In its original book publication order, Poul Anderson's Technic History begins with a collection about van Rijn, a collection about Falkayn and two novels about both. Again, two short stories fall between the two novels. In the original order, these two short stories were collected with ten other instalments in the later The Earth Book Of Stormgate whereas, in the still later The Technic Civilization Saga, the entire Technic History is presented in chronological order of fictional events, requiring a total of seven omnibus volumes.
In the original order, the first collection, Trader To The Stars, partly by its quotations from Percy Shelley, conveys the sense of adventure in the early days of the Polesotechnic League whereas the second novel, Mirkheim, is clearly and explicitly about the beginning of the end of the League. However, the second story in Trader... foreshadows later conflicts in its prologue, an extract from the first van Rijn story, "Margin of Profit," which ends by informing readers that the League:
14 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
i never did think that theocratic dictatorship we see ruling the US in REVOLT IN 2100 at all convincing. Altho written before his writing started going to heck it's still one of RAH's weaker novels. I should search among his non-fictional works for any evidence for why Heinlein was so hostile to evangelical Protestants.
A bit oddly, maybe, Heinlein seems to have had much more friendly views of Catholics and the Catholic Church.
Merry Christmas! Sean
Sean,
"Life-Line" was Heinlein's first short story and "If This Goes On -" was his first novel so both were included in his Future History even though this created the problem of how the period of technological progress and interplanetary expansion was followed by a theocracy.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
But I would not be surprised to see periods of technological advances and possible "progress" be aborted by tyrannical regimes of any kind. I was reminded of how the progress Tsarist Russia was making after 1905 was reversed and destroyed by the monstrous regime the evil Lenin founded in 1917. It's simply what human beings are like, all too prone to succumb to folly and catastrophe.
Merry Christmas! Sean
Sean,
What happened in 1917 was not just one individual founding a monstrous regime. The masses took action but unfortunately were driven back.
Paul.
Paul: no, the masses were -manipulated- by a 'vanguard party' full of misanthropes.
They expected the "new man" to be worthy of respect, but had nothing but contempt for human beings as they actually existed -- see some of Trotsky's remarks.
Hence the dismissal of the elected assembly. Lenin thought he knew the people's interests better than they did -- the SR's the peasants elected, for example. He starved five million peasants to death along the Volga, and thought nothing of it.
I don't think that the masses are easily manipulable! They are mostly conservative (small "c") and suspicious of alternative leaders.
I am not sure of all these details. That deliberate mass starvation charge has come up before. We should certainly subject individual leaders of past struggles to careful scrutiny but, most basically, I can only say that we will have to aim to do much better next time and there will be a lot of next times. The world is certainly not returning to a stable, business as usual, scenario. In fact, are we even going to survive for much longer?
Kaor, Paul!
Disagree, what made Lenin and his Bolshevik cronies so loathsome and vile were the abominable ideas and policies they institutionalized. Such as the permanent and bloody reign of terror Lenin gleefully urged on thru his Cheka goons. Nor do I put much stock in this mysticism about "mass action." And his genocidal crushing of rebellious peasants was a model for Stalin!
Merry Christmas! Sean
Sean,
Disagree. We can go on like this forever. That was not how it happened.
The real issue here is not whether particular individuals like Lenin were abominable but whether the working class/social majority can take collective action and can challenge its present rulers for control of production and society. Yes it can. Mass resistance is a material force, not anything "mystical." Derogatory terminology does not help!
Paul.
Sean,
I have just re-forwarded an email response to any earlier phase of this argument.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I disagree; all I'm seeing are wishful speculations about some kind of "collective action" which never happened as you insist it did. "Masses" of "workers" are never going to take "...control of production and society" because it always boils down to politicians and bureaucrats clumsily and incompetently trying to run an economy from the top down. Which means I stand by what I said about, the founder of a truly evil regime that was the first example of State Socialism.
Happy New Year! Sean
Correction: "...I said about Lenin, the founder..."
Sean
Sean,
I disagree. (Can we stop saying that?)
All I'm seeing is me pointing out that collective action happens, has deposed tyrants and changed regimes and you calling this "wishful speculations." "Masses" of "workers" (there are MASSES of them and they DO work) CAN take control of production and society. They started to do it in the Paris Commune, which was slaughtered, and in Russia in 1917 and we can keep repeating how the small industrial working class in Russia was physically liquidated by the wars of intervention and the Civil War. Public officials can be elected, accountable and recallable, especially with the use of modern communications technology. It does not have to boil down to politicians and bureaucrats clumsily and incompetently trying to run an economy from the top down. An economy can be run democratically for need, not profit, and from the bottom up. Your arguments boils down to this has never happened, therefore it will never happen. If that were true, then nothing would ever have happened.
Which means I stand what I said about the irrelevance of individual personalities, about your smearing of "State Socialism" and about your application of the word "evil" to some regimes but not to others.
Paul.
stand by
Sean,
We owe it to ourselves to do better than this.
You do not want just to discuss some issues and ideas. You want to totally annihilate a point of view that you not only disagree with but also intensely dislike. You cannot do this. You can continue to disagree and dislike - and you do - and you can annihilate an unpalatable opinion to your own satisfaction but never to the satisfaction of everyone else. The person on the other side of the argument can always argue back. So the argument becomes endless and repetitive.
We ought to be able to identify:
the issues;
the main disagreements;
the main arguments on both sides;
the main counterarguments -
- clarify all that, maybe learn something from it and then, at the end of all that, discuss something else.
Paul.
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