In Wells' The War In The Air, war went into the air.
In Poul Anderson's "Kings Who Die," war goes into space.
I know that there is more to war in sf than that! But that is enough for this evening and those are three high points with Anderson admirably succeeding Wells.
See also War, Wells And Anderson.
"Kings Who Die" is in Seven Conquests, Anderson's war-themed collection, which could be read after the two Wells novel.
29 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
The conflicts seen in "Kings Who Die" were "cabinet wars," limited struggles fought in space for limited ends and gains. The great powers had agreed it was too dangerous to fight each other on Earth. Safer to do that in space.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Yes. Anderson made a logical addition to Wells' predictions about war.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
It's also typical of how humans try to manage their quarrels in non-ideological"jihadist" times. That is, times when struggles and conflicts are not desperate, life and death wars. Rather like the 18th century, before the Revolutionary/Napoleonic wars.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
Well, there were exceptions in the 18th century, such as the implacable hatred Empress Elizabeth of Russia had for Frederick II of Prussia. She was willing to fight to the bitter end, no matter the cost, to destroy Prussia. Only the Empress' death saved Frederick, when he was at his last gasp.
Ad astra! Sean
Yes, Prussia lost about 20-25% of its population in the Seven Years War. That was exceptional for a European war of the period.
curse it, I can't get the system to post my name!
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
At least we now know who "Anonymous" is. I hope that problem is soon fixed.
Finished reading the pub. version of TO TURN THE TIDE, and loved it!
Yes, if Empress Elizabeth even a few months longer Prussia would have been destroyed, at least as a great power. Our history would have been staggeringly different if that had happened!
And you have commented on how chastened Frederick II was, after the Seven Years War. No more wars against other great powers, no more attempts at winning wars quickly thru preemptive attacks.
Ad astra! Sean
You could say that Federick's providential last-minute reprieve -- "the Miracle of the House of Brandenburg" -- gave subsequent Prussian rulers exactly the wrong idea.
Germany in WW1 counted on a quick victory over France, and then kept hoping something would turn up -- Ludendorff was gambling on a quick victory before the US came in substantially as late as 1918.
He -nearly- brought it off, but not quite.
That is, they did try to win wars quickly and on the cheap -- Bismarck was the last one who succeeded at it -- and then hope 'something would turn up' if it didn't work.
Hitler often referenced Frederick from 1942 on, hoping the Allies would fall out or something of that order.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, subsequent Prussian/German leaders tried to emulate how Frederick II acted during the first half of his reign--but only Bismarck pulled that off successfully.
Yes, by 1916 Germany should have heeded Austria-Hungary's wishes and at least tried for an armistice and compromise peace in WW I. Even if that didn't work the onus for continuing the war would have been on the Entente Powers, not the Central Allies. That, plus stopping or limiting German submarine attacks on Entente shipping might have kept the US out of the war.
I recall reading, after FDR died in 1945, of how Hitler hoped that would mean the US dropping out of the war. Except it was inconceivable the US would do that, for many reasons. Political, military, emotional/ideological.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: the problem was that while they hadn't won the war, they'd won a lot of the battles -- they were on French territory and occupying a fair bit of it, they'd thrashed the Russians every time they fought them seriously and had a good prospect of knocking them out of the war (which they actually did). Returning to the status quo ante bellum would have made whoever did it's name mud.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Yes, but even a return to that status quo ante bellum would have been far better than the utter catastrophe suffered by the Central Allies in 1918.
Also, a US which remained out of the war in 1917, due to concessions made by Germany re submarine warfare, would have given the Central Allies more time to exploit the gains won by knocking Russia out of the war in early 1917. Given that I can still see the UK/France eventually agreeing to making peace if Germany returned to the 1914 borders in the west.
Yes, Germany would still have gained, at a minimum, Russian Poland, and what is now Belarussia; with Austria-Hungary acquiring at least Romania. They would have ended the war stronger than the UK and France.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: it's worse than that. Just before Germany began unrestricted submarine warfare again and sent the grotesque Zimmerman Telegram, the US Federal Reserve (with the government's approval) had strongly cautioned US banks from lending more money to the Allied/Entente powers.
