Draka Darkness

For recent blog comments by SM Stirling, see here.

The sub-genre of military sf is not my preferred reading. I value sf for new horizons and cosmic perspectives, not for high tech replays of World War II. However, good sf writers, notably Poul Anderson and SM Stirling, write good military sf - or maybe sometimes "good naval sf," if we transfer marine terminology to space combat: spaceships have Captains; space fleets have Admirals etc.

Clearly, Robert Heinlein approves of the society that he describes in Starship Troopers. Equally clearly, SM Stirling cannot possibly approve of what he describes in the Draka History! However - like Alan Moore depicting in merciless detail what a superhero-turned-villain would do to London -, Stirling is prepared to follow a fictional premise all the way to its horrific conclusion. Moore looks beyond London to a Golden Age whereas I suspect that Stirling's continuing series delves deeper into the Draka darkness.

We know from Marching Through Georgia that the Draka enslave populations and plan world conquest. In Under The Yoke (New York, 1989), they treat prisoners of war dishonorably. It is frankly sickening. I cannot bring myself to describe in detail what they do. Avoiding details, defeated enemy leaders are not respected but paraded, derided and shot. The Draka deliberately eschew any humane values.

Security Strategos Vashon, remembering such a victory spectacle, reflects:

"...that had been a good time. A time to be at one with the Race, when they could relax from the long years of grinding effort and feel the pride of a great accomplishment. Limitless vistas of power and possibility opening out before them..." (p. 55)

Sounds good? Sure, if our "Race" is the human race and if "power" does not mean subjugation.

Vashon thinks that it is a "...self-evident lie that all men were created equal." (p. 57) We are unequal in abilities but can be equal before the law. Alfie Rouse was hanged not for murdering anyone important but for burning to death an unknown, and still unidentified, hitchhiker. The law would have treated Rouse no worse if he had assassinated the Prime Minister whereas serfs (euphemism for slaves) who attack Draka are impaled as examples.

A ten year old Citizen girl, armed with a knife, thinks that her mother should punish two uppity serfs. Her mother gives her the advice quoted in the second image. Sound, pragmatic advice to a slave-owner, no doubt. But not all Draka give orders that they know will be disobeyed. Serfs can become trusted domestic servants and friends, albeit still unsalaried and unfree. Individual compassion is possible even within an oppressive system. See Schindler.

Systematic cruelty often brings out the worst in those who climb one step up the ladder, e.g., serfs becoming security guards. That this does not have to be the case is shown by Yasmin who protects fellow serfs and deflates a bullying guard. Because she is owned by a powerful family, she can strike the guard but he cannot risk striking her back...

When the ten year old girl has become old enough to think about clothes, she also wants to buy a serf of her own with money saved from her allowance. Imagine bringing up a child to think like that! And what chance does she have of learning to think any differently? If only one global generation could be brought up free from the "muck of ages..." I believe that adults should tell children, "This is what I think but you might think differently when you have learned more." But this means that I disagree with all the parents who want their children's education to include religious instruction. And it would also be wrong for me to try to enforce my view through legislation. Intolerant secularism is no better than intolerant belief.

I have passed over two instances of torture, both enjoyed by Draka witnesses. Finnish Resistance fighters, waging all out war against the Draka invaders, call them "...the snakes..." (p. 40), a denial of their humanity - appropriate in the circumstances. We, in our timeline, do not face the Draka but do face comparable threats, even including neo-Nazis. Stirling simply presents a worst case scenario for the history that he and his readers live in.

I am too young to remember World War II but did attend three different talks by Holocaust survivor Leon Greenman, who stayed with us when he spoke at Lancaster Town Hall. Leon ended one question-and-answer session by saying, "If anyone here is a Nazi, do not do it! You will become a monster, hated by your fellow men." In the Draka timeline, some European refugees escape to Britain... (Ketlan and my daughter leafleted every afternoon showing of Schindler's List to build for the Greenman public meeting, which filled a large hall to capacity. Later, Holocaust deniers attacked and damaged Leon's house so I got my union branch to donate to his defense fund.)

