The Maurai Mission

In "Progress," three minimally trained Maurai spies confirm the existence of a concealed fusion generator. In "Windmill," a single professional Maurai spy investigates something powered by huge, cannibalized windmills. Obviously, the windmills are unobjectionable but what are they powering? Despite reading and rereading before, I can't remember. The condensed Maurai History is not easy to recall in detail.

The Maurai strive to prevent a return to the kind of technology that had led to the War of Judgment. Readers make their own value judgments about the Maurai Federation as also about the Polesotechnic League, the Terran Empire and the Time Patrol. Eventually, the Federation's single superpower status will be successfully resisted. We read different accounts of this in Orion Shall Rise and There Will Be Time. Poul Anderson presents not only several future histories but also among them two, Maurai and Kith, that exist in different versions.

Futuristic sf comments on the present. Do crowding, sensory deprivation and artificial environments bring on the mass lunacy that leads to nuclear war? It is us that they are talking about although I question whether we are sensorially deprived.