Classic Apocalypse: Top six reasons for the decline and fall of the Roman Empire

It seems a fitting topic of discussion for a blog about the Post-Apocalypse, although this is a particularly old one. 

But why did it happen?

You don't need to read Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to find out; this blog post reduces it to six easily digestible points. How's that for brevity?

Of course, anyone and everyone interested in history eventually stumbles across this question, and the answers are just as numerous.

Every ideological agenda has an explanation to fit, ranging from Marxist to Libertarian. Some say it never happened at all, that the empire just morphed into a different form.

Theories wax and wane. Historians, believe it or not, follow trends.

Here's what Matthew White has to say about it:

"…There is also a tendency to downplay the violence associated with barbarian invasions—as well as frowning on calling them barbarians. In fact, some scholars argue that the whole fall of the Western Roman Empire is overrated as a milestone, and that the changes sweeping Europe were mostly the peaceful immigration of wandering tribes, who imposed a new ruling class but were culturally assimilated in a couple of generations.

This view is especially popular among the English, Americans, and Germans since they are the descendants of the aforementioned barbarians, who would now seem less barbaric… Every now and then scholars grow bored with overrated golden ages, and they gain a renewed interest in former dark ages. It is never permanent, and we shouldn't take it too seriously."

One paradigm or narrative will hold sway for awhile until someone comes along who wants to prove their intellectual bonafides by upsetting the applecart and overturning the accepted narrative.

The pendulum swings one way, then the other, hopefully going to less of an extreme each time, until a better, more accurate picture of the past emerges.

Or at least the most egregious errors and ideological agendas are purged.

I was going to go with a list, starting with peripheral causes and then zeroing in on the biggie, but the biggie is so big it cascades over into all the others, so it makes sense to start with the main cause and expand outward from that.

The Roman Leviathan, which dominated the Mediterranean for centuries, essentially fell because it was subjected to more stress than the system could absorb. The empire was an organization, a kind of information system. If you disrupt a system enough, introduce enough chaos, it will eventually reach a tipping point and dissolve.

So what were the primary sources of stress?

Here's my Quick Start Guide to the Fall of the Roman Empire.

1) Barbarian invasions

This is a controversial thing to say these days, as the current trends is to absolve the negative impact of barbarian attack ('migration'). Damage inflicted by barbarians is downgraded or simply ignored by the hip historians, leaving it to the fuddy duddy's to hold barbarian feet to the fire.

Hipster historians are willing to write off the 40 million people killed, for example, during the campaigns of Genghis Khan as insignificant. Because trade routes and culture exchange! They're trying to offset the previous focus on Mongol city razing and balance the account, but they're swinging the pendulum too far in his case.

Of course, Genghis arrives on the scene long after Rome succumbed, but he's nevertheless part of the same phenomenon: the collision of vast, wealthy, and well-established agrarian states and mobile, poor, yet militarily superior steppe peoples.

Barbarians were always at the borders of Rome. That's very true. But the pressure they exerted increased greatly over time, and escalated from footmen to mounted archers. Areas that had been quiet, such as North Africa, also became more active threats over time.

During the Classical period, the legions of Rome dominated the region with their professionalism and highly flexible formations. Armed with a  short sword (gladius) and throwing spear (plum), they were better organized and frequently better led than those of their opponents around the Mediterranean basin.

And they were almost all foot soldiers.

Fortunately, their opponent's armies were composed, primarily, of footmen as well. Cavalry were expensive to field. When the proportion of cavalry eventually increased, they frequently weren't Romans at all, but hired barbarian mercenaries.

Nomadic peoples of the steppes began to impact the borders of the Roman during the third century AD, which was a calamitous period for Rome thanks to a mixture of invasions, revolts, plagues, civil war, economic depression, currency debasement, and secession. Rome went through 20 emperors in 50 years. It brought the Mediterranean Leviathan to the brink of collapse.

The arrival of the Goths complicated things further, and it would get worse when the Vandals and Huns showed up.

Why? Agrarian based states at this time were unable to effectively counter the masses of horse archers that nomads deployed. This was true for all the states bordering upon the steppes: China, Persia, India, and Rome all experienced devastation at the hands of mounted invaders.

Settled civilizations had to adapt to an enemy that could literally ride circles around them. That or perish.

Both China and Rome, the two most easily accessible from the steppes, tried bribery. China was expert at playing on nomad people off against another, and did so with aplomb for centuries. Rome hired barbarians to provide cavalry forces for their armies, until, eventually, the barbarians essentially became the Roman army. But they were never accepted as Romans. Just foxes guarding the hen house.

Rome's riches were extremely tempting to poor steppe peoples who didn't have the food surpluses necessary to support as much specialized labour.

Given how easily settled states could be crushed militarily, it made sense for the nomads to prey upon them and extort vast tributes.


2) Military inferiority

The legions built an empire for Rome, and for hundreds of years, nothing could stand against them. But by the third century, things had changed. The legions found themselves outclassed by new, mounted opponents.

In addition, the population of Germany had increased, and with it pressure against the borders of the empire, so there would have been some increase in military spending to meet the rising tide regardless of whether or not the steppe peoples arrived.

But horse archers were much more dangerous than the axe wielding barbarians Romans were used to: the hordes were the equivalent of Classical Era Panzer Divisions, practicing early Blitzkrieg.

Foot soldiers simply couldn't keep up, nor could they force a faster moving enemy to battle. Mounted troops would ride up, fire an arrow from their powerful composite bow, and retreat out of range before defenders could respond.

It is not known if the Huns brought stirrups to Europe. It's within the realm of possibility, but just their mobility and composite bow was enough to give them a decisive edge. In fact, the horse archer dominated the world militarily until rifles were developed. Only then could foot soldiers cut down mounted troops before they had a chance to loose their arrows.

Obviously the first two points (barbarian invasion and military inferiority) are intertwined. The fact that China and Rome could not beat the nomads mano a mano meant they had to co-opt, bribe, or hire nomads to fight for them. China, which had a much larger population and was, relatively speaking, more culturally powerful and homogenous than Rome, was better able to absorb invaders than its polyglot Roman counterpart, and did so repeatedly. Barbarians would conquer China only to become Chinese.


3) Increasing internal oppression and erosion of rights and security
In order to deal with the inability of Roman forces to hold the enemy at the border, whole regions were abandoned by civilians, who understandably did not want to be casually raped and pillaged by raiders.

The change was noticed: Emperor Diocletian saw that the empire was caving under barbarian pressure and implemented sweeping military and civil reforms.

First he divided the military into two branches: a limited, fortified, stationary border guard to sound the alarm and hold back small incursions, and elite mobile legions held in the rear to deal with major invasions. These would ride out to meet enemies who penetrated deep into Roman territory. It was now defense in depth, the same defensive tactic adapted to thwart Blitzkrieg during the Second World War.

The idea of holding barbarians right at the border was a thing of the past. Front lines were too brittle.

Yet Rome was already spending half its budget on the military (the United States spends roughly 20%). This not only increased, but in order to secure a stable supply system for the military, Diocletian forced people to remain in place, forbidding them from moving, as well as forcing male children to take up the vocation of their father.

People were robbed of choice.

Anyone unfortunate enough to live in a border territory was now stuck there.

Yet this way Diocletian could guarantee that the supply system for the army wouldn't erode or collapse as people decided to move or switch professions.

It unquestionably made the Roman Empire a worse place to live. Only a very small, rich minority would have been unaffected.

The reason for these changes? Pressure from barbarians. Without that pressure, there would be no reason for such drastic changes to the circumstances under which the civilian population lived.

Diocletian also brought in a system of guilds, to which workers were compelled to belong.

The predation by barbarians changed everything and resulted in the militarization of an entire society.