In our timeline, EP Thompson wrote The Making Of The English Working Class and Eric Hobsbawm wrote The Age Of Revolution, The Age Of Capital, The Age Of Empire and The Age Of Extremes. In the Draka timeline, EP Hobsdown wrote The Age Of Domination.

A possible proofreading point: on p. 17, Andrew von Shrakenberg seems to change his name to Alfred and back again?

It is Wednesday. I am reading new works by Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman and drafting this post. As yet, I have read only a small part of Under The Yoke so there will be more posts about this novel. Stirling shows us oppressors who are credible human beings but who have become as accustomed to oppressing the serfs that outnumber them as we are to using twenty first century technology: unsettling but plausible.

Strategos Cynthia Carstairs informs Chiliarch Denford de Fourneault:

"...Security tells me there's another of those loony cults running through the factory compounds, claiming all the Draka are being spirited away by their master Satan."
-SM Stirling, Marching Through Georgia (New York, 1991), pp. 210-211.

So many of the Draka have gone to war that they must have been spirited away... Carstairs contemptuously refers to a "loony cult" but the factory serfs are deliberately isolated and kept in ignorance. Consequently, they can explain external events only by recourse to superstition: an appalling regime but one that the Draka must now maintain for their own survival.

What An Ending!

What an ending to SM Stirling's Marching Through Georgia (New York, 1991)! I had better not summarize precisely what happens in case any reader of this blog has yet to read the novel but some general observations are appropriate. Karl Marx wrote that men make their own histories but not in circumstances of their own choosing. Thus, no one can choose his starting point, obviously, but nor do we have to stay there. Marx was writing about societies but it is equally true of individuals.

Eric von Shrakenberg, who harbors no qualms about killing serfs when he considers it necessary, assesses two aspects of Draka society. Of the Citizen Force, he says:

"'...these are my people. Killers? Yes. But they have courage, and honor, and love and loyalty to one another. Those are real virtues, and on that something can be built, something can grow.'" (p. 370)

- whereas, of the Security Directorate, he says:

"'What you are is a disease, and the only thing yo'll ever produce is rot.'" (ibid.)

Eric intends to continue leading his Century against the Germans, then to write. Would it make sense for him to accompany the American journalist, Dreiser, back to the US, where Eric has already sent his daughter by a concubine, there to warn the American public and politicians against the threat posed by the Draka? Maybe that is asking too much. However, I said earlier that the Draka seem naive, and needing to be shown a better way, so I am pleased to see that Stirling has moved the narrative marginally in this direction.

Draka Vol 2, Under The Yoke, is en route from the US.

Gods

Whether or not people believe in the gods, they swear by the names of the gods that they are used to hearing. How long will atheists continue to say "Christ"? Sf authors presenting narratives set in past, future or alternative times often convey to the reader that this is a different time or timeline by telling us how their characters swear. In Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, an Earthman on Mars where the Martians are extinct meets a Martian who is either from the past or from the future - the latter would mean that he is a descendent of Terrestrial colonists. They say, "Jesus," and "gods," respectively.

In one Poul Anderson future, the characters swear by Cosmos, which communicates to the reader that an entirely different world view has become prominent, referring neither to personal deities nor to anything supernatural. SM Stirling's Eric von Shrakenberg sounds extremely archaic when, early in Marching Through Georgia (New York, 1991), he refers to "...the White Christ and Almighty Thor..." (p. 32). Is he in a timeline where, in 1941 when there are airdrops on Sicily, Christianity still contends with Norse Paganism? No. The Draka have adopted a lifestyle that makes it impossible for them to remain even nominally Christian. References to Christ are likely to convey their hostility to that belief system. Furthermore, there had been:

"...a failed attempt to revive the Old Faith back in the last century." (p. 89)

This has resulted in figurines of Thor and in Eric's father being familiar enough with the old myths to say:

"'Even you couldn't lift the Midgard Serpent or outwrestle the Crone Age, eh, Redbeard?'" (ibid.)

