# "The Scourge Of God" S.M. Stirling's new book. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 4, 2008, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-scourge-of-god-s-m-stirlings-new-book/461948 "2008-09-04T06:28:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-scourge-of-god-s-m-stirlings-new-book/461948/21 "2008-09-08T16:56:45Z")
Am I the only one who always reads the sample chapters, which means that by the time the book comes out, I’m already halfway done with it? On the other hand, I continue to basically enjoy them, so I suppose it doesn’t matter much. I think the most interesting revelation in TSOG is clearly: The reason for the change - Rudi is given a vision of a dystopian future where technology has gone too far, presumably due to some version of the singularity. So God(s) step in and presumably restart things with two simultaneous experiments: Nantucket sent back in time so that technology can be re-spread more or less from scratch, and the modern world continuing without technology. One criticism: I thought the ending was rushed and out of nowhere. Suddenly the king of Iowa, which is this super-powerful kingdom we’ve never heard of, which of course has a douchebag king, randomly decides to send Rudi out on a quest and give him one month or else his friends will be killed. Who actually acts that way? ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-scourge-of-god-s-m-stirlings-new-book/461948/22 "2008-09-08T21:48:01Z")
I don’t think there’s going to be crossover between the Changed world and Nantucket in the past. That is, unless Stirling forgets about the prologue in Against the Tide of Years That was a short exerpt from a history book written in 57 AE, and published by the Nantucket press. Surely if there had been contact it would have been referenced. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-scourge-of-god-s-m-stirlings-new-book/461948/23 "2008-09-08T22:37:40Z")
> [@A\_shameful\_cracka](#): > > I haven’t read from any of the later books, but from what I’ve read about them, there is still no explanation as to how that was accomplished. If the laws of physics are going to be enforced so arbitrarily (Electricity still conducts in nature but not in man-made items made from the same conducting materials? Gunpowder doesn’t burn but cells still catalyze chemicals?) admit that a wizard did it or the whole world is in an arbitrary simulation of the real world. But they do admit “a wizard did it”! Or at least, that the changes to the laws of physics are so specific that the change must have been done on purpose…some entity or entities decided to limit human technology for some unknowable purpose. The term of art in alt-history for these entities is “Alien Space Bats”. They introduce arbitrary changes to the space-time continuum, and then the author writes a story about them. The comparison to the MacGuffin is obvious. The author wants to write a story about modern humans reduced to feudal level technology, that’s the point of the book. Concentration on the Alien Space Bats themselves is a mistake, since nobody cares about the Alien Space Bats themselves. Why and how the Emberverse was created is irrelevant in the context of the books themselves, because no characters in the books would ever be able to find out. And it’s irrelevant to the reader and the author as well, because they are simply a device to create the milieu the author wanted to explore. Even if the characters finally figure out why the Alien Space Bats did what they did it won’t mean anything, because the real meta-reason is that the author wanted them to. Likewise, James Bond might spend the entire movie trying to recover the secret plans from the villain of the week, but the secret plans themselves are completely uninteresting. Spending more than one or two minutes explaining the plans is a waste of time, because the audience doesn’t care about the plans. Same thing with the proximate cause of the alt-history divergence point. Why do the ASB kill Abraham Lincoln? Because the author wanted to explore what would happen if Lincoln died. Nothing more complicated than that. Of course, a stray musket ball fulfills the same story needs. The more your time-travel/alt-history novel concentrates on the ASB the worse it is. All the readers care about is that the briefcase contains the secret plans and the good guys have to get it back. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2008, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-scourge-of-god-s-m-stirlings-new-book/461948/24 "2008-09-12T19:12:57Z")
I just got the book, and have been reading through it. Did anyone catch a small detail in one of Juniper’s visions, near the beginning of the book? She saw the dying Pope in one of them. There was a doctor, a couple of cardinals, and a military figure at his bedside. Juniper could understand their speech, even though she didn’t know Italian. Did you note the physical description of the military guy? Dark skinned, middle aged, speaking Italian with an accent she thought “sounded” Texan. Hmmm, sounds like Luke Hutton must have made it through the change, but it doesn’t sound as if Juniper knew him for who he must be. Take into consideration that I haven’t got a third of the way through the book yet. ---
**Author:** ![Cowgirl\_Jules](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4af34b/32.png) [@Cowgirl\_Jules](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cowgirl_Jules)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2008, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-scourge-of-god-s-m-stirlings-new-book/461948/25 "2008-09-12T20:09:53Z")
I caught that too, Baker. And when did Signe Havel become a witch? Wasn’t she fairly strongly Christian in the first three? I don’t remember anything one way or the other in Sunrise Lands, and I just reread it before this one came out. How does one pronounce “Signe” anyway? Is it like “Sonya?” ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2008, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-scourge-of-god-s-m-stirlings-new-book/461948/26 "2008-09-12T20:51:43Z")