Rome was now a military with a state, rather than a state fielding a military. This kept the empire humming along for another century or two. From Diocletian's harsh reforms to the final collapse of the (Western) Roman Empire, we are looking at an interstitial period, Late Antiquity, that bridges the gap between the Classical Era and Medieval Feudalism (and The Dark Ages, if you believe they happened at all). The knights of the feudal era, and the peasants who supported them, are a response to the threat of mounted troops.

One thing you will find over and over again throughout history: trade increases wealth, so savvy leaders protect merchants and trade routes, because they generate wealth, and wealth can be taxed.

As the Roman state could no longer guarantee the security of merchants, long distance trade declined. Drastically. The payoff was no longer justified given the increased risks involved.

And so the state and everyone in it became poorer.

It had already been through a major depression during the Crisis of the Third Century, and Roman currency had been badly debased. Diocletian tried to rectify this with strict price controls and draconian punishments, but they didn't work and didn't last.


4) Lack of a peaceful means of succession and state fragmentation

Democracy allows for the peaceful transition of power, and it's one tool the Romans didn't have.

When an emperor died, every ambitious noble and power hungry general scrambled for the diadem.

This handy chart from Randal S. Olson's site shows length of reign and means of death for emperors between 27 BC and 395 AD:

Emperors were often assassinated by their successor. Sometimes this impacted just the emperor and his immediate family (all would be hunted down and murdered), other times it devolved into civil wars that would convulse the state and disrupt trade for a year or two. Armies would be stripped away from the frontier to fight for the Imperial Purple, allowing barbarians to flood into Roman territory unhindered.

Over time, any highly coveted position will see the investment contenders make to seize it increase, until, eventually, the investment made far outweighs the actual benefit of the position itself.

This is very much the case with the Imperial Throne. After moving Heaven and earth to gain the it, many emperors perished within a year or two, murdered by the next in line. It was like a revolving door.

The actual benefit of the position declined precipitously. Power began to be wielded more by people behind the scenes, as sitting on the throne was simply too dangerous. The last emperors were little more than puppets of barbarian power brokers holding the position of the Magister Militum, head of the (now not so) Roman Army. Eventually the barbarian generals decided to do away with the figurehead emperor entirely.

Many governors, if they couldn't take the throne, seceded from the Empire and established their own, separate domain where they could be numero uno. Britain, for example, was a separate domain for years, first as part of the Gallic Empire (259-274 AD) and then as the Britannic Empire (286-296 AD) until finally being brought to heel.

This sort of secession was so common that Diocletian separated military and civil powers to prevent any one man from holding too much power. Diocletian even divided rule of the empire between four Tetrarchs.

Then he retired to raise cabbages.

It wasn't enough.

Despite all of Diocletian's efforts, the Romans preferred fighting amongst themselves when they should have been dealing with invaders. Internal competition led to alliances with external enemies that further damaged the state.

5) Cultural fragmentation and bigotry
Over time, the invaders of China became Chinese. This didn't happen with Rome, which was incapable of assimilating the barbarians. Indeed, the Romans resisted making Germans, in particular, into Roman citizens, to their own detriment. Emperor Honorius indulged his prejudice against them and had the families of the Goths, some 30,000 women and children, who were under Roman protection at the time, murdered.

Not a good way to co-opt people.


6) Slavery and wealth polarization
The rich got richer and the common free man got poorer as the empire aged, and it wasn't good to begin with.

Slavery only benefits a small minority at the top of the totem pole. Vast slave estates made it impossible for free men to compete as farmers, and eventually the free men were driven into debt or fled to Rome to live on the dole. Others took shelter under rich lords, accepting their protection from debt collectors in exchange for labour.

It was the beginning of serfdom.

It had become much harder for the little people to make a living. Whatever middle class had existed was being squeezed out of existence as the rich pressed their advantage and impoverished everyone else.

Enormously wealthy senators didn't pay taxes and were exempt from military service, into which ordinary people could find themselves unceremoniously dragooned.

There was no Solon to strike a balance between the interests of the rich and the poor. The system had degenerated too far and become too corrupt. What few protections there were for the average citizen had been eroded away, and they had less and less reason to be loyal to the state that oppressed them in the name of protecting them.

From the point of view of the elite, there was little reason for technological innovation, as slaves (human beings) are incredibly sophisticated machines, capable of a wide range of functions. Disposable people made automation irrelevant and held back the development of practical, labour saving devices.

The ancients knew of all sorts of things, of course, including steam power. They just didn't see any economic reason to harness such marvels, except as toys or for spectacle. It was far cheaper to use people.

When the Roman state collapsed, the barbarians kept some elements of the bureaucracy functioning. The rich certainly faired better than the poor, and the senate continued to meet. Some of them cooperated with their new, barbarian overlords while others fled to Constantinople.

But eventually all of the state systems that Rome had built withered away. The remarkable Roman roads became overgrown. Long distance trade dried up. Aqueducts, stadiums, and magnificent baths slowly collapsed and no one knew how to rebuild them.

The forum, centre of life in Rome, became a cow pasture.


That's my top six. Other possible factors:

7) Plague

The Roman Empire was hit repeatedly by massive plagues, and some of the worst occurred during its later years, such as the Plague of Justinian. That one, of course, was too late to account for Rome's collapse, just as the Antonine Plague was too early.

No doubt there were others, and they may have impacted the ability of the empire to defend itself.

As was seen in the collapse of the Incan and Aztec Empires, disease can devastate not only the military forces of a state (indeed, large concentration soldiers were breeding grounds for disease, including The Spanish Flu), but the bureaucracy and supply systems behind it, making the government incapable of defending the state and its people effectively.

But I'm really speculating with this one. The barbarians would have been affected by plague as well. When Pope Leo I turned back Attila from the gates of Rome, some say it was less because of God and gold and more because plague had broken out in the Hun camps.

8) Climate change

Areas in North Africa were already abandoned and left fallow before barbarians overran them, suggesting that they were already no longer economically viable. Food production declined. There is evidence that life in general had become more difficult.

A change in climate, possibly a mini-ice age, might explain this.


Rise and Fall
The animation below shows the expansion and contraction of the empire from the time of the republic:

Lead poisoning may have reduced the effectiveness of the ruling elite and driven some of them mad, but I'm not sure how major a factor that really was. Christianity was militarized by Constantine, so its earlier pacifist, slave ideology origins were successfully co-opted by the state and seem an unlikely cause of its collapse. It did cause instability for a time as various factions competed for dominance.

Rome hit a high with Marcus Aurelius and the golden age of the second century, got slammed in the third, was saved by Diocletian's reforms, which helped it trudge through the fourth, but then got finally overwhelmed in the fifth.

Acting together the top six points created a perfect storm.

The Eastern Roman Empire, however, would continue to exist until Constantinople fell in 1453.

Looks like the Robopocalypse is still a ways off.

Quest for an Audience: What marketing works for an ebook, and what doesn't?

I've found these methods are commonly pushed online:

1) WRITE ANOTHER BOOK. This advice is typically delivered in 36 pt font and in all caps.
2) Promote on social media such as Facebook and Twitter.
3) Create a blog.
4) Participate in online forums for the genre you're writing in, engage with the writer community, and help others when and where you can.
5) Write and submit short stories.
6) Run ads.
7) Run promotions with services such as Bookbub, FreeBooksy, etc.

I tried several. Grab yourself a cup of really hot tea, settle in, and let's take a look at my results, shall we?

1) WRITE ANOTHER BOOK

Jury still out, but I suspect this is extremely helpful.

My first book was 100,000 words, and my second is likely to be roughly the same, so it's taking time to complete. Too much time, I know. I ran into a number of issues that derailed me for awhile as well, so things are proceeding more slowly than I might have hoped.

