Interview with Stephan Martiniere

Here's an interview with Stephan Martiniere, who's doing all the wonderful Cassandra Kresnov Series covers. In fact, I'm now looking forward to seeing what he does for Killswitch.

End of Year Lists

Crossover has made Bookgasm's top five SF books of 2006, while also making Pat's Fantasy Hotlist's top ten as well. Thanks Ryun and Pat!

We Build Cities...

Let me introduce you to one of the world's most amazing companies. They're a construction company, called Emaar, and they don't merely build individual projects, buildings, bridges etc. They build entire cities from scratch.

As a science fiction writer, this appeals to me immensely. More interestingly still, they build these cities in places in the world that could most use the development. Like in Saudi Arabia. Or Pakistan.

So where do Emaar get the money? Well, they're part owned by the government of the United Arab Emirites, particularly by people in Dubai, which is probably the world's fastest growing city, and is doing for construction this decade what Shanghai did in the last. The Emirites have a small population, and a huge amount of oil. Rather than doing as the Saudis, Iranians and others did, and spending that oil in establishing a socialist nanny state that ensures no one has to work, they instead established a giant tax haven for global companies to come and do business. All the money that usually comes from taxes, to pay for infrastructure, schools, bureaucracy etc, is instead paid for by the oil. The result is that Dubai, a sleepy little fishing village on the Persian Gulf, has been completely transformed, and has a lot of growth to go.

The King Abdullah Economic City project is just fascinating. Not only does it look great, it could do amazing things for Saudi, because it demonstrates an effort by the Saudi rulers to move away from the Socialist nanny state, to something closer to what Dubai has next door. How this will be received by the Saudi religious leaders (a different thing to the national leadership, and with frequent tension between them) is another matter. Dubai is famously liberal, women can sunbathe on tourist beaches, and you can get a drink at a hotel if you want. Looking at the KAEC project, I'd bet neither sunbathing nor drinks will be in... but there is a resort section, tourism is part of the business model, and foreigners will be mixing with locals quite intimately. I can't see the religious types liking that at all.

Also interesting is the history of the project. The rulers were obviously a bit concerned as to how it would be received, but when they put it on the stockmarket for Saudi investors only, about half the Saudi population (ten million people) invested. Saudi's no democracy, but that's as close to a landslide vote of approval as they'll get. The leadership responded to this vote of faith by more than tripling the size of the city. I don't think it's that surprising -- despite all its oil wealth, the Saudi economy is stagnant, poverty is surprisingly high, and unemployment rampant. People have no political outlet, they can't aspire to anything new in cultural or political terms, so this is really the only 'new vision' of their nation available -- that of wealth, power and economic development. They're being offered a 'new Saudi Arabia', and they like what they see.

Details are sketchy, but I'd guess the KAEC aims to operate as a tax haven, like the Jebel Ali Free Trade Zone in Dubai. That'll make manufacturing really cheap, and they're just south of the Suez Canal, on probably the world's busiest shipping route. Services will follow, and I can't see how it can fail, in purely economic terms. What it means for Saudi in social and political terms is another matter.

Then there's this Diamond Bar City project Emaar are building on a couple of islands in a river delta beside Karachi in Pakistan -- if you get on Google Earth, you can find the island easily enough. It's a $43 billion project over thirteen years. I mean, fucking hell. Lots of complaints follow in Pakistan -- they didn't follow consultative procedure in approving it (funny complaint, in a military dictatorship), could be better spent on combating poverty, etc. How they expect to alieviate poverty without massive economic growth like this, I've no idea. And as for the environmental objections, I've been to quite a few poor nations, and it seems pretty clear that the worst environmental damage comes not from fancy new development, but its lack. You've never seen a river system destroyed until you've seen it colonised by a few hundred thousand shanty dwellers and cheap industrial zones pumping effluent 24/7. High rolling investors in their expensive riverside bungalows, on the other hand, don't like sailing or swimming in raw sewage, so the likelihood exists that they'll exert some pressure to clean the place up. Yes poor people will be displaced -- it always happens -- but if someone bothered to run the development properly, they might try to get them jobs in the construction industry... but running things well is difficult enough in India, and apparently unthinkable in Pakistan.

