Infofiche

(Forgot to do last months, so you'll be getting two in Sept. instead. September 1/2)

This book ended up on my list for two reasons: a) it has the word linguist in the title and b) it was getting talked about a lot on social media, with adjectives like "wacky", "surreal" and "what on earth is happening". Safe to say, I was intrigued, and now I've finally read it. The short and boring version of this discussion is: "this book uses a very strong version of linguistic relativity and universality to power its magic system and metaphysics, but linguistics isn't key to the plot or characterisations beyond that", that would be a injustice against a surprisingly deep and involved book.

This discussion contains some spoilers for Battle of the Linguist Mages by Scotto Moore, specifically the metaphysics and Maddy, so beware if you are still reading. I do not touch the plot. So, without further ado, lets explore the weird world of Battle of the Linguist Mages.

Battle of the Linguist Mages is a mostly sci-fi, pseudo portal-fantasy which features Isobel Baille, the queen and first rank leader board position holder of the game Sparkle Dungeon (a fictional MMORPG), it also features politics, a megachurch, advertising mega-agency, metaphysics and philosophical explorations about the nature of godhood and what is worth risking to save the world. And too many passages of exposition (hey, at least it made my job easier). The details of the magic system are quickly left behind in the more exciting and bewildering latter sections, but it is explained in enough detail to capture your interest.

The reason we're here is because the magic system of both Sparkle Dungeon and, it turns out, the universe is based on a concept called power morphemes. These are the building blocks of spells, ultra-concentrated and pure units of meaning that, when uttered, cause some effect either in the mind of the listener or (because this book takes a strongly relativist position) in reality itself via belief. The linguistic analogy goes further, in order to speak a sequence (spell) you first have to verbalise the power morphemes which is no easy feat, the precise phonemes and phones made are physically taxing and the main limitation in casting, as well as limitations of recording technology (IE, adding or taking out some formants changes the sequence, so it isn't trivial to broadcast sequences). As well as that, intonation alters the parameters and effect of a sequence. All this information is delivered over a few long paragraphs of dialogue.

Another analogy made is the plot progresses and power escalates through the development of power morpheme technology. All sides in the conflict make innovations in how power morphemes can be used, going from shouting to subliminal to megaphones to recordings to implantation and ending with writing. This was an interesting analogue to the creation of information technology in the real world, with similar innovations taking place in this 'new' power morpheme language as took place with natural languages (yodelling, talking drums, writing, printing, computers, the internet).

The fact that power morphemes can be broadcast and affect people who have never heard them before, as well as how the phoneme is almost identical with the morpheme itself, suggests that they are linguistic universals. This brings us to the book's broader theory of language and its metaphysics. It turns out, that humans only have language the way we do because some extraterrestrial "punctuation marks" (not written, it's made clear that the interrogation mark does not depend on the sign ? existing but only the act of questioning) came along and invaded/found refuge (different characters interpret this differently) in all human brains, bringing along with them the capacity for language use. Thus we gained language, did civilisation, and eventually at the height(?) of that an advertising executive discovered complex vowels and tripped balls so hard he spoke with these punctuation marks and they taught him the 108 basic power morphemes. Right. And uttering a power morpheme can change reality itself.

Analysing this we see a few things: firstly, that these punctuation marks are the linguistic universal, and that the morphemes form a universal grammar present in all language users. Every human has them and has the same ones. The book also takes a strong linguistic relativity position, its not quite said that the punctuation marks' presence gave us consciousness as well as language, but I feel it is implied. They definitely radically transformed our capacity for thought. Additionally belief in a thing causes that thing to happen which is another sort of relativism. If a power morpheme sequence makes you feel so terrible you die, you die for real. If a power morpheme sequence makes the listener believe you have a gun, you now have a gun. If it makes the listeners believe you are a god... In this universe belief becomes identical with existence.

There is one exception to this universality, which is that new punctuation marks, "rogue" ones, can be made. The implication is that these are somehow not original with human language and include the interrobang (which I would have thought one of the most primordial of expressions), and possibly also emoji? We don't get too many details. The conflict to universality here is that when the interrobang is invented, presumably not everybody knows about it - otherwise it wouldn't be invented - so its power morphemes can't have an effect on the brains of those who don't know the interrobang, so they aren't universal, yet we are told that they are. You can probably spot your own problems (like how discrete are punctuation marks? How many are there?), but this marks (heh) the book's shift away from having such a close analogy with linguistics and coincides with its enconuter with some heady metaphysics, and it's more fun for it.

Continuing onwards, the idea of a dimension of concepts, the logosphere, becomes more important. These are where concepts, ideas, thoughts, punctuation marks, all reside and its also where the ultimate threat to the cosmos comes from (that really isn't important here though). The metaphysics of the book is that concepts form a physical part of reality, they exist in the logosphere, and so belief in a concept causes it to exist, and can also cause it to manifest in the real world (like the punctuation marks did when they brought us language). This power of belief has no limits, though for a person to tap it they drain some amount of vital force from each believer.

We can now state the full mechanism of the magic system: power morphemes communicate with punctuation marks which modify the belief of the brains (all the brains - universal grammar) they inhabit, because the logosphere can intrude on reality, the manipulation of beliefs this way can produce 'real' effects too (relativity).

In conclusion, Moore has used linguistics as a big analogy to build his magic system from, and philosophy of language to inform his metaphysics and worldbuild. These purposes borrow from each other, but also serve to give the magic system a particular vernacular (morphemes, phonemes, language, sequences) that lends it verisimilitude as a rigourous system whilst at the same time being completely absurd, no spoilers for the end of the novel but some crazy stuff happens. The metaphysics draws from the fact that language is how meaning and belief is communicated, and power morphemes allow belief to be arbitrarily altered and thus reality changed, and also allow the logosphere and all its contents (the sum of human thought) to be accessed. Moore goes fantastically far with these ideas and his use of linguistic theory, whilst fantastical, is thrilling.

Would I recommend? I think I would. Its a surprisingly long read with some rough patches, but it is genuinely fun to be carried along for the ride. Readers who dislike deus ex machina should not touch this book with a three meter pole. My one issue, other than the deus ex machinas, is the characterisation of Maddy, the Anarchist and primary love interest (that's it, that's the characterisation), especially as in my opinion she does some rather un-anarchist things (her comrades are refereed to as her anarchists, and she argues "doesn't copyright mean anything?!"). Finally, I was disappointed to see the punctuation marks referred to as, e.g., 'the question mark' and not '?'.

There are parallels with Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson and The Embedding by Ian Watson.