So if Germany -hadn't- done those things, the supply of American munitions, food and so forth to the Entente would have been drastically cut back, just at the time Russia started to collapse!
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That I had not known, what you said about the US Federal Reserve! Stunningly fascinating, what would have happened if Germany had held off from both unrestricted submarine warfare and never sent the idiotic Zimmerman Telegram? France and the UK would very soon had been in a far worse position than the Central Allies.
History is so chaotic and contingent!
Ad astra! Sean
Utterly chaotic and totally contingent -- but everything looks 'inevitable' in retrospect, if you stand back and don't pay attention to the details.
OTOH, the WW1 Germans were -totally lousy- at estimating what other powers would do. They consistently made gross errors.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And the utter chaos and contingency of human history and life is a huge reason why I don't believe in hopeless, futile Utopian fantasies!
Hindsight is 20/20 as the saying goes--while foresight is near sighted, astigmatic, and half blind!
Your BLACK CHAMBER books really brought home to me how terrible WW I Germans were at Intelligence work and strategic analysis. The Germans won in that timeline only because of dumb luck.
I can see Horst von Duckler, if he had survived, rising to become chief of German Intelligence and knocking some sense into it.
Ad astra! Sean
We can, not necessarily will, learn, reorganize and use technology to improve life significantly.
Kaor, Paul!
Technological improvements, yes, but not necessarily anything more than that.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Not necessarily but technology affects perceptions, understanding, lifestyles, consciousness. I think that you keep trying to make a false distinction: we change our natural and social environments but something inside us remains permanently unchangeable nevertheless. What? Why? How?
These routine denunciations of unrealistic dangerous Utopianism begin to sound like rants, the kind of thing that extremists of left or right are accused of. There is a difference between rants and discussion.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Because I believe my "not necessarily" to be far more realistic than what you hope for.
I believe free enterprise economics, along with the limited state (in whatever form), is the optimum possible for mankind.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But free enterprise will be redundant when so much is produced that it is not longer necessary to buy or sell it, to limit its distribution or to deny anyone access to what they need. Everyone will be an equal shareholder in General Production. Instead of having to work for someone else just to get what we need for survival, everyone will be free to find better ways to spend their time. Adjusting to very different circumstances, education and culture will encourage everyone into meaningful creative and social activities instead of into alienated labour in a factory or office at someone else's behest.
Paul.
Paul: and then you wake up.
Note that the USSR had access to the same technology that we had, but living standards were stagnant by the last generation and life expectancies -declined-.
Bad management can screw up the results of -any- technology. And power is at the heart of economics, and power is -inherently- a zero-sum game.
BTW, the average person is simply not physically capable of "creative activities" because they're too stupid and that is genetic.
(About 80% of cognitive abilities are genetically determined, absent severe environmental deficits.)
Freed of the necessity for work they'd simply sit around, stuff their faces, watch the equivalent of TV, and get into physical fights and faction-fights with the neighbors out of raw boredom.
We can work on that 20%, to start with! I think that the present population freed from the necessity to work is a different proposition from future generations born into cultures with completely different material conditions and priorities. Of course a transitional period will be chaotic but I think that that is what we are going through anyway. (Male) Andrea, with whom I spent this afternoon is a very canny guy who expects a global financial crash in about 2028.
I can see where we are now, where I think that we could be in the future but not how to get from one position to the other very quickly or easily. I do think that continued business as usual will be increasingly disastrous.
Kaor, Paul!
I have to continue to disagree with you and agree with Stirling (and Anderson for that matter). The scenario seen in "Quixote and the Windmill" again comes to mind.
The only way to work on that 20% is by Draka style genetic engineering. Do you really want to go down that road? I can easily see a genetic oligarchy breeding people to be either geniuses but submissive servants of Draka like masters or having them bred to be as empty of will and intelligence as the Zolotoyans in "The High Ones."