Odin One-Eye, Loki, Frey and Heimdall are also invoked in casual conversation so the attempted revival, even if it failed, has been effective enough to alter habits of speech.

The Eurasian War: Combat

SM Stirling knows his military hardware and even his alternative historical military hardware like the use of steam vehicles in the Eurasian War which is what his Draka timeline has instead of our World War II. Page after page of Marching Through Georgia (New York, 1991) rubs our noses in the danger, pain, fear and fatigue of hours and days spent on a modern technological battlefield. Brilliantly led by Centurion Eric von Shrakenberg, a small Draka force inflicts immense damage on the advancing Germans before Eric realizes that all that is left for them to do is to alert their HQ by radio, then scatter into the woods.

"...the crew lay where the machine-guns had caught them bailing out. Fuel and scorched metal, burnt flesh and explosive, wet dung-smell from the fields. More bodies lying in the glistening chewed-up grey mud, in straggling lines, in bits where the mines had gone off, singly and in clumps where they had been shot off the tanks..." (p. 346)

"...the body twisted off the edge, turned once and landed broken-backed across the hull of the wrecked personnel carrier below. Blood and pink-grey brain dripped into the burning oil, hissing." (p. 354)

We do not wish that we had been there - I don't think - but we do appreciate that here we are reading an unflinching account of what participants in many modern wars have done, seen, heard and felt.

Some Parallels Between Collective And Individual Psychology

SM Stirling's Drakians/Draka, granted a territory and wanting to possess it, "had to" enslave the natives and conquer new territory. Thus, their philosophy became Conquest and Domination. Now, they must maintain their control in order to survive physically. However, imagine that they had instead wanted only to live peacefully in the granted territory, coexisting with the natives. Then, they would have survived as a community and also as part of a wider society.

Does something similar occur in individual psychology? I believe that the universe is conscious of itself through every sentient organism. "-self" identifies the subject and object of an action. Thus, we say not that the man killed the man but that the man killed himself. "-self" need not entail consciousness. Thus, when two mirrors face each other, each reflects itself in the other. Although I am an instrument of universal self-consciousness, I am primarily aware of myself as a psycho-physical organism with particular wants and fears. My mental activity has been not the perception of the universe by itself but the imagining of scenarios centered on myself. Thus, I am like the Draka inside my own head.

World Conquest Or Competitive Sports

"War and repression are the raison d'etre of the Domination's state machinery; the Draka exist in a state of either war or serious preparation for same."
-SM Stirling, Marching Through Georgia (New York, 1991), p. 394.

Poul Anderson shows us wars and militarized societies but Stirling goes all the way with this idea. No one has ever conquered the entire Earth before but, if the Draka do succeed, so that their raison d'etre becomes not war but only repression, then surely they will stagnate? Or they might pull the 1984 stunt of dividing the world into nominally hostile powers and maintaining permanent limited wars in undeveloped areas far away from the centers of civilization?

Here is one Draka's response to the prospect of battle:

"'Brothers an' Sisters of the Race!' he cried in mock ecstasy. 'These are great times. Do yo' realize what this means?' He paused for effect. 'For once - just like we always dreamed in Basic - just this one time in our young nearly-maggot-recruit, lives, bros, we gets a chance to kill the sumbitch donkeyfuckahs that're roustin' us out of bed in the middle of the night!'" (p. 254)

This draws laughter and cheers and even a stifled smile from Centurion Eric von Shrakenberg who, we know, is capable of aspirations beyond the Draka dead end. But the "...gangling, freckled young man..." (ibid.) making this rousing speech is simply naive. He really does not know any better. Such enthusiasm and group loyalty should be channeled into football, not into world conquest.

Death To The Draka?

I am plotting the overthrow of the Draka regime but how is this to be accomplished?

(i) The Citizens themselves are a write-off. They are too few and overwhelmingly committed to upholding the regime. When a Citizen begins to attend boarding school with military training from the age of five, s/he is usually accompanied by at least one servant. It must be impossible for all but a few to question the rightness of their social system and way of life. And any Citizen who does ask subversive questions is investigated by the Security Directorate. Every new detail makes the regime sound more horrible.

