I agree with Sigurdsen:
"'...star-exploring civilizations must be peaceful, because otherwise they would have destroyed themselves before reaching the required level of technology.'" (p. 22)
Pointing out the immensity of the achievement and the investment represented by the starship, he asks:
How can its crew profit by harming mankind?
What plunder could be worth the cost of the voyage?
What population pressure could be relieved by sending a single ship?
What ego gratification could there be in attacking a defenseless target after conquering interstellar space?
The travelers can be motivated only by knowledge and mankind has that to give. (I think that the aliens later turn out to be motivated mainly by aesthetics.)
I quoted Alan Moore when criticizing Asimov's future history:
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.”21
-copied from here.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I am not so optimistic as some! I think conflict and strife will be possible, even if you have only a STL means of star traveling, if you are bound and determined to fight. Which Poul Anderson shows us in "Time Lag."
And of course conflicts of all kinds becomes much more likely if we have a FTL means of space traveling, as we see in Anderson's Technic Civilization stories. The Empire had to fend off both barbarian attacks and the hostility of the civilized, non human Merseians.
Sean
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