The Vandarian Incident

The Vandarian Incident, by Martin Godfrey

Since about 2010, I’ve been looking for the name of a book. Not all the time, obviously, but every now and again. Sometimes I’ll plug a few words into Google to see if, by chance, I’ll be able to stumble upon some crucial detail that will let me get one step closer to something more specific than “futuristic/sci-fi adventure book for young adults”. Other times, I’ll wander rows and rows of second-hand books, on the off-chance I’ll be able to recognise the front cover amongst a sea of other titles.

For years, despite being able to recall the majority of the plot, I was never able to remember anything specific enough that would let me get any closer to being able to Google the title, the author, or even the publisher. There were nights I’d dream about finding the book with some of my old things, or even dream about reading the book, but for whatever reason I was never able to read the title, and it remained elusively out of reach. I like to think I have a pretty good memory, so you might be able to understand my frustration at not being able to remember something as simple as the name of a book I read over a decade ago.

And honestly, it got to the stage where I didn’t care about the book itself. I’d long ago confined myself to never being able to read the book again, which was fine — I knew how the plot went, anyway, so being able to read the book again was inconsequential, in the grand scheme of things — but after all this time, it became less about finding the book and just being able to know the name of it so I could put the whole thing to bed, get some closure, and let something else occupy that particularly obsessive part of my mind.

In June 2013, I posted on my blog about it. Not that I expected anything to come of it, but more as a marker, something I could refer back to, and refine as I remembered more details. I knew that it was possible someone would read it, know the exact book I was looking for, and get in touch to tell me about it, but I wasn’t exactly holding my breath for that to happen. It was more for me than anyone else.

At the time, one of my Twitter friends told me to post to Reddit’s Tip of my Tongue subreddit to try my luck, but I off-handedly dismissed the suggestion, offering the (admittedly very weak) excuse that I didn’t have a Reddit account.

Fast-forward a couple years, and I’m still no closer to finding out any details about the book that I read as a teenager. I do remember wading through dozens of pages of youth sci-fi/adventure books on Amazon in the vain hope that I’d recognise the cover, even if I had no idea what the title was, but that, along with everything else that I’ve tried, was as unsuccessful as any of my earlier attempts.

It’s August 2018. I sign up for a Reddit account, furnish my plot description with a few more details, give it a little extra polish, and post to the Tip of my Tongue subreddit, all in the vain hope that some kind stranger will either know the name of the book that I’m talking about, or know where to start looking.

Long story short, some kind stranger posts the exact title of the book I’m looking for, sourced from an old scholastic book ordering catalogue, based off nothing more than my description of it and some other contextual information particularly regarding the time period I read the book in (even though that turned out to be off by about 10 years). A quick Google confirms that yes, The Vandarian Incident is the exact book that I’ve been looking for, for years now. Total turnaround time, around 9 hours.

Thanks to the internet, I now possess my very own copy of The Vandarian Incident by Martin Godfrey, which you see in the photo at the top of this post. It arrived last week, all the way from a bookshop in Evesham in the UK, a town with a population one-tenth that of my home town, Hobart. I told my colleagues that it had sentimental value, which it kind of does — even if it’s not the traditional kind of sentimental.

There’s another story there, but it’s not The Vandarian Incident — which is, by the way, every bit as excellent as I remembered it being.

And now I can finally put this one to rest. Finish this particular chapter, if you will.

There Are No Right Decisions

There’s a good Folklore story about intentionally making a mess in the video game Defender. Now, I’ve never played this game, but apparently it’s a side-scrolling shooter where you’re tasked to clear waves of enemies. The story tells us about members of the original Macintosh team who had a Defender arcade cabinet in the office and would play recreationally in-between working on the Mac, and about one guy in particular who had a, uh, slightly different approach to achieving a high score. I won’t spoil it for you, but the gist of it was about getting into precarious situations to gain experience.

I know what you’re thinking, that probably sounds like a pretty normal strategy. But remember, this was the early 80s. It was a time when video games were in their infancy, and where thinking outside the box to beat the game was practically unheard of. Intentionally getting into dire situations and intentionally putting yourself under that kind of pressure in “practice situations”, just so you could have some experience for when things went sideways for real was nothing short of creative, and maybe even more so because this was a video game. There’s some kind of take-home wisdom here, I’m sure.

