Kansas City Royals news: Lugo to the IL, Ragans progressing back

Vinnie and Salvy, authors of 2 of the team’s 4 homers yesterday

By now, I think everyone’s seen the bad news from yesterday about Seth Lugo going on the IL. Max covered this yesterday.

As did Theo DeRosa at MLB. So did Jaylon Thompson at The Star:

“Something cramped up back-wise just like stretching the other day,” Quatraro said. “It wasn’t a game issue. … Today was the same as yesterday. We needed to see some improvement for him and (for us) to feel comfortable putting him out there.”

Lugo has struggled in recent weeks. He has posted a 9.11 ERA across his last

six starts while allowing 28 runs in 26 2/3 innings. Earlier this season, Lugo also missed time with a right middle finger sprain.

The finger injury zapped some of Lugo’s effectiveness. Lugo told The Star that he tried to “pitch too fine” while compensating for the injury. He has since overcome the finger pain but is now dealing with the stiff back.

Also at MLB, Anne Rogers reported back on Cole Ragans’s progress:

Ragans threw 30 pitches across two “innings” and faced Nick Loftin, Tyler Tolbert and Carter Jensen. It didn’t matter that those were his teammates; Ragans wanted to get them out. And he did a pretty good job of it.

“It just gives you that adrenaline boost,” Ragans said. “They’re trying to freakin’ hit what you throw over the plate and you’re trying to not let them hit it. Trying to keep them off balance, execute, get ahead. It gives you that adrenaline boost: Somebody is trying to hit this stuff. In a bullpen, there’s no consequences leaving a pitch unexecuted. So having that in the back of your head – even if it is my teammates, you’re trying to punch them out. Talk a little trash later on. Just gives you that little extra adrenaline boost when someone is trying to hit the ball.”

Jaylon Thompson also wrote about Jac Caglianone and his changes in Omaha:

Caglianone went back to the drawing board. He worked with Triple-A Omaha hitting coaches and minor-league coordinators to make adjustments, particularly with his approach at the plate.

There were drills with Storm Chasers hitting coach Bijan Rademacher in the batting cage. Caglianone worked to see more pitches and draw favorable counts throughout his rehab assignment.

As the hamstring healed, Caglianone leaned on assistant hitting coach Darin Everson to figure out the best way to formulate a game plan to attack pitchers.

Minor league news?

Not a lot of blog action today.

Both Craig Brown at Into the Fountains and David Lesky ($) at Inside the Crown wrote about Wednesday’s game.

Blog Roundup:

Royals Data Dugout ($): Another Pitching Feather in KC’s Cap – Ryan Bergert’s not-so-subtle adjustments since joining the Royals

Darin Waton at U.L.’s Toothpick: This Date In Royals History–1985 Edition: September 4 – The Royals make a key defensive play and the White Sox don’t, and that’s the difference in KC’s win

Caleb Moody at KOK: Unlikely source continues to drive Royals’ suddenly ice-cold offense

Also, Caleb Moody at KOK: Latest Royals injury blow creates another hurdle amid chaotic Wild Card race

Oliver Vandervoort at KOK: This Royals prospect might be in the majors sooner than you’d expect

I mentioned last month that I was going to try something new for OT.

In the past, I’ve driven a lot for work, including large city commutes and as a field engineer for many years. I’ve never been much of a reader, but I really enjoyed books on CD (though I haven’t done one for a while). While “reading” these books, I would jot down notes*. After finishing the book, I’d write something that was part book report, part plot summary, part significant quotes, and part my own thoughts. It was a way to help me organize the book in my head and what I got out of it. I was having fun reading through an old one of these last month and thought I’d share one here.

_{*Not literally while driving; after I finished or when my wife was driving}

Today’s we’re going to be talking about the Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov. I’ve always loved Asimov – his prose is so clean. A lot of people don’t like him as his characters are secondary, subservient to the plot and ideas, but that’s a draw for me. I’m going to let someone else make part of this point. A couple of times in the notes, I quote “another review”, and I think its this set of three from Gizmodo by Josh Wimmer and Alasdair Wilkins (Part I, Part II, Part III)

Critically speaking, the best thing about Foundation is probably the strength of its ideas, considering the repetitive plotting and paper-thin characters. The stories in Foundation and Empire reflect a maturing writer who has greatly improved his skills of characterization. The characters in “The General” may still be at heart mouthpieces for Asimov’s various ideas, but they’re all far more memorable than their counterparts in Foundation, and there’s just enough details to suggest internal complexity.

