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EP291: Shannon’s Law
May. 6th, 2011 01:55 pm "Shannon's Law" by Cory Doctorow is a preview of the soon-to-be published Welcome to Bordertown, the first Bordertown anthology in who knows how many years. I've been looking forward to this anthology from the moment I heard about it a year ago or so. So, of course, I clicked play on this podcast with fond memories, tense anticipation, and high expectations.
The result? I can best explain by analogy. Some years back, there was a TV show called Whose Line Is It Anyway? featuring a bunch of comedians played short-form improv games. One of the games was called "Song Stylings." The audience would suggest and object and a style then one of the comedians would sing a song about that object in that style. e.g., a song about a blender in the style of Stephen Sondheim, or a song about an ironing board in the style of reggae (which inevitably leads to lyrics about how the singer can't stand the board up because it "be jammin'.") The show used skilled improvisers so the results were always funny and on-style, but more or less what you'd expect.
For me, "Shannon's Law" is what happens when you command, "Give me a story in the style of Cory Doctorow set in Bordertown that name checks Claude Shannon and references the Shannon-Hartley Theorem." i.e., given the knowns of "Cory Doctorow" and the title "Shannon's Law", the story was more or less what I expected.
If you like Cory's work, you'll like this story. If you'd rather hack your limbs off with a rusty axe than read Doctorow, this is not a story that will change your mind about him. If you, like me, find his work decent but occasionally problematic, this story will just reinforce your existing biases about his work.
The idea is an intrinsically good one. Bordertown is an area where neither magic or technology work consistently. That makes Shannon's Law especially relevant, or at least the nature of Bordertown ought to magnify its effects. If anything, though, I wished "Shannon's Law" had dealt more meaningfully with Shannon's Law. (Otherwise, the title is just a cute, but meaningless, pun.)
Anyway, the situation and main character are vintage Doctorow. The main character, of course, is a smart, tech savvy guy who uses sarcasm to distance himself from others, and does not subject his own ideas to the same intense scrutiny that he subjects everyone else's to. Thus, he spends a lot of his thoughts underlining the uselessness of magic, but he sees the technology as reliable. e.g., he grouses about a ladder that has been magicked so that the rungs are extra grippy. True to Borderland, some rungs are downright sticky while other rungs are near impossible to hold onto. He decides that later he'll solve this problem with some good old-fashioned tape. Because, of course, the rather advanced adhesives on the backside of the tape is sure to stick the rung. It seems to me that for some rungs, the tape will slip because the adhesive will fail.
Yes, this is kind of a trivial example that has nothing to do with the spine of the story. It does crystalize, though, the world view of the main character, Shannon Claude (*bonk* *bonk* get it?). He is so utterly dismissive of magic that one wonders why he ran away to Bordertown in the first place.
Of course, Shannon has wired Bordertown up to the Internet via a variety of technology. Cory dutifully mentions "spell boxes" as part of the infrastructure. Setting up a reliable network with some guarantee of service out of explicitly flaky parts engages directly with Shannon's Law. So, of course, the story isn't about that. The network is weirdly reliable. I'd have expected him to have deploy multiple technologies to cover the same links. i.e., use redundancy to cover the inherent unreliability of technology in the area. If the story made any reference to that, I missed it. The impression I got was that the network was a hodge-podge of different technologies in different areas (with a dutiful reference to "spell boxes").
No, the story is about trying to send a bit through Faerie and back. That aspect of the story chock full of the sort of infodump that you love if you're a Doctorow fan and you skip if you're a Doctorow fan who's already taken at least his fair share of Computer Engineering classes. (That's how I got through Little Brother.) As such, I suspect I'd have enjoyed the story more on paper since you can't really skip the infodumps when you listen to the podcast. (For the record, I liked Little Brother.)
(Oh, and there is a Relationship in the story so that we never lose track of the characters as feeling, sentient beings.)
I always get the impression that Cory has a much more optimistic view of engineering than I do. His networks never have problems. With his engineering projects, the challenge is mostly figuring out what to do, with a slight dash of actually making it work out as planned. (i.e., the consequence may not be what his characters expect, but the actual doing seems to go well.) That's the impression I got here too. (Like I said, this story reinforces my existing biases. YMMV.)
As such, I can't decide whether the ending is clever or a cop-out. Frankly, unless he wanted to fundamentally chance the nature of the shared world, it had to end as it did. That necessity doesn't make the ending satisfying though. For me, the story flinches in that Shannon never comes to evaluate himself with the rigor he evaluates everyone else.
Like I said, the story is vintage Doctorow. It doesn't do much good to complain or to triumph that Cory Doctorow writes like Cory Doctorow. I enjoyed it, I guess, but I bet this will not be my favorite story in the anthology.