I am considering writing shorter 'novelettes' in future, or doing something serialized so I have a regularly updated presence. Otherwise, readers apparently forget you. Out of sight, out of mind seems to be very true in the fast paced world of online indie publishing, although results may vary depending on the genre you are writing in:

"Those who want to do best at self-publishing, they found, would be well advised to focus on romantic fiction. Romance authors earned 170% more than their peers, while authors in other genres fared much worse: science-fiction writers earned 38% of the $10,000 average, fantasy writers 32%, and literary fiction authors just 20% of the $10,000 average."

Many authors on the Kboards are switching from long winded tomes to short, breezy novelettes. Dean Wesley Smith has written about how the traditional publishing market pushed writers to aim for a certain length, and began to frown upon shorter books. Many classics, however, are actually quite short. They'd qualify now as novelettes. And some authors went in to completed manuscripts to pad them out to 100,000 words, which seems a waste of time and talent.

Smith is a proponent of letting a story find its own length, and I agree with him. From a financial point of view, shorter works can be put out more frequently and thus keep up a constant stream of income. Writing massive epics means longer between cheques. Not only that, if the epic flops, you've invested, and essentially wasted, a lot of time on it without reward.

So it makes sense to write shorter pieces and publish more frequently.

Practice makes perfect, as they say.

If you go by Kboards, you'll find those who are pursuing it as a career do so with almost demonic determination, pumping out full novels every three months, or even faster, which doesn't seem possible if I look at my own writing speed. Some of them seem to be doing quite well at it, too, income wise. Which just allows them to write more.

Making a living from writing seems real pie in the sky type stuff to me. The average, 'real' writer makes only $10,000 per year, which is under the poverty line.

Those claiming higher incomes, then, are the exceptions, not the rule.

And as expected, sales by people with multiple titles are often higher than those with just one book. Helps build an audience.

2) Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc)

I started up a Facebook account solely to promote my first book. I haven't dived into Twitter. One social media account at a time. I haven't put much effort into it. It takes a lot of time and energy to build a social media presence, you need to post frequently. It also helps to be connected to a large social network of people who are similarly engaged in these communities. If you aren't, it doesn't do much good.

3) Create a Blog

The blog (Welcome!) hasn't helped build an audience but I've had fun with it. Of course, they say blogging is dead.

You need to be focused, have a unique angle, and offer readers value. If I had really valuable advice on writing, for example, or incredible recipes, or helpful tips for car maintenance, or real estate buying and get rich quick schemes, or marketing secrets that work, well, the blog would have more readers.

But I have no secrets.

Not interesting ones, anyway.

I post stuff vaguely related to the post-apocalypse, articles on writing in general, my own adventures, plus reviews. Which millions of other people post. I suspect a thorough, in depth focus on something specific, say a run down of every post-apocalypse novel ever written, or every issue of Kamandi, episode of Thundarr, or analysis of the all the Fallout games would yield better results, but do not feel I am prepared to write such a research blog.

Maybe you can.

4) Online Forums and Communities

I've participated in a number of forums, mostly for writers, but there are others who have far greater levels of knowledge and expertise than mine already contributing.

So mostly I just listen.

On the Kboards, several successful writers now post under pseudonyms for various reasons.

They may be a two-edged sword, even for experts.

5) Short Stories, Anthologies, Competitions

I've written a number of short stories and submitted to various magazines and competitions. Some are still under consideration, but so far no dice. Not surprising, given the number of writers out there, my own novice status, and how competitive it is. It'd be like winning the lottery to get into a short story collection or a sci-fi magazine.

This is an area where persistence is a real virtue. It also has the side benefit of improving your writing.

The more you write, the better you get.

One can invest a lifetime into writing and achieve creative satisfaction and personal development but nothing else, neither audience or income, or you could write one story that goes viral and is a huge success. Of course, that risks being a flash-in-the-pan, as a lucky first break may bring success you aren't ready for.

Many authors who seem like instant successes spent years toiling away in obscurity before that one story hit an audience nerve and catapults them to success. Hugh Howey, for example. He's a great example of someone who worked hard not for the sake of success, but for the love of writing. And it all worked out. He's a cool guy too.

At the same time, full time writers have to be business people as well.

Writing is a craft and an investment. Some say it is easy (Iain McCaig) and others say it is extraordinarily complex (John Truby). But unlike studying medicine, or law, there's no guarantee of anything at the end of the learning curve other than self-fulfillment.

6) Online advertising

I've run a couple ad campaigns now using Google Ad Words (both text and image) and Amazon's own advertising system. They're kind of fun and exciting to do. But results wise? Crickets.

They are, in my opinion, entirely ineffective.

This may be due to the subpar quality of my ads, or perhaps ineffective targeting. I am writing for a niche audience.

Finally, many of my ads are probably hidden by ad blockers.

But what are the numbers, you ask? People love hard numbers. I get that. I also understand that people are often reluctant, for various reasons, to give them out.

In the altruistic spirit of this post, here they are: I have spent $500 on online advertising. Sounds like a lot, right?

For the results I got, it most certainly is.

First, I did a low burn text ad campaign I put $100 of funds into. $1 per day spending limit with bids set at 10 cents max. Some cost as little as a couple cents. On top of that I added two 'blitz' campaigns I ran only when the book was free. The idea was to maximize exposure and downloads and in so doing, gain reviews that are so essential to being regarded 'seriously' (as much as a flawed system can bestow legitimacy) and getting accepted by the book promotion services.

This is where you need to have more than one book. The first acts as a loss leader and gains interest. You only start charging with the second. But I have only one book so there's a conundrum. I figured I'd give away a short story or two but Amazon has cracked down on anything 'permafree', made it more difficult to make books/short stories permafree (it's a convoluted system where you have to list the story on another service, one that allows free listings, and then report it to Amazon, only it can't be you that reports it, or some such nonsense, what a headache, never mind) and as a result I abandoned the whole pain-in-the-butt idea.

I spent $400 on the two blitzes, split the budget between text and image ads. The text ads got higher click through rates, but the image ads got much higher views.

Neither translated into sales.

You can see the image ads here. Yes, this post is just chock filled with self-references.

Some of the ads have a a decent amount of text, but then, I am selling a book. I thought they were cheeky.

Well cheeky doesn't work, bucko.

On top of all of that, I gambled $100 on Amazon ads. In fact, I had to spend $100. You can only create an Amazon campaign if you invest the hundred buck minimum. It's that or no go. As I'd not tried them, I figured it'd be worth the attempt. Try, evaluate, refine, repeat.

I saw no movement with these ads either, so I won't be doing Amazon ads again.

It's all a little embarrassing. I feel like I just showed the world my underwear.

Perhaps better ads, or better targeting would yield better results. I don't know. But if you're going to run ads, make sure you've got good ones and that you use effective, targeted keywords.

On the plus side, it was fun. Kinda like gambling your savings away in Vegas surrounded by show girls and drinking scotch is fun. Which, come to think of it, might be a down side if you get addicted to that sort of thing.

7) Promotion Services (BookBub, FreeBooksy)

Several people online have said one should never use these services, ever, that they're just a waste of money and you'd be better to invest time in Twitter and social media instead.

I found the exact opposite.

I had a promotion with FreeBooksy (it isn't free for authors, it just lists free books) and a couple others, and had tremendous success, at least relative to all my other promotion methods. I'm writing in a very niche area, and every day there are over a thousand free books available for download. Several thousand I believe.

Competition to get in the promotional newsletter to their subscribers can be intense with the most recognized ones, such as BookBub.

Obviously the service picks books according to what they feel their audience is going to enjoy reading. That means books in popular genres are more likely to be listed, as are those that have overwhelming positive feedback (reviews, ratings). The promotion service's own success depends upon their subscribers having a positive reaction to the material they promote, and every bad book that gets in damages their brand. So they are understandably picky and will veer towards mainstream sensibilities, as that will elicit the strongest and broadest positive reaction. Niche material, or anything controversial, will be riskier to promote as it has the potential to harm the service.

Smaller services are more likely to take risks in their recommendations.

