[Dragaera] some comments on _The Incrementalists_

[Jon Lincicum]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Philip Hart" <philiph at slac.stanford.edu>
> To: dragaera at lists.dragaera.info
> Sent: Sunday, September 29, 2013 3:17:48 PM
> Subject: [Dragaera] some comments on _The Incrementalists_
> Spoilers for _TI_ below.
> 
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> 
> Seriously spoilful.
> 
> 
> 
> Go read the book if you haven't.
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> (0. I don't agree with every design choice on the cover but all in all
> it's pretty wow.)

Love the cover. Only issue I have with it is that the Stardust hasn't actually existed for many years, so it's not contemporary to the story... 


> 1. Note the shout-out to Mark Mandel (cited without the "Dr." style),
> who
> made so many contributions to this list back in the day.

Hear hear. Let's hear it for Dr Whom! 

> It's 1/5 of the way in before Irina shows up to add a secondary
> character.
> Compare Amber, where there's a lot of talking to start but also a
> bunch
> of action before any world-building discussion. This didn't much
> matter
> for me - I bought the book six months ago - but I wonder about folks
> picking it up and reading the first few pages.

It'as funny you say that. When reading the first scene with Irina I couldn't help thinking about the first meeting between Corwin and Fiona in /Nine Princes in Amber/. The two scenes seemed very similar to me, which is odd because I can't put my finger on exactly why that is. 


> 5. Some of the handling of the developing friendship and romance ("Ren
> laughed, and my heart flipped--flopped") seemed a bit telling not
> showing,
> though actually it probably wasn't. Maybe I don't feel enough of a
> sense
> of Ren's personality. It's hard to accept her (really anyone) agreeing
> to
> be spiked - if you're not stronger than a soul that has survived many
> combats, your life effectively ends. Ok, in her case she's under a
> geas.
> But then it's difficult to know what's her and what's Celeste - a
> theme
> of the book, in fact, but also a barrier to feeling for the character.

The whole aspect of having a battle of personalities in the spiking process where one will always subsume and dominate the other was obviously a big part of the premise of the story (really, the key premise when it came to Celeste). However, I wonder if this is always the case? Perhaps there are situations where the Second is almost equal in strength to the personality in the stub they are spiked with? As I see it, this could result in either a split personality problem where the resulting Incrementalist is constantly flipping back and forth, or perhaps instead, in a fusion personality that is neither the same as the Primary, or that of the new Second. 

I think this latter idea appeals to me more, personally. A hybrid personality emerges that combines traits from the two being joined. Not exactly the same as either of the originals, but not entirely dissimilar either. I wonder how many Incrementalists are out there like that. (We see a small example of this, perhaps, in Phil, with his affinity for baseball, which he never had before Chuck. I'm thinking in other cases, this sort of residual influence is more pronounced.)

> 
> 9. It's all in-group stuff. There's essentially nothing external - a
> waitress gets nudged, maybe a bartender doesn't, an entrepeneur is
> schmoozed slightly. I'm not sure I cared quite enough about the
> characters for this. The main characters are a revolutionary cell of
> sorts, and presumably this is what it's like to be in one - more
> instructive than compelling for me at least on a first read. Well,
> there was stuff like Jimmy saying what they do is evil, but. And
> Matsu is certainly cool, and Oskar having something of a point, etc.

I do agree there could have been more set-up with "a day in the life" of Phil doing Meddle-work to establish "normal" before flying into the story elements where the group is dealing with things they've never seen in 40,000 years of experiences. It's a little unsettling to just leap into things the way it does. The whole concept of making incremental changes through Meddling is interesting enough to carry a few chapters before there is a story requirement to shake things up. It seems like an opportunity was missed to explore the fundamental ideas of the world to kick things off. 

> 
> 13. I mentioned Amber earlier - that's because I felt a lot of Zelazny
> here, esp. in the garden sections of the book. There was something
> reminiscent of Corwin's Pattern or the Primal Pattern in the latter
> part
> of the novel; and Celeste has something of Brand about her. I don't
> know about the memory palace stuff and references to Wolfe (Latro) or
> to Crowley (Little, Big) but that's a very wide-spread trope. Anyway,
> there's a lot of cool stuff in the details.

The whole Incrementalist cast of characters felt like folks straight out of Amber to me; from Celeste as Brand to Irinia as Fiona, to Oskar as Bleys, Jimmy as Random, etc.
Not that these are are all very exact parallels in characterization, but the group dynamic seems very similar to Corwin and his family. 
 

> 15. This seems like a very personal work - I'm guessing there's more
> SKZB
> in Phil than in Vlad or Billy Feng (another matzo ball soup fan) or
> etc.

As I was reading I kept wondering, with all the scenes in Phil's house in Vegas, how similar the house in the story was to SKZB's former residence in that same city. Or if the 24/7 Cafe and Poker rooms at The Palms were places where he once spent quality time studying Mathematics and Psychology over a stack of poker chips.

Also; knowing SKZB's interest in American Civil War history made Phil's repeated references to that conflict seem more personal. 


> 16. Having finished the book at 2 in the morning after I got it, I
> didn't
> feel the usual need to reread it immediately as I would have with a
> Dragaera or just Brust book. I think I sort of got it and didn't feel
> the need to integrate it into some larger framework, though given the
> last point I will. Maybe more's explained here than usual.

I have just started re-reading it, and have already caught some nuances I missed the first time around. As with all of SKZB's works, I expect there are plenty of subtle jokes that require a more detailed analysis to catch than a first-time glance affords. (For example, did you notice where Phil uses quotes for emphasis almost immediately after complaining about it? Made me chuckle.)


Majikjon