"'Remember your history, Diane. Think what happened in Earth's past when there were sovereign states working at unintegrated cross-purposes.'" (CHAPTER IV, pp. 28-29)
Thus, futuristic sf comments on contemporary society. Examples could be multiplied. In fact, this same future history series showed the aftereffects of World War III in its opening installment so that some of the history remembered by Diane is still in our fictional, now alternative, future. In Poul Anderson's Technic History, the Ythrians, intelligent flying carnivores, find it difficult to understand the human concept, "nation." Ythrians manage their public affairs without any threat of violence from a territorial institution. Custom usually suffices and any violence against offenders is communal but not institutionalized.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And I don't buy that bit you quoted from Chapter IV of THE PEREGRINE. It reflects a view of history and politics that Anderson came to reject. Always, when it comes to commenting on his Psychotechnic stories, we should keep in in mind Anderson's criticisms of his own stories that he wrote for the "Afterword" added to THE PYSCHOTECHNIC LEAGUE (TOR Books: 1981).
Nations working at so called "unintegrated cross-purposes" do so because their rulers, even the apparently lunatic Kim Jong Un in N Korea, are behaving and acting in ways rational to THEM. And now they have taken stock of the bungling "JosiP" and his Democrats, that is exactly what they are doing.
And even the Ythrians had institutionalized forms violence. Such as the duel to the death that Christopher Holm and Draun agreed to fight after the with the Empire was over.
Ad astra! Sean
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