SING-neh. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2008, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-scourge-of-god-s-m-stirlings-new-book/461948/27 "2008-09-12T22:01:56Z")
> [@RandMcnally](#): > > That’s _exactly_ why I hate him! Ever since he was introduced Stirling tried to make him too likable. He has no flaws whatsoever. None. And it’s annoying. > > I just wish he would die every time I read about him. Well, he’s obviously a neopagan messiah-figure and destined to be an emperor. Flaws wouldn’t fit. Not unless they’re extremely noble, tragic flaws, worthy of an Aeschylus or Sophocles character. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2008, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-scourge-of-god-s-m-stirlings-new-book/461948/28 "2008-09-12T22:04:51Z")
One other thing: Didn’t Matilda at one point capture a lion cub. What happened with that? ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2008, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-scourge-of-god-s-m-stirlings-new-book/461948/29 "2008-09-12T23:11:15Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Well, he’s obviously a neopagan messiah-figure and destined to be an emperor. I don’t think he’s going to be an emperor. At least he doesn’t think he is, he’s told Mathilda he’s destined to die at the end of the quest, in battle, with his sword in his hand. ---
**Author:** ![RandMcnally](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b782af/32.png) [@RandMcnally](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RandMcnally)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2008, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-scourge-of-god-s-m-stirlings-new-book/461948/30 "2008-10-07T02:09:14Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > Am I the only one who always reads the sample chapters, which means that by the time the book comes out, I’m already halfway done with it? No, I do that also. I’m going to try and stop myself this time around (he already has the first two chapters of the next book up] because I can never remember where I leave off. > [@](#): > > I think the most interesting revelation in TSOG is clearly I somehow missed that. Could you tell me the page so I could reread it? Like others have said, I find myself skimming over some of the paragraphs because Stirling really love his descriptions. I liked the book well enough, not as much as I liked the first one though. And I understand why Rudi is so perfect, but it still bothers me. And I wish the Clan McKenzie wasn’t the focus of everything. I’d much rather hear more about Portland and the Bearkillers. My favorite thing about the series though is seeing who the different places model their society after. The Romans, Normans, English, etc. I’d love to play a Medieval: Total War type game going up against the various factions. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2008, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-scourge-of-god-s-m-stirlings-new-book/461948/31 "2008-10-07T02:14:05Z")
> [@A\_shameful\_cracka](#): > > I’ve read three stories (well, two novels and one story) by S.M. Stirling which describes how to kill an elephant with one shot by shooting it between two particular wrinkles on it’s trunk. 😕 Are you sure? I’ve read **all** Stirling’s novels but _Scourge of God_ and several shorts and I don’t remember that in any of them. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2008, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-scourge-of-god-s-m-stirlings-new-book/461948/32 "2008-10-07T02:18:45Z")
From [“Shooting an Elephant,”](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part4) by George Orwell: > [@](#): > > There was only one alternative. I shoved the cartridges into the magazine and lay down on the road to get a better aim. The crowd grew very still, and a deep, low, happy sigh, as of people who see the theatre curtain go up at last, breathed from innumerable throats. They were going to have their bit of fun after all. The rifle was a beautiful German thing with cross-hair sights. I did not then know that in shooting an elephant one would shoot to cut an imaginary bar running from ear-hole to ear-hole. I ought, therefore, as the elephant was sideways on, to have aimed straight at his ear-hole, actually I aimed several inches in front of this, thinking the brain would be further forward. The elephant took several more shots of this kind, and several to the heart, before it died. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2009, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-scourge-of-god-s-m-stirlings-new-book/461948/33 "2009-02-10T13:09:31Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > I think the most interesting revelation in TSOG is clearly: > > The reason for the change - Rudi is given a vision of a dystopian future where technology has gone too far, presumably due to some version of the singularity. So God(s) step in and presumably restart things with two simultaneous experiments: Nantucket sent back in time so that technology can be re-spread more or less from scratch, and the modern world continuing without technology. Sorry if this is too corpsified to bump, but I just finished Scourge of God and I was wondering if anyone could clarify this revelation. I don’t remember that scene at all. Rudi’s dreams seemed completely and