Fantasy/Science Fiction books I'm reading, June 2018

I started my summer holiday late as I needed to study for my qualifying exams in in early June (spring term classes were over since May). There were days when the prospect of being able to read whatever I want after the exams was what kept me going. So when my exams were over, I did the only thing fitting for a liberation: going to the library and get myself an armload of books. Here are what I have been reading this month, from the Fantasy/Science Fiction shelves.

• Foundation - Isaac Asimov: 4*/5*
• Firstborn - Brandon Sanderson: 3*/5*
• Perdido Street Station - China Miéville: 3*/5*
• White Sand (1 & 2) - Brandon Sanderson: 3* and 2*/5*
• Arcanum Unbounded - Brandon Sanderson: 5*/5*

Reading F/SF books is always a pleasure, and I'm mostly happy reading the above books. Sanderson is a favorite, and the collection of his short stories and novellas in Arcanum did not disappoint. I should make a separate post for this book. It also included an excerpt of White Sand, a graphic novel based on his story, which trade paperback volumes I immediately checked out from the library, too.

I end up not liking it: the artwork is gripping for the action sequences, which is how the first volume started, but the book very quickly degenerate into a really weak political plot. Maybe things are lost in the adaptation? Dialogues were very clunky, and the change of artwork in the final chapter of the second volume from messy lines (which I thought was rather fitting with the desert world) to clean art was really shocking. I also get a really strong Dune vibe from the story with the inconsequential political manoeuvring, which was Bad. Sanderson admitted as much in his foreword: it was one of his early works, and "it was hard to escape your influences as a new writer. The first draft of White Sand was one part Dune, one part The Wheel of Time, and one part Les Miserables." I hate Dune.

Why do I hate it? I agree with this essay on Iain M. Banks by Joseph Heath who argued it doesn't makes sense to combine feudalism with energy weapons. I shit talked about Dune forcefully enough to my friends that César had his reservations when he recommended Asimov's Foundation, which runs on the same vein: Take a social structure from the past (the Imperial Rome), but make the civilization space-faring.

I find it notably quaint for Asimov to think of the nuclear power as the pinnacle of mankind's technological progress, but much to my surprise I found it a very enjoyable read. It's short and the characters are naturally dispensable (the book covers a period of almost two centuries, so characters had to die anyway). I also enjoyed the way it explored the consequences of scientific regress that comes with the decline of an empire, and the expansionary force that religion and trade can exert to uncharted civilizations. Actually, this does come out like Asimov is taking a leaf out of the European colonization history, and maybe he did. At least the brevity and the straightforward writing kept it engaging.

Which isn't something that I can say for Perdido Street Station. It's nearly 700 pages long, and boy it was a slog. I heard about Miéville from Laurie, who read and liked his other books, but they weren't available in the library. I must admit that I immediately eyed the book with suspicion when I read in the inside flap that Miéville was "reading for his PhD at the London School of Economics"--I wondered if reading Perdido would be a leisurely activity at all.

My suspicion was largely right. For much of the first half of the book, I read but did not really get what's actually happening. Miéville seems to have a penchant for erudite words. Many argued that he wrote this novel with a thesaurus open. I think if he had to take a GRE for his graduate study--maybe he just wants to not waste all the fancy vocabularies he acquired for his test. It's the only way for me to rationalize prose like these:

The thing drew on the stored energy it had drawn from the dreamshit and powered its transformation. ... It folded on itself, shaping itself out of the protean sludge of its own base matter. ... After, ... there was a brief moment when the thing in the cocoon was poised in a liminal state. ... Isaac spent many hours watching the chrysalis, but he could only imagine the struggle of autopoiesis within. ... He spent his days soldering and hammering, attaching steam-pistons and thaumaturgic engines to the nascent engine. [Underlines added.]

That was from the beginning of chapter 21, page 246-267, when Things Finally Happens and Plot Is Moving At Last. Honestly with not much of a plot in the previous two hundred pages, reading it felt like reading Mas-Colell's Microeconomic Theory book. And at least with Mas-Colell et al.'s book, they don't just show off words like "thaumaturgical"[1], "atavistic"[2], or "oneiric"[3]. And don't get me started on the occurrences of "vertiginous".

On the other hand, if you're preparing for a spelling bee, this is the book for you. I must admit I was half-tempted to set up a blog much like Jarett Myskiw's Definitive Jest that highlighted DFW's unusual/unusable vocabularies from Infinite Jest, but I realized this will require me to read Perdido again and I don't think I want to subject myself to that twice in a summer.

