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Thora Birch

Thora Birch (born March 11, 1982) is an American actress, producer, and director. She made her feature film debut in 1988 with a starring role in Purple People Eater, for which she received a Young Artist Award for "Best Actress Under Nine Years of Age". Birch rose to prominence as a child star during the 1990s through a string of parts in films such as Paradise (1991), Patriot Games (1992), Hocus Pocus (1993), Monkey Trouble (1994), Now and Then (1995), and Alaska (1996). Her breakthrough into adult-oriented roles came with her portrayal of Jane Burnham in American Beauty (1999), for which she was nominated for that year's BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress.

Birch received further acclaim—and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress—for starring as Enid Coleslaw in the cult hit Ghost World (2001), and was nominated for an Emmy Award for her work in the 2003 television film Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story. Her other film credits during the 2000s included Dungeons & Dragons (2000), The Hole (2001), Silver City (2004), and Dark Corners (2006). Birch took a break from acting after producing and starring in the 2012 film Petunia; she returned in 2016 and has since appeared in various independent features, such as The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019). From 2019–2020, she played the role of Mary (aka "Gamma") on the tenth season of AMC's The Walking Dead.

In 2022, Birch made her directorial debut with the Lifetime television film The Gabby Petito Story. She will make her feature directorial debut with an adaptation of Elmore Leonard's novel Mr. Paradise, making her the first woman to direct a Leonard adaptation.

Early life
Birch was born in Los Angeles, California, to Jack Birch and Carol Connors, ex-pornographic film actors who both appeared in 1972's Deep Throat. She is of German-Jewish, Scandinavian, French-Canadian and Italian ancestry. Her forename is derived from that of Norse god of thunder and lightning, "Thor", which would have been her name if she had been born a boy. She has a younger brother, Bolt Birch.

Because of their own experience with the entertainment industry, Birch's parents were reluctant to encourage her to act, but were persuaded to show Birch's photograph to talent agents by a babysitter who noticed her imitating commercials. Birch got her first big break at the age of four, when the babysitter accompanied her to a successful audition for a Quaker Oats commercial.

1988–1998: Television work and film breakthrough
Birch appeared in commercials in the late 1980s for Burger King, California Raisins, Quaker Oats, and Vlasic Pickles. She made her film debut as Molly Johnson in the 1988 science fiction comedy Purple People Eater, for which she received a Young Artist Award in the category of "Best Young Actress Under Nine Years of Age". That same year, she guest-starred in an episode of Doogie Howser, M.D., and was cast in the regular role of Molly on the NBC sitcom Day By Day. The show ran for two seasons and earned Birch a further two Young Artist nominations.

In 1990, Birch was cast in a principal role on Parenthood, a sitcom based on the 1989 film of the same name, which ran for a single season on NBC. Next, she co-starred as Billie Pike in the 1991 drama Paradise, with Roger Ebert commenting in his review for the Chicago Sun-Times that Birch played the role with "strong, simple charm". She appeared in the festive comedy All I Want for Christmas that same year, playing a girl who schemes to reunite her divorced parents. The film was a moderate financial success, but found an audience on television and home video in subsequent years. She then co-starred as the daughter of Jack Ryan in the spy thriller Patriot Games (1992), a commercial success which grossed US$178 million at the worldwide box office.

At age 11, Birch appeared in the Halloween-set fantasy film Hocus Pocus (1993), playing Dani Dennison, the younger sister of a teenage boy who inadvertently resurrects a trio of witches. Making US$39 million in the U.S. (against a budget of US$28 million), Hocus Pocus was not considered a financial success, but quickly developed a sizeable cult following due to strong home video sales and television re-runs. "I think the most surreal thing is that it keeps getting more popular instead of the other way around", Birch later said, while admitting the experience was "the most amount of fun I've ever had on a set".

In the 1994 comedy Monkey Trouble, Birch portrayed a girl who befriends a Capuchin monkey. In a positive review for the Austin Chronicle, Marjorie Baumgarten observed that Birch's "nuanced performance (a rarity amongst child performers) no doubt lends Monkey Trouble its realistic touch". That same year, she reprised her Patriot Games role in its sequel, Clear and Present Danger, which grossed over US$215 million globally. She was then cast as "Teeny" Tercell in the 1995 coming-of-age drama Now and Then. The film was largely dismissed by critics upon release, but has since been recognised as a milestone of its genre. Next, Birch headlined the adventure film Alaska (1996), playing one of two siblings who cross the Alaskan wilderness in search of their lost father. The Austin Chronicle found it to be a "decent kids' adventure movie" with an "impeccable" performance by Birch. For the next two years, she did not appear on film but guest-starred in episodes of Promised Land and Touched by an Angel.

1999–2003: Transition to adult roles
Birch appeared in several projects in 1999: firstly, the made-for-television film Night Ride Home, where she played a teenager grieving the loss of her older brother. Writing for Variety, David Kronke called it "a thoughtful and sensitive examination of how a family copes with grief", and said of the performances, "De Mornay … digs deep and comes up with a character that seems true; Burstyn and Birch competently complement [her]". Next, she played the small, uncredited role of Mary in Anywhere but Here.

Birch's portrayal of insecure teenager Jane Burnham in American Beauty, Sam Mendes' dark dramedy about the struggles of a middle class household, was roundly praised by critics, with Peter Travers of Rolling Stone writing that she  with grown-up radiance". The performance earned her a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actress, while the film was the recipient of the 1999 Academy Award for Best Picture and grossed over US$356 million worldwide,  emerging as the biggest commercial success of Birch's career to date. She later said of the experience, "There was a lot of therapy involved … A lot of opening up and sharing things from our own lives about why we related to these characters. Everybody brought a lot of themselves to it. I know Annette did a lot of research about women becoming obsessed with the self-help realm. Kevin was working out obsessively and already in the headspace of [his character] Lester, even in rehearsals. And then there was Wes, Mena and I, who were these kids just incredibly excited to be there and watching [these] masters at their craft — just trying to absorb as much as we could from them".

Following the success of American Beauty, Birch appeared in two films released in 2000: low-budget drama The Smokers, in which Birch was called "a scene-stealer" by The Hollywood Reporter, and Dungeons & Dragons, a poorly-received adaptation of the fantasy role-playing game of the same name. British horror film The Hole came next, where she starred as Elizabeth Dunn, a devious schoolgirl who lures her friends into an underground bunker. In a mixed review for Variety, Derek Elley stated that Birch gave "an effectively creepy lead [performance]", but called the film "clunky" in its "attempt to merge the psychothriller and teen movie genres".

Birch's next project was the satirical 2001 comedy Ghost World, directed by Terry Zwigoff. Based on the graphic novel of the same name, the film was released to an enthusiastic critical reception and developed a loyal cult following. James Berardinelli found Birch's part to be her "first effectively developed role" since American Beauty, commending the actress for the "quirkiness [and the] underlying sense of melancholy and ennui" in her portrayal of Enid Coleslaw. Meanwhile, A. O. Scott said in his appraisal for The New York Times:

"Thora Birch, whose performance as Lester Burnham's alienated daughter was the best thing about American Beauty, plays a similar character here, with even more intelligence and restraint. Enid's capacity for scorn is unlimited: her plucked eyebrows might illustrate a dictionary entry for "supercilious," and her quiet voice shoots darts of sarcasm in every direction."

Birch received various accolades for Ghost World, including a nomination for the 2002 Golden Globe Award for Best Actress.

In 2003, she appeared as the title character in the biographical television film Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story, starring as a young woman who, after becoming homeless at 15 amid personal tragedies, decides to finish her schooling. Birch's performance earned her a nomination for the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress that year.

2004–2012: Independent films and career lull
Birch played a supporting role in Silver City, a political satire directed by John Sayles, which premiered at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. The independent feature received mixed reviews, but Empire Angie Errigo thought Birch's portrayal of whistleblower Karen Cross was "terrific". She co-starred in the crime drama Slingshot the following year.

In Dark Corners (2006), a psychological horror-thriller about a young woman who wakes up one day as a different person, Birch starred in the dual role of Susan Hamilton and Karen Clarke. The film received a mixed reception, with Adam DiLeo of IGN praising its surreal, David Lynch-style elements, but criticizing Birch's performance. She followed this with roles in two more genre films: Train—a loose remake of the 1980 slasher film Terror Train, released in 2008—and the psychological thriller Deadline, in which she co-starred with Brittany Murphy, who passed away shortly after the film's release in December 2009. Birch later revealed she had been concerned about Murphy's wellbeing during filming.

In the true crime drama Winter of Frozen Dreams (2009), Birch played Barbara Hoffman, a Wisconsin prostitute convicted of murder in the first-ever televised murder trial. In a review for Bloody Disgusting, John Marrone described Birch's "alluring" performance as the highlight of the film. Next, she took on the role of journalist Sidney Bloom in The Pregnancy Pact, a Lifetime movie based on the true story of a group of high schoolers in Gloucester, Massachusetts, who plotted to get pregnant at the same time and raise their children communally. The film was watched by 5.9 million viewers when it premiered in January 2010. Later that year, Birch was cast—in what would have been her stage debut—as Lucy in the off-Broadway revival of Hamilton Deane's Dracula, but was subsequently dismissed from the production for the alleged behavior of her father—her manager at the time—who was reported to have physically threatened one of the show's cast members during a rehearsal.

Birch played the role of Vivian in Petunia (2012), an independent dramedy depicting the lives and romantic relationships of a dysfunctional New York family. Birch, who is credited as one of its producers, described the "intimate [and] honest" feature as "a little bit different". Given a small theatrical release in the U.S., the film garnered mixed reviews, though Birch and the rest of the ensemble were praised.