(ii) Military defeat? This is possible, although the Draka plan long term unlike the Nazis quickly overreaching themselves. I do not think that military defeat is to happen in this four volume series. The author is examining how bad things can get.

(iii) A serf revolt? Yes, despite everything, these happen. Given the numbers involved, and also the degree of repression, it must be only a matter of time before a local revolt spreads instead of being suppressed. There are times when the state forces are stretched and would not be able to respond everywhere at once (Marching Through Georgia, p. 210).

I would not want the Draka to be exterminated but nor would I help them to suppress a serf uprising - and a successful uprising would definitely end in their extermination. The price of continued tyranny is eternal vigilance whereas the serfs need to win outright only once.

Finally, Shelley:

'Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many - they are few.

Chunderban Desai And The Domination Of The Draka

SM Stirling's Domination of the Draka does not conform to the theory of civilizations discussed in Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization. The Domination has been in its Dominate phase from the beginning. It has not gone wrong but started wrong.

However, is the Domination an allegory for any society in which a minority wields power and defends that power by whatever means are necessary? The Draka are an extreme, perhaps impossible, example but how many societies in our timeline and in our present era answer this description in a more general way?

A controversial question and one that I do not intend to pursue here! However, I cite it as an example of the kind of question that good sf, and also good literature, is meant to inspire, whether or not the author had it explicitly in mind while writing. James Blish said that sf had to be about something. Anderson's and Stirling's works are.

How Do The Draka Do It?

How do SM Stirling's Draka control serfs who are never less than 85% of the population and usually slightly more?

(i) Groups of serfs are isolated in factory compounds, mines, plantations and households.

(ii) Police and army are always ready to move along the superbly maintained roads, railways and air transport systems. The pacified area is the "Police Zone" and areas yet to be pacified, i.e., where war is currently being waged, are the "War Zone."

(iii) There are widespread informer networks.

(iv) There are many instruments of repression and torture.

(v) It is known that a hundred serfs will be killed for even one Draka killed or injured.

(vi) Knowledge that their overthrow will mean their extermination unites the Draka.

(vii) They are arrogantly self-confident, having inherited the power of life and death over other human beings from birth.

(viii) They have received intensive military training from the age of five. Thus, they are visibly physically superior.

(ix) The training emphasizes not only deadliness but also self-reliance and the ability to act alone under stress. Thus, the Citizen Force is not a blunt but a finely tuned instrument.

(x) Serfs are indoctrinated to believe in Draka superiority and the uselessness of resistance.

Mortality

When a character in a work of action-adventure fiction seems to have been killed but then turns out to have survived, I suggest that this is the perennial death and resurrection myth re-expressing itself through popular fiction. See here. I don't think that Poul Anderson does this? - although he certainly approaches it because we are led to believe that Hanno will die at sea and that Dominic Flandry will die in space but then both are rescued.

SM Stirling's Draka are always waging or preparing for war so they must have a high mortality rate. It would make sense therefore if we were to be familiarized with a viewpoint character only to be shocked when she dies in combat. On p. 229 of Marching Through Georgia (New York, 1991), Johanna von Shrakenberg's fighter plane crashes and the last word of the chapter is "Blackness" - which could mean either death or unconsciousness.

So which is it? Have we accepted Johanna as a continuing character only to be shown that she is mortal or have we been made to think that she is dead so that we can later be surprised by her survival? (I have been curious enough to glance ahead but that is not really the point at this stage...)

An Eerie And Chilling Text

Poul and Karen Anderson's Gratillonius and Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry defend civilization because it enables populations and generations to live in peace. Anderson's Nicholas van Rijn defends civilization because it is profitable but also shows that he wants peace not only because it is profitable. He has a conscience as well as a profit motive.

However, there are antithetical reasons to value an ordered society. In SM Stirling's Marching Through Georgia (New York, 1991), the American journalist, William Dreiser, refers to:

"...the eerie and chilling Meditations of Elvira Naldorssen." (p. 64)

Later, we are able to judge for ourselves because p. 230 comprises a three paragraph quotation from Meditations: Colder than the Moon by Evira Naldorssen. (I do not yet know which is the correct spelling of Naldorssen's first name.)