There's some negativity directed at popular writers from the literary crowd. At a writer event I went to (incognito), for example, they divided books into two groups: literary and 'crap that sells'.

My book would be classified as 'crap that doesn't sell' which is the worst of both worlds.

Oops.

Personally, I enjoy reading in both areas, and I'm not about to begrudge someone for trying to make a living in a difficult market, whether it be by grants, fanfic, romance or whatever. Ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

I spent $70 on FreeBooksy (and, I think, a couple others) and got 1,500 downloads from their promotion. For a free book, mind you. And in such a crowded market, I consider that, from what else I've experienced in my self-publishing journey, very good. And from that set of free books, I got several reviews. Authors on the Kboards say you get about 1 review per 1000 copies downloaded. So I did fairly well with 4 reviews.

Reviews are necessary if you want to apply for many of these promotion services. Some require a minimum of 6 reviews and a 4 star average. A few bad reviews and you're out of consideration.

This means that there are strong incentives for people to try and game the system by having people they know give them five star reviews. And of course it is also easy to sabotage a book.

All my reviews are from strangers as almost all of the people I know don't read novels, and those who do aren't sci-fi buffs. It's ironic: they say no one reads anymore, yet there are more writers than ever.

We're just reading short articles and Twitter posts instead of novels.

Will there be a Best Twitter Post award eventually? Will the Great Tweeters rise up to take their place beside literary luminaries such as Victor Hugo, Hemingway and Poe? In a hundred years, will english classes be studying the greatest tweets alongside Shakespeare? Will anyone then have the attention span necessary to read Shakespeare, or will his plays have been translated down into 140 characters by then?

Yet, in all seriousness, Amazon sells over five billion worth of books every year. So somebody is still reading.

I got a couple more reviews by soliciting on a Google review community. So you can try that.

The majority of ebooks I've gotten out there have been given away for free, so I'm not making any money at this. My primary goal is to find readers. It will be a long term investment if it's anything.

Many authors give away their first book, just to gain traction in a crowded market. But it leads immediately to the first point, if you want it to work: WRITE ANOTHER BOOK.

There you have it.

Hope this was helpful, at least a little, and I wish you all the success with your (e)book(s)!

For some excellent advice on marketing, check out what Michael J. Sullivan and Chris Fox have to say. These are two smart cookies with lots of valuable advice.

Sullivan, for example, has this juicy morsel:

Before doing any serious marketing you need to get your Amazon reviews in the double digits. At least 10 but probably more like 12 - 15. Until you do that you, don't do any marketing of your book because people will land on your Amazon page then walk away as they don't want to take the risk if they see no or only a few ratings. See my posts above on getting reviews for tips. But bottom line: don't buy reviews, or trade reviews with other authors, get them by offering free review copies only.

Makes sense.

The Google Intelligence Agency is listening. Literally.

I certainly hope this is not for real:

"Google has been stealth downloading audio listeners onto every computer that runs Chrome, and transmits audio data back to Google. Effectively, this means that Google had taken itself the right to listen to every conversation in every room that runs Chrome somewhere, without any kind of consent from the people eavesdropped on. In official statements, Google shrugged off the practice with what amounts to “we can do that”."

I feel pressure, knowing someone could be listening. Am I going to have to make my private conversations more entertaining?

I use Google products. This blog is on Google's Blogger. It's great and it's free. Same goes for gmail.

Le sigh.

What was their motto again?

Russia building an Amusement Park of Doom -- For Real.

Patriot Park is the world's first military themed amusement park, a sprawling, 5,5000 hectare, $363 million dollar installation being built outside Moscow.

Now this is what I'm talking about: an amusement park with enough heavy weaponry to really bring the doom.

Over 5000 military designs to choose from. As Foxtrot Alpha notes, there's even a motocross.

What could possibly go wrong?

And... it's coming.

Fallout Four.

Inspired: Tank in a tennis match

This is too funny. Love the last line.

It's so good I hesitate to point out that the M1-Abrams was not a WWII tank and didn't enter service until 1980. But like Slartibardfasts name, that is not important...

Jurassic World: Dumbed Down Amusement Park of Doom

Dinosaurs. Amusement Park. Tourists. Disaster.

Jurassic World has them all.

Naturally, I had to see it.

I'm a fan of both Michael Crichton's original book and the first film. Crichton was a smart cookie, with an incredible imagination and insatiable curiosity. He dove into multiple fields, from economics to genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and the airline industry. Then he concocted stories around what he'd learned. Every book has an aside where the characters will slip into essay mode:

Bob and Ted take cover as the mysterious gunmen close in. Bullets ricochet off crates.

Bob: Dammit! Why are they trying to kill us over this DNA sample?

Ted: Well, Bob, it all started back in the 1970s, when biologists Allan M. Maxam and Walter Gilbert…

But he made it interesting.

Some people can't stand that sort of thing, and understandably so. I always found the background info he slipped in fascinating, and the story sugar coated the pill. He may not have gotten everything right (there's a lot of controversy around his book tackling climate change; he did have a contrarian streak) all the time, but he was never dull.

Even though Crichton had nothing to do with the film, I still had high hopes for Jurassic World. Surely they'd be able to build off his solid, high concept foundations.

The beginning of the movie holds much promise, and the loving Peter Jackson-esque pans over the park get your hopes up for the disaster to come. There are unquestionably great action sequences when it does: you can especially look forward to a rolling glass ball with the soft chewy children centre.

Some of the characters are annoying, true, but that's just makes it all the better when they're eaten.

Unfortunately the final act unravels into outright farce.

Chris Pratt plays Owen Grady, the affable yet bad-ass Raptor Whisperer. He's got an easy going charisma that could easily carry an iconic character like Indiana Jones. Pratt's on his way to being a full fledged Movie Star, someone who can put butts in seats just by showing up on the screen. He doesn't need to act so much as show up and be himself, like Harrison Ford and Arnold have done to great box office effect.

The other actors are okay, but their roles don't give them many opportunities to shine. The billionaire owner of the Park, Simon Masrani (Irrfan Khan) was interesting, but his role gets cut short. I wanted to see more of his eccentric Indian billionaire helicopter pilot cowboy, but sadly it wasn't to be.

In a call out to the earlier films, B. D. Wong returns as a shifty scientist who's gone bad and sold out. He should know that's dangerous, given Newman's unpleasant fate, but greed can override common sense, particularly if it helps set up a sequel.

Bryce Dallas Howard plays Claire Dearing, the uptight park manager, who initially clashes with the laid back Owen. The frisson predictably leads in a romantic direction. Claire is a buttoned down exec type who likes life itemized on a ledger, but she soon finds herself with more than budget issues on her plate. She rises to the action occasion, which is great, but in one of the key scenes of the film, she prioritizes fashion over being practical. It's like self-preservation lost out to Manolo's.

It was an unintentionally jaw dropping moment, and not in a 'wow, those look like real dinosaurs' kind of way.

The film tries to flesh out Claire's character by throwing in her two nephews (someone and another kid), who do double duty as McGuffins that must be rescued. We get to see that Claire cares. Sort of. After a bit and mostly because we need Claire to get down into the jungle and out of the air conditioned control room, which is a boring place with lots of screens and comfortable chairs and nerds.

Claire dragoons Owen to the task, because he's Mr. Great Outdoors, and our odd couple set off across dino island to find The Lost Boys. It reminded me briefly of The African Queen for some strange reason, but Humphrey Boggart and Katharine Hepburn they are not.

Worse, Vincent D'Onofrio shows up as Hoskins, a villainous representative of the military-industrial complex angling to weaponize velociraptors. He's all sneers and scenery chewing, so obviously evil he's got a goatee. D'Onofrio does it well (he's a very good actor) but the evil plan he's been saddled with by the writers makes no sense at all. None. Zero. Nada. Honestly, it's one of the stupidest plans I've ever seen in a movie. He's going to use the raptors as weapons, you see. Just release them and hope they'll go after the deadliest predator on the island rather than the thousands of soft, yummy tourists.