2013–present: Break from acting and subsequent return

After devoting herself to academic pursuits, which included securing a degree in legal studies through Kaplan University, Birch returned to acting in 2015 with a recurring role as software engineer Morgan on the first season of USA Network's Colony. It was later revealed that Birch would not return for the second season because of a scheduling conflict, and that the part had been recast.

Birch starred as a left-wing activist in the 2018 political thriller Affairs of State, which Noel Murray of The Los Angeles Times called "refreshingly smart". In a less favorable review for Forbes, Luke Y. Thompson wrote, "[cinematographer] Horacio Marquinez gamely films everything like it's an art movie, though there's one scene in which he shoots Birch so unflatteringly that you wonder what she must have done to make him mad". She headlined and co-produced The Competition that same year, an independent romantic comedy.

Next, Birch starred in the 2018 drama The Etruscan Smile—an adaptation of José Luis Sampedro's novel—which was filmed in Scotland and received strong reviews. The following year, she played a supporting role in the crime thriller Above Suspicion, which—after Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger in the 1990s—marked her third collaboration with director Phillip Noyce. In a positive review for The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw commented, "There's an interesting cameo from Thora Birch [as the] long-suffering Jolene".

Birch's cameo appearance in The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019), a drama about a young man's pursuit to reclaim the Victorian home built by his grandfather, was considered a crucial part of the film's success. Speaking of her casting and the symbolic nature of the part, director Joe Talbot said:

"Thora is one of the great actresses of her generation and her work, in part, inspired me to want to make films. Her performance in Ghost World made me feel seen as a teenager when I was a bit lost. At the end of that film, [she] rides a bus off into the sunset. In our film, we meet her character on a bus in the heart of San Francisco—almost as if she kept riding it all these years, and somehow wound up in the Bay Area working a tech job she loathed. Her exchange that follows with [main character] Jimmie, however brief, has been written about and quoted more than any other part of the film."

The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2019, where it won awards for Best Directing and a Special Jury Prize for Creative Collaboration. It was released theatrically in the U.S. by A24.

Between 2019–2020, Birch appeared in the role of Mary (aka "Gamma") on the tenth season of AMC's post-apocalyptic horror series The Walking Dead, with Collider commenting that she brought "emotional depth" to the part. Birch called the experience "a fun, massive thing to have been a part of". Next, in the independent drama 13 Minutes (2021), she played a single mother struggling to keep her family together in the wake of a destructive tornado. Rex Reed of The New York Observer felt that the film succeeded on the strength of its "compelling" and "likable" ensemble, singling out Birch as a highlight.

Birch made her directorial debut in 2022 with The Gabby Petito Story, a Lifetime television movie in which she also co-starred. The film is based on the 2021 disappearance of Petito, a 22-year-old who was murdered by her boyfriend during a cross-country drive. Birch said she had been wanting to direct since she was "nine or ten years old" and that it was the subject matter which drew her to the project: "There's an element of abusive relationships in this story that I think so many of us can relate to … [it] captured the entire nation's attention in the middle of Covid … Everyone stopped and took a minute and [said] "Where’s Gabby? What happened to Gabby?" That kind of fascination and focus point was something that I thought was a third character in [the] story". The ethical nature of dramatizing such recent events was met with public criticism, especially as the film—which premiered on October 12, 2022, just over one year after Petito's death—was made without the involvement of the Petito family.

Also in 2022, Birch played Audrey Beach in the ten-part fictional podcast Overleaper, an espionage-style thriller about a female soldier embarking on a top-secret mission. Birch said it was the idea of "a return to the old radio dramas … from the [1920s and '30s]", as well as the luxury of acting with her voice and not having to endure "the harsh physical positions that the character is in", which drew her to the project.

It was announced at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival that Birch's next project as director—her feature debut—will be an adaptation of Elmore Leonard's novel Mr. Paradise, making her the first woman to direct a Leonard adaptation.

Personal life
Birch married talent manager and philanthropist Michael Benton Adler on December 21, 2018. Birch is a long-time Democrat who was a delegate at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. In addition, she has supported Joe Biden and local political efforts, such as Congressman Wiley Nickel's campaign.

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Anti-capitalism

Anti-capitalism is a political ideology and movement encompassing a variety of attitudes and ideas that oppose capitalism. In this sense, anti-capitalists are those who wish to replace capitalism with another type of economic system, such as socialism or communism.

History of movements
Anti-capitalism was widespread among workers in the United States in the 1900s and 1910s, and Colorado was especially known as a center of anti-capitalist labor movements in that era.

Socialism
Socialism advocates public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources, and a society characterized by equal access to resources for all individuals, with an egalitarian method of compensation.
 * 1) A theory or policy of social organisation which aims at or advocates the ownership and democratic control of the means of production, by workers or the community as a whole, and their administration or distribution in the interests of all.
 * 2) Socialists argue for a worker cooperative/community economy, or the commanding heights of the economy, with democratic control by the people over the state, although there have been some undemocratic philosophies. "State" or "worker cooperative" ownership is in fundamental opposition to "private" ownership of means of production, which is a defining feature of capitalism. Most socialists argue that capitalism unfairly concentrates power, wealth and profit, among a small segment of society that controls capital and derives its wealth through exploitation.

Socialists argue that the accumulation of capital generates waste through externalities that require costly corrective regulatory measures. They also point out that this process generates wasteful industries and practices that exist only to generate sufficient demand for products to be sold at a profit (such as high-pressure advertisement); thereby creating rather than satisfying economic demand.

Socialists argue that capitalism consists of irrational activity, such as the purchasing of commodities only to sell at a later time when their price appreciates, rather than for consumption, even if the commodity cannot be sold at a profit to individuals in need; they argue that making money, or accumulation of capital, does not correspond to the satisfaction of demand.

Private ownership imposes constraints on planning, leading to inaccessible economic decisions that result in immoral production, unemployment and a tremendous waste of material resources during crisis of overproduction. According to socialists, private property in the means of production becomes obsolete when it concentrates into centralized, socialized institutions based on private appropriation of revenue (but based on cooperative work and internal planning in the allocation of inputs) until the role of the capitalist becomes redundant. With no need for capital accumulation and a class of owners, private property in the means of production is perceived as being an outdated form of economic organization that should be replaced by a free association of individuals based on public or common ownership of these socialized assets. Socialists view private property relations as limiting the potential of productive forces in the economy.

Early socialists (Utopian socialists and Ricardian socialists) criticized capitalism for concentrating power and wealth within a small segment of society, and for not utilising available technology and resources to their maximum potential in the interests of the public.

Anarchism and libertarian socialism
For the influential German individualist anarchist philosopher Max Stirner, "private property is a spook" which "lives by the grace of law" and it "becomes 'mine' only by the effect of the law". In other words, private property exists purely "through the protection of the State, through the State's grace." Recognising its need for state protection, Stirner argued that "[i]t need not make any difference to the 'good citizens' who protects them and their principles, whether an absolute King or a constitutional one, a republic if only they are protected. And what is their principle, whose protector they always 'love'? Not that of labour", rather it is "interest-bearing possession ... labouring capital, therefore ... labour certainly, yet little or none at all of one's own, but labour of capital and of the—subject labourers." French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon opposed government privilege that protects capitalist, banking and land interests, and the accumulation or acquisition of property (and any form of coercion that led to it) which he believed hampers competition and keeps wealth in the hands of the few. The Spanish individualist anarchist Miguel Giménez Igualada saw: "capitalism [as] an effect of government; the disappearance of government means capitalism falls from its pedestal vertiginously...That which we call capitalism is not something else but a product of the State, within which the only thing that is being pushed forward is profit, good or badly acquired. And so to fight against capitalism is a pointless task, since be it State capitalism or Enterprise capitalism, as long as Government exists, exploiting capital will exist. The fight, but of consciousness, is against the State."Within anarchism there emerged a critique of wage slavery, which refers to a situation perceived as quasi-voluntary slavery, where a person's livelihood depends on wages, especially when the dependence is total and immediate. It is a negatively connoted term used to draw an analogy between slavery and wage labor by focusing on similarities between owning and renting a person. The term wage slavery has been used to criticize economic exploitation and social stratification, with the former seen primarily as unequal bargaining power between labor and capital (particularly when workers are paid comparatively low wages, e.g. in sweatshops), and the latter as a lack of workers' self-management, fulfilling job choices and leisure in an economy. Libertarian socialists believe if freedom is valued, then society must work towards a system in which individuals have the power to decide economic issues along with political issues. Libertarian socialists seek to replace unjustified authority with direct democracy, voluntary federation, and popular autonomy in all aspects of life, including physical communities and economic enterprises. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, thinkers such as Proudhon and Marx elaborated the comparison between wage labor and slavery in the context of a critique of societal property not intended for active personal use, Luddites emphasized the dehumanization brought about by machines, while later American anarchist Emma Goldman famously denounced wage slavery by saying: "The only difference is that you are hired slaves instead of block slaves." Goldman believed that the economic system of capitalism was incompatible with human liberty. "The only demand that property recognizes," she wrote in Anarchism and Other Essays, "is its own gluttonous appetite for greater wealth, because wealth means power; the power to subdue, to crush, to exploit, the power to enslave, to outrage, to degrade." She also argued that capitalism dehumanized workers, "turning the producer into a mere particle of a machine, with less will and decision than his master of steel and iron."