definitely not an earth shattering secret spiller like you describe. Did I just completely blank over a whole chapter or something? As for me, I thought the book was mostly filler, but I was intrigued by one thing… [spoiler]Gods/demons/Alien Space Bats of some kind are real and interacting with the people of the Changed world. And they appear to each character (Sethaz, Rudy, Juniper and Ignatius differently to match each one’s belief structure. However, I was pissed this one ended almost exactly like the first one! Mathilda and Odard were captured again! And Rudi has to do some heroics to save them again! Christ![/spoiler] ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2009, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-scourge-of-god-s-m-stirlings-new-book/461948/34 "2009-02-10T18:18:20Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > Sorry if this is too corpsified to bump, but I just finished Scourge of God and I was wondering if anyone could clarify this revelation. I don’t remember that scene at all. Rudi’s dreams seemed completely and definitely not an earth shattering secret spiller like you describe. Did I just completely blank over a whole chapter or something? It was a vision Rudi had while injured, right before talking to whatever God/higher power he talked to. He saw what clearly seemed to me to be a sort of hyper-technological dystopia, and then the God showed up and said “some times you have to give someone a bit of a smack”. Or something like that. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2009, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-scourge-of-god-s-m-stirlings-new-book/461948/35 "2009-02-10T18:40:24Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > It was a vision Rudi had while injured, right before talking to whatever God/higher power he talked to. He saw what clearly seemed to me to be a sort of hyper-technological dystopia, and then the God showed up and said “some times you have to give someone a bit of a smack”. > > Or something like that. I thought that’s what you were referring to. I think you may have read into that vision a bit too much… [spoiler]God (The Wanderer) doesn’t show Rudi any hyper-technogical dystopia. But they do discuss what to do with a child who’s a bit of a pyromaniac and purposely torches a house. The god asks Rudi if he would kill the child and Rudi replied no, he’d just give it a smack so it would learn. I can see how that could be applied to the Change and saving the earth from humanity or some such, but their was no super-technolgy vision.[/spoiler] ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2009, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-scourge-of-god-s-m-stirlings-new-book/461948/36 "2009-02-10T19:40:36Z")
Here’s the crucial passage, from chapter 10, which is one of the preview chapters on [smstirling.com](http://smstirling.com) (and hopefully I won’t get in trouble for pasting here): > [@S M Stirling](#): > > “Look, then,” the Wanderer said. “If you can bear it.” > > For a moment the mountains about him stood stark and bare, only here and there a charred root exposed by the gullies cut by long-gone monsoon floods. Heat lay on it like a blanket, through air gray and clear and thick with the tears of boiling oceans. Then it changed and was green once more… but different, somehow; there was a wrongness to the way the trees were placed, a regularity that held patterns as complex as those you saw in a kaleidoscope, layer within layer. A rabbit hopped by… > > … and silvery tendrils looped around it, thinner than the finest wire. The beast gave one long squeal and then froze as they plunged beneath its skin. Then it seemed to blur, as if it were dissolving, until nothing was left but a damp patch on the ground. Involuntarily Rudi looked down at his own feet. The Mother’s earth was beneath him, and he expected to feed it with his body and bones someday… > > But not like that! he thought. > > “Those were evil fates, lord Wanderer,” he said. “And true ones, I’m thinking.” > > “Evil for more than men,” came the reply. “Now, tell me, son of the Bear. What would you do with a little child you saw running with a sharp knife?” > > Rudi’s mouth quirked. “Take it from her, lord Wanderer. Swat her backside so that she’d remember, if she were too young for words.” I sure interpret that as “technology was going to lead to a horrible future in which the forest was replaced by nanotech rabbit-eaters, so we took technology away from people like you’d take a sharp knife away from a kid”. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2009, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-scourge-of-god-s-m-stirlings-new-book/461948/37 "2009-02-10T19:46:29Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > I sure interpret that as “technology was going to lead to a horrible future in which the forest was replaced by nanotech rabbit-eaters, so we took technology away from people like you’d take a sharp knife away from a kid”. I see where you’re coming from, but this is a Dies the Fire book. If history is any guide, a revelation that important would have gone on for several pages, not a quick paragraph. ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2009, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-scourge-of-god-s-m-stirlings-new-book/461948/38 "2009-02-10T21:39:35Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > I see where you’re coming from, but this is a Dies the Fire book. If history is any guide, a revelation that important would have gone on for several pages, not a quick paragraph. I disagree. It was pretty obvious what he was saying. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-scourge-of-god-s-m-stirlings-new-book/461948.md?page=1)