(My computer will be collected for repair tomorrow morning. There will then be an intermission of several days.)
"'And when a technology has advanced to the point of interstellar drive, it doesn't need an empire.'" (p. 124)
Why does this proposition seem intuitively sound or at least plausible to some, if not all, readers?
(i) An inhabited planet is already economically self-sufficient. It might start to exploit other parts of its planetary system but can there be any motive for interstellar economic imperialism?
(ii) A wealthy civilization has both motive and means to control its population size. It does not need ever-new territory for an ever-expanding population and, if it did, then it would eventually run into some natural limits.
(iii) A high tech civilization will either destroy itself or resolve its internal conflicts. Having resolved its internal conflicts, it will have no reason to seek out any external conflicts.
Now let us imagine this scenario:
tomorrow, the Americans or Chinese discover an easy means of faster than light (FTL) interstellar travel;
exploring nearby planetary systems, they discover several uninhabited terrestroid planets and set out to colonize them;
then they discover that another race at exactly the same (immature) level of social, moral and technological development as humanity is also setting out to colonize those same planets;
interstellar war?
But how probable are all the elements of that scenario? There is no sign either of FTL or of any extra-solar civilization, let alone of one at exactly our level, and we look like destroying ourselves soon in any case.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Again, I have to disagree with you and Trevelyan Micah. Polities, under whatever name you want to call them, tend to expand as far as the available technology allows them. Or as much as rival powers will allow them. So, granted FTL similar to what we see in the Technic stories, I see no reason, per se, why an interstellar republic, empire, federation, whatever, can't vastly expand.
Also, I think you overlooked a major reason for the rise of the Terran Empire in the Technic series: the Time of Troubles. The chaos and anarchy of that period, which included barbarian invasions, convinced many worlds and races of the need for UNITY in the face of a dangerous universe. So external threats was a big reason why the Empire arose, to better mobilize the resources needed for defense.
There were other benefits, of course. The Empire protected trade, commerce, communications, travel, etc., within the sphere it controlled. And the unifying of many worlds and races within a single overarching polity meant THEY did not have to pay as much as they otherwise would have needed to do for military defense. Albeit, some planets like Dennitza insisted on having a navy of their own. But even Dennitza almost certainly did not have as large a fleet as it would have were it independent.
Many Dennitzans, being on the same frontier as a hostile Merseia, thought of their fleet as supplementing that of the Imperial Navy in case of need.
The fact the Stellar Union, aside from the peculiar case of the Alori, was not either harassed by barbarian raids or confronted by a hostile civilized power, frankly struck me as odd and not very plausible. And I suspect Anderson, deep down, came to think that another of the flaws in his Psychotechic stories.
And I hope we DO quickly get a FTL drive!
Ad astra! Sean
Note that it takes agreement to have a peaceful relationship, but conflict can be imposed unilaterally.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I keep forgetting to say THAT in many of my comments here! Despite some of my remarks obviously having that idea at least implicitly in mind. Barbarians and a hostile power like Merseia CHOSE, after all, to regard the Empire with enmity.
And thanks for commenting!
Ad astra! Sean
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