Noam Chomsky contends that there is little moral difference between chattel slavery and renting one's self to an owner or "wage slavery". He feels that it is an attack on personal integrity that undermines individual freedom. He holds that workers should own and control their workplace. Many libertarian socialists argue that large-scale voluntary associations should manage industrial manufacture, while workers retain rights to the individual products of their labor. As such, they see a distinction between the concepts of "private property" and "personal possession". Whereas "private property" grants an individual exclusive control over a thing whether it is in use or not, and regardless of its productive capacity, "possession" grants no rights to things that are not in use.

In addition to individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker's "big four" monopolies (land, money, tariffs, and patents), Kevin Carson argues that the state has also transferred wealth to the wealthy by subsidizing organizational centralization, in the form of transportation and communication subsidies. He believes that Tucker overlooked this issue due to Tucker's focus on individual market transactions, whereas Carson also focuses on organizational issues. Carson holds that "capitalism, arising as a new class society directly from the old class society of the Middle Ages, was founded on an act of robbery as massive as the earlier feudal conquest of the land. It has been sustained to the present by continual state intervention to protect its system of privilege without which its survival is unimaginable." Carson coined the pejorative term "vulgar libertarianism", a phrase that describes the use of a free market rhetoric in defense of corporate capitalism and economic inequality. According to Carson, the term is derived from the phrase "vulgar political economy", which Karl Marx described as an economic order that "deliberately becomes increasingly apologetic and makes strenuous attempts to talk out of existence the ideas which contain the contradictions [existing in economic life]."

Marxism

Karl Marx saw capitalism as a historical stage, once progressive but which would eventually stagnate due to internal contradictions and would eventually be followed by socialism. Marx claimed that capitalism was nothing more than a necessary stepping stone for the progression of man, which would then face a political revolution before embracing the classless society.

Contemporary anti-capitalism
Inspired by Marxist thought, the Frankfurt School in Germany was established in 1923, with the purpose of analyzing the superstructure. Marx defined the superstructure as the social stratification and mores reflecting the economic base of capitalism. Through the 1930s, the Frankfurt School, led by thinkers such as Herbert Marcuse and Max Horkheimer created the philosophical movement of critical theory. Later, Critical theorist Jürgen Habermas noted that the universality of modern worldviews posed a threat to marginalized perspectives outside of western rationality. While Critical Theory emphasized the social issues stemming from capitalism with the intention towards liberating humanity, it did not directly offer an alternative economic model. Instead its analysis shifted attention to the reinforcement of existing power dynamics through statecraft and a complicit citizenry.

In turn, Critical Theory inspired postmodern philosophers such as Michel Foucault to conceptualize how we form identities through social interaction. During the 1960s and 1970s the global political movement called the New Left explored what liberation entailed through social activism on behalf of these identities. Therefore, socialist identifying movements critical of capitalism extended their reach beyond purely economic considerations and became involved in anti-war and civil rights movements. Later this postmodern activism centered around identities regarding ethnicity, gender, orientation, and race would influence more direct anti-capitalist movements.

New critiques of capitalism also developed in accordance with modern concerns. Anti-globalization and alter-globalization oppose what they view as the sweeping neoliberal and pro-corporate capitalism that spread internationally in the wake of the Soviet Union's fall. They are particularly critical of international financial institutions and regulations such as the IMF, WTO, and free trade agreements. In response, they promote the autonomy of sovereign people and the importance of environmental concerns as priorities over international market participation. Notable examples of contemporary anti-globalist movements include Mexico's EZLN. The World Social Forum, began in 2002, is an annual international event dedicated to countering capitalist globalization through networking of attending organizations.

According to historian Gary Gerstle, the ideological space for anti-capitalism in the United States shrank significantly with the end of the Cold War and the globalization of capitalism, forcing the left to "redefine their radicalism in alternative terms" by heavily focusing on multiculturalism and partisan culture war issues, which "turned out to be those that the capitalist system could more, rather than less, easily manage." Late philosopher Mark Fisher referred to this phenomenon as capitalist realism: "the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it."

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Talk:American Beauty (1999 film)

Cast section
While I think this is a good article on the film, would it not be a good idea to actually have a section on who plays who and a short blurb on each character?

It must be the first film article I have seen without it.

It all just seems "messages" and "meanings" and "themes"

If no one disagrees I will do it in a week or so.

--TheMightyAllBlacks (talk) 01:40, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

 * Hi, . I don't know how it looks on the device you're using, but the Plot section has a boxout that lists the main actors and their roles. This is fairly conspicuous on the desktop I'm using. Then, in the Production sections later in the article, there's more of an in-depth Casting subsection. This, combined with the Plot section and cast boxout to my mind would make a separate Cast section redundant. Steve  T • C 20:48, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

 * I came here looking for cast information also, specifically who played which character. It is conspicuous by absence and out of line with all the other major film articles. Can someone please add it? 174.0.48.147 (talk) 23:48, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Madagascar spoof
Should it be on the Reception and Legacy section or not? Espngeek (talk) 12:36, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

 * This reference should be fine, though its spoof from Family Guy might deserve to be mentioned alongside it as well. The latter spoof was a reference point in The Huffington Post's retrospective article on the film in 2019. (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/american-beauty-legacy-20-years-later_n_5d5c344fe4b0d1e1136902be) H.AFI.17 (talk) 14:50, 5 May 2022 (UTC)H.AFI.17

Under Reception and Legacy, should there be separate titles for 'contemporary' reviews and 'retrospective' reviews?
On Wikipedia's entry for the film Titanic (1997 film), its section for critical reception has separate titles for contemporary and retrospective reviews. I think American Beauty should have two separate titles for contemporary and retrospective reviews due to the film's notorious backlash from major publications, as noted in this entry's section for Reception and Legacy:

"A few months after the film's release, reports of a backlash appeared in the American press,[193] and the years since have seen its critical regard wane.[194][195] In 2005, Premiere named American Beauty as one of the 20 "most overrated movies of all time."[196] Mendes accepted the inevitability of the critical reappraisal, saying in 2008, "I thought some of it was entirely justified—it was a little overpraised at the time."[195] In 2019, on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the film's release, The Huffington Post's Matthew Jacobs wrote that "the film's reputation has tumbled precipitously," adding, "Plenty of classics undergo cultural reappraisals [...] but few have turned into such a widespread punchline."

Additionally, Wikipedia's entries for The Great Ziegfeld and Diamonds Are Forever (film) have separate distinctions for contemporary and retrospective reviews. H.AFI.17 (talk) 14:43, 5 May 2022 (UTC)H.AFI.17

I have two new sources to contribute to American Beauty's retrospective reviews.
Under Reception and legacy, Wikipedia cites several sources for the film's negative reappraisal it received years after its initial popularity. I found two articles that would be worth citing, from The Guardian and Time respectively.

For American Beauty's 20th anniversary, Stephanie Zacharek of Time Magazine stated, "In 2019, beating up on Sam Mendes’ multi-Oscar-winning American Beauty, released roughly 20 years ago this week, is so painfully easy that it seems unfair. The Best Picture winner has fallen largely out of fashion; it rarely appears on critics’ lists of favorite movies, and its memory seems to have faded for most moviegoers, too."

H.AFI.17 (talk) 15:47, 5 May 2022 (UTC)H.AFI.17

There should be a separate Wikipedia page for American Beauty's themes
I was reading discussions here on editing the tone of American Beauty's themes and analysis section. Should there be a separate Wikipedia page for it as there are separate pages for themes of various films like Blade Runner, Minority Report, and Avatar? This would also help this primary page for American Beauty be more concise.

H.AFI.17 (talk) 00:44, 14 May 2022 (UTC)H.AFI.17H.AFI.17 (talk) 00:44, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

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Greg Bear

Gregory Dale Bear (August 20, 1951 – November 19, 2022) was an American writer and illustrator best known for science fiction. His work covered themes of galactic conflict (Forge of God books), parallel universes (The Way series), consciousness and cultural practices (Queen of Angels), and accelerated evolution (Blood Music, Darwin's Radio, and Darwin's Children). His last work was the 2021 novel The Unfinished Land. Greg Bear wrote over 50 books in total.

Early life
Greg Bear was born in San Diego, California. He attended San Diego State University (1968–1973), where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree. At the university, he was a teaching assistant to Elizabeth Chater in her course on science fiction writing, and in later years her friend.

Career
Bear is often classified as a hard science fiction author because of the level of scientific detail in his work. Early in his career, he also published work as an artist, including illustrations for an early version of the reference book Star Trek Concordance and covers for periodicals Galaxy and F&SF. He sold his first story, "Destroyers", to Famous Science Fiction in 1967.

In his fiction, Bear often addresses major questions in contemporary science and culture and proposes solutions. For example, The Forge of God offers an explanation for the Fermi paradox, supposing that the galaxy is filled with potentially predatory intelligences and that young civilizations that survive are those that do not attract their attention but stay quiet. In Queen of Angels, Bear examines crime, guilt, and punishment in society. He frames these questions around an examination of consciousness and awareness, including the emergent self-awareness of highly advanced computers in communication with humans. In Darwin's Radio and Darwin's Children, he addresses the problem of overpopulation with a mutation in the human genome making, basically, a new series of humans. The question of cultural acceptance of something new and unavoidable is also indicated.

One of Bear's favorite themes is reality as a function of observation. In Blood Music, reality becomes unstable as the number of observers (trillions of intelligent single-cell organisms) spirals higher and higher. Anvil of Stars (sequel to The Forge of God) and Moving Mars postulate a physics based on information exchange between particles, capable of being altered at the "bit level." In Moving Mars, that knowledge is used to remove Mars from the Solar System and transfer it to an orbit around a distant star.

