What could be more absurd than either an interstellar Emperor or a police force to prevent time travelers from changing the past? Yet Poul Anderson built a substantial series on each of these ideas and also, in other works, presented completely different kinds of interstellar civilizations and time traveling organizations. (
I am still having problems with paragraphing, at least until I am below the level of the image. Maybe, in the next post, I will try attaching the image after completing the text of the post but what else will go wrong then?) The cliche "hyperspace" was given a novel meaning. The Terran Empire became a less implausible social structure. The cliche green alien villains became a more rounded fictional species. The impossible universal telepath became a tragic and anti-heroic character. Dominic Flandry and David Falkayn matured. The fat merchant, van Rijn, became a more serious personality and a vehicle for reflection on the decline of a civilization. In the Time Patrol series, the lone villain, Stane, and the time bandits called "Neldorians" were succeeded by the more sophisticated Exaltationists, including an individual continuing villain, and also by the new idea of temporal chaos expressed through a personal causal nexus. I think that the
The Imperial Stars cover illustration sums up the progress of the Flandry series from its pulp origins.
22 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Here I want to focus on this: "What could be more absurd than either an interstellar Emperor..." What puzzles me is why you should think an Imperial/monarchical form of gov't should be so absurd for an interstellar state (assuming, of course, a FTL drive). My view is that would be no more absurd than a Terran Federation or Commonwealth. Real peoples in real history have set up many other other kinds of gov't: republics, oligarchies, theocracies, aristocracies, despotisms of various kinds, dictatorships, etc.
Poul Anderson had his own ideas and beliefs, mostly libertarian moderated with conservative skepticism and distrust for all ideologies. But he was not dogmatic and shows us many kinds of possible states and societies in his stories. And I think the political system of Dennitza, in his Technic series, comes closest to what he thought the best form of gov't that could realistically be hoped for.
Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven wrote an essay discussing their novel THE MOTE IN GOD'S EYE, called "Building the Mote in God's Eye" (in A STEP FARTHER OUT, Ace Books, 1980) Some of what they wrote there is applicable here (all quotes taken from pages 133-34): "In THE MOTE IN GOD'S EYE we chose Imperial aristocracy as the main form of human goernment. We've been praised for this. Dick Brass in a NEW YORK POST review concludes we couldn't have chosen anything else, and other critics have applauded us for showing what wha such a society might be like." The authors then went on to say: "Fortunately there are no Sacred Cows in science fiction. ...Because other critics have been horrified. Do we, they ask, really BELIEVE in imperial government? And MONARCHY?
To conclude: "That depends on what they mean by "believe in." Do we think it's [imperial gov't] desirable? We don't have to say. Inevitable? Of course not. Do we think it's POSSIBLE? Damn straight." Pournelle and Niven then said they based the politics of the Co-Dominium timeline on C. Northcote Parkinson's book EVOLUTION OF POLITICAL THOUGHT.
I know you have a wishful hope for the existence of some kind of mass action communitarian "republic." But real history and politics in the here and now (and, I believe, indefinitely into the future) shows us many different kinds of gov't. And I argue that what matters is not the form of a state, but whether it is believed to be LEGITIMATE. Given that, and if it governs not too terribly badly, even the most outlandish form of gov't has as much right to exist as any other. And that was Anderson's basic view as well.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I am not happy about Niven & Pournelle ducking out of whether they think that imperial government is desirable although, of course, that is different from whether it is plausible.
Interstellar empires became a cliche so, when the Empire of Man showed up in the CoDominium History, I thought, "Nothing new."
Paul.
Sean,
It was Novak, not Koch, that made the mistake that nearly got him and Everard caught.
Paul.
Sorry. Not Volstrup.
Kaor, Paul!
Pournelle and Niven were writing a novel with THE MOTE IN GOD'S EYE, not a political treatise. So, if they wanted to "duck out" of making plain their preferences, surely that was their business? Anyway, we can know from Pournelle's non fictional writings what his political views were: basically the same as Poul Anderson, but perhaps a bit more pessimistic.
And cliches became that way because they usually embodied some TRUTH. In this case it was the truism that an interstellar empire (or federation), granted a FTL drive, was just as likely a possibility as anything else.
