Because the Hermesians, as they are called here, are gamblers and have even based their planetary economy on gambling, they have developed games theory more than anyone else (games theory is one of the inputs to psychotechnics in Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History and is applied by a Galactic psychotechnician in "Details.") and, by letting a spy escape with crucial military intelligence, they make the enemy's actions even more predictable. Thus, they win the interstellar war. Is this enough to base a short story on? Well, Anderson did base this story on it and the story has given us three blog posts in addition to several earlier.
The two remaining stories in Seven Conquests are "License" and "Strange Bedfellows." I have no memory of the contents of "License" but am still sitting at home recovering from a cold so maybe "License" is next on the reading list.
"Cold Victory," full of content, generated a dayfull of posts yesterday.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I have strong doubts anything like the premise used for "Inside Straight" would work in real life, but it's certainly worth examining for a story.
Ad astra! Sean
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