{"id":6277,"date":"2012-03-21T18:06:53","date_gmt":"2012-03-22T01:06:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jerrypournelle.com\/chaosmanor\/?p=6277"},"modified":"2012-03-22T22:55:44","modified_gmt":"2012-03-23T05:55:44","slug":"hikes-black-ship-nature-and-the-china-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jerrypournelle.com\/chaosmanor\/hikes-black-ship-nature-and-the-china-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Hikes, Black Ship, Nature, and the China System"},"content":{"rendered":"

View 717 Wednesday, March 21, 2012<\/p>\n

The Secret of Black Ship Island by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Steven Barnes is now available on Nook and Amazon Kindle<\/a>. This is a novella \u2013 a bit more than 40,000 words \u2013 set on Avalon, the first human interstellar colony, and takes place in the time between the novels The Legacy of Heorot and Beowulf\u2019s Children. There\u2019s a short preface by the authors, and the story will tell you why it is not an explicit part of the cultural background in Beowulf\u2019s Children. It\u2019s the story of a colossal generation gap, and some consequences of that. There\u2019s also a new alien, designed by us with help from Jack Cohen. We liked it. <\/p>\n

NOTE THAT I first posted this as The Legend of Black Ship Island, which is illustrative of the memory lapses I have come to hate but expect. It\u2019s SECRET, and it\u2019s still a good story. I get things right eventually, but I am not as often right the first time as I used to be. Ah. well. <\/p>\n

And my daughter gets a favorable mention\/citation in this Nature article: http:\/\/www.nature.com\/news\/satellites-expose-8-000-years-of-civilization-1.10257<\/a><\/p>\n

Niven and I hiked up to the top of Mulholland today. Our first since I was laid out by whatever has kept me down since January. I made it, so I must be getting over it all, but it was pretty tough and the pollens were bad. Got a lot of good notes and scene ideas for our book. Profitable morning, very much so.<\/p>\n

I came back from lunch to find a stockbroker alert about Chinese Credit Default Swaps experiences price anomalies after Internet rumors of a coup in Peking. I don\u2019t really have much in stocks, and none in credit default swaps, but I do get some of the broker alerts. This is the first one like this I have seen in a while. The latest I can get on the subject is that no one knows. I remember similar rumors surfacing every few years. The People\u2019s Liberation Army has enormous stakes in the Chinese economy, and armies have somewhat different goals, ideals, and honor systems than parties do. On the other hand the Chinese party system is systematic and thorough, and I recall few precedents for this extensive \u2013 and surprisingly well thought out \u2013 party structuring. It\u2019s far more pervasive than anything Mussolini, Hitler, or Stalin ever put in place. Stalin\u2019s system teetered after his death, and the succession apparently depended entirely on the personal skills of some of the highest participants. The Nomenklatura began dismantling Stalin\u2019s party system, and over time were successful; then their system gradually crumbled as the economic situation of the USSR remained static and then crumbled. China\u2019s economic boom is said to be faltering, but that\u2019s a slowing of growth, not an actual collapse. There is no shortage of goods in the large cities. Shops thrive, luxury goods are available to walk in customers for cash, and there is nothing like the extensive secondary economic\/distribution system that marked the last decades of the Soviet Union Nomenklatura system.<\/p>\n

Best guess is that it\u2019s all rumor, but you can never know for sure. One reader sent me this link http:\/\/p.washingtontimes.com\/news\/2012\/mar\/21\/inside-the-ring-436080940\/<\/a> with the comment that we live in interesting times.<\/p>\n

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View 717 Wednesday, March 21, 2012 The Secret of Black Ship Island by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Steven Barnes is now available on Nook and Amazon Kindle. This is a novella \u2013 a bit more than 40,000 words \u2013 set on Avalon, the first human interstellar colony, and takes \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-view"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jerrypournelle.com\/chaosmanor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jerrypournelle.com\/chaosmanor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jerrypournelle.com\/chaosmanor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jerrypournelle.com\/chaosmanor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jerrypournelle.com\/chaosmanor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jerrypournelle.com\/chaosmanor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6277\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jerrypournelle.com\/chaosmanor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jerrypournelle.com\/chaosmanor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jerrypournelle.com\/chaosmanor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}