I kid you not.

The 'plan' (sort like the Cylons had a plan) depends entirely on wishful thinking, as Hoskins has no means of controlling the beasts without the help of Owen, Chris Pratt's dino-whisperer. Owen is essential to the plan, but that doesn't stop Hoskins from threatening to proceed, with or without the guy.

Hoskins just has the worst people management skills. He needs to watch some HR videos.

If only Owen had said no. What would Hoskins have done but blubber and beg? He should have called Hoskin's bluff, but then, he's an action man and not the brightest bulb in the box. But he does empathize with the raptor urge to… unh unh, yeah baby. This emotional connection to our proto-terror birds, being recognized as the raptor Alpha, is key to the film's climax, in which Owen must out macho Indominus.

Fortunately, the evil, genetically engineered megaraptor, Indominus Rex, is much smarter than the bumbling, corpulent Hoskins. And most of the other humans on the island. As an effective, relatively competent villain, Indomo wrecks havoc all over the park, threatening the lives of all twenty-thousand tourists who are packed into Isla Nubar's posh resort.

Yum yum.

Be a good time for the smarter tourists to start moving inward, towards the center of the crowd. After all, Indomo is likely to be full after the first hundred tourists or so, right? Just how many people can it and a half-dozen escaped velociraptors eat?

The director, Colin Trevorrow, said in interviews that he wanted the dinosaurs to act like real animals, not cartoon monsters. Quelle surprise! I had no idea, as he has well-fed winged dinos (or near enough to dinos) go on a crazed orgy of violence against hapless tourists. Why? Because cool action sequence!

And it was.

Although I have to mention that one poor soul is treated to the most outlandishly elongated death sequence I've ever seen, and all to no end. This sort of thing is usually reserved for the worst of the worst villains. It didn't justify anything, paid nothing back, and offered no comeuppance. It was just gleeful indulgence in the sadistic torture and killing of an utterly hapless person for the purpose of our entertainment. Hey, I'm down with that, I watch plenty of violence on screen, but this was just weird.

Which brings us to the final act. Turn off your brain before it begins, because it's utterly preposterous.

Yes, I know, we're not supposed to demand sense from a movie about an amusement park filled with genetically engineered dinosaurs. I get it. People have analyzed the costs, and the economics of such a park just wouldn't work out. It's silly to begin with. Honestly, though, my standards really aren't that high for logic. But there were just too many blackboard scratching moments that took me out of the movie.

If you engage your inner eleven year old and suspend disbelief, you'll likely enjoy this action packed summer blockbuster. But be forewarned: there are speed bumps for your brain. Script logic hiccups. If you don't turn off your noggin', you'll start asking questions and won't be able to stop.

It didn't have to be like that.

The first movie proved you could have a smart script and dinosaurs in the same movie. The IQ of the series dropped with each outing. The first one had chaos theory and amber and DNA extraction and cleverness up the whazoo. What does this one have? Hackneyed ideas of weaponized raptors with no control mechanisms, a clunky plot, and characters so smart they run from T-Rex's wearing high heels.

They could have had electrical implants in the heads of the raptors, stimulating nerves to control their behaviour. Scientists are already doing this sort of experimentation with insects, using impulses to direct the bugs left and right. Crichton even wrote about controlling human behavior with implants in The Terminal Man. So it's not like a more sensible, logical, compelling foundation couldn't have been laid if they'd bothered. It'd be smarter, more interesting, and add another angle to the franchise.

Whatever.

Programmed… for Death!

io9 has an article about how organisms are programmed to age and die as an evolutionary adaptation.

One of the researchers, Bar-Yam, believes that this aging process may be reversed. From what I've read, however, this is highly unlikely ('all the low hanging fruit have been picked'), but it's certainly an interesting idea.

Life extension always reminds me of Isaac Asimov, who described a struggle between long lived, risk adverse Spacers and their more numerous, shorter lived, breeder adversaries, known as the Settlers, in his Robot novels. The robots, naturally, were produced by the aloof, elitist Spacers, who needed manpower. Rather than opening up their perfectly ordered new worlds to immigration and letting in the teeming masses from the overcrowded, dying earth, they made synthetic laborers.

It's a fascinating series, and later in life he connected it to Foundation.

As we see demographic transition accelerate and life extension technology becomes a reality, will the world split into fecund, short lived societies and long lived, sterile immortal ones? Or will it be class based? Isn't that the dream of every despot? To rule for all eternity, forever on top, with disposable masses crushed beneath. Which just reminds me of Stargate.

One thing Asimov showed quite well is how changes in one area (say, life span) will affect many others. He was a writer who explored consequences.

Game of Thrones: The Mother's Mercy Review

Season Five ended on a high. At the top of a cliff. Or rather dangling from one.

It's all about revenge.

Brienne finally had hers: she executes 'King' Stannis to avenge the death of Renly Baratheon, whom she was sworn to protect. It restores her personal honor and lets poor Renly rest easy.

At the same time, her revenge drove her to kill the one man capable (supposedly) of saving the world. So there is, or was, a potential, possible down side. A world destroying biggie of a down side, really, had the prophecy not been bogus. And she missed out on saving Sansa, which was more important, as Stannis would have just frozen to death anyway.

Fortunately Sansa's got agency of her own.

I must admit I thought Stannis' final fall would be dragged out over a few more episodes, during which he'd become increasingly disillusioned and demented before being ignominiously decapitated.

But like Stannis, the show runners felt the need to keep… pushing… forward.

His end resolves the moral dilemma presented by the prophecy promoted by Melisandra, that Stannis, being the one true king, was the only one who could save the world from the White Walkers, and because of that, human sacrifice was justified.

That meant the 'good guys' who were going to save the world were justified in burning heretics alive and sacrificing little kids. After all, magic worked. It wasn't just loony superstition. In Martin's fantasy world, the Carthaginians would have been right to burn kids alive to guarantee victory over Rome.

Except it doesn't work.

Not in the real world, and apparently not in the fantasy world either.

If it did, well, again, there's the moral dilemma. What lessons do you draw from a show that endorses human sacrifice? Sure, it's a fantasy world, but part of the reason we tell stories is to illustrate how to live a good life.

We learn from stories.

Having Stannis victorious after sacrificing Shireen, indeed, BECAUSE of sacrificing her, would be rather problematic, even for a cable show. People would go, 'ew'.

Even within the fantasy world, the burning seems to have freaked out his sell swords, who deserted Stannis, taking all the horses. Realization finally hits Mel in the face: this guy is a loser. She quickly abandoned ship, leaving Stannis to lead his soldiers to their inevitable deaths.

Nasty.

A colossal waste of manpower and lives.

Stannis' final battle was utterly pointless, an exercise in form, a front. Good manners. Doing his duty mattered more than the life of his daughter, his soldiers, or even his own.

It is possible Stannis is still alive, of course, as the final blow was not shown. Why she'd refrain from killing him I don't know, given how she'd sworn on her honor to do so, but it would serve as a nice opposite to Arya's indulgence in sadism. Martin likes to juxtapose things, both themes and characters, so having one chose the higher path while the other takes the low road would make sense. Think Varys vs. Littlefinger, Cersei vs. Ned, Thorne vs. Jon, Mel vs. Onion, and Slave Owner Dude vs. Danny.

I'm just not sure it would make sense for Brienne in this situation.

So the new question is: where does Melisandra go from here? It's now evident that Stannis' death, perhaps his whole journey, is a learning point for her. It may instigate character growth. That or she's soon for the grave as well.

She's the one who pushed Stannis to burn people alive. She promised he'd win the throne.

And she was dead wrong.

It says something about the nature of magic in the World of Westeros. Spells may work, but prophecies are still written by lawyers. What you think you're getting is not what you really get.

