"Falkayn relaxed a bit. Morruchan seemed to be his own kind despite everything, not awestruck, not idealistic, not driven by some incomprehensible nonhuman motivation, but a shrewd and skeptical politician of a pragmatically oriented culture.
"Seems to be, the man cautioned himself. What do I really know about Merseia?"
-Poul Anderson, "Day of Burning" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 209-272 AT p. 216.
Falkayn is realistic and cautious as well as competent and ambitious. I respect his role in this setting. If I were on Merseia, then it would be as an academic member of the earlier Grand Survey team. I would hope to meet idealistic Merseians motivated by the good of their species and by an aspiration to cooperate harmoniously with other intelligent species. I would also be realistic enough to realize that I might not find what I hoped for.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
We do get a glimpse of the kind of Merseians you would have hoped to have met in "Day Of Burning," the Star Believers. Despite being somewhat naive and unrealistic, they seemed to have been among those Merseians who hoped for friendly relations with other races. And some of these cultists were even Merseians of power and influence.
And I have wondered elsewhere if the racism and aggressive expansionism of the future Roidhunate had their origins in the Demonists, which one Star Believer described thus: "A lunatic sect. They imagine you galactics mean, have meant from the first, to corrupt us to our destruction." Now, if you ally Demonist notions to the shrewdness and pragmatism of Morruchan Long-Ax (plus the pride, even arrogance of many in the Vachs), then it's possible to see the origins of the ideology which came to drive the Roidhunate after the unification of Merseia.
Sean
Well, there's a difference between "idealistic" and "credulous idiot"... 8-).
I think the aggressiveness of the Merseians as we meet them later may stem partly from the inherently warlike ethos of the Eriau culture in particular, and partly from the blow to their pride delivered by the presence of Technic visitors and the discovery that they're not at all important in the greater galactic scheme of things. And that even the rescue mission the Terrans send is a by-product of a scientific research project aimed at the supernova.
There's another analogy to Japanese history -- similar resentments and fears drove the Meiji and post-Meiji Japanese to modernize overnight and to build their own empire in East Asia.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
We had too many of these credulous idiots during the Cold War when the USSR was it's most menacing and aggressive. I recall too well how they kept poo pooing and minimizing the Soviet threat. The first Soviet despot, Lenin, contemptuously called such persons "useful idiots," who would sell the Communists the rope they would be hanged with. And * I * coined the term "appeaseniks" for such persons!
Yes, I agree, finding out they are not all that important on a galactic scale would gall many Merseians. I perhaps should have quoted from the text in "Day Of Burning" beginning with "A fierce, proud people..."
I agree, resentments and fears, mostly unwarranted in my opinion, did drive many Japanese in Meiji and post-Meiji times. But, I recall reading how, during Emperor Taisho's reign (1912-26), there was a time when Japan came close to following a very different and better path. The Imperial Diet, for example, showed signs of becoming a truly assertive and GOVERNING parliament. Unfortunately, the rise of extreme nationalism nullified such tendencies.
Sean
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