It seems that an omniscient narrator recounts the course and consequences of the Council of Hiawatha on pp. 138-143 of Chapter IX in:
Poul Anderson, Mirkheim IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March, 2011), pp. 1-291.
The account is not part of the dialogue of any of the characters and there is no indication within the text that the information is imparted from any particular perspective within subsequent history. It is as objectively factual as the author can make it - I think. On the other hand, there is an element of interpretation and commentary as well as of fictional "fact." When Home Companies magnates gain political power within the Solar Commonwealth, the narrator states that the Commonwealth has become:
"...the corporate state." (p. 142)
- a phrase that has connotations as well as denotations!
But it would be hard to eliminate that level of commentary. In any case, it is not van Rijn or any other actor in the plot of the novel that tells readers about Hiawatha. The passage is an extended interruption to a conversation between van Rijn and Bayard Story.
There might be more purely impersonal and factual narration in the opening passage of the Prologue which describes a supernova 500,000 years ago, long before any human social interactions? However, in this case, a plural first person pronoun comes on-stage:
"There may have been lesser worlds and moons as well; we cannot now say. We simply know that the giant stars rarely have attendants..." (p. 1)
This narrator is not omniscient and acknowledges some limits to his knowledge but is a scientifically informed individual living within Technic civilization and addressing some of his own contemporaries.
Robert Heinlein's The Star Beast has a narrator who not only recounts the points of view of different individual characters but also informs us of the fact that an extrasolar crustacean species as yet unknown to humanity will be long dead eleven thousand years hence when Terrestrials eventually reach that planet: an unprecedented degree of prescience in any narrator!
8 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
It might have been better, as well as interesting, if Anderson had framed pages 138-43 as a quote from A HISTORY OF THE POLESOTECHNIC LEAGUE.
Merry Christmas! Sean
Sean,
Yes. And the whole later TECHNIC HISTORY would have benefited from an equivalent of the EARTH BOOK.
Paul.
Note that power and wealth have an innate attraction for each other -- powerful people want wealth, wealthy people want influence on those who are powerful. They want to control entry and competition, for example -- capitalists don't like competition any more than anyone else, they just put up with it if they have to.
Trying to keep power and wealth apart is like trying to keep iron filings off a magnet.
This is why, incidentally, in the long term, attempts to politically control wealth tend to backfire and produce "corporate states".
It's the natural magnetism, which in the long view overcomes ethical constraints.
Which is why, in the long term, minimal governments concentrating on war abroad and controlling violence at home, are best. Otherwise they're going to become corporate states, where the regulated capture the regulators.
The late Soviet Union, for example, became a festival of kleptocracy -- some regional panjandrums even had private gladiatorial arenas, and I'm not kidding there, where they threw people they didn't like to wild beasts or forced them to fight to the death. Putin's Russia is similar, though not quite so baroque... yet.
Or China now -- Xi keeps purging his military trying to eliminate corruption, which is like Sisyphus trying to push that boulder up the hill.
And no, human beings will not become angels. Ever.
Kaor, M. Stirling!
Exactly, which is why I don't believe in Utopian dreams and fantasies of perfect, ideal societies for a Fallen race like ours. The limited State, in whatever form, and free enterprise economics (plus Christianity, to enjoin caution), is the best we can hope for.
Merry Christmas! Sean
Sean,
Free enterprise will be redundant went wealth is abundant. There will no longer be any need for economic competition. This is neither a Utopian dream nor a fantasy but a legitimate extrapolation of the future of human labour enhanced by technology. We have not Fallen but risen. We can not only hope but also work and campaign for so much more.
Wealth and power will remain intertwined as long as there is a money economy. However, money has not always existed and need not always exist. It was a standardization of exchange and an improvement on barter but has become the means by which a few control the labour of many and will become redundant when abundant wealth is held in common.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I disagree, because I don't think you understand "money," which is just short hand for how many goods, resources, services, etc., are available to anyone. Also, take note of what Stirling said on why power and wealth are mutually attracted to each other and moralistic attempts to control/prevent that attraction always fail.
The genius of free enterprise, when allowed to function, is how it reduces the costs for more and more people making use of such goods, resources, services. I see no reason to agree it should ever be replaced.
We are going to have to agree to disagree re the Fallen/imperfect nature of mankind. To quote Stirling: "And no, human beings will not become angels, ever."
Merry Christmas! Sean
Sean,
I disagree. I don't think you understand money. It is not just short hand for how many goods, resources, services etc are available to anyone. Large accumulations of money are economic power over the work and lives of populations. Of course power and wealth attract each other in a money economy. This critique is realistic, not moralistic.
Free enterprise will be redundant when wealth is abundant. While it exists, it generates wealth for a few and poverty for many. The rate of profit is in long term decline, causing national and international turmoil.
One species of animals has become human beings. Human beings can become better human beings. As long as the Fall doctrine is merely stated, it can be merely denied.
Paul.
Post a Comment