Over a century after the events of "The Trouble Twisters," the Polesotechnic League ends, to be followed in succession by:
the Time of Troubles;
the Terran Empire;
the Long Night;
the Allied Planets period;
the Commonalty period;
a later Galactic period?(see Historical Perspectives and Galactic Civilization.)
The Commonalty is not a civilization. Instead, there are disparate human civilizations in several spiral arms of the galaxy. The Commonalty is an interstellar service organization in one spiral arm, a remote successor of the League and an improvement on the Terran Empire which, according to one text, was only the first interstellar empire.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
But what might happen when an emergency or crisis is confronted by the Commonalty? We only see it, in "Starfog," during its early phase or when it was approaching its apogee. My copy of THE LONG has someone at the end of that story writing in italics: "And now a new cycle turns on Fortune's cosmic wheel. Another brilliant era races to its apogee. What hidden flaws will send the Commonalty spinning downward into darkness like the Empire and the League before it? Let its free and lively people prosper while they may, for as a proverb handed down from Old Earth puts: Shines the sun ne'er so bright,/In the end must come the night."
I suspect the interstitial comments seen in THE LONG NIGHT were written by Sandra Miesel, who edited many of the collections of Anderson's stories pub. in the 1980's. But I don't think Anderson would have consented to being included if he had not agreed with them. I know the grim realism (or bleak pessimism, if you like) of conservatives like PA and myself does not appeal to you--but I've seen NO reason not to expect "rises" to be followed by "falls."
Sean
"It may just be," [Lucas Trask] added, "that there is something fundamentally unworkable about government itself. As long as Homo sapiens terra is a wild animal, which he has always been and always will be until he evolves into something different in a million or so years, maybe a workable system of government is a political-science impossibility, just as transmutation of elements was a physical-science impossibility as long as they tried to do it by chemical means."
"Then we'll just have to make it work the best way we can, and when it breaks down, hope the next try will work a little better, for a little longer," Bentrik said.
— Space Viking, H. Beam Piper, 1963
Kaor, DAVID!
I absolutely agree with what Piper wrote here! And another point, we need to avoid thinking only ONE form, system, or philosophy of gov't is good and all others are bad--as long as the state does not govern too intolerably badly. (See my "Political Legitimacy In The Thought Of Poul Anderson" article.)
Sean
Humans are constructed to function in a society of about 150 other people (which is the maximum most people can know personally). Everything above that level is unstable. It keeps happening, because there are so many functional advantages, but you have to come up with means (nations, for instance) to trick people into treating strangers like kin.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
And, in part, that is where questions of legitimacy comes in. There are different ways in which people can be persuaded strangers like kin. And to believe that it was right to do so.
Sean
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