Having promised us an eerie and chilling text, Stirling delivers. The Draka do not violate the Golden Rule or utilitarianism. They reject them. They conquer to conquer and dominate in order to dominate. "The purpose of Power is Power." (p. 230)

(James Blish once said that sf has to be about something and that 1984 worked because it was about the proposition that the purpose of power is power.)

"...power is the ability to compel others to do your will, against theirs. It is end, not means." (ibid.)

I most disrespectfully disagree. Naldorssen goes on to present a chilling vision of "...the Final Society, a new humanity without weakness or mercy, hard and pure." (ibid.)

An inhumanity.... Remembering Count Ignatieff, we must commend Stirling for creating villains who are not just our heroes' honorable enemies but thoroughly evil.

What does Naldorssen need? An extended period in a society where every new acquaintance treats her as an equal and a friend, where no one imposes their will on her and where she has no means of imposing her will on anyone else. After a while, she would either be unexpectedly happy or deeply depressed. If the latter, then all we would be able to offer her would be an island hermitage!

Real War

Although I enjoyed Poul Anderson's exciting descriptions of battles in space, Anderson always shows us the physical reality of war for the combatants:

"War was always the same: not a neat affair of lines across maps, nor a hallooing gallantry, but men who gasped and sweated and bled in bewilderment.

"A slight, dark-faced youth squirmed nearby, trying feebly to pull out the javelin that had pierced his stomach. He was a slinger from Carthage but the burly Italian peasant who sat next to him, staring without belief at the stump of an arm, paid no attention.

"A flight of crows hovered overhead, riding the wind and waiting."
-Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006), p. 223.

I was reminded of this passage by one phrase in SM Stirling's Marching Through Georgia (New York, 1991):

"...men in shock staring with unbelief at the wreck of selves that had been whole fractions of a second before..." (p. 206).

How many characters in war fiction stare without belief at newly acquired wounds or injuries? Maybe quite a lot? There is also the effect on minds. I quoted here a description of some horrible injuries to German soldiers but left out the response of one of their Draka antagonists:

"'Ya! Ya! Beautiful, fuckin' beautiful!' he shouted."
-Stirling, op. cit., p. 201.

Yes, and we love you too, comrade! Some things I honestly would not wish on the worst criminal in human history. War leaves us not only the dead and the badly injured but also those who exult that all this was visited on their enemies.

Marching Through Georgia: The Morals Of The Story

People can fight back from defeat. Unfortunately, they can go about it in completely the wrong way. The formerly dispossessed can become dispossessors. Aggression can be turned against populations not responsible for the original dispossession.

A very large oak tree can grow from a very small acorn. Also, the spectrum of possible social moralities is broad enough to encompass diametrical opposites. Consequently, we should always question our own received values - although how many do?

"War is Hell!" and should be described as such. Passages like:

"The loudest sound was the shrill screaming of the wounded - men lying thrashing with helmets, weapons, harness nailed to their bodies."
-SM Stirling, Marching Through Georgia (New York, 1991), p. 201 -

- are not (I trust) enjoyable to read but should be read. I have previously enjoyed accounts of battles, e.g., in Poul Anderson's The People Of The Wind and Ensign Flandry, where the emphasis was on the excitement of the conflict, not on the suffering of the wounded and dying. However, real war is about pain, disfigurement and death.

Draka Food

A short while ago, this blog developed an extended food thread. Apparently, SM Stirling's Draka also eat well although only one meal has been described so far in Marching Through Georgia. At Oakenwald, home of the von Shrakenbergs, servants present:

biscuits;
scones;
fruits;
grilled meats on wooden platters;
salads;
juices.

