Newly discovered races must be protected from exploitation but would any of them have the capacity to launch an interstellar war that would seriously threaten the Stellar Union? This seems improbable. We would like to be shown some examples of what Trevelyan feared might happen. And we would also like to be shown what does in fact cause the Third Dark Ages.
In The Peregrine, the task of the Coordination Service is to protect the Union from the destructive consequences of its own complexity. In "The Pirate," written later but set earlier, its task has become to guard the Pact between the dead, the living and the unborn, that they be kept one in the oneness of time. More reflective and philosophical - but this also is presented as a matter of survival.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I'm a bit skeptical over how much protection alien races which independently achieved an advanced technological civilization would need from human beings. At least not if they were not too far behind the technology reached by mankind. My view is that "Day of Burning" shows us Anderson handling such ideas more plausibly than what we see in THE PEREGRINE.
Ad astra! Sean
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