time announced they were going to replace them with another set of arbitrary classes, but it didn't affect me. (I've given you access so you can see my old LJ posts from 2004-2008 with some comments on the classes if you're curious.) I don't think I took any of the ones that were super iconic of the college.
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2024-01-25 06:03 pm (UTC)Yes!! So much this. I do not believe such modeling exists.
Re: bashes, I've lived in communal households ever since I moved from home, but they haven't included children (though they could include partners). The challenge for me, and for many other people I think, has been to get enough continuity. Like, I was so sad when this one person, with whom I'd lived for six years, moved out...and currently I'm living with people a lot younger than me and I haven't been able to find that continuity and sense of community that I want.
no subject
Date: 2024-01-27 06:23 am (UTC)Yeah, I think that's one of the very appealing things about being in a bash' -- that (as far as I can tell) it appears to be a permanent community, so you don't worry about the continuity aspect.
no subject
Date: 2024-01-27 12:48 pm (UTC)I don't know how realistic that is, though! If there's nothing legal or economic tying them together (is there? I don't remember), it seems strange that people wouldn't sometimes wander off. Sure, there's instant travel, so a new job, or wanting to be near your aging parents, or whatever, wouldn't be a reason to move, but you might find new interests and have more in common with other people, or really hate your bashmate's new partner, or whatever.
no subject
Date: 2024-01-29 05:59 am (UTC)But yes: that's why I wonder what the procedure is for disentangling oneself from a bash'! After all, the divorce rate for two-person marriages is pretty high, and I'd imagine that it would just get more likely that someone would leave if you increased that number.
no subject
Date: 2024-01-26 12:07 am (UTC)With bash'es, one thing that I think is interesting is that we get introduced to the system through the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash', which is both highly atypical and somewhat dysfunctional in ways that you've just started to discover. In fact I'm not sure we ever really see a "normal bash'" in these books!
I hadn't thought about childrearing in this world but it's a really good point! I feel like we don't get a good view of what pre-Campus education is like -- it seems like some form of "homeschooled by bash'" is considered an acceptable option, but not what options there are outside of that.
no subject
Date: 2024-01-27 06:30 am (UTC)Oh, yeah, that's a good point! (I'm sure that most aren't involved in, uh, things like the end-of-first-book-spoiler...) So my viewpoint might be very off on what a "typical" bash' might be like...
I am rather curious as to how child education works in this world! I think... if I were designing a utopian educational system for Terra Ignota, it would probably involve (for those who wanted it) small-group instruction with peers who are at very similar level in the particular subject (this being more possible in-person than in our world because of the rapid transit) -- though I suppose whether this was feasible would depend a lot on what the teacher availability was. But, hey, if I get to design it, maybe a combination of post-scarcity, dramatically increased cultural cachet for teaching (with the cachet increasing as the level went down, maybe?), and reduced hours needed for schooling (both since post-scarcity means that school is less necessary for daycare and also since the small-group-peers format would presumably be more effective than the current public-school large-random-group format) would mean there were enough teachers?
no subject
Date: 2024-01-27 11:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-29 06:09 am (UTC)I... actually don't really know what hive would appeal to me the most yet! They all seem right now to have some aspects that seem interesting, and some that seem unsavory. (Well, okay, I am more dubious about the Mitsubishi hive as something I would enjoy, though I certainly know people who would, and I think there's at least one hive I don't really know much about yet and/or missed when it was talked about... Gordians?)
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2024-02-01 02:14 am (UTC)That was also my first guess -- it seems like a Cousin-y thing to be in charge of...
There's an AMA Palmer did with her Discord server (the link to the compilation is in my promo post). It is full of spoilery things, so,
Since the work week has shrunk and there are always multiple adult caretakers, it’s worked for school days to shrink as well. Thus kids get a lot of their education at home while also going to school for social interactive parts of it too. If a current school week generally has a kid at school for maybe 30-40 hours, theirs are closer to 20 hours at school with more learning done at home. The schools are run by many organizations - the Cousins provide a lot of the earlier levels of school but all Hives offer the equivalent of middle school but there are also lots of private schools and regional schools to choose from. It’s generally recognized that the socialization aspect of school needs to be recognized as separate from the informational learning aspect of school, so more of the latter is at home, and school is free to organize activities designed more to facilitate good socialization and social interaction learning.
And then someone asked a follow-up question about Hiveless:
Romanova does run some schools and there are also private schools with no Hive affiliations, but yes Hiveless kids can also go to Hive-run schools and are usually very heartily encouraged in hopes they’ll then join the Hive.
So, yes, kind of a lot of the same stuff you were talking about
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From: