Decisions

This fall, I made the decision to quit my PhD, and I couldn't be happier.

Looking at the past few end-of-year blog posts I've done, the themes have been the futility of trying to engage with society and politics, and the hopelessness of my attempt at an academic career. I've finally been able to draw the appropriate conclusions from this, and I've pretty much stopped trying to be in any way politically active, and faced facts on my PhD project.

There are two principal reasons why I've quit: I believe the postgraduate system is completely unfair, but even if it wasn't, working conditions are so bad that I'd much rather do something else.

For background, it's vital to understand that the Finnish academic system has no transparency at all. Decisions on who gets grants and salaried doctoral candidate positions are totally opaque to those of us on the receiving end. The only obvious thing is that they're not based on any kind of publicly visible merit like publications. The same goes for decisions like which doctoral candidates get to participate in publications, research groups or teaching.

After several years inside the system, my impression is that from the beginning, doctoral candidates are divided into those whose careers will be advanced, and those whose won't. I don't know what the criteria for this selection are, but the split seems to me to be fairly clear. If you're in the first group, you will get funding and opportunities to demonstrate your abilities, and a way up into the academic hierarchy. If you fall in the latter group, you will get nothing, and nothing you can accomplish on your own will matter. I'm very much in this second group, which I believe means that in practice, even if I went on to finish my PhD, I would have no chance of getting any postdoc work or funding. More than that, though, I believe the current system is unjust and wrong, and I don't want to be a part of it.

The other reason is that even if I did know the right people and I had an opportunity to advance my career - which would probably effectively blind me to the nature of the system - working conditions are so bad and employment so precarious that I don't want to do it. Under some definitions of the word, people my age count as millenials; I was more skeptical of this until I realized that one of my fondest dreams right now is to get a steady job with a monthly salary. I don't think that's at all a realistic possibility if I pursue a PhD.

So I've officially quit the PhD, and next year, I'll be doing something completely different with my life. And I'm very happy with my decision. I taught a university prep course and a lecture course at the adult education center this year, and I've got some more teaching work lined up for next year. I'm also getting back into programming, so we'll see if anything will come out of that.

To conclude, I'd like to wish all three of my readers a very happy new year, and a succesful 2019!

Rogue Trader: Let's Play Warhammer 40,000

It started with Star Wars: Rebellion. It's a great, great game, and I loved painting the miniatures. The trouble was, it left me wanting to paint more, but I never really felt like painting for the sake of painting. Then the Fallout board game came along, and like I explained before, I built a Chaos Space Marine figure for a friend to use as the Brotherhood Outcast due to his predilection for charging and stabbing things.

That got me thinking that I might actually enjoy getting back into Warhammer 40,000, but I don't know if I could ever really muster the energy to actually play it. The ugly specter of painting the well over 200 War of the Ring figures reared its head. Luckily, I had a better idea.

John Sibbick: Rogue Trader cover, 1987

**

Back in the summer of 2014, we started a Rogue Trader campaign that I've occasionally blogged about here under the Rogue Trader label. It's still ongoing, even if the cast of characters has changed somewhat. The campaign is set in the Acheron sector, which I've invented myself and set in the northernmost reaches of Segmentum Obscurus. One of the major events in its recent past, which makes an appearance in several characters' back stories, is the Ignatian Rebellion, where governor Ignatius Virius of the agri-world of Derbe declared independence from the Imperium. Eventually, he threw his lot in with Chaos, and Imperial forces invaded Derbe and restored order.

Because several of our player characters have backgrounds that involve the Ignatian Rebellion, we've actually detailed several units that fought there. So it occurred to me: why not build a Warhammer Imperial Guard army based on those units? We can even have specific models for those of our player characters who fought there. What's more, we can fight out battles they were involved in in Warhammer, and hell, I can give my players experience points for doing it. In other words, I can use my position as GM to bribe my players into playing Warhammer with me, and I get a good reason to build an Imperial Guard and Chaos army.

I think this is brilliant, so I'm doing it. The first objective is to round up some models and figure out how to play. The last time I played Warhammer 40,000 was third edition, so to put it mildly, it's been a while.

**

My first mini-army is going to be an Imperial Guard patrol detachment. The Guard get bonuses for fielding detachments that are entirely from the same regiment, but I have two problems with that: our characters are from different regiments, and only painting models from one regiment would be incredibly boring. I'm sure I could fudge this by saying they're all from the same battlegroup that's functionally a regiment or whatever, but I won't: the role-playing aspect matters here.

To start, my patrol detachment needs an HQ unit, and while I was going through my old Warhammer stuff last summer, I found this absolutely wonderful old commissar model.

I painted it back in the day when I was very bad at painting, but I've done my best to touch it up. Because of that pose and especially that coat, there's no way he isn't Lord Commissar Zhukov. He's got a bolter, too: it's under his coat.