Blood Music was first published as a short story (1983) and then expanded to a novel (1985). It has also been credited as the first account of nanotechnology in science fiction. More certainly, the short story is the first in science fiction to describe microscopic medical machines and to treat DNA as a computational system capable of being reprogrammed, that is, expanded and modified. In later works, beginning with Queen of Angels and continuing with its sequel, Slant, Bear gives a detailed description of a near-future nanotechnological society. This historical sequence continues with Heads—which may contain the first description of a so-called "quantum logic computer"—and with Moving Mars. The sequence also charts the historical development of self-awareness in artificial intelligence. Its continuing character Jill was inspired in part by Robert A. Heinlein's self-aware computer Mycroft HOLMES in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966).

Bear, Gregory Benford, and David Brin wrote a trilogy of prequel novels to Isaac Asimov's influential Foundation trilogy. Bear is credited with the middle book.

While most of Bear's work is science fiction, he has written in other fiction genres. Examples include Songs of Earth and Power (fantasy) and Psychlone (horror). Bear has described his Dead Lines, which straddles the line between science fiction and fantasy, as a "high-tech ghost story". He has received many accolades, including five Nebula Awards and two Hugo Awards.

Bear cited Ray Bradbury as the most influential writer in his life. He met Bradbury in 1967 and had a lifelong correspondence. As a teenager, Bear attended Bradbury lectures and events in Southern California.

He also served on the Board of Advisors for the Museum of Science Fiction. Bear was also one of the five co-founders of the San Diego Comic-Con.

Personal life and death
In 1975, Bear married Christina M. Nielson; they divorced in 1981. In 1983, he married Astrid Anderson, the daughter of the science fiction and fantasy authors Poul and Karen Anderson. They had two children, Chloe and Alexandra, and resided near Seattle, Washington.

Bear died on November 19, 2022, at the age of 71, from multiple strokes, caused by clots that had been hiding in a false lumen of the anterior artery to the brain since a surgery in 2014. After being on life support for two days and not expected to recover, per his advance healthcare directive, life support was withdrawn.

Awards and accolades

 * The story on which the novel Blood Music was based, published in the June 1983 issue of Analog, won the Best Novelette Nebula Award (1983) and Hugo Award (1984).
 * "Tangents" won both the Hugo Award for Best Short Story and the Nebula Award for Best Short Story
 * Darwin's Radio won the Endeavour Award in 2000.
 * Hull Zero Three was short-listed for the Arthur C. Clarke (Book) Award in 2012.
 * Hayakawa Award "Heads" Best Foreign Short Story (1996).
 * Inkpot Award (1984)
 * Doris Lessing, winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in literature, wrote, "I also admire the classic sort of science fiction, like Blood Music, by Greg Bear. He's a great writer."
 * The 2024 novel Halo: Epitaph, a continuation of Bear's Forerunner Saga, was dedicated to Bear's memory by author Kelly Gay.

Series

 * Darwin
 * Darwin's Radio (1999) Nebula Award winner, Hugo, Locus SF, and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards nominee, 2000
 * Darwin's Children (2003) Locus SF, Arthur C. Clarke, and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards nominee, 2004

 * The Forge of God
 * The Forge of God (1987) Hugo, and Locus SF Awards nominee, 1988; Nebula Award nominee, 1986
 * Anvil of Stars (1992)

 * Songs of Earth and Power
 * The Infinity Concerto (1984) Locus Fantasy Award nominee, 1985
 * The Serpent Mage (1986)
 * Songs of Earth and Power (1994 – combines The Infinity Concerto and The Serpent Mage)

 * Quantico
 * Quantico (2005)
 * Mariposa (2009)

Novels in internal chronology:
 * Quantum Logic
 * Queen of Angels (1990) Hugo, Locus, and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards nominee, 1991
 * Slant (1997) John W. Campbell Memorial Award nominee, 1998
 * Heads (1990)
 * Moving Mars (1993) Nebula Award winner; Hugo, Locus SF, and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards nominee, 1994

 * War dogs
 * Killing Titan (2015)
 * Take Back the Sky (2016)
 * Take Back the Sky (2016)

 * The Way
 * Eon (1985) Arthur C. Clarke Award nominee, 1987
 * Eternity (1988)
 * Legacy (1995) Locus SF Award nominee, 1996
 * The Way of All Ghosts (1999)

Series (non-originating author)

 * The Foundation Series
 * Foundation and Chaos (1998) (Second Foundation series: book 2)

 * Man-Kzin Wars
 * The Man Who Would Be Kzin (with S.M. Stirling) (1991)

 * Halo
 * Forerunner Saga (trilogy)
 * Halo: Cryptum (2011)
 * Halo: Primordium (2012)
 * Halo: Silentium (2013)

 * Star Trek: The Original Series
 * Corona (1984)

 * Star Wars
 * Rogue Planet (2000)

 * Foreworld Saga
 * The Mongoliad (2012–2013 )

Non-series

 * Hegira (1979)
 * Psychlone (1979)
 * Beyond Heaven's River (1980)
 * Strength of Stones (1981)
 * Blood Music (1985) Hugo, and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards nominee, 1986; British Science Fiction Award nominee, 1986; Nebula Award nominee, 1985
 * Dinosaur Summer (1998) (winner 1999 Endeavour Award)
 * Vitals (2002) John W. Campbell Memorial Award nominee 2003
 * Dead Lines (2004)
 * City at the End of Time (Gollancz edition published July 17, 2008; Del Rey Books edition August 2008 ) (Nominated for the Locus and Campbell Awards, 2009 )
 * Hull Zero Three (2010)
 * The Unfinished Land (2021)

Short fiction

 * Hardfought (1983)
 * Collections
 * The Wind from a Burning Woman (1983, vt The Venging 1992)
 * Early Harvest (February 1988)
 * Tangents (1989)
 * Bear's Fantasies (1992)
 * The White Horse Child (1993)
 * The Collected Stories of Greg Bear (2002)
 * W3: Women in Deep Time (2003)
 * Sleepside: The Collected Fantasies (November 2005)

Anthologies edited

 * New Legends (1995, with Martin H. Greenberg)
 * Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson's Worlds (2014, with Gardner Dozois)
 * Nebula Awards Showcase 2015 (2015)

Critical studies and reviews of Bear's work

 * War dogs

title: Greg Bear


text:
Condorcet method

A Condorcet method is an election method that elects the candidate who wins a majority of the vote in every head-to-head election against each of the other candidates, whenever there is such a candidate. A candidate with this property, the pairwise champion or beats-all winner, is formally called the Condorcet winner. The head-to-head elections need not be done separately; a voter's choice within any given pair can be determined from the ranking.

Some elections may not yield a Condorcet winner because voter preferences may be cyclic—that is, it is possible that every candidate has an opponent that defeats them in a two-candidate contest. The possibility of such cyclic preferences is known as the Condorcet paradox. However, a smallest group of candidates that beat all candidates not in the group, known as the Smith set, always exists. The Smith set is guaranteed to have the Condorcet winner in it should one exist. Many Condorcet methods elect a candidate who is in the Smith set absent a Condorcet winner, and is thus said to be "Smith-efficient".

Condorcet voting methods are named for the 18th-century French mathematician and philosopher Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat, the Marquis de Condorcet, who championed such systems. However, Ramon Llull devised the earliest known Condorcet method in 1299. It was equivalent to Copeland's method in cases with no pairwise ties.

Condorcet methods may use preferential ranked, rated vote ballots, or explicit votes between all pairs of candidates. Most Condorcet methods employ a single round of preferential voting, in which each voter ranks the candidates from most (marked as number 1) to least preferred (marked with a higher number). A voter's ranking is often called their order of preference. Votes can be tallied in many ways to find a winner. All Condorcet methods will elect the Condorcet winner if there is one. If there is no Condorcet winner different Condorcet-compliant methods may elect different winners in the case of a cycle—Condorcet methods differ on which other criteria they satisfy.

The procedure given in Robert's Rules of Order for voting on motions and amendments is also a Condorcet method, even though the voters do not vote by expressing their orders of preference. There are multiple rounds of voting, and in each round the vote is between two of the alternatives. The loser (by majority rule) of a pairing is eliminated, and the winner of a pairing survives to be paired in a later round against another alternative. Eventually, only one alternative remains, and it is the winner. This is analogous to a single-winner or round-robin tournament; the total number of pairings is one less than the number of alternatives. Since a Condorcet winner will win by majority rule in each of its pairings, it will never be eliminated by Robert's Rules. But this method cannot reveal a voting paradox in which there is no Condorcet winner and a majority prefer an early loser over the eventual winner (though it will always elect someone in the Smith set). A considerable portion of the literature on social choice theory is about the properties of this method since it is widely used and is used by important organizations (legislatures, councils, committees, etc.). It is not practical for use in public elections, however, since its multiple rounds of voting would be very expensive for voters, for candidates, and for governments to administer.

Summary
In a contest between candidates A, B and C using the preferential-vote form of Condorcet method, a head-to-head race is conducted between each pair of candidates. A and B, B and C, and C and A. If one candidate is preferred over all others, they are the Condorcet Winner and winner of the election.

