The Point.

 

Everything in war is very simple. But the simplest thing is difficult.

Carl von Clausewitz, On War

I'm currently re-reading a digital copy of K. J. Parker's fantasy novella Mightier Than The Sword. At 75 pages it's a fun little read, clever, witty, and imaginative, that just sort of sits on my iPhone and gets opened now and then when I'm out of fresh reading material.

However, during this re-read, I began to wonder about the actual numbers involved in the story's climactic battle. (This is a thing that happens now and then when I'm reading, something in the math gets my attention.)

Here's the scenario: the bad guys have 4,000 to 7,000 warriors - we don't know exactly how many, because it's based on reconnaissance, rather than actual knowledge. On the other side, there are 575 archers who are supported by a thousand heavy infantry and 1,500 untrained local militia - not great odds, even if we take the low end count for the enemy, but let's average them out at 5,500 light infantry - more accurately, tribal barbarians, who apparently aren't even wearing shoes.  (Which may actually be a factor in all of this - wait, you'll see.)

Here's how the narrator, who happens to be commanding the defending army, lays things out.  He puts his militia in line, with the Steelnecks - his heavy infantry - on the flank, and hides his archers in a ditch behind the militia.  His opponents sensibly decide to launch their attack on the weaker target of the militia, and begin their charge.

The militia had sworn me a solemn oath to stand their ground, no matter what.  When the enemy were two hundred yards away, they turned and ran like deer; one moment they were there, the next they weren't, and who can blame them?

At this point, his concealed archers stand up and start to shoot.

Okay, time for math.  First, it looks like the general may have made a bit of a mistake.  Historians have determined (lord knows how) that a trained archer in the time of Edward III could shoot an arrow 365 meters.  Accuracy isn't an issue here, the target is an army of over 5,000 people, it would probably be hard to shoot an arrow at that many people and NOT hit someone.  So the good guys have already wasted 182 meters of opportunities to put arrows into the enemy.

The second factor is speed - on both sides.  A sprinting man can run at about 32 kilometers an hour, and a normal running speed is 24 kilometers an hour.  Realistically, in this situation the barbarians will obviously be running as fast as they can, but they're also carrying swords, axes, spears, shields and so forth, which most casual runners don't have to deal with.

So again, let's split the difference and give them a speed of 28 kilometers an hour, which breaks down to about 22 seconds to cover that 182 meters - presumably, like African marathon competitors, they're not handicapped by running in their bare feet because they do it all the time.

The next speed question is how long it takes to fire an arrow.  Again, we're not looking at careful target selection, the archers just need to pull an arrow from a quiver - probably on the ground - nock it to the bow, raise, pull and let go.  The internet suggests that there's some show-off out there who can fire three arrows in .6 seconds, but we're looking at a longer sustained volley, so let's say an arrow a second.

Given the 22 seconds that it's taking the charging infantry to reach the archers, that gives us 22 arrows each from 575 archers for an impressive total of 12,650 arrows.  However, that's in a perfect world.  Let's face it, by the time the barefoot people with axes and swords are three meters away, you've probably stopped shooting and starting running yourself.  If you don't run, you get stabbed or chopped, which is what happens to about half of the archers in the story.*

Even so, that's going to be about two arrows per attacking barbarian, although, again, a lot of this isn't targeted shooting, so a few lucky souls may not get any arrows at all.  (And a few less lucky souls will get four, after all, they have to end up somewhere, and as already discussed, 5,500 people makes for a big target.)

Does that wipe out the attacking horde?  At this point, we enter the realm of supposition, since the only ready sources of information about the results of volleyed arrows are the movie 300, the Battle of the Five Armies from the third Hobbit film, or Ian McShane's character in Hercules, none of which can really be considered as science.

You'd have to think that it would at least put a big dent in the attacking army - even if you've only been hit by one arrow, having three feet of birchwood with an iron tip stuck somewhere into your body is going to make you a less effective fighter when the thousand heavy infantry take you in flank. On the other hand, we don't really know what they're wearing or carrying in terms of protection, although there has to be some kind of inverse relationship between amount of armour and ability to sprint up a hill while archers snipe away at you and your companions.

The author, oddly enough, seems to feel that the archers would only be shooting at the front row of the attacking army, which feels like a mistake - or is it?  Hmmm...575 archers in a line, 5,500 running men, let's call that 10 ranks of 550 each (although probably not that organized) - let's slow things down a bit because our archers are aiming a bit, but even then, the math suggests that ten carefully aimed arrows per archer pretty much wipes out the attacking army.