Logistically, this is a mess. As a trilogy, it makes sense to split this into three weeks. I doubt anyone wants this to drag out that long. I could squeeze it all into one week. It’s not like I haven’t done long Rumblings before (like, say, 8000 words about Neon Genesis Evangelion). But that was the offseason. If I pasted this entire entry here, it would be pushing 15000 words. Yikes. I considered doing two weeks, but even that was unwieldy as it splits the second book in half. That means the initial plan is to do one book a week for the next three weeks. Fortunately, the Royals are still in playoff contention, so they should provide more than enough to talk about if you don’t care to talk about the books.

Lastly, I’ll ask you to forgive the voice. I wasn’t planning on sharing this – it was written for an audience of one. Like I said, these were meant to be my notes to myself on the book – I wasn’t planning on sharing them. It sounds more authoritative than it should be and lacks the citations you’ve come to expect from me. It’s more quotes and simple summaries with some light editorializing rather than the stronger opinions I usually post. Plus, this was written back in 2016, so my writing voice then was different than it is today. I only made a few minor edits. But this sounded like something fun to share so I’ll see what we get.

(FYI: No, I have not seen the Apple TV series yet – I’m sure a lot of creative liberties were taken because this has always been listed as one of those “unfilmable” books; It’s not that I’m not interested – I just haven’t had Apple TV yet)

Novel 1: Foundation (5/2-5/17)

(read by Dan Lazar from cassette)

This is perhaps the most famous series (it or the Robot series) written by science fiction giant Isaac Asimov. The book is a set of 5 short stories originally published in science fiction magazines. The concept is simple: the great galactic Empire is about to collapse, as predicted by psychohistorian Hari Seldon, so what comes next. Psychohistory is a combination of “science and psychology that equates all possibilities in large societies to mathematics, allowing for the prediction of future events”. The first book covers about 200 years across the five novellas. Each is centered around a major character and a couple of supporting characters and, potentially, a “Seldon Crisis”. The theory of a Seldon Crisis is that it is a social and political crisis with both an external and internal pressure which leaves only one possible course of action.

We listened to sound files that were taken from an old audiobook on cassette. This added an unintentional bit of atmosphere as the 50s sounding male voice implored the reader to turn over the cassette at the end of each track. It fit well with the post-Victorian exposition, matter-of-fact “logic”, and 40s-era science fiction. The prose was not as descriptive as the Victorian need to describe everything but it wasn’t the clean plot-only prose of today. Much ink was spilled trying to set up the mood and environment but it was mostly germane to the plot. The prose was not dissimilar to the 30s and 40s noir mystery novels.

* * * * *

Book 1: The Psychohistorians

Characters: Hari Seldon and Gaal Dornick

Date: 0 FE

Seldon Crisis: End of the Empire (not technically Seldon crisis)

Plot/Notes: Mathematician Gaal Dornick arrives on Trantor to work on a project led by psychohistorian Hari Seldon. He is followed by government agents, asked about his potential work, and warned away from Seldon. When he gets to his hotel room, Seldon is there and shows him the math that says the 12,000 year Galactic Empire is about to fall. Both are arrested and Seldon put on trial. He convinces the rulers of the truth of this and states that he can make the subsequent dark ages last only 1K years instead of 30K years. Rather than martyr him, they allow him to take 100K workers to Terminus, a world at the far edges of the galaxy, and work on the Encylopedia Galactica, a collection of all human knowledge (also, the chapters often have entries from the EG as an intro, adding nice flavor).

A lot of the first book is exposition and mood setting. “Modern” things like encyclopedias and visas and even a “futuristic” pneumatic tube treated as commonplace both to ground the reader and to make the new science fiction inventions like the various atomics to seem commonplace. In a way, if feels a little small, though. The future doesn’t feel that far in the future, in terms of inventions (limited atomics), and it just feels like a 50s world, culture, and science on a large scale.

