"'The station hasn't got any armament, but trust the human race to juryrig that. We commandeered the scoopships belonging to this vessel and loaded them with Jovian gas at maximum pressure. If your missile detonates, they'll dive on you.'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Rogue" IN Anderson, Tales Of The Flying Mountains (New York, 1984), pp. 45-100 AT p. 95.
See What Is A Weapon?
This adaptation of peaceful technology for warfare is another conceptual parallel between Anderson's Tales Of the Flying Mountains and Larry Niven's Tales of Known Space.
Also relevant is a very perceptive comment by an Alan Moore character:
As Alan Moore’s extraterrestrial character, Zhcchz (“Skizz”), says:
“You…refuse to…understand. When technology…has reached…a certain level…weapons…are redundant. When you already have…all that you need, then…why fight? We…have devices…that you would call weapons. To us…they…are tools.”
-copied from here. We do not fight for the air that we breathe and I am confident that we will not fight for anything when technology has been used to make everyone rich.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I have to disagree with what Alan Moore had his fictional non human saying. Zhcchz is far too optimistic when he believes wealth alone would be enough to prevent competition, including competition leading to wars, from breaking out. Human history gives me no reason to believe a "post scarcity" economy will eliminate competition and wars. In fact, I can see ennui alone being enough to make people intrigue, scheme, plot, conspire, etc., if that was what it too to relieve boredom. I had GENESIS in mind when I typed this note.
Sean
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