At the start of the year, I picked up a couple of new t-shirts. Crazy, I know, but they were on sale, and I thought Make Mistakes was representative of a philosophy I believed in — enough to wear it printed on tri-blend heather on my chest, anyway. The idea was that if someone was to come up and ask about it, I’d tell them that I strongly believed in making mistakes. That’s not saying I believe in being incompetent on purpose, or going out of your way to screw up, but making genuine mistakes. The kind you accept, learn from, and move on. Some would call that character building, but I just call it making mistakes.

Which brings us back to making decisions. I’ve briefly touched on this before, but after thinking about it, I’ve started thinking: what if there are no right decisions?

I came across an interesting piece which cemented my thoughts on this. There is no right decision talks about how we all have to make choices, all of which have consequences, and then somehow, we get this idea that there’s always a “correct” decision. And you know what? Maybe there is. With one big caveat: I can absolutely see myself arriving at a particular decision based on all the information available to me at the time, optimising for a particular outcome. At that time, maybe I do tell myself I’ve made the right choice.

But choices and consequences aren’t paired off one-to-one, like doors in a game show bonus round, each hiding either a prize or a punishment. Every action sets off endlessly rippling consequences, a cascade of effects that are often both beneficial and detrimental, both short-term and long-term, both intended and unintended, both known and unknown.

Giving up on the idea of right decisions doesn’t mean giving up on using our best judgment. But it’s a tremendous relief to recognize that getting it right, in any meaningful sense, is an impossible goal.

Here’s the rub: none of us knows the future. Even if we think, today, that we’ve made the right call, maybe two weeks from now we’ll miss out on a fantastic opportunity because of it. You should absolutely read the whole thing, but the takeaway is that there are no right decisions. That’s not saying you can’t make good decisions, but getting it right every time is something that you can’t — shouldn’t — expect to do.

Which is a good thing, because sometimes things work out OK.

I think this is usually called “getting lucky”, but we’ve all been there. Maybe we missed out on getting a promotion that we really wanted, but a really great role came up in another team. Maybe we skipped meeting up with friends, but met someone new who would later become our closest confidant.

Sure, you’ll get unlucky as many times as you get lucky. You miss all the hooks you don’t throw, and all that. But just when we’re telling ourselves that we somehow attract failure, that we are somehow cursed with bad luck or something — what, you think you’re unique? — things work themselves out.

And if they don’t, well, you’d be surprised at what you can live with.

But that’s for another time.

You Think You’re Unique?

There’s a scene in The Unit — one of my favourite TV series of all time — where one of the unit members asks another: you think you’re unique?

In that scene, Jonas asks Bob about what’s been bothering him, after Bob makes a mistake that almost compromises a mission and forces them to take up alternate sniper positions. Bob replies that he’s been struggling with the difference between the pre-meditated killing as part of his role as a member of an elite special forces unit, and how that differs to murder carried out by an individual operating on his own.

There are differences, of course, as explained to Bob in an earlier scene where he visits a military chaplain and asks about the concept of “just war”. Bob questions when the taking of life is justified, or if it’s ever necessary, but the chaplain tells him that there are always justifications for taking a life. Bob claims there are some who say that the taking of life is never justified, and the chaplain’s response is that those people employ others to protect them so they will never have to face that choice.

As they discuss the issue, Jonas wonders how long Bob’s been thinking about it, then says Bob will just have to work it out, just like everybody else. Bob questions the “everybody else” part, to which Jonas replies: “you think you’re unique? Happens to everyone. What surprises me is what took you so long.”

You think you’re unique?

I think about that a lot.

I might not be in one of the world’s most elite military special forces, but I think about it a lot. Every time I have some reason to lament my own existence, whatever harrowing circumstance I find myself in, or question my recent decision making, I wonder how many other people have ever been in the same situation I am now.

I can’t be the only one, right?

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The Money, Dota 2, and Making Decisions Addendum

This is an addendum, of sorts, to Twenty Seven. While this will (hopefully) make plenty of sense without reading that first, I’d still recommend it.

Yours truly, back in February:

Or on a more personal note, maybe life’s too short not to travel the world. Too short to have to reconcile giving up what you enjoy doing for the faint promise of career progression. Too short to not go to The International every year, or not get to one esports event in a different country. Too short to not spend time with family and friends. Too short to not talk to that pretty girl you like. Suddenly, you’re not sure what you should be doing any more, and all because life’s too short.

You — where I, of course, really mean I — could probably cross a few things off that list without worrying about what happens next. It’s (mostly) just money, after all, and you only live once.

