This volume is about nothing but change, most - although not all - of it, accompanied by conflict. Volume III, Rise of the Terran Empire, contrasts sharply with Volume I, The Van Rijn Method, just as, in Robert Heinlein's Future History, Volume III, Revolt In 2100, contrasts sharply with Volume II, The Green Hills of Earth.
Rise of the Terran Empire collects six Technic History instalments.
Mirkheim recounts the first civil war in the Polesotechnic League which is also the beginning of the end of the League. This solid novel is our last sight of van Rijn, Falkayn and the trader team and we also see some disaffected Merseians, precursors of the Flandry period.
"Wingless" and "Rescue on Avalon": two stages of the Falkayn-led colonization of Avalon, first the Hesperian islands, then the Coronan continent. Joint colonization by human beings and Ythrians without conflict other than some initial friction.
"The Star Plunderer": nothing but conflict. Earth sacked. The Commonwealth dead. A slave revolt. The Terran Empire proclaimed. We are now as far as we can get from the peaceful era of Volume I.
"Sargasso of Lost Starships": Conflict continues. The Empire expands by force and is threatened by powerful aliens.
The People of the Wind: There is now a Terran Empire, a Domain of Ythri and a small but growing Merseian Roidhunate. An Empire-Domain border dispute ends when the Empire concedes that Avalon will remain in the Domain.
The scene is now set for the following three and a half volumes of the Saga.
15 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
All great powers, and wannabe great powers, have used force to expand, so that should not be thought surprising or unusual.
Overall, the war between the Empire and the Domain was a victory for Terra, even tho the Imperium decided not to insist on the cession of Avalon.
Ad astra! Sean
It is not surprising or unusual.
Not just great powers. All human territorial groupings fight over territory, from hunter-gatherer bands on up.
And nonhuman social predators all fight over territory, too. For that matter, so do chimpanzee bands.
This means it's probably inherent -- though in the case of humans, the 'territory' may be something other than literal turf.
Yes. And I think our territoriality can be expressed simply in debate and argument, defending our ideas and theories without becoming fanatical about them.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: I agree, competitiveness is hard wired into both humans and animals. And the "turf" humans fight over does not have to always be literal turf.
Paul: Not going to happen, because sometimes debate and bargaining is not going to work. People will fight if they feel strongly enough about what they either want or find yielding the concessions demanded of them intolerable.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But you have to imagine a situation in which everyone has everything that they need or want physically and the only disagreements are about theoretical and philosophical issues. Civilized people do not engage in physical conflict over such issues. Am I about to bomb New York because someone over there disagrees with me about the mind-body question?
Paul.
Paul: we already have that as far as material goods go, in large chunks of the world. Nobody is starving or freezing in Russia or Ukraine.
They still fight.
This is because a large part of human existence is 'ideational'.
That is, it exists only in their heads, like nationality.
As such, it's only peripherally affected by material conditions.
And of course, human society is full of "positional goods".
That is, the supply is inherently limited because having it means someone else -doesn't-.
There is still a lot of physical deprivation in the world, though. And, in affluent countries, standards of living can be precarious and threatened. "Food banks" in Britain. Still a lot of causes of dissatisfaction that could be ended.
Paul: why should that make any difference?
If it's one thing human beings are great at, it's finding causes for dissatisfaction and for resenting people they don't identify with.
Why make the -a priori- assumption that material shortages are the cause of human conflict?
Kaor, Paul!
And I agree with Stirling, whose comments are better than mine would have been, despite trying to make the same points he did.
People will fight, if the cause is strong enough to make them fight.
Ad astra! Sean
Well, let's aim to satisfy material and social needs and then see what happens. At least some causes of conflict and violence will have been removed.
Kaor, Paul!
And I firmly believe humans will simply find other things to fight about.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
And I firmly believe that they need not always do that.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And I believe the evidence favors my side of this debate.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean
Of course you do. Everyone thinks that the evidence favours his side of the debate or it wouldn't be his side of the debate. That observation gets us precisely nowhere.
Paul.
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