The narrative suggests otherwise, with half the archers dead and half of them running, as a thousand heavily armed and armoured killing machines hit the barbarians in flank and wipe them out.  And even then, there's a suggestion that it's not a walkover, there are enough remaining barbarians that the first century of Steelnecks that comes into contact with them experiences 83% casualties. 

Ultimately, in that situation, I'm willing to admit that math might not be the only factor that determines the results. As von Clausewitz points out, even the simplest thing is difficult in war.

- Sid

* But why would the archers not have swords as well? Or sharpened poles as a defense to slow down the enemy - something, ANYTHING other than just a bow and arrows.
 
Postscript:

A couple of late-breaking comments on the above.  First, it turns out that the general hasn't wasted that first 182 meters - an earlier note in the book mentions that the maximum range of the bows used by his archers is 200 yards, so he's actually waiting for the enemy to get into range, not wasting time. (His archers must be using some kind of shorter compound bow, rather than the full longbow that made the English archer such a dangerous opponent.)

Second, after writing this all up, I checked in with my archery consultant, Her Ladyship Anika Styfe - aka my co-worker Christi -  and here's her comment:

Hmmm...in a 30 second round, I can comfortably shoot 8 arrows, with the first arrow ready to be loosed when the marshal says go.

For 20 arrows I'd say about 90 seconds, maybe a little faster for the lack of aim. But can't help muscle memory. :-)

So it would appear that an arrow a second would be an unrealistic timeline - but four seconds seems like a LONG time.

ePulps.

 

It's the end of November, which means that the holiday season will be coming up surprisingly soon, as it generally does.  As such, Karli and I are in the early stages of gift negotiations.  Karli is looking at streaming service subscriptions such as Britbox™ for her two sisters (and it's been suggested that an Amazon Prime™ subscription would be suitable for her), but to the best of my knowledge, there isn't a similar service for science fiction fans.*

However, it occurred to me that many years ago I used to subscribe to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, which I found to be a great collection of fiction and fact to have show up in my Muskoka mailbox.  I certainly don't need to increase my burden of physical media (I actually still have those vintage copies of F&SF**) but this is the future, there must be a digital equivalent for those monthly mail drops.

Magazines featuring short fiction have been the backbone of science fiction and fantasy writing for close to a hundred years, ever since the 1920s. Weird Tales, which most famously featured the work of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, made its debut in February of 1923, and Hugo Gernsback launched Amazing Stories, the first publication dedicated solely to science fiction, in 1926.

Later publications such as Galaxy, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Astounding (to be renamed as Analog in 1960) allowed legendary Golden Age editors such as John W. Campbell Jr., Horace Gold, and Anthony Boucher to place their stamp on science fiction, defining and shaping the development of the genre.

The early pulp magazines found an avid readership, a readership which then produced the next generation of authors:  authors who also became editors, reviewers, and, in some cases, publishers. 

Almost all of the classic science fiction authors such as Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and Arthur C. Clarke were primarily short story writers during the early phases of their careers.  (Asimov's award-winning Foundation trilogy is actually a collection of short stories collected as book chapters in three volumes.)  In fact, up until well into the 1960s***, science fiction magazines were still the primary starting point for aspiring science fiction authors, giving New Wave writers like Roger Zelazny and Ursula K. Le Guin their first sales, and allowing Harlan Ellison to build a reputation based almost entirely on his short fiction.

I still see F&SF and Analog for sale on the magazine shelves at Indigo, which demonstrates that they're alive and well - or at least still printing paper editions - but what are the options for virtual subscriptions?

My old friend The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction has chosen to do its subscriptions through an e-book distributor called Weightless Books, six issues for $36.97 - presumably in US dollars - MOBI, EPUB and PDF formats are available.

No questions with Analog - six different digital subscription options, including an app-based version with a $35.88 USD 12-issue annual subscription.

Asimov's Science Fiction, which was Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine when I subscribed, now seems to be under the same publishing umbrella as Analog.  Same page format, same subscription outlets - and same price, $35.88 USD for six "double issues", whatever that means.

Interzone, the United Kingdom SF magazine, doesn't seem to have a digital subscription on their site, but I found one, again at Weightless Books. $24.99 for six issues, probably USD.

