{"id":4714,"date":"2018-10-03T05:00:38","date_gmt":"2018-10-03T12:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4714"},"modified":"2018-10-01T20:25:47","modified_gmt":"2018-10-02T03:25:47","slug":"mark-reads-the-science-of-discworld-ii-chapter-9-chapter-10-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2018\/10\/mark-reads-the-science-of-discworld-ii-chapter-9-chapter-10-part-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads &#8216;The Science of Discworld II&#8217;: Chapter 9 \/ Chapter 10, Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the ninth and tenth chapters of <i>The Science of Discworld II<\/i>, the wizards expel the elves, but with an unseen cost. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read <i>Discworld<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Well, they <i>tried<\/i>, right?<\/p>\n<p><b>Discworld<\/b><\/p>\n<p>I did not expect an all-out, iron-heavy brawl between the wizards and the elves, but damn if it wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t immensely satisfying, you know? I guess I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m used to the wizards in this series being mostly ineffective and ridiculous, but they found the elves, and they went in HARD. Seriously, look at this!<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Dean hit first, striking an elf a blow with his staff. A horseshoe had been wired to the end. The elf screamed and twisted back, clutching at its shoulder.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>HE CAME <i>PREPARED<\/i>, Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ALL. And all of them did! Which makes the paint-flinging scene at the opening of the book make so much more sense. When it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s needed, the wizards know how to throw down. Even Rincewind sets up the elf queen to get taken out by the Luggage, and he very nearly does it!<\/p>\n<p>But even if you <i>try<\/i> to do what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s best, sometimes, your actions can have unseen ramifications. Somehow\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand I assume it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be explained later\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthe future version of Rincewind will visit himself at the moment of the wizards\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 victory, and he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll warn him to hold his breath upon returning to Dee\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s actually a really kind gesture because&#8230;. well, Rincewind could have actually told himself what the <i>hell<\/i> is going on, but instead, he opted to make sure he could breathe when he dropped into a river. A river, mind you, that is not really a river at <i>all<\/i>:<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>And the river was in any case rather like a slowly moving swamp. Floating logs and mud banks choked it. Here and there, mud banks had become sufficiently established to sprout a crop of trees.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Now, perhaps I just don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know the topography or geography of England all that well, but this\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sound like England? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t recall there being many swampy bits to it, so my guess is that the <i>land<\/i> has changed, too. I say that because CLEARLY HUMANS HAVE AS WELL. The version of humans that the wizards meet at the end are, as Cohen and Stewart put it, really, really bland. So: whatever the wizards did <i>erased<\/i> the initial creative spark that led to humans developing culture and intelligence. Roundworld is now <i>definitely<\/i> worse than what it was before. So\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 how the hell do they fix that? The elves are gone, but they have a whole new problem now. GREAT.<\/p>\n<p><b>Roundworld<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Ah, so now we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re getting to the part of evolutionary theory (and the evidence left behind that supports much of it) that has always been the thorniest part for a lot of people. Indeed, growing up in a very religious community meant that I had to hear rebuttals of evolution that focused on two elements referenced in this chapter: that there is no way we are ancestors to monkeys (which was just the catch-all term for all the various species), and all those fossilized <i>Homo<\/i> relatives are fake.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Yes, you read that right. Our hominid ancestors are <i>fake<\/i>. Why? Well, I heard various theories over the years. The biggest one was that scientists created them so that prayer could be taken out of schools. Yes, that sentence is just as ridiculous as it seems, and it pained me to type it. But that was a real thing that <i>many<\/i> people I knew believed with their whole being. It made perfect sense to them: there was a grand conspiracy to get God out of the public consciousness, so scientists faked corpses, lied about their age, and then tricked generations of people into believing it. I was told to resist that programming, and I promptly did no such thing. You know that thing you experience, inevitably as a kid, where you realize your parents can and <i>do<\/i> lie to you? Mine came very early, and it made my upbringing challenging, particularly since I started defending things once I got into my teenage years.<\/p>\n<p>So, I know I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve expressed this sentiment before, but: Do you know how <i>cool<\/i> it would have been for me to have a book like this as a teenager? I know a lot of us say this kind of shit when it comes to representation, but I needed more than that as a kid. I needed <i>information<\/i>. I needed something that easily broke down things like gracile and robust forms of a species, something I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve heard since Marine Biology in college. (Which holds lots of bitter memories for me, by the way, since it is the only class I have ever failed in my life, and I failed it TWICE. Twice!!! It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even that hard!) Look, I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know that there was technically a third kind of elephant until TODAY. THIS VERY DAY. This book taught me a <i>huge<\/i> piece of knowledge IN 2018. But I wonder how much of this isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just because of my upbringing, but because of the sort of anti-intellectual, anti-science bias that permeates American society. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something I spoke of at the UK Discworld Convention when someone asked if the US could ever produce their version of Sir Terry, and I said that our society has a lot of reckoning to do before we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d ever be able to do something like that. And it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not just a rural or suburban problem, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a liberal vs progressive problem, either. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so, so much bigger than that! Obviously, there are specific instances in which you can delineate this sort of cultural problem across boundaries like that. Our textbooks are a mess because of government interference, particularly on a state level in the state where many of them are produced. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why American history education, without the right kind of teacher, is often just a regurgitation of propaganda and mistruths. The sciences are not always seen as a valid pursuit in life, but when they are, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s for <i>men<\/i>, not anyone else. So we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got all these huge barriers, many of which intersect and combine with one another to create <i>bigger<\/i> disasters.<\/p>\n<p>The point being: I appreciate that this book exists and that it might introduce a whole group of fiction readers to ideas and theories and knowledge that they might otherwise not have come across.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/youtu.be\/eNIaScoGl7w<\/p>\n<p><b>Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <strong>My YA contemporary debut, <a href=\"https:\/\/bit.ly\/AngerIsAGift\">ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now out in the world!\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><strong>If you&#8217;d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, <a href=\"http:\/\/eepurl.com\/ey636\">sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the ninth and tenth chapters of The Science of Discworld II, the wizards expel the elves, but with an unseen cost. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[451],"tags":[463,248,552],"class_list":["post-4714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-terry-pratchett","tag-the-science-of-discworld-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4714\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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