The Northwest Union deployed a battleship with nuclear rockets that destroyed a quarter or more of the Maurai Grand Fleet. Jovain, the usurper of Skyholm, asks:
"'Whoever ordered that battleship out must have been insane, no?'" (p. 435)
What happened to your self-criticism, Jovain? The Maurai ambassador's response is perhaps ironic:
"Rewi gave him a grim smile. 'Insanity is a relative matter, sir.'" (p. 436)
Rewi discusses the Maurai "'...collapse of morale...'":
"'...it's no use telling the crews that the nukes are all spent. An obsession about the atom is built into them, into our entire culture.'" (ibid.)
Some future histories show our descendants fearing nuclear weapons because of what had happened in the twentieth century. In Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, the UN suppresses nationalism in order to prevent a World War IV. Once in Isaac Asimov's future history it is hypothesized that Earth is radioactive because multiple nuclear explosions had once been generated artificially as an act of war. The horrified response is along the lines of: "Impossible. Only once in Galactic history has any space admiral suggested doing such a thing and he was immediately lynched by his own men!"
This is futuristic sf commenting on its authors' and readers' present.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And that obsession about nuclear technology has become a blind and irrational superstition by too many of the Maurai, as the Federation's ambassador seems to have realized.
And I disagreed with what Asimov said about how people would react to the military use of nuclear technology in his Galactic Empire/Foundation timeline. Because I consider it very implausible.
Ad astra! Sean
The restraint on using nuclear weapons isn't moral, it's eminently practical: the risk of retaliation in kind.
We wouldn't have nuked the Japanese if they could have replied in kind.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Of course not, IF the Japanese could have nuked us.
Ad astra! Sean
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