Free enterprise economics and the limited State might be kludgy, but it works and it allows people who want to a chance to better themselves.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Of course I don't want to go down that road! Where do these ideas come from? If (and I only accepted this figure for the sake of argument) 20% of our cognitive abilities are not genetically determined, then we work on that 20% ourselves by learning, adapting, changing ourselves and our circumstances. I really do not see how the Draka or "The High Ones" came into this discussion.
I am astonished at the suggestion that people, at least some of the people some of the time, are incapable of adapting to changed circumstances. We have been doing this all the time. If technology opens up possibilities of new ways of living, then some people will despair because the old ways of living are gone forever whereas others will embrace the new ways of living.
Free enterprise economics makes sense when someone like van Rijn buys from producers and sells to consumers. Buying and selling will be redundant when technology produces so much that everyone can have what they need and more without any longer needing to use money as a means of exchange. Barter is redundant. Money can become redundant. We would be at that stage now if resources were not systematically diverted into producing means of mass destruction. There is much opposition to continued propping up of the present conflictive, unstable and destructive status quo.
Paul.
An earlier point: When I said that a future economy need not involve some people employing other people in exchange for a wage or salary, it was replied that there is nothing wrong with employing people in this way. Of course there is nothing wrong with it if that is the kind of economy that we are living and working in but the point is that we need not live in that kind of economy forever.
Human beings are active, proactive and interactive. They do not just passively suffer whatever is inflicted on them by governments. Of course they sometimes do just suffer whatever is inflicted on them. We are two-sided, dialectical. A lot of time is wasted in arguing that people are just one thing.
Whenever I read "free enterprise," I reply to it. If "free enterprise" is repeated, then I repeat my reply. Can we somehow break out of this cycle?
Kaor, Paul!
Then we cannot agree, because I don't believe in the plausibility of what you hope for. A free enterprise economy is basically a society where people make their own decisions, wisely and foolishly.
And I believe most people are simply not going to be what you want them to be. E.g., what Stirling said. Only some, not all, humans are going to be creative, proactive, or interactive in beneficial ways.
Ad astra! Sean
Paul: 20% isn't much.
For example, my IQ is somewhere between 140 and 160 -- the tests get unreliable at that level, tho' I attracted the attention of some psychologists in my teenage years and they put me through very exhaustive examinations.
Say it's 150 and I got a 20% reduction through environmental influences. That would bring it down to 120.
But say it was 80 -- which a lot of people are.
A 20% increase would bring it up to... 96.
A 20% reduction would bring it down to 64%, which is borderline needs-continuous-care idiocy.
Sean,
But surely we are not trying to agree? If that were the aim, then there would clearly be no point in even starting.
A free enterprise society is not basically a society where people make their own decisions. Everyone will be able to make far better and more meaningful decisions when economic scarcity and a few employing the many and controlling their work merely to increase the profits of the few have been eliminated.
People are all these things - sometimes active, sometimes passive - now. That is how we have built the societies that we already have. Of course not everyone is going to be equally creative but they can certainly be educated and encouraged to appreciate dance, music, drama, visual arts, every kind of prose fiction - and popular accounts of science. This denigration of the bulk of humanity is unwarranted and certainly counter-productive.
I am not sure how accurate IQs are in measuring general intelligence. How socially conditioned are they? How accurate are they in predicting what we will accomplish in future when more opportunities for everyone have been opened up?
Most people are not going to be...? How does anyone know that? People as they are now will not suddenly be miraculously transformed into saints and geniuses. If I were asserting that, then I would quite clearly be certifiable. What will future generations growing up in completely different conditions be like? They will not be turned out of school semiliterate seeking only unskilled labour and only wanting to watch TV soap operas.
Paul.
How often in argument is it necessary to say, "No, I did not mean that," "No, I did not say that"? We ought to be able to achieve mutual comprehension more quickly.
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