I'm still looking forward to Welcome to Bordertown. The story is definitely worth a listen and it does give a flavor of what Bordertown is like. I hope it entices everyone to buy a copy of the anthology.
The result? I can best explain by analogy. Some years back, there was a TV show called Whose Line Is It Anyway? featuring a bunch of comedians played short-form improv games. One of the games was called "Song Stylings." The audience would suggest and object and a style then one of the comedians would sing a song about that object in that style. e.g., a song about a blender in the style of Stephen Sondheim, or a song about an ironing board in the style of reggae (which inevitably leads to lyrics about how the singer can't stand the board up because it "be jammin'.") The show used skilled improvisers so the results were always funny and on-style, but more or less what you'd expect.
For me, "Shannon's Law" is what happens when you command, "Give me a story in the style of Cory Doctorow set in Bordertown that name checks Claude Shannon and references the Shannon-Hartley Theorem." i.e., given the knowns of "Cory Doctorow" and the title "Shannon's Law", the story was more or less what I expected.
If you like Cory's work, you'll like this story. If you'd rather hack your limbs off with a rusty axe than read Doctorow, this is not a story that will change your mind about him. If you, like me, find his work decent but occasionally problematic, this story will just reinforce your existing biases about his work.
The idea is an intrinsically good one. Bordertown is an area where neither magic or technology work consistently. That makes Shannon's Law especially relevant, or at least the nature of Bordertown ought to magnify its effects. If anything, though, I wished "Shannon's Law" had dealt more meaningfully with Shannon's Law. (Otherwise, the title is just a cute, but meaningless, pun.)
Anyway, the situation and main character are vintage Doctorow. The main character, of course, is a smart, tech savvy guy who uses sarcasm to distance himself from others, and does not subject his own ideas to the same intense scrutiny that he subjects everyone else's to. Thus, he spends a lot of his thoughts underlining the uselessness of magic, but he sees the technology as reliable. e.g., he grouses about a ladder that has been magicked so that the rungs are extra grippy. True to Borderland, some rungs are downright sticky while other rungs are near impossible to hold onto. He decides that later he'll solve this problem with some good old-fashioned tape. Because, of course, the rather advanced adhesives on the backside of the tape is sure to stick the rung. It seems to me that for some rungs, the tape will slip because the adhesive will fail.
Yes, this is kind of a trivial example that has nothing to do with the spine of the story. It does crystalize, though, the world view of the main character, Shannon Claude (*bonk* *bonk* get it?). He is so utterly dismissive of magic that one wonders why he ran away to Bordertown in the first place.
Of course, Shannon has wired Bordertown up to the Internet via a variety of technology. Cory dutifully mentions "spell boxes" as part of the infrastructure. Setting up a reliable network with some guarantee of service out of explicitly flaky parts engages directly with Shannon's Law. So, of course, the story isn't about that. The network is weirdly reliable. I'd have expected him to have deploy multiple technologies to cover the same links. i.e., use redundancy to cover the inherent unreliability of technology in the area. If the story made any reference to that, I missed it. The impression I got was that the network was a hodge-podge of different technologies in different areas (with a dutiful reference to "spell boxes").
No, the story is about trying to send a bit through Faerie and back. That aspect of the story chock full of the sort of infodump that you love if you're a Doctorow fan and you skip if you're a Doctorow fan who's already taken at least his fair share of Computer Engineering classes. (That's how I got through Little Brother.) As such, I suspect I'd have enjoyed the story more on paper since you can't really skip the infodumps when you listen to the podcast. (For the record, I liked Little Brother.)
(Oh, and there is a Relationship in the story so that we never lose track of the characters as feeling, sentient beings.)
I always get the impression that Cory has a much more optimistic view of engineering than I do. His networks never have problems. With his engineering projects, the challenge is mostly figuring out what to do, with a slight dash of actually making it work out as planned. (i.e., the consequence may not be what his characters expect, but the actual doing seems to go well.) That's the impression I got here too. (Like I said, this story reinforces my existing biases. YMMV.)
As such, I can't decide whether the ending is clever or a cop-out. Frankly, unless he wanted to fundamentally chance the nature of the shared world, it had to end as it did. That necessity doesn't make the ending satisfying though. For me, the story flinches in that Shannon never comes to evaluate himself with the rigor he evaluates everyone else.
Like I said, the story is vintage Doctorow. It doesn't do much good to complain or to triumph that Cory Doctorow writes like Cory Doctorow. I enjoyed it, I guess, but I bet this will not be my favorite story in the anthology.
I'm still looking forward to Welcome to Bordertown. The story is definitely worth a listen and it does give a flavor of what Bordertown is like. I hope it entices everyone to buy a copy of the anthology.
