Nicholas van Rijn wonders what is wrong with the Shenna:
"What ailed those shooterbulls, anyhow? A high technological culture such as was needed to build robots and spaceships ought to imply certain qualities - a minimum of diplomacy and caution and enlightened self-interest - because otherwise you would have wrecked yourself before you had progressed that far...." (pp. 203-204)
I believe that the same argument applies to the kzinti in the Man-Kzin Wars period of Larry Niven's Known Space future history series.
Those are different but interconnected virtues: diplomacy; caution; enlightened self-interest. We know that no society could exist if every law was broken, if every legal order by an employer/manager etc was disobeyed, if every statement was a lie, if every coin or bank note offered was counterfeit, if every acolyte stabbed every high priest in the back etc! In fact, a lie is a counterfeit truth. The telling of a lie assumes that most statements made are true - or at least honest.
The answer with the Shenna, and I think with the kzinti, has to be that they are barbarians who have usurped a high technology and therefore might soon destroy themselves.
6 comments:
".. I think with the kzinti, has to be that they are barbarians who have usurped a high technology and therefore might soon destroy themselves."
That is my recollection of the backstory of the Kzinti that Niven put in somewhere in the Known Space series.
Kaor, Paul and Jim!
Except you are both overlooking something which became plain as the stories collected in the MAN-KZIN WARS books shows: the Patriarchy of Kzin was an ancient state 50,000 years old in the Known Space timeline. No state or society could last so long if enough of its people hadn't mastered the qualities adumbrated by Old Nick.
True, self control and foresight wouldn't come easily for a race as bellicose and warlike as the Kzin, but they worked out customs and institutions limiting such things.
Ad astra! Sean
I don't know about the kzinti but I read somewhere that they had inherited their tech from someone else.
Kaor, Paul!
They did, but the Kzin also managed to retain that tech.
Ad astra! Sean
Yes, the kzinti did -- they were used as mercenaries by the species that discovered them (at which point they were at a medieval tech level, roughly) and the kzin decided robbing them and overthrowing them would be more profitable than working for them.
Having them decide to rob the paymaster is one of the perils of employing mercenaries.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
The way to have and handle mercenaries is to use them only for small, specialized, or ultra elite units. Some examples being the Varangian Guards of the Eastern Roman Empire, the Swiss Guards of the kings of France, or the Gurkha regiments of the UK.
In fact, the Pope still has a small unit of Swiss Guards and France has the Foreign Legion.
Ad astra! Sean
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