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Chapter 6: Ballon d'Essai
By: Brett Coster
Also: Russell Chapman, Jean-Marc Chaton, Ticia L., Erik Reuter, and Gord
Sellar
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Title:
Ballon = Balloon, so this could be the Balloon of Essai. Now Essai is
French for Essay, so I could read this as an essay about a balloon. But
Essai is also French for "attempt", I'll allow that "attempt" falls within
the realm of "practice", so does this read "Practice(d) balloon?
"Ensayo", the Spanish for "essai" means practice, so I'd guess so. :)
-Ticia L.
"Essai" means "try" or "attempt" much more immediately than it means
"essay"... [And "essay" in English used to mean "attempt", from this French
sense of the word. It's still occasionally used in this way in English...]
But I have a feeling there's some kind of saying we're missing here, like
with the other earlier chapters. -Gord Sellar
"Isn't there a phrase something like, "sending up a trial balloon"?" -Erik
Reuter
In French the compound name "ballon d'essai", often used in the expression
"lancer un ballon d'essai" literaly 'to launch a test ballon' is used when
for example :
- a politician/diplomat incidentaly says or makes say one of his lieutenant
a statement just to probe/sound reactions or have feedback. Just the way
'I've said it but I haven' said it'.
- an organisation/company tries a proccess on a small scale for the same
reason.
I'm not sure about the etymology of this name, probably from the
analogy with the meteorological sounding ballon. -Jean-Marc Chaton
Analysis:
Dunno, but I think the ballon's gone up in Zuslik. Dennis and Arth, along
with Stiv and a new apprentice wizard, Gath, are in hiding with another
couple of escapees - Perth and Mishwa - back in Arth's old haunts. Dennis
has hatched a plan to use the practice effect in his escape by constructing
a balloon.
We get a tour of Zuslik, and particularly the social construct attached to
the practice effect. Making is confined to guilds - I assume where the
secrets of making particular items are protected. The status of the guilds
also depend on the complexity of the finished article, so that the
papermakers are at the top of the tree as paper must be of the right form
from the very beginning. The furniture trades are at the bottom, because
"anyone could tie a few sticks together to make a chair or table".
But we don't get the backpack back - what cool innovations could we have
had by
practicing some of the other gear Dennis would have been carrying. Consider
the
needler and the floss as sample material and we would have taken on Godlike
powers rather than Wizard-like powers with a full complement of equipment.
This chapter has some of the best Brinness in it - looking at an idea
and how it would change society in ways the rest of us probably wouldn't have
thought of...
Dennis realises the new slavery/indenture created by the need to keep things
in practice. The poor get money by practicing items that they eventually
cannot afford to keep. So much so that they cannot even have their own
leisure time, as there is always something needing practice.
This is one of the strangest concepts for a civilisation that I can recall
reading. In this, the workers ARE the means of production, but in a way in
which they can only survive economically by selling the results of their
production to the rich. Really strange.
Wealth, too, is not just in the accumulation of goods, but has the onus that
it must also maintain those goods to stay wealthy. So, the workers are
essentially kept indentured looking after the assets of the wealthy, with
little time to spend practicing on their own account. The role of money in
the society seems to be lessened, or is it just ignored?
Dennis runs into his first treachery in this chapter, from Perth. Perth's
motivation for the treachery eludes me: even though he escaped through
Dennis' help, and is aware that Kremer wants Dennis back, no real motivation
is given. Yes, Dennis spies the handover of money, but the lead up to this
is weak. It just happens out of the blue.
At the same time, Dennis goes into one of his tunnel vision trances when he
rediscovers the robot. Again, these trance states aren't really explained.
They invariably happen at the most inopportune times.
The robot, with help from the Krenegee Pixolet, is starting to evolve in
strange ways. Being in our world a tool of great flexibility it has carried
all of that flexibility with it into this new world and is practicing itself
into multiple perfections.
Notes:
-This was also the chapter where the language started to sound a little
wrong to
me. The use of the feudal terms without any alteration over time or distance
just seemed to grate - especially when we compare it to Sara Koolhan's work in
later novels. -Russell Chapman
-I liked the suggestion earlier in the discussion that both Dennis and the
Tatirians spoke some other common language and Dr Brin was just tranlating for
us, but in "Best Way to Carnegie Hall" we hear that "Dennis had a chance to
practice his accent - familiarizing himself with the muddy, strange Coylian
version of English". (we had already assumed it's his native language from
Dennis going to lengths "to get out of the infamous Professor LaBelle's
English
7") -Russell Chapman
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"The point of living in a Republic after all, is that we do not live by
majority rule. We live by laws and a variety of isntitutions designed
to check each other." -Andrew Sullivan 01/29/01