American correspondent William Dreiser, "...buttering a scone...," found that:

"It was excellent as usual; he had not had a bad meal since Dakar. The meat dishes were a little too highly spiced, as always. It was a sort of Scottish-Austrian-Indonesian cuisine, with a touch of Louisiana thrown in." (Marching Through Georgia, p. 69)

When Dreiser's host "...raised his cup slightly...":

"Hands appeared to fill it, add cream and sugar." (ibid.)

- like Asimov's robots responding to their masters' every wish, except that these domestic servants are not robots but human serfs.

Servi, Serfs And Servants

In Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, we find a Terran Empire based on the Roman Empire, even including the restoration of slavery and occasional use of Latin phrases.

In SM Stirling's Draka History, we find a small militarized society reviving Classical military terminology, e.g., "Centurion," and dominating a much larger population of serfs differing only in name from slaves (Latin: servi). The status of the Draka's serfs is approximately that of slaves:

"...under Roman law: pro nullis, pro mortis, pro quadrupedis: 'as nothing, as one who is dead, like a beast.'" (Marching Through Georgia, p. 407)

They were called indentured servants or "bondservants" until the colloquial term "serfs" was legalized in the 1880s.

it is remarkable that, in our timeline, a single word-root has survived essentially unchanged through three historical eras:

Roman servi, property;
feudal serfs, tied to the land;
modern servants, wage-earning workers.

Economic systems change but language preserves history.

Angles

Life is busy so posts are slow. Is that good or bad? Also, I currently lack an angle for posting. Recent angles were:

fictional treatments of war;
viable societies;
degrees of divergence between alternative histories.

I am enjoying SM Stirling's Marching Through Georgia, which is not as horrific as I had feared because the central character, Centurion Eric von Shrakenberg, is sympathetic and also because the text clearly does not endorse Draka oppression. I feel that the Draka are rather naive and simply need to be shown a better way. Eric cannot shake off the callousness of his upbringing. He interrupts a Jannisary about to rape a serf but takes no action against the Jannisary. During combat, he orders that locals be ignored if they are quiet but otherwise should be expended - although he does prevent one of his men from dropping a grenade onto an inoffensive family sheltering in a cellar.

As I said when discussing Ermanaric, if there were a judge of the dead, then he would have to take many factors into account. Street Evangelicals tell me that the Judge will ask not, "Are you guilty of crimes against humanity?" but "Did you accept me as your Savior?" If I did, then genocide will not matter!

Another aspect of Stirling's treatment of war:

"The peculiar smell of fresh destruction was in the air... Ruins needed time to achieve majesty, or even pathos; right after they had been fought over there was nothing but...seediness, and mess." (Marching Through Georgia, pp. 108)

Yes, it would be like that. Stirling seems to have been there. A similar passage in Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History is the description of a dark ruined street at the beginning of "Marius."

Literary Accounts Of War

My preferred reading is not war fiction but imaginative fiction, ancient myths or modern sf. However, imaginative fictioneers also describe wars. European literature starts with Homer. A long passage in the Iliad describes the fighting back and forth in front of Troy. CS Lewis wrote of his World War I experience:

"One imaginative moment seems now to matter more than the realities that followed. It was the first bullet I heard - so far from me that it 'whined' like a journalist's or a peacetime poet's bullet. At that moment there was something not exactly like fear, much less like indifference: a little quavering signal that said, 'This is War. This is what Homer wrote about.'"
-CS Lewis, Surprised By Joy (London, 1964), pp. 157-158)

And in the Hindu epic, the Mahabharata, Krishna teaches Arjuna in a chariot between two armies before the slaughter begins.

In Poul Anderson's The People Of The Wind and Ensign Flandry, I thoroughly enjoyed the accounts of battles in space. Now that I am reading Marching Through Georgia by SM Stirling, it is enjoyable to read about Draka forces attacking Germans though not about the Draka napalming noncombatants and shooting prisoners. However, we are not being asked to approve of the latter. We are simply learning what the Draka are like.

We, or at least I, also hope that such large scale slaughter and destruction can be prevented from recurring in future.

Would We Still Be Here?