Novak made that error, not Volstrup. I really should have remembered that!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I read somewhere what N&P thought about the aristocratic/imperial society in MOTE... and it was clear that more thought had gone into it than appeared in the novel, or so I thought.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Even in 1975 I could tell how much work and thought had gone into THE MOTE IN GOD'S EYE. And in their sequel THE GRIPPING HAND.
Ad astra! Sean
Note that "Emperor" comes from "Imperator", which was a Roman term that originally had no monarchical overtones: it just meant "fit to command Romans".
"Caesar" (from which are derived Kaiser and Tsar) was a family name.
"Imperium" just meant "sphere of authority".
The Romans of the Empire didn't refer to their state as an Empire; they called it the "Republic".
To show that this isn't a Latin peculiarity, the Sumerian word that originally came to mean "king", "Lu-Gal", originally just meant "big man" or "boss".
And our word "King", is from proto-Germanic *kunningaz, which apparently had an original meaning of roughly "scion of an important family".
You can see the same linguistic evolution in ancient Greek.
The Bronze Age word for "king" in Greek was "Wannax" (Annax in Homer, because the initial 'w' sound dropped out of Greek). This word dropped out of use.
In Iron Age times, "king" was "Basileus". This derives from a Mycenaean-era word that meant something more like "village chief" or "headman".
So the head of an interstellar empire might well be officially "Chairman" or "President" of a "Confederation" or "Republic".
It's the actual degree of authority and means of succession that matter, not the name.
The head of state of North Korea is officially the "Chairman of the State Affairs Commission".
That doesn't alter the fact that he has the job because his father and grandfather did, and that he's an absolute monarch who can have people shot (or, according to rumor, thrown into pits with tigers) at his whim.
Senatus Populusque Romanus!
The abuse of innocuous, democratic-sounding titles by regimes like North Korea is a linguistic travesty fully comparable to the atrocities that they commit while abusing those titles. A mere Chairman of a mere Commission should be removable at any time by a vote of that Commission!
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: Exactly! An empire and its ruler can in FACT be called by many other names than simply "Empire" or "Emperor." I'm reminded of THE GBNERAL books you co-wrote with Dave Drake. The long isolated planet Bellevue preserved garbled memories of how it had once been part of an empire called the Terran Federation. The head of that Federation might well have been called "President," "High Commissioner," etc. But he was probably as powerful as any Roman or East Roman Emperor.
And in Jerry Pournelle's JANISSARIES books, the king of Drantos was called "Wanax," and that state has a somewhat archaic Greek look, meaning it had been set up by Bronze Age Greeks.
Paul: Many tyrants have sought to mask or disguise their actual autocratic despotism by modest titles. Such as "General Secretary" in the USSR or "Chairman" in Maoist China. Altho as time passed they tended to assume more "normal" titles, such as Premier or President.
Ad astra! Sean
It’s interesting that the longest-surviving Communist states all became, effectively, hereditary monarchies (except China, so far). I suspect that this is the “default” state of affairs; only strong institutional-cultural forces can prevent it. It’s the lowest-entropy state for succession of power, and there’s always a tendency to relapse into it.
Some of us think that the so-called "Communist" states were more accurately described as "state capitalist" because bureaucrats extracted wealth from labor and used it to compete, albeit the competition was primarily military (weapons stockpiling) rather than economic in nature. This is not what "communism" originally meant although, of course, circumstances and history change the meanings of words.
Paul: a political (or religious) movement is what its proclaimed devotees do, not what theoreticians speculate they might/should do.
Hence "Communist state" is what Communists do when they have the power of the State, ditto any others.
Words are cheap, in other words...
Kaor, Paul!
And I agree with Stirling, and not with you. Communists are Communists if they say so and keep falling back on the Marxist scriptures to find justifications for what they do.
Also, I disagree with the desperate recourse to "state capitalism." What is communism or socialism? State control or ownership of the means of producing and distributing goods and services. That is NOT by any means free enterprise* economics.
Ad astra! Sean
*A term like "free enterprise" is more accurate than "capitalism."