The bigger takeaway here goes to the scope and the idea that humanity went out and colonized. The plot is basically the fall of the Roman Empire only across a galaxy, using the past to predict future echoes (“The fall of Empire, gentlemen, is a massive thing, however, and not easily fought. It is dictated by a rising bureaucracy, a receding initiative, a freezing of caste, a damming of curiosity—a hundred other factors. It has been going on, as I have said, for centuries, and it is too majestic and massive a movement to stop.”). However, the innovation is that rather than the moon populated by “moon men” or Martians who are just like humans but not from earth- it’s manifest destiny spread across an entire galaxy. Without the invention of Trantor, there is no Coruscant.

This is the evolutionary link between really old sci-fi (Frankenstein, Verne, Wells) and more “modern” science fiction. It feels more akin to Jules Verne like description of the future (“Travel through ordinary space could proceed at no rate more rapid than that of ordinary light (a bit of scientific knowledge that belonged among the items known since the forgotten dawn of human history”): descriptive but with world building rather than descriptive aggregation. This older style of prose helps makes the book feel more like “literature” while the genre is not often held in high regard. It has weaknesses, like most literature, but we’ll get to that later. As another review said somewhere else: “Asimov just tells a great, exciting, and interesting story” – the science and treknobabble are secondary or even tertiary plot devices (the characters seem secondary) while the plot is primary.

Like Verne, he has his own “magnets” or “electricity” that are used for plot devices, sometimes to deus ex machina or just hand-waving. The scientific one is “atomics”. But the more interesting and unique one is the idea of psychohistory (“A great psychologist such as Seldon could unravel human emotions and human reactions sufficiently to be able to predict broadly the historical sweep of the future”). It is given two major limitations (3^rd book): “Because even Seldon’s advanced psychology was limited. It could not handle too many independent variables. He couldn’t work with individuals over any length of time; any more than you could apply kinetic theory of gases to single molecules. He worked with mobs, populations of whole planets, and only blind mobs who do not possess foreknowledge of the results of their own actions” and, this, from the Encyclopedia Galactica: “A further necessary assumption is that the human conglomerate be itself unaware of psychohistoric analysis in order that its reactions be truly random”. So, in short, as long as the mob was sufficiently large and not self-aware, actions could be predicted and psychology is treated as a hard science, which it really is not now.

There’s a certain fatalism or determinism that runs counter to our modern belief that one person can alter history

* * * * *

Book 2: The Encyclopedists

Characters: Terminus mayor Salvor Hardin and Foundation encyclopedia chair Lewis Pirenne

Date: 50 FE

Seldon Crisis: Balance-of-Power; External: Four Kingdoms of periphery, specifically Anacreon; Internal: weak Encyclopedia committee; Resolution: Hardin coup, pit kingdoms vs each other

Plot/Notes: Terminus has no resources and is threatened by its neighbors who have broken away from the empire. Because of the Empire crumbling, the galaxy is starting to fall into a dark age. Terminus continues to develop technology but is stuck in a bureaucratic rut of inaction by the passive rule of the Encyclopedia Board of Trustees. On the 50^th anniversary, a hologram of Hari Seldon appears at the time vault and explains the concept of a Seldon crisis. From this rises Salvor Hardon, the first mayor of the city. He stages a bloodless coup to save the planet and turns the three weakest neighbors against the strongest, Anacreon.

Hardin pontificates about the failing galaxy: “It amounts to a diseased attitude—a conditioned reflex that shunts aside the independence of your minds whenever it is a question of opposing authority. There seems no doubt ever in your minds that the Emperor is more powerful than you are, or Hari Seldon wiser. And that’s wrong, don’t you see? … It isn’t just you. It’s the whole Galaxy… In Gamma Andromeda, a power plant has undergone meltdown because of poor repairs, and the Chancellor of the Empire complains that nuclear technicians are scarce. And the solution? To train new ones? Never! Instead they’re to restrict nuclear power… Don’t you see? It’s Galaxy-wide. It’s a worship of the past. It’s a deterioration—a stagnation!”

But Hardin is not a power-hungry monster; he is sympathetic and knows that he has to save the planet: “Hardin, as he sat at the foot of the table, speculated idly as to just what it was that made physical scientists such poor administrators. It might be merely that they were too used to inflexible fact and far too unused to pliable people.”