If, e.g., World War I had not occurred, then many people would have lived longer and many lives would have been completely different. I think it follows that, a couple of generations later, the entire population, certainly in Europe, would have comprised genetically different individuals. Even a couple copulating at a different time would have produced different offspring and we are imagining far greater changes than that. Even an individual who did somehow inherit exactly the same genetic makeup as someone in our history would have a completely different upbringing and life experience so they would hardly be the same person. By the same taken, clones brought up in completely different environments would soon diverge. When, in Poul Anderson's "Delenda Est" and "Amazement Of The World," earlier history has been significantly altered, it is taken for granted that the entire twentieth century world population is different.

On the other hand, a minor change, like the War beginning or ending a few hours earlier or later, would probably not affect very much so how big does a historical change have to be before it changes the population? In SM Stirling's Marching Through Georgia, in 1783, the Dutch Cape Colony is renamed the Crown Colony of Drakia and this new colony proceeds to become a world power, later renamed the Domination of the Draka. Yet, in the subsequent history, we recognize the names of:

Napoleon
Thomas Carlyle
Louis Pasteur
Nietzche
Oscar Wilde
Lenin
Stalin
Mussolini
Hitler
Roosevelt
Einstein
Fermi

Also, events like the Great War, the stock market crisis and the Spanish Civil War occur on schedule. The Eurasian War beginning in 1939 is followed by the "Covert Struggle" between Alliance and Domination.

Thus, the premise of the Draka series is not only that a new world power was founded back in 1783 but also that the subsequent history continued to parallel ours in many ways, even including the participation of certain named individuals. However, an Oscar Wilde who had grown up knowing of a Domination of Draka and who even emigrated to the Domination would not be exactly the same Oscar Wilde as the individual of that name in our timeline.

Viable Societies

How broad is the spectrum of viable human societies? There are some limits. A society in which every individual was always against every other individual would not be a society. A minimum of cooperation, most fundamentally linguistic communication, is essential to humanity. In his Angrezi Raj timeline, SM Stirling shows entire populations degenerating almost to sub-humanity by continual recourse to cannibalism. Families of savages, using minimal language skills, hunt each other to stay alive...

However, history and anthropology display an enormously broad range of possible societies which becomes even broader if we envisage evolutionary changes to humanity itself, as in Poul Anderson's The Night Face where an entire planetary population becomes insane for a few days each year but otherwise is psychologically integrated enough not to need any restraints imposed by laws or governments. Ideas and values that seem self-evident in one social context are unthinkable in another.

How viable is SM Stirling's Domination of the Draka with its continual warfare, militarized citizenry and massive slave population? I would have said highly unstable but Stirling shows it as dynamic and expanding. The Draka, in all honesty, abandon any pretense of Christianity and even try to revive Northern Paganism. I will be interested to learn how their civilization develops over four volumes.

Oscar Wilde

Writers sometimes have fun imagining what a real person would say in a fictional situation. Poul Anderson gives us several historical figures but maybe not any recent or contemporary celebrities? Brian Aldiss fictionally quoted Aldous Huxley in an early novel. William Clinton spoke at Superman's funeral because he was President of the United States in 1993. Earlier, Supes had conversed with Ronald Reagan.

In From Hell, written by Alan Moore and drawn by Eddie Campbell, a character at a party looks exactly like Oscar Wilde and indeed is introduced as such. When asked, "Oscar Wilde, the playwright?," Wilde responds, "Heavens, no! Can't stand the man! I'm Oscar Wilde, the Florist!"

What would Wilde say about SM Stirling's Domination of the Draka? Stirling tells us and we instantly recognize authenticity:

"'How did Oscar Wilde put it, after he settled in the Domination? The rest of the Anglo-Saxon world is convinced that the Draka are brutal, licentious, and depraved; the Draka are convinced that outlanders are prigs, hypocritical prudes, and weaklings, and both parties are right...'"
-SM Stirling, Marching Through Georgia (New York, 1991), p. 71.

As Puck said when watching Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: A Midsummer Night's Dream:

"It never happened; yet it is still true. What magic art is this?"
-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Dream Country (New York, 1995), p. 75.