Because of the possibility of the Condorcet paradox, it is possible, but unlikely, that a Condorcet winner may not exist in a specific election. This is sometimes called a Condorcet cycle or just cycle and can be thought of as Rock beating Scissors, Scissors beating Paper, and Paper beating Rock. Various Condorcet methods differ in how they resolve such a cycle. (Note that most elections do not have cycles. See Condorcet paradox for estimates.) If there is no cycle, all Condorcet methods elect the same candidate and are operationally equivalent.

 * Each voter ranks the candidates in order of preference (top-to-bottom, or best-to-worst, or 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.). The voter may be allowed to rank candidates as equals and to express indifference (no preference) between them. Candidates omitted by a voter may be treated as if the voter ranked them at the bottom.
 * For each pairing of candidates (as in a round-robin tournament) count how many votes rank each candidate over the other candidate. Thus each pairing will have two totals: the size of its majority and the size of its minority (or there will be a tie).

For most Condorcet methods, those counts usually suffice to determine the complete order of finish (i.e. who won, who came in 2nd place, etc.). They always suffice to determine whether there is a Condorcet winner.

Additional information may be needed in the event of ties. Ties can be pairings that have no majority, or they can be majorities that are the same size. Such ties will be rare when there are many voters. Some Condorcet methods may have other kinds of ties. For example, with Copeland's method, it would not be rare for two or more candidates to win the same number of pairings, when there is no Condorcet winner.

Definition
A Condorcet method is a voting system that will always elect the Condorcet winner (if there is one); this is the candidate whom voters prefer to each other candidate, when compared to them one at a time. This candidate can be found (if they exist; see next paragraph) by checking if there is a candidate who beats all other candidates; this can be done by using Copeland's method and then checking if the Copeland winner has the highest possible Copeland score. They can also be found by conducting a series of pairwise comparisons, using the procedure given in Robert's Rules of Order described above. For N candidates, this requires N − 1 pairwise hypothetical elections. For example, with 5 candidates there are 4 pairwise comparisons to be made, since after each comparison, a candidate is eliminated, and after 4 eliminations, only one of the original 5 candidates will remain.

To confirm that a Condorcet winner exists in a given election, first do the Robert's Rules of Order procedure, declare the final remaining candidate the procedure's winner, and then do at most an additional N − 2 pairwise comparisons between the procedure's winner and any candidates they have not been compared against yet (including all previously eliminated candidates). If the procedure's winner does not win all pairwise matchups, then no Condorcet winner exists in the election (and thus the Smith set has multiple candidates in it).

Note that computing all pairwise comparisons requires ½N(N−1) pairwise comparisons for N candidates. For 10 candidates, this means 0.5*10*9=45 comparisons, which can make elections with many candidates hard to count the votes for.

The family of Condorcet methods is also referred to collectively as Condorcet's method. A voting system that always elects the Condorcet winner when there is one is described by electoral scientists as a system that satisfies the Condorcet criterion. Additionally, a voting system can be considered to have Condorcet consistency, or be Condorcet consistent, if it elects any Condorcet winner.

In certain circumstances, an election has no Condorcet winner. This occurs as a result of a kind of tie known as a majority rule cycle, described by Condorcet's paradox. The manner in which a winner is then chosen varies from one Condorcet method to another. Some Condorcet methods involve the basic procedure described below, coupled with a Condorcet completion method, which is used to find a winner when there is no Condorcet winner. Other Condorcet methods involve an entirely different system of counting, but are classified as Condorcet methods, or Condorcet consistent, because they will still elect the Condorcet winner if there is one.

It is important to note that not all single winner, ranked voting systems are Condorcet methods. For example, instant-runoff voting and the Borda count are not Condorcet methods.

Voting
In a Condorcet election the voter ranks the list of candidates in order of preference. If a ranked ballot is used, the voter gives a "1" to their first preference, a "2" to their second preference, and so on. Some Condorcet methods allow voters to rank more than one candidate equally so that the voter might express two first preferences rather than just one. If a scored ballot is used, voters rate or score the candidates on a scale, for example as is used in Score voting, with a higher rating indicating a greater preference.

When a voter does not give a full list of preferences, it is typically assumed that they prefer the candidates that they have ranked over all the candidates that were not ranked, and that there is no preference between candidates that were left unranked. Some Condorcet elections permit write-in candidates.

Finding the winner
The count is conducted by pitting every candidate against every other candidate in a series of hypothetical one-on-one contests. The winner of each pairing is the candidate preferred by a majority of voters. Unless they tie, there is always a majority when there are only two choices. The candidate preferred by each voter is taken to be the one in the pair that the voter ranks (or rates) higher on their ballot paper. For example, if Alice is paired against Bob it is necessary to count both the number of voters who have ranked Alice higher than Bob, and the number who have ranked Bob higher than Alice. If Alice is preferred by more voters then she is the winner of that pairing. When all possible pairings of candidates have been considered, if one candidate beats every other candidate in these contests then they are declared the Condorcet winner. As noted above, if there is no Condorcet winner a further method must be used to find the winner of the election, and this mechanism varies from one Condorcet consistent method to another. In any Condorcet method that passes Independence of Smith-dominated alternatives, it can sometimes help to identify the Smith set from the head-to-head matchups, and eliminate all candidates not in the set before doing the procedure for that Condorcet method.

Pairwise counting and matrices
Condorcet methods use pairwise counting. For each possible pair of candidates, one pairwise count indicates how many voters prefer one of the paired candidates over the other candidate, and another pairwise count indicates how many voters have the opposite preference. The counts for all possible pairs of candidates summarize all the pairwise preferences of all the voters.

Pairwise counts are often displayed in a pairwise comparison matrix, or outranking matrix, such as those below. In these matrices, each row represents each candidate as a 'runner', while each column represents each candidate as an 'opponent'. The cells at the intersection of rows and columns each show the result of a particular pairwise comparison. Cells comparing a candidate to themselves are left blank.

Imagine there is an election between four candidates: A, B, C, and D. The first matrix below records the preferences expressed on a single ballot paper, in which the voter's preferences are (B, C, A, D); that is, the voter ranked B first, C second, A third, and D fourth. In the matrix a '1' indicates that the runner is preferred over the 'opponent', while a '0' indicates that the runner is defeated.

Using a matrix like the one above, one can find the overall results of an election. Each ballot can be transformed into this style of matrix, and then added to all other ballot matrices using matrix addition. The sum of all ballots in an election is called the sum matrix. Suppose that in the imaginary election there are two other voters. Their preferences are (D, A, C, B) and (A, C, B, D). Added to the first voter, these ballots would give the following sum matrix:

When the sum matrix is found, the contest between each pair of candidates is considered. The number of votes for runner over opponent (runner, opponent) is compared with the number of votes for opponent over runner (opponent, runner) to find the Condorcet winner. In the sum matrix above, A is the Condorcet winner because A beats every other candidate. When there is no Condorcet winner Condorcet completion methods, such as Ranked Pairs and the Schulze method, use the information contained in the sum matrix to choose a winner.

Cells marked '—' in the matrices above have a numerical value of '0', but a dash is used since candidates are never preferred to themselves. The first matrix, that represents a single ballot, is inversely symmetric: (runner, opponent) is ¬(opponent, runner). Or (runner, opponent) + (opponent, runner) = 1. The sum matrix has this property: (runner, opponent) + (opponent, runner) = N for N voters, if all runners were fully ranked by each voter.

Example: Voting on the location of Tennessee's capital
To find the Condorcet winner every candidate must be matched against every other candidate in a series of imaginary one-on-one contests. In each pairing the winner is the candidate preferred by a majority of voters. When results for every possible pairing have been found they are as follows:

The results can also be shown in the form of a matrix:

As can be seen from both of the tables above, Nashville beats every other candidate. This means that Nashville is the Condorcet winner. Nashville will thus win an election held under any possible Condorcet method.

While any Condorcet method will elect Nashville as the winner, if instead an election based on the same votes were held using first-past-the-post or instant-runoff voting, these systems would select Memphis and Knoxville respectively. This would occur despite the fact that most people would have preferred Nashville to either of those "winners". Condorcet methods make these preferences obvious rather than ignoring or discarding them.

On the other hand, note that in this example Chattanooga also defeats Knoxville and Memphis when paired against those cities. If we changed the basis for defining preference and determined that Memphis voters preferred Chattanooga as a second choice rather than as a third choice, Chattanooga would be the Condorcet winner even though finishing in last place in a first-past-the-post election.

An alternative way of thinking about this example if a Smith-efficient Condorcet method that passes ISDA is used to determine the winner is that 58% of the voters, a mutual majority, ranked Memphis last (making Memphis the majority loser) and Nashville, Chattanooga, and Knoxville above Memphis, ruling Memphis out. At that point, the voters who preferred Memphis as their 1st choice could only help to choose a winner among Nashville, Chattanooga, and Knoxville, and because they all preferred Nashville as their 1st choice among those three, Nashville would have had a 68% majority of 1st choices among the remaining candidates and won as the majority's 1st choice.

Circular ambiguities
As noted above, sometimes an election has no Condorcet winner because there is no candidate who is preferred by voters to all other candidates. When this occurs the situation is known as a 'Condorcet cycle', 'majority rule cycle', 'circular ambiguity', 'circular tie', 'Condorcet paradox', or simply a 'cycle'. This situation emerges when, once all votes have been tallied, the preferences of voters with respect to some candidates form a circle in which every candidate is beaten by at least one other candidate (Intransitivity).