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[1] The top point was labelled Occult/thaumaturgical; the bottom left Material; the bottom right Social/sapiental. p166
[2] ... after the atavistic disgust and fear has gone, .... his lover had been taken from him. p438
[3] It had only been the slake-moth's oneiric hold on him that kept him standing. p475

Bonus:

I love Perdido Street Station pic.twitter.com/jq95DJGhwG

— Jack (@JWilliamJames) June 7, 2018

Shout out to the time I went to a party dressed as a slake moth from Perdido Street Station pic.twitter.com/FM8QmePhd1

— Regular Frog (@FrogCroakley) June 6, 2018

The Incubator

A month ago, an article about Duolingo was published on Quartz and it sparked a discussion among contributors in Duolingo Incubator. Some think the article is inaccurate in many places, but one point that led to a longer discussion is about putting our (voluntary) work on our resumes. I put it on mine, many others don't.

Which made me ask myself, why did I put it on mine?

Of course, I put a bunch of other stuff on my resume, too. Obviously there's contact information, education history, and professional experience. And aside from the volunteer experiences and other activities, I also put in the online courses I completed, awards I won, and languages I mastered.

The last three things are easier to justify. I took economics courses online to reveal my interest and familiarity of basic economics theories despite my background from astronomy. I showed off my awards to hint at my ability to excel academically. I listed the programming languages to demonstrate my exposure to quantitative analytics.

My activities with Duolingo Incubator, though, would not directly tell you what aspect of myself I am selling. (And that's the point of a resume, isn't it? To sell yourself.)

On the face of it, I was not applying for a linguistic-related position. But even if I were, I had other credentials to emphasize. I like to think listing TOEFL/GRE scores are rather crass, but they could do. Of course, if the position had asked for someone with academic training in linguistics then I would be out of consideration regardless.

So my intent must have leaned towards showcasing my skills. In the discussion I mentioned earlier, a fellow contributor posited that volunteering in the Duolingo Incubator is an evidence of one's persistence, stubbornness, and patience--with a streak of insanity. But of course you would only know this if you are familiar with the workings of the Incubator. Most people don't--many has never even heard about Duolingo at all.

Evidently, we are not paid for our voluntary contributions. Ostensibly, this shows that we are employer's dream employees for willing to work hard for free. I think this is an overtly cynical view. Only predatory, exploitative employer would extrapolate that because a candidate listed voluntary activities in their resume they will hold that against them (maybe in the salary negotiation?). If that were the case, they shouldn't want to work for these employers anyway.

I have never been in the receiving end of my own resume. Naturally, or it would have been weird. So I can't tell you how my Incubator activities are being seen by the people who read them. The closest remark that I had was from Héctor--then a prospective employer, who said that I was "pretty enterprising", having seen the meandering path that I took with plenty of detours from astronomy to parliamentary debating, Tohoku reconstruction, and Amnesty campaigns (this was the days before I joined the Incubator).

Seeing that they then hired me, apparently listing volunteering activities did not hurt me. But I feel that in my former workplace, at worst, volunteering is neither here nor there. My boss volunteered in a health clinic. Some colleagues also did a stint with Indonesia Mengajar, which tend to come with ancillary volunteering activities once our stint was over. When I later took charge of the recruitment, candidates' volunteering/organisational activities were never the main reason behind our recruitment decision, but it's likely reading a list of volunteering history in a candidate's resume made me see their profile more positively[1].

A relevant infographic from Deloitte. Source: here.

In the end, I think it boils down to the fact that it feels great to be able to contribute in the Duolingo Incubator. I first joined when the English course for Indonesian speakers was still in Beta phase, and it has now reached 4.06 million users. That's almost the entire Costa Rican population using our course, right there. I had also designed the reverse course: the Indonesian course for English speakers, which Duolingo will hopefully launch into Beta this August. Figuring out the best structure to teach Indonesian in Duolingo has led me to find hidden gems of language resources, which had been really interesting.

Furthermore, I have to vet, recruit, and onboard new volunteer contributors in Duolingo, too. My interactions with the applicants and fellow contributors has also taught me what (not) to do when you need something done--which I can easily translate into my actual professional environs. It helps me grow.

In my resume, putting it there is my declaration of how I grew, and how I'm seeking to grow. That, I think, is really the reason why it's there.

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[1] I'm not alone in this. In 2013, Deloitte surveyed 202 HR executives and found that the skills and experience acquired through skills-based volunteering are favourably viewed among most HR executives. Read more here.