Agreed that words are cheap. There is a lot that needs to be DONE about the state of the world.
Kaor, Paul!
And that SHOULD include not stubbornly repeating failed experiments with socialism in the forlorn hope that if we just try one more time, surely it would succeed.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Well, it makes some difference whether the state is democratic! - but we have been over this before.
"State capitalism" was a term carefully chosen by Tony Cliff after an in-depth economic and political analysis of the USSR. If the society had been democratic and if its internal economic relationships had not been exploitative, then he would have used some other term.
But how are we, the human race, coping with our present problems? Is free enterprise adequately addressing the environmental issues, social divisions and wars that it itself causes? I have a lot of sympathy for anyone who might think that there are no solutions to be found and that arguments are only making it worse. Unfortunately, we have to argue. It is an unavoidable part of the process of (hopefully) working toward an answer.
Let us try to see the planet and the Solar System through the Chaos. If that leads only to a Solar Commonwealth followed by a Terran Empire, then that will be a lot better than extinction.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Democracy is fine IF the right preconditions for it to work exists in a nation or society. That has not been true of many nations, both past and present.
Perhaps I should not comment if if I have not read Mr. Cliff's argument, so I will only offer some tentative thoughts. I find "capitalism" an at least slightly demeaning alternative to "free enterprise economics." If my recollection is correct, "state capitalism" means a socialist command economy using the powers of the state to commandeer labor and resources of all kinds for either rapidly building heavy industry or the military of the state. A "state capitalist" command economy is simply not comparable to any genuine free enterprise (or, if you insist, "capitalist") economy. Instead of the Politburo setting goals and ordering the commandeering of the required resources, a free enterprise system works by both individuals and firms large and small being guided by the demands of the people at large on which goods and services to offer.
Yes, when it is ALLOWED to work, free enterprise economics will do a much better job of finding solutions to many of our problems than socialism ever can or will. I only need to remind you of the extracts I quoted from Zubrin's THE CASE FOR SPACE of how a single man, a private person, persuaded some Indians from either Alaska or Oregon into forming their own corporation, buying a shipload of plain old RUST to scatter at sea for sopping up carbon dioxide from the ocean, to revitalize fishing stocks. And succeeded spectacularly!
And I certainly agree with your last paragraph! An intermediate stage before a Solar Commonwealth and Terran Empire would be the settling and developing of the Solar System, as we see in Anderson's TALES OF THE FLYING MOUNTAINS.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Some of this is terminological. We can at least agree on disagreeing with command economies.
Paul.
If trying to implement a set of ideas repeatedly and consistently leads to very bad results, one should not keep blaming bad implementation or bad leaders and start doubting the ideas themselves.
This is why it's usually better to soldier on with imperfect institutions, making the odd tweak here and there, rather than try to wipe the slate and create something -de novo-.
Human minds simply cannot successfully invent new social systems from scratch; we can't understand the complexity of the interactions involved and thinking we can is hubristic.
And after hubris, nemesis; but madness lets Her in.
Anything that's existed for a long time has shown that it works -- more or less -- with human beings as they actually are, rather than someone's conception of what they should be.
Changing it is going to have unanticipated consequences, and (the universe being what it is) they're likely to be dire, given that there are infinitely more ways to screw things up as opposed to making them more workable.
Predicting the future is inherently impossible, but it's something we have to try every time we take an action designed to produce a future result.
Hence you're much more likely to get a predictable outcome if you base your actions on precendent -- on what's worked before.
Novelty increases the unpredictability exponentially -- and you shouldn't expect to luck out.
Kaor, Paul!
And Mr. Stirling's comments immediately above says everything, and more, that I might have said, replying to you. If socialism (outside of monasteries) simply does NOT WORK, no matter how many times you try to make it word, WHY stick with it?
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
One reason is that I think that the present global economic system is literally self-destructive. Remember the UN scientific forecast of an irreversible ecological catastrophe very soon. But I do agree that a lot of thought and experiential learning is necessary to devise structures that work. And all the inevitable disagreement and discord makes it seem very unlikely that we are going to pull through into a better world dispensation any time soon.
Paul.
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