"Cold Victory."Robert Crane continues to reflect while travelling through space:
"Crane had never liked the revolutionary government of Earth, but while the Union remained and the only navy was the Guard and its only task to help any and all men, he had been reasonably content. Please God, that day would come again." (p 82)
It comes again for a while. According to Sandra Miesel's Chronology of Future at the end of The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 3, "Cold Victory" occurs in 2180 and the Second Dark Ages, which of course involve the end of the Solar Union, begin in 2300. Then over five centuries elapse before the beginning of the Nomad culture in "Gypsy" in 2815. The Stellar Union and its Coordination Service are founded shortly after that but between installments in 2900. These dates do not appear within any of the stories so that even regular readers must consult the Chronology to get some feel for periods of time elapsed.
A navy whose only task is to help anyone and everyone has ceased to be a navy! Indeed:
"By the opening of the twenty-second century, the Psychotechnic Institute's power and prestige reached their zenith. The bright future it had planned for humanity seemed inevitable. High technology was triumphant. The blessings of the Second Industrial Revolution were available to all. No one went hungry or homeless anymore. Work had become a privilege instead of an obligation. From sophisticated Earthlings to roughneck colonial, mankind shared a common, semantically rigorous language called Basic. The space navy of the newly formed Solar Union stood guard from Venus to the Belt. The New Enlightenment bathed Sol's children in the cool radiance of reason.
"But there were shadows..."
-Sandra Miesel, Forward IN Poul Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 2 (Riverdale, NY, February 2018), pp. 3-5 AT p. 5.
(We think that "Forward" should be "Foreword.")
"'Psychotechnic government had failed to solve the problems of Earth's adjustment to living on a high technological level.'" (pp. 75-76)
It was not enough that no one was hungry or homeless or that work was no longer an obligation.
Freylinghausen continues:
"'Conditions worsened until all too many people were ready to try desperate measures.'" (p. 76)
Humanism, a desperate measure, offered:
"'...a return to a less intellectualized existence...'" (ibid.)
- so its leader, Carnarvon, became planetary dictator.
Had there not been democratic institutions and government before the Humanist revolution? Yes, rival political parties and alliances are discussed in "The Sensitive Man," but there come times when such parties no longer satisfy their electorates. Like now?
Earth had too many people and too few resources to cut back on technology so the Humanists failed to keep their promises, instead causing famine, disruption and breakdown, making them unpopular and increasingly arbitrary, which caused Mars and Venus to intervene. The Solar Guard spilt into two rival navies...
We got there in the end.
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