What was the fine print at the bottom of all her fire visions? Was she simply so blinded by her own biases, her own faith in Stannis, that she ignored her god's message? Or is her god wrong? Is she a false prophet?

Where Stannis was always riven by doubt, she was certain. Now, she's been shaken.

I suspect that we'll see her team up now with Jon Snow. As a priestess, she can bring people back from the dead, and she needs that hero to save the world.

But if she does, she may find that Jon Snow is not as willing to compromise his morals when it comes to burning people alive.

Martin has to be given a lot of credit for zigging when people think he'll zag. Just when we think a story line will be wrapped up with a nice moral bow, he reverses, has the 'hero' beheaded, and the world thrown into chaos.

He does this just enough that, honestly, I don't feel I can predict which way things in the show will go. I knew Stannis would come to a dark end, but given all the prophecy stuff, thought he'd be at least around to meet the White Walkers. Of all the leaders in Westeros, he's the only one taking the threat seriously. Or even really aware of it.

The death of Jon Snow, betrayed by the short sighted Night's Watch, was a real jab to the heart. He was our leading man in the North, our young Santa Claus, the action man capable of fighting off the Walkers and Wights. His death leaves too big a hole in the show, and as such, I suspect he'll be back, either Berric Dondarian style, or like The Mountain. I suspect more like Berric, as The Mountain looks like he's pretty gross under that helmet, and it would dash Jon's sex appeal.

But the Night's Watch have really hobbled themselves with this one. Jon was a good leader, and he'd brought in the Wildlings to help resist the Walkers. Even killed one. Who will be liaison now between the two groups? Who can get them to cooperate, who isn't dead? To fulfill their anger, to sate their hate, they've slit their own throats.

That's the price of their revenge.

I'm not too concerned: Jon Snow will be back.

When Jamie and his neice/daughter left Dorne, you knew the instant she was given a kiss on the lips that she was doomed. Poisoned. I'd have thought they'd turn the ship around straight away for the antidote. You'd think the young prince would keep some on himself at all times, given how obsessed these Dorne nobles are with poisoning people. They seem to do it all the time, for kicks. They probably poison their sibling's birthday cakes, then give the antidote as a present.

You know, for fun.

As it is, the young prince is likely headed off into captivity, as a hostage for the Lannisters.

So her revenge will beget further revenge, and two nations will be plunged into war, just when everyone has to unite to oppose the Walkers, all because people are so consumed with anger and hate they can't see past it.

How ruinous revenge often is.

Arya's revenge upon Meryn Trant was initially satisfying, given he was a real monster, but as it went on, it became uglier and uglier. There's something dehumanizing about it, and how far Arya was willing to go. Not good for the soul to embrace hate so close. Still, you can entirely understand why she did it, that she had very good reasons for doing so, and that his death was deserved, even if the manner of it was, well, pretty horrible.

It was the way Joffrey deserved to go.

Be careful what you wish for. When we finally got a harsh punishment for a nasty piece of work, it has a vile after taste.

I suspect Arya will be descending into even darker places unless her blindness and the belief her actions almost got Jaqen killed brings her back from the brink. She's got more lessons to learn.



Cersei's walk of shame is undoubtably going to lead to a great big orgiastic feast of revenge. At least, I expect her to make a damn good try of it. She's going to be out for the High Sparrow's head, along with half the city. Especially with her undead Mountain as enforcer. I don't expect Tommen to survive it all. That hapless, sweet little kid isn't long for this world, thanks largely to the machinations of his mother. Cersei's flaws, one way or another, will be the cause of his death. Will she recognize the irony? Probably not.

Was her walk of shame the god's revenge for her impious actions? Can her punishment even be described as revenge, or should it be seen as medieval justice? Karma? Where do you draw the line?

At Winterfell, Theon/Reek grows some virtual balls and saves Sansa from that nasty little stable girl, Myranda, who wants revenge upon Sansa for muscling in on her hawt sadomasochistic Ramsay action. She goes spinning over the rail and meets swift justice at the hands of a paving stone.

Yay paving stone!

Then Sansa and Reek are off jumping into snow banks. I hope there's nothing sharp under all that fluffy white stuff.

If they're caught by Ramsay, well, there'll be more revenge to be meted out. Season long torture porn revenge. Maybe two seasons worth if he's really pissed.

It's one of the wheels that keeps Westeros spinning.

As much fun as it is hating the guy, I hope he meets Mr. Paving Stone soon.

Now it's back to the post-apocalypse, at least until next year.

Game of Thrones: A Dance of Dragons

Stannis goes The Full Evil, and Danerys has a Kodak moment.

Both of these leaders have been struggling to balance their personal beliefs with the harsh demands of ruling the unruly.

Stannis, the stickler, often inflicts harsh punishments for crimes, and does so with unwavering certainty and not a jot of mercy.

He's also a grammar Nazi.

He's been chucking his morals away ever since he met Melissandre, who brings out the brother-killing-heathen-frying worst in him.

The Onion Knight, the angel of his better nature, finally lost the fight for Stannis' soul last night.

Heaven help anyone who uses improper conjugation now.

His character has been struggling between light and dark for several seasons now, and he's been frequently leaning dark. Certainly more than his closest rival, Danerys.

Speaking of whom, she soared last night.

Literally.

She climbed atop the back of her dragon and left her friends in the dust, to be murdered by the Harpies. Just kidding. I'm sure they're okay, even in the high casualty world of GoT.

Danny abolished slavery and imprisoned two of her dragons to prevent them from snacking on shepherd kids, but for the sake of social stability opened up the fighting pits again. She's trying to go along to get along, condoning and presiding over people hacking each other to death for her amusement, which repulses her.

That reaction would sadly have been atypical in the period we're looking at. Cruelty, torture, and violence were extremely common and accepted back then. People flocked to the Coloseum to see gladiators butcher each other, and animals tear criminals to pieces. Such games were enormously popular, and wouldn't be abandoned until the Christian movement began to take hold late in the era of the Roman Empire. Understandably so, as the Christians were often unwilling participants in the arena. By the time the more violent games were shut down, historian Matthew White estimates some 3.5 million people had died for amusement's sake.

And people criticize video games.

G.R.R. Martin is well versed in history and myth, so there's precedent for much of what we see in Game of Thrones. Agamemnon sacrificed a daughter on the way to Troy. Royal brothers frequently murdered each other, just as Stannis had Renly killed.

All the sadism we're seeing is a part of human history, and we do a disservice to our modern times by forgetting how far we've come. If anything, Martin and HBO are holding back.

Thankfully they didn't actually show footage of Shireen going up in flames.

Surprisingly, it was her religious fanatic mother who broke down and tried to intervene.

Burning people at the stake repulses us, as viewers. A thousand years ago, it was a form of entertainment. People would bring their kids to watch people being burned or drawn and quartered.

Stannis has a tragic aspect, like Shakespeare's MacBeth. He's a man who started out with potential, and a conscience, and let it whittle away.

There's no going back now. He's done. Committed to the dark side. Dead in the hearts of the audience.

He's going to come to a very bad end.

Too bad he's not Anakin Skywalker. That guy was forgiven for slaughtering younglings and worse.

Danny, on the other hand, still has potential. Paired with Tyrion, we're looking at Team Projection. These two are the ones our modern sensibilities map onto best, and they, along with Jon Snow, will be the ones who drive the show home and win the day. Everyone else is expendable. Except maybe Bran, who's busy turning into a tree. Don't ask.

What interests me now is the horrible moral calculus going on. Mel insists that only Stannis can stop the White Walkers. Since he must triumph to save humanity, any sacrifice to that end is justifiable, or so she would claim

Of course, that's the excuse that every fanatic uses. 'My cause is just so I can commit any sin I like.'

It's for truth and justice and the Westeros way, after all.

Is Martin going to pull the rug out from under this narrative?