For example, if there are three candidates, Candidate Rock, Candidate Scissors, and Candidate Paper, there will be no Condorcet winner if voters prefer Candidate Rock over Candidate Scissors and Scissors over Paper, but also Candidate Paper over Rock. Depending on the context in which elections are held, circular ambiguities may or may not be common, but there is no known case of a governmental election with ranked-choice voting in which a circular ambiguity is evident from the record of ranked ballots. Nonetheless a cycle is always possible, and so every Condorcet method should be capable of determining a winner when this contingency occurs. A mechanism for resolving an ambiguity is known as ambiguity resolution, cycle resolution method, or Condorcet completion method.

Circular ambiguities arise as a result of the voting paradox—the result of an election can be intransitive (forming a cycle) even though all individual voters expressed a transitive preference. In a Condorcet election it is impossible for the preferences of a single voter to be cyclical, because a voter must rank all candidates in order, from top-choice to bottom-choice, and can only rank each candidate once, but the paradox of voting means that it is still possible for a circular ambiguity in voter tallies to emerge.

The idealized notion of a political spectrum is often used to describe political candidates and policies. Where this kind of spectrum exists, and voters prefer candidates who are closest to their own position on the spectrum, there is a Condorcet winner (Black's Single-Peakedness Theorem).

In Condorcet methods, as in most electoral systems, there is also the possibility of an ordinary tie. This occurs when two or more candidates tie with each other but defeat every other candidate. As in other systems this can be resolved by a random method such as the drawing of lots. Ties can also be settled through other methods like seeing which of the tied winners had the most first choice votes, but this and some other non-random methods may re-introduce a degree of tactical voting, especially if voters know the race will be close.

The method used to resolve circular ambiguities is the main difference between the various Condorcet methods. There are countless ways in which this can be done, but every Condorcet method involves ignoring the majorities expressed by voters in at least some pairwise matchings. Some cycle resolution methods are Smith-efficient, meaning that they pass the Smith criterion. This guarantees that when there is a cycle (and no pairwise ties), only the candidates in the cycle can win, and that if there is a mutual majority, one of their preferred candidates will win.

Condorcet methods fit within two categories:

 * Two-method systems, which use a separate method to handle cases in which there is no Condorcet winner
 * One-method systems, which use a single method that, without any special handling, always identifies the winner to be the Condorcet winner

Many one-method systems and some two-method systems will give the same result as each other if there are fewer than 4 candidates in the circular tie, and all voters separately rank at least two of those candidates. These include Smith-Minimax (Minimax but done only after all candidates not in the Smith set are eliminated), Ranked Pairs, and Schulze. For example, with three candidates in the Smith set in a Condorcet cycle, because Schulze and Ranked Pairs pass ISDA, all candidates not in the Smith set can be eliminated first, and then for Schulze, dropping the weakest defeat of the three allows the candidate who had that weakest defeat to be the only candidate who can beat or tie all other candidates, while with Ranked Pairs, once the first two strongest defeats are locked in, the weakest cannot, since it'd create a cycle, and so the candidate with the weakest defeat will have no defeats locked in against them).

Two-method systems
One family of Condorcet methods consists of systems that first conduct a series of pairwise comparisons and then, if there is no Condorcet winner, fall back to an entirely different, non-Condorcet method to determine a winner. The simplest such fall-back methods involve entirely disregarding the results of the pairwise comparisons. For example, the Black method chooses the Condorcet winner if it exists, but uses the Borda count instead if there is a cycle (the method is named for Duncan Black).

A more sophisticated two-stage process is, in the event of a cycle, to use a separate voting system to find the winner but to restrict this second stage to a certain subset of candidates found by scrutinizing the results of the pairwise comparisons. Sets used for this purpose are defined so that they will always contain only the Condorcet winner if there is one, and will always, in any case, contain at least one candidate. Such sets include the

 * Smith set: The smallest non-empty set of candidates in a particular election such that every candidate in the set can beat all candidates outside the set. It is easily shown that there is only one possible Smith set for each election.
 * Schwartz set: This is the innermost unbeaten set, and is usually the same as the Smith set. It is defined as the union of all possible sets of candidates such that for every set:
 * Every candidate inside the set is pairwise unbeatable by any other candidate outside the set (i.e., ties are allowed).
 * No proper (smaller) subset of the set fulfills the first property.
 * Landau set or uncovered set or Fishburn set: the set of candidates, such that each member, for every other candidate (including those inside the set), either beats this candidate or beats a third candidate that itself beats the candidate that is unbeaten by the member.

One possible method is to apply instant-runoff voting in various ways, such as to the candidates of the Smith set. One variation of this method has been described as "Smith/IRV", with another being Tideman's alternative methods. It is also possible to do "Smith/Approval" by allowing voters to rank candidates, and indicate which candidates they approve, such that the candidate in the Smith set approved by the most voters wins; this is often done using an approval threshold (i.e. if voters approve their 3rd choices, those voters are automatically considered to approve their 1st and 2nd choices too). In Smith/Score, the candidate in the Smith set with the highest total score wins, with the pairwise comparisons done based on which candidates are scored higher than others.

Single-method systems
Some Condorcet methods use a single procedure that inherently meets the Condorcet criteria and, without any extra procedure, also resolves circular ambiguities when they arise. In other words, these methods do not involve separate procedures for different situations. Typically these methods base their calculations on pairwise counts. These methods include:

 * Copeland's method: This simple method involves electing the candidate who wins the most pairwise matchings. However, it often produces a tie.
 * Kemeny–Young method: This method ranks all the choices from most popular and second-most popular down to least popular.
 * Minimax: Also called Simpson, Simpson–Kramer, and Simple Condorcet, this method chooses the candidate whose worst pairwise defeat is better than that of all other candidates. A refinement of this method involves restricting it to choosing a winner from among the Smith set; this has been called Smith/Minimax.
 * Nanson's method and Baldwin's method combine Borda Count with an instant runoff procedure.
 * Dodgson's method extends the Condorcet method by swapping candidates until a Condorcet winner is found. The winner is the candidate which requires the minimum number of swaps.
 * Ranked pairs breaks each cycle in the pairwise preference graph by dropping the weakest majority in the cycle, thereby yielding a complete ranking of the candidates. This method is also known as Tideman, after its inventor Nicolaus Tideman.
 * Schulze method iteratively drops the weakest majority in the pairwise preference graph until the winner becomes well defined. This method is also known as Schwartz sequential dropping (SSD), cloneproof Schwartz sequential dropping (CSSD), beatpath method, beatpath winner, path voting, and path winner.
 * Smith Score is a rated voting method which elects the Score voting winner from the Smith set.

Ranked Pairs and Schulze are procedurally in some sense opposite approaches (although they very frequently give the same results):
 * Ranked Pairs (and its variants) starts with the strongest defeats and uses as much information as it can without creating ambiguity.
 * Schulze repeatedly removes the weakest defeat until the ambiguity is removed.

Minimax could be considered as more "blunt" than either of these approaches, as instead of removing defeats it can be seen as immediately removing candidates by looking at the strongest defeats (although their victories are still considered for subsequent candidate eliminations). One way to think of it in terms of removing defeats is that Minimax removes each candidate's weakest defeats until some group of candidates with only pairwise ties between them have no defeats left, at which point the group ties to win.

Kemeny–Young method
The Kemeny–Young method considers every possible sequence of choices in terms of which choice might be most popular, which choice might be second-most popular, and so on down to which choice might be least popular. Each such sequence is associated with a Kemeny score that is equal to the sum of the pairwise counts that apply to the specified sequence. The sequence with the highest score is identified as the overall ranking, from most popular to least popular.

When the pairwise counts are arranged in a matrix in which the choices appear in sequence from most popular (top and left) to least popular (bottom and right), the winning Kemeny score equals the sum of the counts in the upper-right, triangular half of the matrix (shown here in bold on a green background).

In this example, the Kemeny Score of the sequence Nashville > Chattanooga > Knoxville > Memphis would be 393.

Calculating every Kemeny score requires considerable computation time in cases that involve more than a few choices. However, fast calculation methods based on integer programming allow a computation time in seconds for some cases with as many as 40 choices.

Ranked pairs
The order of finish is constructed a piece at a time by considering the (pairwise) majorities one at a time, from largest majority to smallest majority. For each majority, their higher-ranked candidate is placed ahead of their lower-ranked candidate in the (partially constructed) order of finish, except when their lower-ranked candidate has already been placed ahead of their higher-ranked candidate.

For example, suppose the voters' orders of preference are such that 75% rank B over C, 65% rank A over B, and 60% rank C over A. (The three majorities are a rock paper scissors cycle.) Ranked pairs begins with the largest majority, who rank B over C, and places B ahead of C in the order of finish. Then it considers the second largest majority, who rank A over B, and places A ahead of B in the order of finish. At this point, it has been established that A finishes ahead of B and B finishes ahead of C, which implies A also finishes ahead of C. So when ranked pairs considers the third largest majority, who rank C over A, their lower-ranked candidate A has already been placed ahead of their higher-ranked candidate C, so C is not placed ahead of A. The order of finish is "A, B, C" and A is the winner.

An equivalent definition is to find the order of finish that minimizes the size of the largest reversed majority. (In the 'lexicographical order' sense. If the largest majority reversed in two orders of finish is the same, the two orders of finish are compared by their second largest reversed majorities, etc. See the discussion of MinMax, MinLexMax and Ranked Pairs in the 'Motivation and uses' section of the Lexicographical Order article). (In the example, the order of finish "A, B, C" reverses the 60% who rank C over A. Any other order of finish would reverse a larger majority.) This definition is useful for simplifying some of the proofs of Ranked Pairs' properties, but the "constructive" definition executes much faster (small polynomial time).

