Summarizing The Introductions (If Possible)
"Kings Who Die": Technology changes not only the methods but also the nature of war.
"Wildcat": Men turn every new capability against each other, indirectly and subtly but significantly.
"Cold Victory": revolution is different from war until it causes civil war.
"Inside Straight": war is often the only way to preserve values dearer than life.
"Details": even if we knew how to end war, could we do it?
"License": Abolition of war would leave a potentiality for violence.
"Strange Bedfellows": Progress happens but will insanities remain?
"Inside Straight" also has a fictional introduction that is the opening passage of the text and is presented as an extract from a history of this fictional timeline. Two paragraphs are followed by:
"-Simon Vardis, A Short History of Pre-Commonwealth Politics, Reel 1, Frame 617" (p. 95)
We remember similar fictional historical introductions in Anderson's Technic History but "Inside Straight" is a one-off story. However, Vardis repeats some of what we know from the Technic History:
Reasons For Extra-Solar Emigration
fresh start
malcontents
"peculiar people"
Consequences
colonies from colonies
human scattering
isolated odd societies
each planet economically self-sufficient
- but other causes of conflict.
Again like Homeward And Beyond, Seven Conquests includes a Psychotechnic History story, in this case "Cold Victory." Just from reading them, there is no way to tell that "The Pirate" and "Cold Victory" are two installments of a single future history series.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Actually, "Wildcat" was about a desperate attempt to save the human race from extinction. Some of the leaders of the US gov't were given evidence that a nuclear war between the US/USSR ended with the near total extermination of all life on Earth. Under cover of prospecting for oil an expedition was sent to the age of dinosaurs to prepare for that.
Ad astra! Sean
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