This single story is a miniature future history in its own right whether or not we think that we can connect it with other interstellar stories by Poul Anderson.
Anderson imagines humanity out in the universe and we want to read more. Future history will not all be as violent as this conflict between Vaynamo and Chertkoi but Anderson wrote good military sf and this story is one example.
Where to next?
14 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Of course, there's going to be strife, conflicts, wars off Earth in the future because IWHBD. I've seen zero reason to think that is not going to be the case or that it will change. But STL interstellar travel will necessarily limit how often wars between colonized planets of different stars can be fought. And I agree relativistic time effects might give the defenders an edge, as it did for Vaynamo in "Time Lag."
Ad astra! Sean
As the great pioneering sociologist Max Weber put it, "violence is always the ultimately decisive means of political action".
I see ample reasons for expecting that, if we do not destroy ourselves soon, we will continue to change our environment and ourselves in unpredictable ways throughout an indefinite future.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling. Absolutely! I have no use for Utopian unrealists who insist otherwise. As Flavius Vegetius said, "If you want peace prepare for war."
Paul: The single best way for mankind to survive, right now, is simply to get off this rock! I recall how RAH commented on the foolishness of keeping all your eggs in one basket. We should cheer on Elon Musk and his fellow space barons/entrepreneurs.
Ad astra! Sean
We also need to clean up this planet for the majority who cannot get off it.
Kaor, Paul!
We have discussed this before. I have no use for futilities like windmills, solar panels, or EVs. The only things that will help is nuclear power, plain old rust, and eventually a space based solar power system.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I am not advocating any particular way to clean up the planet! But it needs to be done. Environmental scientists should know what will work best. I do not. I said nothing about windmills etc. You seem to be tilting at them.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
We have plenty of off the shelf tech that could be used, as discussed by real scientists like Robert Zubrin in books like THE CASE FOR SPACE. It's politics/ideology that gets in the way of using that tech.
Ad astra! Sean
And what I am saying is that the helpful tech should be used! ("Real scientists" are scientists that you agree with?)
Paul: material abundance does not reduce political violence, because it's about power, not having enough to eat and a car.
Well, some of us contemplate not just material abundance as such but also:
(i) the very abundant wealth that should be possible in future;
(ii) that wealth socially controlled not only for everyone's needs (physical security for all guaranteed) but also for the fullest development of each individual;
(iii) a genuinely qualitatively different kind of society just as our high tech society differs completely from the experience of our earliest human ancestors.
Imagine something completely different. We have an indefinite future in which to build something different unless we destroy ourselves first - which, however, seems to be what we are in fact doing.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: Yes, real scientists! I've not forgotten or forgiven the ignorant Luddites who did so catastrophically much to cripple nuclear power, starting in the 1970's. If it hadn't been for these early pre-Greta Thunbergs the US (and maybe the UK) might be getting most of its energy from nuclear by now!
1. I do not believe abundant wealth will somehow make human beings less aggressive or competitive.
2. What on Earth does "wealth socially controlled" even mean??? It has more than a whiff of boiling down to politicians and bureaucrats arbitrarily deciding who "deserves:" to get a cut of that wealth. And I strongly doubt most human beings will ever bother about that "fullest development."
3. Any future society which is as "genuinely qualitatively different" from what we actually are might not even be recognizably human and possibly be as monstrous as the Draka we see in Stirling's DRAKON. I'm going to remain suspicious and distrustful of such hopes.
I prefer to be realistically imaginative, as was the case with Anderson (and Stirling). Which means accepting that we humans are all imperfect and flawed.
Mr. Stirling: Power is a limited good, and no matter how much materiel wealth there may be, there's never going to be enough power for those who crave it. Which means the problem of how to control that desire will remain.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
There will be no need or motive to compete for wealth when it is abundant, shared and held in common. That is a logical conclusion, not a "somehow."
Wealth socially controlled means: collective ownership of advanced technology; democratic control of distribution of the wealth produced by that technology. It does not mean unaccountable politicians or bureaucrats restricting distribution on the basis of "who deserves." Many of us want to develop ourselves, both as individuals and as communities, physically, intellectually, socially, culturally and spiritually.
Any future society that is different might be monstrous, of course. We have to prevent that. We know what to prevent: concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few who continue to compete, kill and destroy the environment.
I am being realistically imaginative. You continue to claim that only for yourself. There are conditions in which these "imperfect and flawed" human beings do not try to kill each other and these conditions can be extended so that they exist over the whole Earth and no longer just in some places but not in others but I have said all this before.
Power means ability to coerce and I have outlined social relationships in which that ability will no longer exist: no arms production; no bodies of armed men trained and paid to obey orders etc.
I again ask: what is the point of repeating all this? That question seems to slip past every time.
Paul.
I would welcome serious discussion instead of summary dismissal which generates endless reiteration.
There are major problems with everything that I say:
how to overcome powerful vested interests which resist any social transformation?;
how long and difficult would a transitional period be?;
what will be the details of how a future society is run?
For most of this, we have to learn from experience by living and acting in the future that we are talking about. I cannot predict details of a future society any more than a merchant in a medieval city could have predicted details of our present global economy. Nor, however, do I have to. Humanity will organize itself.
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