We know the Lord of Light, or something, bestows power upon Mel and that drunk priest who's always resurrecting the poor guy who's always being hacked to bits by the Clegane Clan.

Is Rhulor or Ruhlyr or whatever it's called really the one true god, or just another supernatural dick who's yanking humanity's chain around, like the White Walkers are? Are we just looking at two adolescent gods who happen to be jerks?

Wasn't that a Star Trek episode?

I know Danny will be there for the final battle, along with Tyrion and Jon Snow. Even that significant touch by Jorah, the absent minded douche, will not stop her from attending.

I doubt Stannis will, but if he does, he'll die there.

The most interesting question to me, as far as Stan and Mel are concerned, is the validity of her prophecy: is Stan really necessary to stop the Walkers, is all of it a lie? Did he kill all those people for nothing?

Who's the most evil character on Game of Thrones?

This is a toughie.

There are lots of rotters on the show (and I'm explicitly discussing the television adaptation here), from icicle Night Kings to face swapping assassins and sadistic tyrants.

Complicating things further is how you define evil. Is evil in the intent, or the outcome? Is it the scale of the horrors inflicted, or the depths of sadism reached?

We'll try and balance between the two.

Without further ado, here are the candidates and their tongue-in-cheek rating:

"Hey baby, I'm the king. Want to go torture some kittens with me?"

King Joffrey
One of the most hated characters on television in his prime, King Joffrey was our go-to guy for on-screen cruelty. He was a petty, vicious little sadist, and therein lies his saving grace: he thought small.

Going out of the castle and conquering and exterminating entire peoples was out of his comfort zone. He'd be perfectly happy staying home, eating cake and torturing people to death.

Think about all the nasty little things he wanted to do to Sansa, such as presenting Rob Stark's head to her in a box at their wedding. Clearly the little inbred bugger put a lot of thought into that idea. He was inordinately proud of it.

He liked to torment the people around him, emotionally and physically, and the intimacy of their individual level suffering is what he fed off of. The bigger stuff was just a distraction from his real, petty interests.

Besides that, he was a sniveling coward.

So while Joffrey is still my favorite character to hate on the show, his evil is narrow, petty, and small in scope. He's most dangerous to the people in his immediate sphere of influence, not necessarily to the country as a whole, which he mostly left to his grandfather, Tywin, to administer.

Evil Grade: A-

"What do you mean? I AM smiling."

Tywin Lannister
A nasty piece of work, Tywin was smart enough to reign in his viler impulses, subordinating them to a sense of duty and obligation to family. He hated and detested Tyrion, for example, but refrained from killing him because he believed family ties took precedent. This restraint makes him one of G.R.R. Martin's most interesting creations.

A Machiavellian long term thinker, Tywin was tremendously effective and made alliances with his enemies whenever it suited his purposes, then broke them when they didn't. He advanced the interests of the Lannisters Clan with tireless, ruthless, methodical efficiency and got Joffrey, his grandson, seated on the Iron Throne.

A spiritually ugly person, personally immoral and politically amoral, he nevertheless had an interest in maintaining peace and stability in Westeros. He would be what is referred to as a 'Stationary Bandit': it was in his interest to protect the lives of the citizenry. He can't tax dead people. Only the White Walkers can do that.

So he doesn't make the cut either.

Evil Grade: B+

"Don't you know who I am?"

Cersei Lannister
Nasty, petty, and mean, Cersei believes herself immune to repercussions due to her position of status and power. Her thwarted ego makes her feel simultaneously both persecuted and privileged. More focused on small slights and winning control over her brood, Cersei lacks the reptilian emotional disconnect of her father, and is positively indignant when she doesn't get her way. She believes she can play with the best power brokers, but she is too focused on short term gain, and inclined to let emotion taint her judgement. She arms the faith militant, for example, which gains her immediate benefit (bringing down her rival for Tommen's favour) but at a huge long term cost.

Unlike Tywin, she's not able to parse consequences clearly, and as a result hobbles herself.

She wants what she wants when she wants it. And that's generally where her thinking ends.

On the other hand, she did have her husband King Robert murdered, setting into motion a chain of events that would convulse Westeros and lead to tens of thousands of deaths. So that counts for something.

Evil Grade: C+

Oh Ramsay, you are such a wag.

Ramsay Bolton 
A man who gives Joffrey a run for his money in terms of sheer depravity. Ramsay is more hands on than Joffrey, and takes greater risks. He's willing to get his hands dirty, get down in the muck and blood and hack heads off. He enjoys hunting human beings. He spent an entire season torturing Theon, cut the fallen aristocrat's wang off, and then ate a sausage in front of him. Don't say he hasn't got a sense of humor.

But like Joffrey, Ramsay is limited by his own petty, sadistic pursuits. He'll get his hands dirty if he has to, but he'd much prefer to spend his time inflicting emotional and physical pain on people under his immediate control. Every season he spends torturing one guy in his keep is one season less he spends laying waste to the countryside. Nor does he initiate high level action, unless it is practically forced upon him.

He's not a strategic thinker.

He's got potential, though, and his story hasn't yet been brought to a close.

But the odds are against him.

He's clever, not smart.

Evil Grade: A-

Even he looks bored.

Roose Bolton
The man holding Ramsay's leash, he's a colorless calculating machine who'll do whatever is necessary to advance the interests of his house. Practical and opportunistic, but not a high level manipulator. He parasites advantage off the machinations of his betters.

He's got the imagination of a brick, and everything he does is reactive.

A harsh ruler, he just lacks the depraved zeal for evil of Ramsay or Joffrey, although flaying people alive as a house practice takes him from a C to a C+.

Evil Grade: C+

The alpha ape stare.

Gregor Clegane
Otherwise known as The Mountain, Gregor is a beast of a man, but ultimately he's just hired muscle. He might as well have mush for a brain, because he's just going to do what Tywin tells him. Of course, Tywin's a good judge of men, and he knows what Gregor is good for: raping, killing, pillaging, burning, and busting sh*t up. The Mountain enjoys it, and Tywin has need for it. It's win-win. The Mountain is a tool for enforcing the Lannister 'peace', nothing more.

Interestingly, the difference between the living Gregor and the undead, Dr. Franken-Maester monster Gregor is mostly in the complexion.

Evil Grade: C+

"Big brother barbequed my face."

Sandor Clegane (The Hound)
A brute and a thug who believed he lived in a dog-eat-dog world, and had the experience to back up that cynical world view. His brother shoved his face in a fire when he was a kid for taking a toy, and his dad didn't seem to have much of a problem with that. But he grew and grew and went on to be an enforcer for the Lannister clan, like his big bro. He's seen, and done, nasty stuff. While no one would ever call him refined or tender or particularly nice, he had a conscience.

Evil Grade: E

Should I have the chicken, or the beef? Where are my advisors when I need them?

Stannis Baratheon
Stannis is a stiff, colorless and uninspiring. When growing up and playing with his brothers, you can imagine he was always the last kid to be picked to be king. Ambitious and rigid and a stickler for the rules, Stannis is torn between ambition and entitlement and what remains of his tortured conscience. Stannis internalizes events. He can psyche himself up to commit evil acts if he convinces himself it necessary (killing his brother, burning heretics alive, including his wife's brother. Best not to be a brother around Stannis), but his conscience always comes back and nags him.

I'm betting the guy doesn't sleep very well.

He's willing to listen to advice, which is wise, and relies heavily on two people: Melissandre (dressed in blood red) and The Onion Knight. One represents ambition and power and the other conscience and decency.

Eventually Stannis will break with one of them.

The great complicating factor here is that Melissandre believes the real struggle is going to be against the White Walkers. The fire god obviously has a role to play in this battle (as do a certain three dragons), with the fate of humanity at stake. So one could argue that the small scale evils Mel demands (all the human sacrifice, burning people alive, killing your brothers) are small potatoes when the lives of everyone on the planet are at stake. Very Cabin in the Woods. And 'The needs of the many outweigh…'

As is typical, Stannis hasn't made his final decision yet, but I suspect he will have to sooner or later, pushing his grade up or down.