Schulze method
The Schulze method resolves votes as follows:

 * At each stage, we proceed as follows:

 * For each pair of undropped candidates X and Y: If there is a directed path of undropped links from candidate X to candidate Y, then we write "X → Y"; otherwise we write "not X → Y".
 * For each pair of undropped candidates V and W: If "V → W" and "not W → V", then candidate W is dropped and all links, that start or end in candidate W, are dropped.
 * The weakest undropped link is dropped. If several undropped links tie as weakest, all of them are dropped.

 * The procedure ends when all links have been dropped. The winners are the undropped candidates.

In other words, this procedure repeatedly throws away the weakest pairwise defeat within the top set, until finally the number of votes left over produce an unambiguous decision.

Defeat strength
Some pairwise methods—including minimax, Ranked Pairs, and the Schulze method—resolve circular ambiguities based on the relative strength of the defeats. There are different ways to measure the strength of each defeat, and these include considering "winning votes" and "margins":

 * Winning votes: The number of votes on the winning side of a defeat.
 * Margins: The number of votes on the winning side of the defeat, minus the number of votes on the losing side of the defeat.

If voters do not rank their preferences for all of the candidates, these two approaches can yield different results. Consider, for example, the following election:

The pairwise defeats are as follows:

 * B beats A, 55 to 45 (55 winning votes, a margin of 10 votes)
 * A beats C, 45 to 44 (45 winning votes, a margin of 1 vote)
 * C beats B, 29 to 26 (29 winning votes, a margin of 3 votes)

Using the winning votes definition of defeat strength, the defeat of B by C is the weakest, and the defeat of A by B is the strongest. Using the margins definition of defeat strength, the defeat of C by A is the weakest, and the defeat of A by B is the strongest.

Using winning votes as the definition of defeat strength, candidate B would win under minimax, Ranked Pairs and the Schulze method, but, using margins as the definition of defeat strength, candidate C would win in the same methods.

If all voters give complete rankings of the candidates, then winning votes and margins will always produce the same result. The difference between them can only come into play when some voters declare equal preferences amongst candidates, as occurs implicitly if they do not rank all candidates, as in the example above.

The choice between margins and winning votes is the subject of scholarly debate. Because all Condorcet methods always choose the Condorcet winner when one exists, the difference between methods only appears when cyclic ambiguity resolution is required. The argument for using winning votes follows from this: Because cycle resolution involves disenfranchising a selection of votes, then the selection should disenfranchise the fewest possible number of votes. When margins are used, the difference between the number of two candidates' votes may be small, but the number of votes may be very large—or not. Only methods employing winning votes satisfy Woodall's plurality criterion.

An argument in favour of using margins is the fact that the result of a pairwise comparison is decided by the presence of more votes for one side than the other and thus that it follows naturally to assess the strength of a comparison by this "surplus" for the winning side. Otherwise, changing only a few votes from the winner to the loser could cause a sudden large change from a large score for one side to a large score for the other. In other words, one could consider losing votes being in fact disenfranchised when it comes to ambiguity resolution with winning votes. Also, using winning votes, a vote containing ties (possibly implicitly in the case of an incompletely ranked ballot) does not have the same effect as a number of equally weighted votes with total weight equaling one vote, such that the ties are broken in every possible way (a violation of Woodall's symmetric-completion criterion), as opposed to margins.

Under winning votes, if two more of the "B" voters decided to vote "BC", the A->C arm of the cycle would be overturned and Condorcet would pick C instead of B. This is an example of "Unburying" or "Later does harm". The margin method would pick C anyway.

Under the margin method, if three more "BC" voters decided to "bury" C by just voting "B", the A->C arm of the cycle would be strengthened and the resolution strategies would end up breaking the C->B arm and giving the win to B. This is an example of "Burying". The winning votes method would pick B anyway.

Related terms
Other terms related to the Condorcet method are:
 * Condorcet loser: the candidate who is less preferred than every other candidate in a pairwise matchup (preferred by fewer voters than any other candidate).
 * Weak Condorcet winner: a candidate who beats or ties with every other candidate in a pairwise matchup (preferred by at least as many voters as any other candidate). There can be more than one weak Condorcet winner.
 * Weak Condorcet loser: a candidate who is defeated by or ties with every other candidate in a pairwise matchup. Similarly, there can be more than one weak Condorcet loser.

 * Improved Condorcet winner: in improved condorcet methods, additional rules for pairwise comparisons are introduced to handle ballots where candidates are tied, so that pairwise wins can not be changed by those tied ballots switching to a specific preference order. A strong improved condorcet winner in an improved condorcet method must also be a strong condorcet winner, but the converse need not hold. In tied at the top methods, the number of ballots where the candidates are tied at the top of the ballot is subtracted from the victory margin between the two candidates. This has the effect of introducing more ties in the pairwise comparison graph, but allows the method to satisfy the favourite betrayal criterion.

Condorcet ranking methods
Some Condorcet methods produce not just a single winner, but a ranking of all candidates from first to last place. A Condorcet ranking is a list of candidates with the property that the Condorcet winner (if one exists) comes first and the Condorcet loser (if one exists) comes last, and this holds recursively for the candidates ranked between them.

Single winner methods that satisfy this property include:
 * Copeland's method
 * Kemeny–Young method
 * Ranked pairs
 * Schulze method

Proportional forms which satisfy this property include:
 * CPO-STV
 * Schulze STV

Though there will not always be a Condorcet winner or Condorcet loser, there is always a Smith set and "Smith loser set" (smallest group of candidates who lose to all candidates not in the set in head-to-head elections). Some voting methods produce rankings that sort all candidates in the Smith set above all others, and all candidates in the Smith loser set below all others, with this holding recursively for all candidates ranked between them; in essence, this guarantees that when the candidates can be split into two groups, such that every candidate in the first group beats every candidate in the second group head-to-head, then all candidates in the first group are ranked higher than all candidates in the second group. Because the Smith set and Smith loser set are equivalent to the Condorcet winner and Condorcet loser when they exist, methods that always produce Smith set rankings also always produce Condorcet rankings.

Comparison with instant runoff and first-past-the-post (plurality)
Many proponents of instant-runoff voting (IRV) are attracted by the belief that if their first choice does not win, their vote will be given to their second choice; if their second choice does not win, their vote will be given to their third choice, etc. This sounds perfect, but it is not true for every voter with IRV. If someone voted for a strong candidate, and their 2nd and 3rd choices are eliminated before their first choice is eliminated, IRV gives their vote to their 4th choice candidate, not their 2nd choice. Condorcet voting takes all rankings into account simultaneously, but at the expense of violating the later-no-harm criterion and the later-no-help criterion. With IRV, indicating a second choice will never affect your first choice. With Condorcet voting, it is possible that indicating a second choice will cause your first choice to lose.

Plurality voting is simple, and theoretically provides incentives for voters to compromise for centrist candidates rather than throw away their votes on candidates who cannot win. Opponents to plurality voting point out that voters often vote for the lesser of evils because they heard on the news that those two are the only two with a chance of winning, not necessarily because those two are the two natural compromises. This gives the media significant election powers. And if voters do compromise according to the media, the post election counts will prove the media right for next time. Condorcet runs each candidate against the other head to head, so that voters elect the candidate who would win the most sincere runoffs, instead of the one they thought they had to vote for.

There are circumstances, as in the examples above, when both instant-runoff voting and the "first-past-the-post" plurality system will fail to pick the Condorcet winner. (In fact, FPTP can elect the Condorcet loser and IRV can elect the second-worst candidate, who would lose to every candidate except the Condorcet loser. ) In cases where there is a Condorcet Winner, and where IRV does not choose it, a majority would by definition prefer the Condorcet Winner to the IRV winner. Proponents of the Condorcet criterion see it as a principal issue in selecting an electoral system. They see the Condorcet criterion as a natural extension of majority rule. Condorcet methods tend to encourage the selection of centrist candidates who appeal to the median voter. Here is an example that is designed to support IRV at the expense of Condorcet:

B is preferred by a 501–499 majority to A, and by a 502–498 majority to C. So, according to the Condorcet criterion, B should win, despite the fact that very few voters rank B in first place. By contrast, IRV elects C and plurality elects A. The goal of a ranked voting system is for voters to be able to vote sincerely and trust the system to protect their intent. Plurality voting forces voters to do all their tactics before they vote, so that the system does not need to figure out their intent.

The significance of this scenario, of two parties with strong support, and the one with weak support being the Condorcet winner, may be misleading, though, as it is a common mode in plurality voting systems (see Duverger's law), but much less likely to occur in Condorcet or IRV elections, which unlike Plurality voting, punish candidates who alienate a significant block of voters.

Here is an example that is designed to support Condorcet at the expense of IRV:

B would win against either A or C by more than a 65–35 margin in a one-on-one election, but IRV eliminates B first, leaving a contest between the more "polar" candidates, A and C. Proponents of plurality voting state that their system is simpler than any other and more easily understood.

All three systems are susceptible to tactical voting, but the types of tactics used and the frequency of strategic incentive differ in each method.

Potential for tactical voting
Like all voting methods, Condorcet methods are vulnerable to compromising. That is, voters can help avoid the election of a less-preferred candidate by insincerely raising the position of a more-preferred candidate on their ballot. However, Condorcet methods are only vulnerable to compromising when there is a majority rule cycle, or when one can be created.

Condorcet methods are vulnerable to burying. In some elections, voters can help a more-preferred candidate by insincerely lowering the position of a less-preferred candidate on their ballot. For example, in an election with three candidates, voters may be able to falsify their second choice to help their preferred candidate win.