Which raises another point. Yes, Pakistan's economy is looking good lately, and yes, sitting next to the future superpower of India is a good spot to be. But instability in Pakistan, and its inability to make democracy work, would seem to make $43 billion a pretty risky investment. I get the feeling, with Emaar, it's about more than that. Listening to the occassional interview I've heard with Dubai business and political leaders (pretty much the same thing) and I get the impression they're about more than just making money. Firstly, it's only oil dollars, and there's plenty more where that came from. But mostly, it's about remaking the Arab and muslim world, and giving them an entirely different conception of what their civilisation could be. Modern, moderate and confident. I'm all for that.

Stand Alone Complex

I've just received my dvds of season one, Ghost in the Shell:Stand Alone Complex.

If you've followed my work at all, you'll know I love GITS, but I've only caught bits and peices of the Stand Alone Complex TV series up until now. These are the prequels to the movies Ghost in the Shell, and Innocence, and are much more faithful to the orignial manga than either of those.

What I've watched so far is excellent. The plots are complex, the dialogue convincing, and the entire feel is intensely intelligent, understated, and adult -- all of which are pleasantly surprising, considering the depths of poor dialogue and silly cliche a lot of anime can fall to. I'd rate this as the anime equivalent of an HBO TV series, alongside Rome, Deadwood, the Sopranos, etc. It doesn't care if you don't quite get everything that's going on -- if you miss some details, too bad. Which is great, because it's the kind of thing that can be watched several times. And the animation is very good, though not spectacular... but it's a TV series, not a movie, they can't animate to movie standards on a 26 episode season.

Yes, Major Kusanage wears a silly outfit, but she's sexy, and I guess even quality anime can't be expected to dump all their silly impulses entirely.

Economics by Cow

Not much to blog about lately, until I received a very funny email from my brother via his wife via someone at Macquarie Bank who should probably have been working far harder at plundering the world's poor and needy than sending funny emails. Thought I'd share. Love the bit about the Italians.

Economic Models explained with cows

SOCIALISM: You have 2 cows, and you give one to your neighbour.

COMMUNISM: You have 2 cows. The State takes both and gives you some milk.

FASCISM: You have 2 cows. The State takes both and sells you some milk.

NAZISM: You have 2 cows. The State takes both and shoots you.

BUREAUCRATISM: You have 2 cows. The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, then throws the milk away...

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income.

SURREALISM: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the cow has dropped dead.

ENRON VENTURE CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. Sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States, leaving you with nine cows. No balance sheet provided with the release. The public buys your bull.

THE ANDERSEN MODEL: You have two cows. You shred them.

A FRENCH CORPORATION: You have two cows. You go on strike, organise a riot, and block the roads - because you want three cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION: You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
You then create a clever cow cartoon image called 'cowkimon' and market it worldwide.

A GERMAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows, but you don't know where they are. You decide to have lunch.

A RUSSIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 2 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.

A SWISS CORPORATION: You have 5000 cows. None of them belong to you. You charge the owners for storing them.

A CHINESE CORPORATION: You have two cows. You have 300 people milking them. You claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity, and arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.

AN INDIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You worship them.

A BRITISH CORPORATION: You have two cows. Both are mad.

IRAQI CORPORATION: Everyone thinks you have lots of cows. You tell them that you have none. No-one believes you, so they bomb the hell out of you and invade your country. You still have no cows, but at least now you are part of a Democracy....

WELSH CORPORATION: You have two cows. The one on the left looks very attractive.

AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION: If you have two cows business seems pretty good.
You close the office and go for a few beers to celebrate.