Present And Future Conflicts

Returned from a Thai meal, I watch news of a war while friends hold a musical evening with food and drink downstairs and I continue to read about an international conflict in a fictional future. The Maurai who destroy the Beneghali fusion plant must disguise themselves as pirates to avoid open war between their Federation and Beneghal. The concluding section of "Progress" is set several years later during the eighth International Physical Society convention in Wellantoa. Thus, even this single story conveys a sense of the passage of time in a future history. The Merican astrophyicist who had helped Beneghal and one of the Maurai spies who had uncovered the secret fusion plant debate the issue. As with real life conflicts, the reader must reflect and approach a conclusion. (Alternatively, we can just enjoy the story or reinforce our existing prejudices. It is up to us.)

Surely nuclear fusion could have been kept and used for the common good? But Maurai psychodynamicists must have predicted that that would not happen.

In another of Anderson's fictional timelines, the Time Patrol suppresses a matter transmuter because of the harm that it could do. The Maurai and the Patrol have some things in common.