Example with the Schulze method:
 * B is the sincere Condorcet winner. But since A has the most votes and almost has a majority, with A and B forming a mutual majority of 90% of the voters, A can win by publicly instructing A voters to bury B with C (see * below), using B-top voters' 2nd choice support to win the election. If B, after hearing the public instructions, reciprocates by burying A with C, C will be elected, and this threat may be enough to keep A from pushing for his tactic. B's other possible recourse would be to attack A's ethics in proposing the tactic and call for all voters to vote sincerely. This is an example of the chicken dilemma.
 * B beats A by 8 as before, and A beats C by 82 as before, but now C beats B by 12, forming a Smith set greater than one. Even the Schulze method elects A: The path strength of A beats B is the lesser of 82 and 12, so 12. The path strength of B beats A is only 8, which is less than 12, so A wins. B voters are powerless to do anything about the public announcement by A, and C voters just hope B reciprocates, or maybe consider compromise voting for B if they dislike A enough.

Supporters of Condorcet methods which exhibit this potential problem could rebut this concern by pointing out that pre-election polls are most necessary with plurality voting, and that voters, armed with ranked choice voting, could lie to pre-election pollsters, making it impossible for Candidate A to know whether or how to bury. It is also nearly impossible to predict ahead of time how many supporters of A would actually follow the instructions, and how many would be alienated by such an obvious attempt to manipulate the system.

 * In the above example, if C voters bury B with A, A will be elected instead of B. Since C voters prefer B to A, only they would be hurt by attempting the burying. Except for the first example where one candidate has the most votes and has a near majority, the Schulze method is very resistant to burying.

Evaluation by criteria
Scholars of electoral systems often compare them using mathematically defined voting system criteria. The criteria which Condorcet methods satisfy vary from one Condorcet method to another. However, the Condorcet criterion implies the majority criterion, and thus is incompatible with independence of irrelevant alternatives (though it implies a weaker analogous form of the criterion: when there is a Condorcet winner, losing candidates can drop out of the election without changing the result), later-no-harm, the participation criterion, and the consistency criterion.

Use of Condorcet voting
Condorcet methods are not known to be currently in use in government elections anywhere in the world, but a Condorcet method known as Nanson's method was used in city elections in the U.S. town of Marquette, Michigan in the 1920s, and today Condorcet methods are used by a number of political parties and private organizations.

In Vermont, Bill H.424 would enable towns, cities, and villages to adopt a Condorcet-based voting system for single-seat office elections through a majority vote at a town meeting. The system first checks for a majority winner among first preferences. If none, pairwise Condorcet comparisons are counted and the Condorcet winner is elected. If none, it resorts to a first-past-the-post tiebreaker. Once adopted, the system remains in effect until the community decides to revert to a previous method or another system through a subsequent town meeting vote.

Organizations which currently use some variant of the Condorcet method are:

The Schulze method article has a longer list of users of that method.
 * The Wikimedia Foundation used the Schulze method to elect its Board of Trustees until 2013, when it switched to a ratings ballot with Support/Neutral/Oppose ballots.
 * The Pirate Party of Sweden uses the Schulze method for its primaries
 * The Libertarian Party of Washington allows for a Condorcet method, in addition to other systems
 * The Debian project uses the Schulze method for internal referendums and to elect its leader
 * The Software in the Public Interest corporation uses the Schulze method for internal referendums and to elect its board of directors
 * The Gentoo Foundation uses the Schulze method for internal referendums and to elect its board of trustees and its council
 * The Free State Project used Minimax for choosing its target state
 * The uk.* hierarchy of Usenet
 * Kingman Hall and Hillegass Parker House, two loosely affiliated student housing cooperatives, each use the Schulze method to elect their management teams.
 * The Kubernetes community uses Elekto's implementation of the Schulze method.
 * Baldwin's method was in use by the Trinity College Dialectic Society around 1864.

Software

מועמד קונדורסה

title: Condorcet method


text:
The Forge of God

The Forge of God is a 1987 science fiction novel by American writer Greg Bear. Earth faces destruction when an inscrutable and overwhelming alien form of life attacks.

Plot
The novel features scenes and events, including the discovery of a nearly-dead alien in the desert, who clearly says in English, "I'm sorry, but there is bad news," and the alien's subsequent interrogation and autopsy; the discovery of an artificial geological formation and its subsequent nuclear destruction by a desperate military; and the Earth's eventual destruction by the mutual annihilation of a piece of neutronium and a piece of antineutronium dropped into Earth's core.

There is another alien faction at work, however, represented on Earth by small spider-like robots that recruit human agents through some form of mind control. They frantically collect all the human data, biological records, tissue samples, seeds, and DNA from the biosphere that they can and evacuate a handful of people from Earth. In outer space, this faction's machines combat and eventually destroy the attackers but not before Earth's fate is sealed. The evacuees eventually settle a newly terraformed Mars while some form the crew of a Ship of the Law to hunt down the home world of the killers, a quest described in the sequel, Anvil of Stars.

One of the point-of-view characters is Arthur Gordon, a scientist. He, his wife Francine and son Martin are among those rescued from the destruction of Earth. Some other characters are close to an American president, who fails to take action against the threat.

The two books show at least one solution to the Fermi paradox, with electromagnetically noisy civilizations being snuffed out by the arrival of self-replicating machines designed to destroy any potential threat to their (possibly long-dead) creators. (A similar theme is explored in Fred Saberhagen's Berserker novels.)

Cultural reference
It features a character, Lawrence Van Cott, that is modelled on science fiction author Larry Niven, whose full name is "Laurence van Cott Niven".

Reception
Dave Langford reviewed The Forge of God for White Dwarf #95, and stated that "A good nasty read [...] with a flicker of optimism: in the jungle Out There, someone is on our side ..."

The Forge of God was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1987, and was also nominated for the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1988.

Reviews

 * Review by Dan Chow (1987) in Locus, #319 August 1987
 * Review by Stephen P. Brown (1987) in Science Fiction Eye, #2, August 1987
 * Review by Don D'Ammassa (1987) in Science Fiction Chronicle, #99 December 1987
 * Review by Tom Easton (1988) in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, February 1988
 * Review by Tom Jones (1988) in Vector 142
 * Review by John Sladek (1988) in Foundation, #42 Spring 1988
 * Review by Paul J. McAuley (1988) in Interzone, #23 Spring 1988
 * Review by Dean R. Lambe (1988) in Thrust, #29, Winter 1988
 * Review by John Gilbert (1989) in Fear, September 1989
 * Review by Chris C. Bailey (1989) in Paperback Inferno, #81
 * Review [French] by Piet Hollander (1990) in Yellow Submarine, #68
 * Review [German] by John Sladek (1991) in Das Science Fiction Jahr Ausgabe 1991
 * Review by Tom Jones (1999) in Vector 204
 * Review by Chris Amies (2001) in Vector 220
 * Review by John Sladek (2019) in New Maps: More Uncollected John Sladek

Movie
In the early 2000s, The Forge of God and Anvil of Stars, as well as an as-yet-unwritten third book, were optioned by Warner Bros. to be made into movies. It was reported that Stephen Susco worked on a script for The Forge of God. In July 2006, Greg Bear mentioned on his website that the movie is "Still under option. Studio engaged in 'silent running.' "

However, in October 2010, Bear commented on his website that Ken Nolan (who wrote the screen adaptation for Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down film), was actively working on a screenplay.

title: The Forge of God


text:
Blood Music (novel)

Blood Music is a 1985 science fiction novel by American writer Greg Bear. It is an expanded version of a short story of the same title, originally published in the June 1983 issue of Analog and the winner of both the 1983 Nebula and 1984 Hugo awards for Best Novelette.

Blood Music deals with themes including biotechnology, nanotechnology (including the grey goo hypothesis), the nature of reality, consciousness, and artificial intelligence.

Plot summary
Renegade biotechnologist Vergil Ulam creates simple biological computers based on his own lymphocytes. Faced with orders from his nervous employer to destroy his work, he injects them into his own body, intending to smuggle the "noocytes" (as he calls them) out of the company and work on them elsewhere. Inside Ulam's body, the noocytes multiply and evolve rapidly, altering their own genetic material and quickly becoming self-aware. The nanoscale civilization they construct soon begins to transform Ulam, then others. The people who are infected start to find that genetic faults such as myopia and high blood pressure are fixed. Ulam's eyesight, posture, strength, and intelligence are all improved. The infected can even have conversations with their noocytes, with some reporting that the cells seem to sing.

Through infection, conversion, and assimilation of humans and other organisms, the cells eventually aggregate most of the biosphere of North America into a region 7000 km wide. This civilization, which incorporates both the evolved noocytes and recently assimilated conventional humans, is eventually forced to abandon the normal plane of existence in favor of one in which thought does not require a physical substrate. The reason for the noocytes' inability to remain in this reality is somewhat related to the strong anthropic principle.

The book's structure is titled "inter-phase", "prophase", "metaphase", "anaphase", "telophase", and "interphase". This mirrors the major phases of cell cycle: interphase and mitosis.

Reception
Dave Langford reviewed Blood Music for White Dwarf #79, and stated that "The finale is magnificent. The only problem is that it's nigglingly close to the conclusion reached by an author extrapolating from a different start-point: Arthur C. Clarke in Childhood's End. But Bear, I think does it better – and goes beyond even Clarke. Strongly recommended."

The novel was nominated for the Nebula Award in 1985 and for the Hugo, Campbell, and British Science Fiction Awards in 1986.

title: Blood Music (novel)