Seldon crisis, defined:

“To that end we have placed you on such a planet and at such a time that in fifty years you were maneuvered to the point where you no longer have freedom of action. From now on, and into the centuries, the path you must take is inevitable. You will be faced with a series of crises, as you are now faced with the first, and in each case your freedom of action will become similarly circumscribed so that you will be forced along one, and only one, path. It is that path which our psychology has worked out—and for a reason.

For centuries, Galactic civilization has stagnated and declined, though only a few ever realized that. But now, at last, the Periphery is breaking away and the political unity of the Empire is shattered. Somewhere in the fifty years just past is where the historians of the future will place an arbitrary line and say: ‘This marks the Fall of the Galactic Empire.’

And they will be right, though scarcely any will recognize that Fall for additional centuries. And after the Fall will come inevitable barbarism, a period which, our psychohistory tells us, should, under ordinary circumstances, last for thirty thousand years. We cannot stop the Fall. We do not wish to; for Imperial culture has lost whatever virility and worth it once had. But we can shorten the period of barbarism that must follow—down to a single thousand of years.”

* * * * *

Book 3: The Mayors

Characters: Salvor Hardin, Regent Wienis of Anacreon, and Sef Sermack of the Action Party

Date: 80 FE

Seldon Crisis: Religion; External: Anacreon conquest due to industrialization; Internal: Actionist party; Resolution: Hardin leverages the religion of science to stop all power on Anacreon

Plot/Notes: Hardin is now an elder statesman who has spent the last 30 years appeasing the neighboring kingdoms by re-industrializing them. He created a religion around the science and uses that to control the technology. The appeasement has led to the Actionist party on Terminus to attack Hardin for being too lenient while Anacreon’s Regent Wienis and his pawn nephew King Leopold I launch an attack on the planet for being too strong. Hardin is there on Anacreon with his ally Anacreonian High Priest Pol Verisof the night of the attack. In the showdown, Wienis reveals the attack while Hardin reveals his trump: all of the religious scientists consider it heresy to attack the holy Foundation and cut all power to Anacreon. Wienis tries to kill Hardin but fails and instead commits suicide and he returns to Terminus, as popular as ever so the Actionist threat is lessened.

It often feels like Asimov speaking through Hardin’s epigrams and demonstrating them via plot: “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent”. He even further explains, using his narration as a political platform: “I consider violence an uneconomical way of attaining an end. There are always better substitutes, though they may sometimes be a little less direct.” He also narrates in epigrams, at times: “It was childish to feel disappointed, but childishness comes almost as naturally to a man as to a child” or “Besides which, flattery is useful when dealing with youngsters—particularly when it doesn’t commit you to anything.”

The fall of the Galactic Empire has accelerated, as predicted: “And now that the Empire had lost control over the farther reaches of the Galaxy, these little splinter groups of planets became kingdoms—with comic-opera kings and nobles, and petty, meaningless wars, and a life that went on pathetically among the ruins. A civilization falling. Nuclear power forgotten. Science fading to mythology—until the Foundation had stepped in”. Hardin’s solution is not that different than the World War US model: get the smartest academics from the 4 kingdoms and train them on Terminus. The difference is that they were also trained as religious fanatics, as well: “It is remarkable, Hardin, how the religion of science has grabbed hold… it could be considered that science, as science, had failed the outer worlds. To be reaccepted it would have to present itself in another guise—and it has done just that. It works out beautifully.”

The previous book talks about the idea that science becomes myth becomes legend. It was shown to already happen in the universe (forgive the dialect here): “Suahly you must know that it is thought that owiginally the human wace occupied only one planetawy system… Of cohse, no one knows exactly which system it is—lost in the mists of antiquity. Theah ah theawies, howevah. Siwius, some say. Othahs insist on Alpha Centauwi, oah on Sol, oah on 61 Cygni—all in the Siwius sectah, you see.”

Meanwhile, even the young opposing young King Leopold makes you think that this information will be lost to history: “Everyone believes it just the same. I mean all this talk about the Prophet Hari Seldon and how he appointed the Foundation to carry on his commandments that there might some day be a return of the Galactic Paradise: and how anyone who disobeys his commandments will be destroyed for eternity. They believe it. I’ve presided at festivals, and I’m sure they do.”

