Here be dragons...

During the Wimbledon finals match, I happened to be channel surfing and ran into Hallmark's adaptation of Earthsea. With Federer demolishing Roddick with consummate ease, I didn't get to see the whole of it, but I managed to catch a bit of it in the breaks and during the drizzle...The following rantings deal mostly with Earthsea, language, sorcery and coding, and so on...

A bit of background on the Earthsea universe: Magic in Earthsea is done by speaking words of the True Speech, which was the language used to create the world. In the True Speech, word and deed are not separate, and words are more than just sonic representations of things. The great wizards(or mages, to use the correct term) are highly versed in the True Speech, and know the true names of things. Knowing a true name gives a mage power over the thing(or person) that the name represents. As a result, the inhabitants of Earthsea go by another name for practical purposes - use-names, as they call them. True names are hidden and told only to those who one really, really trusts.

BTW, parents don't know the true names of their children either - the names are given at around the age of eleven by a wizard who can sense the child's true name. Thereafter, the child may choose who he will tell the name. No one ever asks you for your true name - you decide to give it to someone. The Master Doorkeeper of Roke(the Isle of the Wise, where gifted students are taught magic) is the only person who asks for a true name - no wannabe wizard gets through the doors of the School without revealing his true name.

The first book of the trilogy - A Wizard of Earthsea - is about a young goatherd from the island of Gont, who eventually becomes both Archmage(the big boss man of Roke island) and a dragonlord. The guy's use-name is Sparrowhawk and his true name is Ged. Unfortunately, in the Hallmark version, they've turned this around - apparently they thought that 'Ged' is not a fitting name for "One who may become one of the great wizards of Earthsea". So everyone calls him Ged throughout the TV version, and he ends up telling the Master Doorkeeper that his true name is Sparrowhawk. Sad...And their idea of the Master Doorkeeper was a bit of a let down - he was nothing like the character the book showed - he looked like a bored court jester. Nothing like the wise and serene old chap from the book.

To top it off, Ged enters and runs into Jasper, an aristocrat and fellow student who proceeds to ridicule him in a highly arrogant tone - "You have the honor of addressing Jasper of Eolg, of the house of Havnor..."

Ok, so the guy in the book is a jerk too, but in a slightly different way - he doesn't actively put down Ged - it's just that his manner is subtly superior, without actually shouting it from the rooftops. It grates on Ged because Jasper has the manners of a royal courtier, and he is a goatherd from a little village, with rough manners and no style...It's the kind of insult that the British manage superbly, but Americans have never quite got the hang of. Like it says at the top of the page - so much for subtlety...

The Archmage Nemmerle isn't true to the book either - he's supposed to be a withered old man - one of the oldest of Earthsea. Instead, he's a pretty vigorous elderly fellow with a long beard. Worse, he doesn't die saving Ged(for more on that - read the book), but ends up merely fainting after spending all that power. Add to that the fact that Jasper betrays them in the TV version, while he just vanishes into obscurity in the book, and you've got a pretty screwed up piece of work.

After that they screw up the timing of the Kargish invasion, neglect to mention the fact that the Kargs distrust and shun magic, and turn Tenar of Atuan into a perfect contemporary of Ged. She must have been at least ten years younger, if not twenty.

Didn't see what else they messed up though - it was too much fun watching Federer trounce Roddick.

Here come the abstractions - as I mentioned a couple of posts ago, I'm actually drawn to this magic business because of coding...This really solidifies the analogy - just as a mage uses the True Speech to manipulate the world, a coder uses a programming language to manipulate a computer. The real difference, of course, is that we have dozens of languages, at different levels, with different goals and uses.

Those who know me well are familiar with my weird brand of laziness. On the one hand I hate doing some things, and will keep on putting them off. On the other hand, I can spend an infinite amount of time and energy working on something really interesting - as long as it's mostly mental. Just yesterday I sat up till 2 AM trying to figure out a recurrence for a problem. The painful thing is that I wound up proving no such recurrence existed...

How does this tie in with wizardry, coding and computers? Computer languages are like the True Speech in another way - doing and saying are really the same thing. For a lazy bum like me, this is ideal. Unlike other types of engineers, I get to work with thought-stuff - no heavy lifting or sweaty work for me...To paraphrase the Qu'ran, I need only say 'Be' and it is. Anyone like me, with a closet hankering for superhuman powers, can't resist being the God of his own private universe. Of course, the architecture of my computer determines the extent of my powers, so the analogy isn't exact - or is it? After all, we've never seen any real miracles, and there isn't any real evidence that any of the famous ones really happened. To the best of human knowledge, there isn't any breakdown in the laws of nature - nor has there ever been one as long as we humans have walked the earth. Is God's power limited by the architecture of the machine he's running our Universe on? That's something for a future blog post...

And here's another interesting allusion that just popped into my head...The Flash ROM on the motherboard that sets the ball rolling when you switch on the computer basically contains a bunch of machine instructions. As they say in the Bible, "In the beginning was the Word."

Here's the last bit - the dragons of Earthsea are not animals like the typical Hollywood variety. They are a far older species than humanity(there is a twist to this tale in book 5), and speak the True Speech as their native tongue. Plus they can fly, breath fire, and are so terrifyingly powerful that only the most powerful mages can kill them.

When I read this bit, I had an obvious question - Are dragons taught the True Speech? This wasn't answered until I polished off book 5 today, and it's a pretty interesting answer.

Human beings are unique among all animals for one reason - we have the power to choose a course of action. Because of this, we have concepts of morality and good and evil, and we can measure someone by his actions. Animals don't do - they just are. It's the same with the dragons - speaking the True Speech is not something they do - it's what they are. As Ged mentions, as he gained wisdom and became Archmage, he learned to choose to do only what he had no choice but to do.

Remember how I mentioned Federer's apparent lack of intensity in the previous post? Let's take a look at the match through the lens of the previous paragraph.

Roddick was busy acting - he went madly after the ball, he fought as madly as he could, struggling to do something, to make the right choices so he would win. But he kept on doing. Against a lesser opponent, that might have worked - it would have then been a battle of two mages, and the one with greater skill would have won. But Federer went through the entire thing without really doing anything - he was just being Roger Federer.

And that's why Roddick couldn't have touched him - not as long as he kept doing what he did. Because as far as tennis goes, Federer is not a man.

In tennis, Federer is the dragon.