For some Canadian content, there's On Spec, which charges $14.99 for a quarterly subscription.  This is also through Weightless Books, so I assume it's USD. 

As a wild card, while I was researching the above options, I suddenly remembered Cinefex, which my friend Colin had introduced me to back when we were at Ryerson together.  Cinefex is a serious offering of special effects filmmaking commentary, aimed predominantly at the professional market but still accessible by the casual reader.  It didn't exclusively look at science fiction and fantasy movies - historical films often rely heavily on digital effects as well - but the greater part of the content dealt with SF movie effects.

I initially didn't see a digital subscription option for Cinefex, but then I spotted the Cinefex for iPad link: "Carry the entire history of modern visual effects with you on your iPad."  A six-issue subscription through the app is $27.99 USD.

In conclusion, I feel that I should recognize the TOR Books website, which has excellent articles, free short fiction, and offers a free book download on a monthly basis. It's a pretty impressive offering for free.

- Sid

Postscript:

If anyone is interested in reading any of the classic magazines in their original formats, there's a surprising range of free opportunities available online.

• A selection of classic pulps can be downloaded in HTML, Flipbook, and PDF format at The Pulp Magazine Project, including a handful of vintage issues of Planet Stories and Weird Tales.
• I was surprised to see that 356 back issues of Galaxy Magazine are available for free at archive.org, although the quality of the scans varies. The issues can be read online or downloaded in a variety of formats.
• Close to the full run of long-running British SF magazine New Worlds is available at the Luminist Archive in PDF format, along with quite a wide range of scanned material - some of which, by their own admission, the site's creators did not obtain permission to reproduce.

* There's a channel dedicated to Japanese anime called Crunchyroll, but as far as I know, that's it, with the possible exception of some less-than-mainstream SF offerings.

**And, to my astonishment, when I went to look at them on my bookshelf, I realized that I had that subscription when I was 13 years old.

*** I'm open to argument regarding this timeline, but the 1950s witnessed the demise of many of the pulp magazines, and the 1960s began a shift toward novels over short fiction in the publishing marketplace.  Although, even then, portions of classic novels such as Dune were originally serialized in magazine form.

"See you around, kid."

  

I have to say that Omaze.com, the online fundraising site, has nailed it in terms of their business model:  offer a wide range of donation levels to win a unique prize or experience, generally in association with a celebrity representative.  And it works: as an example, the opportunity to be in The Force Awakens that I contributed to in 2014 raised over 4.26 million dollars for UNICEF.

And, really, it's brilliant.  As opposed to charity ticket draws with large cash prizes, there's almost no serious expenses involved for most of the prizes.  Win a chance to be in a Star Wars movie?  Real costs, flights and a hotel - maybe meals, or a cab to the set.  Value of experience? PRICELESS.

Similarly, breakfast with a bunch of Doctor Whos?  How much would breakfast for eight people cost on top of airline tickets and accommodations?  But to the right person, it's the experience of all time.

I've entered a couple of other opportunities that haven't made it here, including a chance to take selfies with the cast of Schitt's Creek that was really on Karli's behalf, but the most recent charity offering takes the prize, so to speak.

Dinner with Mark Hamill.

Oh, sure, you get to attend the premier of The Rise of Skywalker, too, but really - DINNER WITH MARK HAMILL!

In addition to his unique contributions to the genre, most people are unaware that Mr. Hamill is also a major comic book geek in his own right.  There's also some of his lesser-known work that I'd love to discuss - does anyone else reading this remember his voice-over work from the Jeannie animated series, which was a California surfer dude re-imagining of the I Dream of Jeannie series from the 1960s?  Or how about The Black Pearl, the comic book he created for Dark Horse Comics in the 1990s?  Not to mention his incredible body of voice-over work as the Joker, which has come very close to eclipsing Star Wars in terms of its notoriety.

No offense to Daisy Ridley or Adam Driver, who also have Star Wars charity packages up on Omaze, but even ignoring Mark Hamill's stature as a geek icon, they haven't really offered anything close to the same level of involvement.  It's one thing to take someone to the premier and take a selfie or give them a signed souvenir light saber, or even get them into the afterparty, but I feel that Mark has gone the extra mile in offering up some of his own time in the interests of charity.

I really don't expect to win, I generally don't have any sort of luck at all in draws, but whoever does win?  You're a lucky person in more ways than one, and I very much hope you appreciate it.

- Sid