The real power behind the throne, Wienis, knows the religion is not real: “Yes, they do; but we don’t. And you may be thankful it’s so, for according to this foolishness, you are king by divine right—and are semi-divine yourself. Very handy. It eliminates all possibilities of revolts and ensures absolute obedience in everything.” And a certain “educated” segment of the society still realizes this is true but the masses do not and thus, it’s the source of the power of the Foundation. Is this realistic?;

I wonder if this book was considered at least a little irreverent, if not downright heretical, at the time? There are a lot of similarities between the religion of science and Christianity, potentially paralleling the Catholic church and the Dark Ages. History becomes myth because history is very controlled or limited to no recorded history so science looks more and more like magic. Hardin and those in the Foundation realize it is a useful tool “I started that way at first because the barbarians looked upon our science as a sort of magical sorcery, and it was easiest to get them to accept it on that basis.” Or “Religion is one of the great civilizing influences of history and in that respect”. Or, in the next chapter: “The full depth of our religious customs, in the ritualistic rather than the ethical sense, is for the masses.”

The showdown between Hardin and Weinis is brilliant – it’s difficult to write smart and politically astute characters that are believable but he is. Also, the Seldon crises are wonderful plot traps and it’s hard to not feel cheated by the outcome but I did not feel this way at any point in the book.

* * * * *

Book 4: The Traders

Characters: Eskel Gorov and Linmar Ponyets

Date: 135 FE

Seldon Crisis: No Seldon crisis

Plot/Notes: This one is short, a little boring, and feels out of place. Word of the federation’s “magic” taking over worlds has spread and one trader (Gorov) is caught trying to trade with a world where it is forbidden. Another (Ponyets) rescues him by making one of the council members rich and powerful with trade of goods like a transmuter that makes iron into gold, showing trade is the next phase beyond religion.

I wonder if this book would have been better as a complete story rather than parts of a science fiction magazine. It does a good job tying together the mass of people across generations, which fits with the idea of psychohistory. However, it leaves limited room for character development as each story introduces new characters and there are no generational ties (those might have felt contrived, but that has been done before in literature).

The dilemma is that religion is reaching its limits and there needs to be another way. This book serves as the transition: “The only way we can increase the security of the Foundation here in the Periphery is to form a religion-controlled commercial empire. We’re still too weak to be able to force political control. It’s all we can do to hold the Four Kingdoms.”

The transition in the book is from political coup to religious control to economic power. How long should it take for science to become religion to become economic control? It feels like the timelines are too short, especially for a dark age. I hope we get to see how this all plays out over the thousand years. However, I believe the next book deviates from the formula and we never actually get to see the thousand years play out (and my initial reaction to that is disappointment).

The next story will be the conflict between religion and economy:

“The religion we have is our all-important instrument towards that end. With it we have brought the Four Kingdoms under our control, even at the moment when they would have crushed us. It is the most potent device known with which to control men and worlds.

The primary reason for the development of trade and traders was to introduce and spread this religion more quickly, and to insure that the introduction of new techniques and a new economy would be subject to our thorough and intimate control…

If nuclear power makes them dangerous, a sincere friendship through trade will be many times better than an insecure overlordship, based on the hated supremacy of a foreign spiritual power, which, once it weakens ever so slightly, can only fall entirely and leave nothing substantial behind except an immortal fear and hate…

For a hundred years now, we’ve supported a ritual and mythology that is becoming more and more venerable, traditional—and immovable. In some ways, it isn’t under our control any more.”

* * * * *

Book 5: The Merchant Princes

Characters: Master trader Hober Mallow and Foundation mayor secretary Jorane Sutt

Date: 155 FE

Seldon Crisis: Trade vs Religion; External: Republic of Korell armed with atomics from the Galactic Empire; Internal: Sutt using religion and the bureaucracy to control Terminus; Resolution: Mallow politically undresses Sutt for trying to trap him, dulls religion’s edge, becomes mayor and does “nothing” – he creates a stalemate with Korell to ruin their economy

Plot/Notes: Hober Mallow is a master trader sent to Korell, after some ships have disappeared. He is sent by Mayoral Secretary Jorane Sutt and accompanied by Jaim Twer, who was secretly planted by Sutt. Missionary Jord Parma is aboard and he is demanded by a mob who approaches the ship as these religious members are illegal on Korell. Mallow senses a trap and turns him over to the angry mob to be killed. Korell’s Commdor Asper Argo invites him, saying he passed the test but not letting Scientism on his planet as they already have a religion. While he is there, he sees atomics of the Galactic Empire and fears they will go after the Foundation.