165th Ophir Highlanders

At the outbreak of the Ignatian Rebellion, the recruitment and training of the 165th Ophir Highlanders had barely started. The regiment was rushed to full strength so it could be deployed to suppress the insurrection on Athir. The Highlanders' youth and lack of training led to them being nicknamed the 165th Children's Crusade by the more experienced troops. Here, the 165th are represented by a unit of 20 Conscripts. Their tunics are German Camo Bright Green, the armor is Luftwaffe Camo Green and the trousers are Dark Blue Pale.

The green conscripts are accompanied into action by Brother Malachi, a Ministorum priest who will later become a Missionary in our Rogue Trader campaign. The model is a Games Workshop Warrior Acolyte.

76th Chirikov Rad-Guards

The Rad-Guards are recruited from the death world of Chirikov, a human colony ravaged by all-out nuclear war in its past and dominated by irradiated wastelands. Its inhabitants make motivated recruits for the Imperial Guard, as anywhere else is better than there! The Rad-Guards are represented by an infantry squad featuring a missile launcher team and a grenade launcher. Their coats are Dark Red, with Dark Blue Pale pants and gas masks.

This all adds up to the following army list:

Lord Commissar Zhukov - HQ, 30 pts
power fist (10), power sword (4), boltgun (1) = 45 pts

Ophir Conscripts (20) - Troops, 80 pts

Ministorum Priest Brother Malachy - Elite, 35 pts
autogun (0), chainsword (0)

Chirikov Infantry Squad (10) - Troops, 40 pts
missile launcher (20), grenade launcher (5) = 65

Total: 225 points

**

That's the Imperial Guard, then; they're going to need someone to fight.

Athir rebels

While the center of the rebellion was on Derbe, an insurrection also broke out on the nearby death world of Athir. I'm including a contingent of these rebels as autogun-armed Chaos Cultists.

The models are GW Chaos Cultists, with the heavy stubber built from Genestealer Cult bits and a head from Brother Vinni's Female Punk Heads sprue. They're led by a rebel.

Iconoclast Chaos Space Marines

The Blue Bolts were an Ultramarines successor chapter of impeccable loyalty - until they came across something so blasphemous and depraved in Segmentum Obscurus that it shattered their faith. What it was, no-one in the Imperium knows, because shortly afterward, the entire chapter was corrupted by the Word Bearers and fell to Chaos, taking the new name Iconoclasts.

The models are plain old Chaos Marines, with some Berzerker and old loyalist bits; the missile launcher operator and aspiring champion's heads are from the same Brother Vinni sprue as the cultist machine-gunner's. Their original armor color is Dark Blue, but I've shaded it into Medium Blue and Black. The original armor trim was Silver, but I've added details in Copper and given many of the surfaces a red wash.

Since I'm playing Word Bearers, obviously my Warlord has to be a Dark Apostle, to be represented by a Chaos Dark Prophet model from Wargame Exclusive, but proxied for the moment by my Fallout World Eater.

Dark Apostle - HQ, 72 pts
power maul (4) = 76 pts

Chaos Cultists (10) - Troops, 40 pts
heavy stubber (4) = 44 pts

Chaos Space Marines (6) - Troops, 78 pts
power axe (5), Icon of Excess (10), missile launcher (25) = 118 pts

Total: 238 pts

**

For this very small initial battle, we set up 2'×4' of my old Necromunda terrain, picked sides and set up our mini-armies. Since my players' characters fought in the Imperial Guard, I'll be playing Chaos.

We were playing the Only War scenario, and after we placed the objective markers, we rolled the version where you remove all but one randomly determined objective. Of course it ended up being the one on the bridge.

My opponent took a very Imperial Guard approach to securing it.

While the Highlander conscripts swarmed over the bridge, the Rad-Guards were shooting the shit out of my Cultists. This was one big lesson in 8th edition 40k: cover does nothing!

Since this was our first game, I decided what the hell, and had my Marines and Dark Apostle charge the conscripts on the bridge.

Soon enough, the Rad-guards wiped out my cultists, but in the battle on the bridge, my Marines were routing the conscripts. The Rad-Guards also charged in.

Eventually, the sheer weight of Imperial numbers wore my Chaos Marines down, and Lord Commissar Zhukov finished them off by defeating my Dark Apostle in hand-to-hand combat.

The game ended with my entire Chaos force wiped out!

**

So, we played a game of Warhammer 40,000 that basically amounted to one huge melee. What did we learn? Mostly that it was damn good fun. We'll be doing more of this!

Let's Read Tolkien 51: The Voice of Saruman

They passed through the ruined tunnel and stood upon a heap of stones, gazing at the dark rock of Orthanc, and its many windows, a menace still in the desolation that lay all about it.