Ultimately, I suspect he's just too conflicted to really, wholeheartedly endorse a path of untrammeled evil.

UPDATE: Wow, was that the wrong call. Mel did warn him he'd have to betray everything he'd ever loved to be king, in which case, why would you want to?

But Stan ruhly, ruhly wants to be king.

I wonder if it will taste like ashes?

Evil Grade: A

"I wants it, I wants it right now. Now, now, NOW!"

Viserys Targaryen
Mad, bad, and entitled, Viserys would have been a great monster if he'd been given the chance to bloom into full adult awfulness. Unlike Joffrey and Ramsay, Vis thought big. And he was a selfish, egomaniacal brat, a preening narcissist who he was willing to sell his own sister into sex slavery to advance his own bid for the Iron Throne. I mean, this guy literally pimped out his sister to conquer the world.

He combined the best of micro and macro level evil.

If he'd managed to lead the Dothraki back into Westeros, you can be sure he would not have been kind to the people he conquered.

There's just one problem: Viserys was an impatient idiot with the emotional sophistication of a five year old. And there are inanimate objects smarter than he was.

His irrepressible sense of entitlement and gargantuan emotional need for recognition and power vastly exceeded his ability, and he just couldn't wait to grow into his ambition. He wanted everything now, now, NOW. Ultimately his ADD egomania undermined and cut short a very promising career in evil.

Sure, petulance and lack of self-control got him a gold crown; it just wasn't the kind he was looking for.

Badly fumbled.

All need, no ability.

Evil Grade: D for dumb

"Would you like to see my boobies?"

Melisandre
A sorceress ('She's a witch!'), dedicated to the Lord of Light, Stannis Baratheon the-one-true-king, and burning people alive, Melisandre likes to screw people and produce murderous shadow demon babies. No one uses sex as a weapon quite like our red hot religious fundamentalist tamale. Or rather, the offspring of sex as weapons.

And yet, ultimately she may be acting to save humanity from extinction, if her one-true-god really is true and a god. The Lord of Light is not a nice god, however, demanding human sacrifice and burning heretics at the stake. But if you have to choose between total extermination at the hands of the White Walkers and the loss of a few gay aristocrats to leeches and shadow demon babies, well, I imagine most people in Westeros are willing to have a few less in the ruling class.

Cabin in the Woods, however, made the opposite choice, picking total extermination.

It's an interesting and ugly moral question: how morally compromised can you be and keep living?

In the world of Westeros, pretty damned f*cking compromised.

But it doesn't get Melisandre any higher a grade.

She's a servant, acting not for her own glory or advancement, but on the instruction of higher powers. She expends lives when it is useful, and is intolerant of other faiths.

Of course, Melisandre's god may just be an evil poseur, and the real salvation will come in the form of Danerys and her dragons. I'm not sure that would surprise me. But Game of Thrones leans dark, so…

Evil Grade: C+

"My distant ancestors will become used car salesmen."

Littlefinger
Now here's a guy who marries Machiavelli with the impish charisma of a Baltimore politician. He seems so obsequious, like the Brit star of the original House of Cards. So unctuous he sets your teeth on edge, yet at the same time he's manipulating rings around you.

If Ned Stark thought one step ahead, Cersei thinks two steps ahead, Danerys thinks five steps ahead, and Tywin thinks ten steps ahead, then Littlefinger thinks a hundred ahead. He's figuring out the end of the chess game from your first move.

Littlefinger has been manipulating events in Westeros from the very beginning. He was in on getting Robert Baratheon assassinated (which got the whole bloodbath-brawl for the crown going), betrayed and brought down Ned Stark, and helped kill King Joffrey. He's had his sticky little digits in just about every murderous machination in the last five seasons.

G.R.R. Martin has set up Littlefinger and Varys as polar opposite manipulators in the Royal Court: Varys represents order, and Littlefinger chaos. It was spelled out in no uncertain terms when the two sparred over their visions for the country in an otherwise empty throne room. Littlefinger says flat out he views chaos 'as a ladder' and as such seeks to foster and benefit from it as much as possible.

And he's right. Chaos is a ladder. A mechanism for injecting murderous psychopaths into the very top rungs of society, because the rules fall into abeyance, social niceties no longer need be obeyed, and the most ruthless and cutthroat can unleash their inner monster and let it run roughshod over the world. Which is why someone as conniving, ruthless, amoral, ambitious and manipulative like Littlefinger likes disrupting the status quo. The system would otherwise freeze him out.

As an outsider, Littlefinger had no chance of ruling Westeros. Under King Robert, it was unipolar. By killing the king, the country became multipolar, divided, and chaos unfolded. Pieces were removed from the board one by one in a very bloody process, as we've seen unfold over the last three seasons.

Now he's closer to actual power than he ever was before.

Littlefinger's willing to murder both intimates and faceless millions so long as it advances his agenda and clears out the corrupt aristocracy in the process.

But he cannot be trusted at all.

Littlefinger is smarter than Tyrion, more manipulative than Cersei, more ruthless than Tywin, more charismatic than Roose, more likable than Ned, and more resourceful than Varys.

Unlike many of the other characters, Littlefinger has taken a weak hand and turned it into a strong one. He's like the McGyver of chaos, able to bring down governments using an elastic band and piece of chewing gum. His competitors, such as Joffrey, wouldn't be able to seize power and influence unless it was handed directly to them.

Littlefinger creates opportunity (ie. chaos).

He's the uber character, and the recent wars in Westeros wouldn't have happened without him.

Unfortunately, Littlefinger's incredible skill set make him come across more as a plot device, an engine to move the plot forward, than a real human being. Ultimately he is too cool a cucumber, too perfect in his manipulations to seem fully real compared to flawed, fallible characters around him. His abilities are preternatural, and his inside knowledge of the world seems more like that of the writer himself than a character contained within it.

He's flat.

But that's just a quibble.

Evil Grade: A+

"Yeah, that's right, look what I can do, biatch."

The Night King
The big bad of the entire series, the 'ice' in A Song of Ice and Fire, the Night King's full potential is yet untapped. He hasn't had more than two or three scenes in five seasons, so his ability to express his inner evil has been seriously limited. Stuck in the barren tundra, he hasn't been given the opportunity to shine, at least, not yet.

The question is whether or not we should judge him as a character or as a force of nature. We know so little of the White Walkers. What are they? Can we judge them as humans, or are their interests so different that the ordinary rules no longer apply? Do they think, or just act? Does the guy even talk?

Does it even matter?

His capacity for destruction is obviously great, as we saw with the zombie avalanche last week. But what about betrayal? Lies? Deceit? Sadism? Cruelty? All those evil things. Does this guy do anything other than kill people and raise them up from the dead to kill more people? That's evil, but it's kind of boring, one-minded evil.

I mean, why is he even doing this? Will we ever know? Does he even know? Does George?

I suspect the White Walkers are more of a primordial force, an expression of Thanatos itself, much as The Lord of Light is an expression of fire, the passion of life, which puts them outside our usual moral evaluations.

The effect of a meteor strike might be described as evil, but as a force of nature there was never any intent. It had no choice. No free will.

The lack of motivation and the single-mindedness of The Night King's actions makes him less interesting than Littlefinger, his nearest human competitor.

The worst thing would be if Littlefinger became The Night King.

Now that would be delightfully bad.

Being determined and focused in your evil can be a good thing for a villain, but The Night King takes this too far and becomes less interesting because of it.

Evil Grade: A

So there you have it.

Littlefinger is, hands down, the most evil man in Westeros. He's a medieval fantasy world mish-mash of Machiavelli, Josef Stalin, Mao, and Hitler all rolled into one compact, mousy package.