Unfortunately, like most people I wasn’t born into wealth, and like most people will have to earn every cent I want to spend. Which probably means picking and choosing what I want to do, the places I want to go, and perhaps most importantly, the experiences I want to have. Provided I stay gainfully employed there’s probably nothing stopping me from doing an overseas trip every few years, or having an interstate jaunt a couple of times per year.

A little while back I read about spending money on experiences, not things, and it’s the same wisdom I’ve attempted to impart on others. Being a technology enthusiast is particularly terrible in this regard, because there’s always a cool new toy to buy, but lately I’ve been doing OK about justifying the things I purchase, carefully weighing up their value versus the use I’ll get out of them and a myriad of other factors, including how much I want other, perhaps more expensive, things.

My iPad Pro? Probably on the wrong side of that scale, but by the same token, my original generation iPad mini was no longer supported by the latest version of iOS, and was a little long in the tooth. My iPhone X? I think this was an OK purchase, but it’ll be better when I sell my old iPhone 7 that I had picked up the year before. (I know, I know. Don’t tell me about it.)

So yeah, life’s too short to worry about money. By the time you think you have enough of it to live comfortably, you’re wondering where the years went. Before you know it, you’re too old and frail to really enjoy the places that you probably should have been when you were still young. So you get to choose between travelling as a broke youth, travelling comfortably during your twilight years, or whatever happy medium you decide to settle for.

Which brings us to… Dota 2.

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Twenty Seven

If I had to use one word to describe how I feel right now, and how I’ve felt for a little while now, that word would be conflicted.

I’m 27 now, and decisions need to be made. Not just “what am I wearing today?” or “what am I eating tonight?”, but real, substantial decisions that will all have a major impact on my life, whether that’s for the next few months, the next few years, or even 5-10 years from now.

It seems no matter how old you are, there will always be someone to give you advice. Life advice, in particular. The kinds of things adults tell you when you’re young, but you don’t listen because, well, you’re young. When you’re young, people tell you to study hard. Get a good job. Earn real money. Buy a house. Settle down. Grow up1. And all before you’re ready for any of it, or really understand what it all means.

Now that I’m a little older, I get a slightly different set of advice. People tell me to spend my money on experiences, not things. They say everyone’s a little weird; nobody’s perfect. Everyone has flaws, but that doesn’t matter because everyone is capable of greatness anyway. People say it’s better to love and have lost than to have never loved at all. They tell you to aim high, shoot for the stars, chase your dreams, dance like no one’s watching, forge your own path, live your best life, love freely, and remember that anything is possible. Maybe not all in the same breath, but it’s all been said before. None of this is particularly new.

And now that I am a little older, there’s one piece of advice that I hear more often than any other: life’s too short.

I have a problem with “life’s too short”. Several problems, in fact, chief of which is it serves as a cop-out for the real problem: time is a cruel mistress. Youth is wasted on the young, and the advantages of being older don’t necessarily outweigh the negatives. Unless you’re born with a silver spoon in your mouth, you’ll have to work like the rest of us, and unless you get lucky, a lot of the time, your dreams will remain just that2.

It’s enough to make anyone depressed.

“Life’s too short” makes me angry, too. Life’s too short… to what? To catch public transport? To wash your dishes by hand? To spend your days at a unfulfilling desk job, eating the same thing you had for lunch yesterday, doing the same thing you were doing a week, a month, a year ago? Perhaps, even, life’s too short to study hard. Life’s too short to get a good job. Life’s too short to earn real money, buy a house, or settle down.

Or on a more personal note, maybe life’s too short not to travel the world. Too short to have to reconcile giving up what you enjoy doing for the faint promise of career progression. Too short to not go to The International every year, or not get to one esports event in a different country. Too short to not spend time with family and friends. Too short to not talk to that pretty girl you like. Suddenly, you’re not sure what you should be doing any more, and all because life’s too short.

Congratulations, you’re now as conflicted as I am.

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Now With No Comments

I’ve now disabled comments here. I probably should have done this a long time ago, but every time I went to do it, a little voice in my head said that I should keep them around as they weren’t costing me anything. While that’s probably true, they weren’t really adding anything, either.

So I’ve disabled Disqus and turned comments off. The comments themselves are still kept in the database, if I want to re-enable them at some point in the future, but otherwise you know how to reach me if you want to comment on something I’ve posted.