On his way back, Mallow stops at Siwenna and meets Onum Barr, an aging and deposed politician there. He confirms that the Empire is still very much alive, even if dying, and learns more about the atomics of their world. When Mallow returns to Terminus, he is accused of murder as Sutt wants to ruin him with the people, even if he can get out of the murder charge. But during the dramatic trial, Mallow shows that Twer was a plant, Parma was Korellian secret police, and Sutt using the power of religion to try and take over. Mallow sweeps into the mayor’s office and sets up an embargo with Korell. As the Empire is failing and they have no way to repair their atomics, its economy crumbles.

The view of nobility is never favorable in this trilogy. Also, interesting women are rare and they are not well written. In this book, you see both as the leader of Korell is a dictator, but in a marriage of convenience and the wife is a shrill political machine. They also use very 50s attitudes with women wanting trinkets and 50s consumer goods: “and since the power unit of this particular item will not last longer than six months, there will be the necessity of frequent replacements”. The idea is that women will not get their kitchen gadgets and clothes and will throw their economy into ruin.

Science fiction as a medium not often held in high regard, but this book is well written. Yes, there are only a couple of interesting characters (due to format, discussed earlier). But the plot and world-building provide symbolism and meaning. Heck, even decades old, it’s a page turner.

The central conflict is that progress is ever changing and there’s a tendency towards specialization that threatens things. From book 1: “As Trantor becomes more specialized, it becomes more vulnerable, less able to defend itself. Further, as it becomes more and more the administrative center of Empire, it becomes a greater prize. As the Imperial succession becomes more and more uncertain, and the feuds among the great families more rampant, social responsibility disappears.” In book 2, the galactic empire’s ambassador: “It is so difficult these days to find men who weally undahstand the moah technical details of ouah powah systems.”

Book 5 was originally published as The Big and the Little (long quote):

“You’ve missed, Sutt, missed as badly as the Commdor himself. You’ve missed everything, and understood nothing. Look, man, the Empire can replace nothing. The Empire has always been a realm of colossal resources. They’ve calculated everything in planets, in stellar systems, in whole sectors of the Galaxy. Their generators are gigantic because they thought in gigantic fashion.

But we,—we, our little Foundation, our single world almost without metallic resources,— have had to work with brute economy. Our generators have had to be the size of our thumb, because it was all the metal we could afford. We had to develop new techniques and new methods,—techniques and methods the Empire can’t follow because they have degenerated past the stage where they can make any really vital scientific advance.

With all their nuclear shields, large enough to protect a ship, a city, an entire world; they could never build one to protect a single man. To supply light and heat to a city, they have motors six stories high,—I saw them—where ours could fit into this room. And when I told one of their nuclear specialists that a lead container the size of a walnut contained a nuclear generator, he almost choked with indignation on the spot.

Why, they don’t even understand their own colossi any longer. The machines work from generation to generation automatically, and the caretakers are a hereditary caste who would b be helpless if a single D-tube in all that vast structure burnt out.”

This specialization and mindsets described previously have doomed the Empire. The Foundation must continue to evolve or face the same fate: “You’re establishing a plutocracy. You’re making us a land of traders and merchant princes. Then what of the future? …What business of mine is the future? No doubt Seldon has foreseen it and prepared against it. There will be other crises in the time to come when money power has become as dead a force as religion is now. Let my successors solve those new problems, as I have solved the one of today.”

I believe this sets up a war between the Foundation and the remnants of the Empire in the next book. I hope we get to see it all play out as the idea has been great so far for nearly 200 year and 300 pages. (Spoiler: It does and the first story in book 2 is my favorite in the entire series)

Let’s revisit some Scribblenauts. Here’s our past entries: