Some civilized race - and Flandry suspects the Merseians - armed the Schotani who displaced the Alarri. This is the interstellar Volkerwanderung in Poul Anderson's Technic History. During Dominic Flandry's boyhood, an Imperial Navy task force smashed and scattered the Alarri at the Battle of Mirzan. It was known that someone had pushed the Alarri but not who they were.
See also:
The Battle Of Mirzan (Scroll down)
The Merseians are the kind of continuing villains who can either come on-stage or remain off-stage, influencing others from a distance. They are behind the scenes in "Message in Secret" and "The Game of Glory."
3 comments:
The Japanese who attacked Pearl Harbour with aircraft carriers in 1941 were commanded by admirals who were the sons of men who’d seen the Meiji Restoration and had grown up using katanas and bamboo bows.
And the Meriseans who were the great enemies of the Terran Empire industrialized at super-speed because they were visited by one set of Terran explorers (rather like Perry’s opening of Japan) and were then rescued from the supernova by another.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I do have some quibbles and caveats, tho! Yes, Japan was technologically backward compared to the West when the Tokugawa Shogunate was overthrown in 1868, but that did not mean the Japanese were barbarians. A people or nation can lag behind other nations and still be civilized. And Japan was an old and very cultured nation.
Japan's backwardness in 1868 was due to the deliberate policy of the Tokugawa shoguns deliberately isolating Japan from the rest of the world, an attempt at freezing Japan at a certain level of technology.
I agree with what you said about Merseia. From what I inferred from "Day of Burning," the first Grand Survey discovered that planet when its most advanced culture, around the Wilwidh Ocean, had achieved a level of technology approximating that of Europe in 1600. A couple of centuries later Falkayn and his companions arrived to find that the United Vachs and its Lafdiguan rivals had achieved interplanetary space travel. Which WE still have not yet managed to do!!!!!!!!!!!
Ad astra! Sean
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