The Solar Union: Physics And Politics

The climax of Poul Anderson's "Holmgang" is a neat solution to a technical problem: how to fight an armed man on a small asteroid? Solution: use one of your air tanks to propel yourself right around the asteroid so that you can smash into his back. Similarly, "Brake" also builds towards the solution to a technical problem: how to decelerate a spaceship on a hyperbolic orbit and with insufficient reaction mass? Solution: jettison non-essentials and brake by skimming the Jovian atmosphere until the ship can float in the atmosphere and await rescue.

However, I am currently rereading these Psychotechnic History installments not for their hard sf but for their information on the political opposition to the Solar Union. "Holmgang" tells us that the Humanists have an asteroid base and plan a military uprising. Why?

A Humanist argues that:

three ideologically motivated World Wars ruined Earth;
therefore, populations emotionally reacted against ideology in favor of reason;
by applying reason, scientists produced goods, machines, space travel, new food sources, new cures for old diseases and a workable plan for socioeconomic unity;
however, this New Enlightenment has created new practical problems that it cannot solve;
these are mass unemployment on Earth and cultural resistance both from Asia and from the extra-planetary colonies;
the psychotechs are making enemies by responding oligarchically and unconstitutionally to these insoluble problems created by themselves.

Before we continue to discuss Solar Union politics, let me quote a speculative passage from The Snows Of Ganymede (New York, 1958), Chapter 4:

"Seen from space, Ganymede was bleaker than Luna herself - seamed with mountains, pocked with craters, mottled light and dark over her sterile face." (p. 21)

This story was originally published in 1954. Now we have close up photos of Ganymede (see image). Anderson described it before we saw it.