The second breakfast gang head into the ruins of Isengard to meet the king's party and talk to Saruman. While the rest of Isengard is wrecked, the tower of Orthanc still stands. Gandalf leads Théoden, Aragorn, Éomer, Legolas and Gimli to Saruman's door, where Gríma speaks to them. Gandalf commands him to fetch Saruman, who eventually appears at a balcony above them.

Saruman works his powers of persuasion on Gandalf, Théoden and the others, but they resist him. Gimli and Éomer speak bluntly against him, and Théoden denounces him completely. Saruman briefly loses his cool, but then turns his full charm on Gandalf. It fails, and Gandalf expels Saruman from the order of wizards. Saruman's staff breaks. As he retreats into Orthanc, a heavy globe is thrown from a higher window: it smashes the rail where Saruman was standing, and falls to the foot of the tower, unbroken. Pippin grabs it, but Gandalf quickly takes it away from him.

It is prudently decided to withdraw from globe-throwing range. Beyond it, the King's party meet the ents, who undertake to guard Saruman. He is left to his own devices.

**

The focus of this chapter is obviously Saruman, formerly the White, now a prisoner in Orthanc. I already talked quite a bit about Saruman in the Council of Elrond, where Gandalf first revealed his treachery. Because of the ludicrous charge of fascism levelled at Tolkien, it's worth looking at what Théoden, who clearly comes away as the moral winner here, has to say to Saruman.

Even if your war on me was just - as it was not, for were you ten times as wise you would have no right to rule me and mine for your own profit as you desired - even so, what will you say of your torches in Westfold and the children that lie dead there? And they hewed Háma's body before the gates of the Hornburg, after he was dead.

What Théoden specifically refuses is what Tolkien's detractors always blame him for: submitting meekly to the rule of the "wiser" old men. As I've said before, too many of Tolkien's critics share Gimli's problem in Fangorn: they can't seem to tell two wizards apart.

Even though Théoden decisively rejects it, Saruman's rhetoric is described as tremendously powerful and persuasive. By the Tolkien Society's account, Tolkien only invented Saruman in August 1940, well into the Second World War (see Letters, 163), and it's difficult to escape the idea that the most direct inspiration for Saruman was Hitler. Tolkien was a committed anti-fascist and hated Hitler with a special passion because of his attempts to connect Nazi ideology with the same Germanic/"Northern" mythologies that inspired Tolkien (Letters, 45). Despite his opinions on Jews, which I've argued are fairly antisemitic, not to mention his ideas of blood heritage and racial decline, Tolkien strongly disapproved of the Third Reich's antisemitic "racial" laws (Letters, 29 and 30). He memorably referred to Hitler as a "ruddy little ignoramus" (Letters, 45).

Luckily for us, Tolkien didn't make Saruman into a caricature of Hitler. I talked a bit about Tolkien's notion of analogy versus applicability in the context of Tom Bombadil, and the same applies here: in his aspect of a demonic orator, Saruman certainly resembles Hitler, but in other ways they're clearly dissimilar. For starters, if the War of the Ring was a direct analogy of the Second World War, then surely the great orator would be Sauron? But we barely hear Sauron speak at all, and when he does, it's hardly memorable or persuasive.

Saruman's appeal as a character lies exactly in the fact that he is, so to speak, more broadly applicable. Consider this part of the first description of Saruman's voice:

Mostly they remembered only that it was a delight to hear the voice speaking, all that it said seemed wise or reasonable, and desire awoke in them by swift agreement to seem wise themselves.

This hits home, not just as a description of persuasive political rhetoric in general, but it specifically captures the neoliberal orthodoxy of our times: an expert is talking, and they know best. This is especially so in Saruman's address to Gandalf, where he directly preaches exactly the techno-gerontocracy of old wise men that Tolkien supposedly advocated. Again he does so in fully 20th-21st century political rhetoric, even including a fauxpology: he doesn't apologize for imprisoning Gandalf, but tries to talk around it and "regrets" it while trying to blame his victim. Saruman's rhetoric hasn't aged one bit since Tolkien wrote it, and its modernity is one of his most succesful deliberate anachronisms. The juxtaposition of Saruman's glib smoothness with Théoden's archaism and Gandalf's down-to-earth directness is very powerful.

In the end, Saruman's powers of persuasion fail him. It seems fairly clear to me that Gríma was trying to kill Saruman with the palantír, specifically when he saw or heard Saruman humiliated by Gandalf. One suspects that the only loyalty Wormtongue ever had to anything was to strength, and seeing Saruman suddenly weak must have made it amply clear to him that his treason had been a complete failure. In confronting Saruman, Gandalf broke his spell, which must have been his plan all along.

Next time: a special rock and a fool of a Took.