Why I Hate Technologically-Static Fantasy

"Why I Hate Technologically-Static Fantasy"

© 2014

by

Jordan S. Bassior  

TV Tropes is a lovely site, in part because it has terms for almost everything one encounters in fiction.  One such term is "Medieval Stasis," which it defines as being

a situation in which, as far as the technological, cultural, and sociopolitical level are concerned, thousands of years pass as if they were minutes.

This describes much fantasy fiction.  Whatever technologies they had a couple thousand years ago, they have now:  this and no more.  Whatever cultures existed then, with whatever artistic, literary and musical developments, are pretty much what they have now, with perhaps the specific elements having changed in a non-progressive fashion (some being forgotten and new ones devised).  Whatever social and political systems existed then are what exist now, only the personnel having changed.

Such a situation is not characteristic of actual human history.  While it is true that technological change was very slow before the invention of agriculture and the consequent appearance of towns containing many thousands of people who could easily exchange ideas, once the first towns did appear (no more than around 10 thousand years ago) human technology began to advance quite rapidly on milllennial timescales (if that doesn't sound like much, consider that during the preceding Paleolithic, human tool kits barely changed from millennium to millenium -- more like what one encounters in Medieval Stasis fantasy).

The invention of writing speeded things up further, because now any major scientific developments could be recorded and made available to future generations as a base on which to build.  Writing appears around 6000 years ago, and since its invention there has been no millennium without significant scientific and technological progress.  Even a fairly stagnant culture such as that of Ancient Egypt progressed, both due to internal creativity and due to diffusion from other culture-centers (think the Hyksos invasion and the adoption of chariots, or the wars with the Hittites and the adoption of iron weapons), on millennial timescales.

The invention of alphabetic writing (and simplified ideographic systems such as the Chinese as usually applied in practice), which occurred around 3000 years ago, resulted in another acceleration of human progress.  Now, not merely priestly scribal specialists, scholarly aristocrats and merchant princes; but also gentries, merchants and the better sort of artisans, could make use of writing to record and transmit information to future generations.  Starting from around 2500 years ago, it is safe to say that technology, culture and society began to register signfiicant changes on a timescale of centuries rather than millennia.

This is often obscured by our perspective standing on the heights of a global industrial and information age civilization, looking down on the pre-industrial ages and seeing them all as "low tech."  For instance, one might accurately point out that people started using "swords" around 5000 years ago, and kept on using them all the way through the World Wars (Japanese officers carried katanas into battle as late as Okinawa), and that therefore nothing much changed in terms of personal weaponry until the invention of handguns a bit over 500 years ago.

That conclusion, of course, is wrong.  It ignores incremental and sometimes revolutionary improvements in technology, which over time can reach a point such that the earlier examples of that technology are far inferior to the later ones.

To take the example of the sword, the earliest swords -- forged over 6000 years ago -- were made of fairly weak bronze alloys which were not strong enough to enable multi-foot long blades:  any broadsword made of the early bronze alloys would have bent or broken at the first contact with armor or an opposing weapon, and after a few strokes have become a useless mass of twisted metal.  Thus, they were usually designed as "sickle swords" -- weapons with long hafts supporting relatively short sickle-like blades, reducing the stress experienced by the blade at impact and hence allowing it to survive through much of the battle.

Metallurgy advanced, even before iron smithing was developed.  The swords of later Bronze Age times were made of better alloys and by smiths who better grasped the capabilities of their materials.  These were recognizably similar to modern designs -- though the hafts were still longer and the blades shorter than any swords which we would design today.

When iron smithing was developed, around 3500 years ago,   it became possible to lengthen and sharpen the blade.  An iron sword could survive a whole battle with only minor damage if skillfully wielded (one reason, in addition to the expense of forging them, why swords were the weapon of military professionals was that amateurs would inevitably break them).  These longer and sharper swords became increasingly useful, and hence both tactically and culturally important.

Iron smithing is complex and there was progressive development in the art from early Classical through Modern times.  From the Celtic broadsword of around 2500 years ago to the Roman shortsword of around 2000 years ago to the Germanic broadsword of around 1500 years ago to the Medieval longsword of about 1000 years ago, to the Renaissance rapiers and  katanas of around 500 years ago, there was a steady technological improvement.  Swordsmithing probably reached its apex ~ AD 1500, but there has been incremental improvements even since then -- for instance, the average cavalry saber of AD 1900 was technologically superior to all but the finsest scimitars of the early Modern era.

I chose to focus on swords because they are both an iconic technology of fantasy (as in "sword and sorcery") and because they are the sort of technology which tends not to be lost in periods of social disruption such as barbarian invasions (quite the contrary:  weapons technology usually advances rapidly in times of general war!).  I could have picked any of a number of other technologies, both military and civilian, with which to make my point -- but I'm writing an essay here, not a textbook.

Swords, of course, while beautiful weapons, are not one of the basic human technologies.  The lives of most people in a society -- even of the urban dwellers, and even of the literate urban dwellers, would not be much affected by whether their warrior elites fought with swords, spears, axes, clubs, or their fists (though there are some in-obvious cultural effects:  for instance, the transition from bronze to iron weapons resulted in a transition from god-kingship based empires to urban republic based ones, because the cost of good weapons was now within the reach of the middle classes).

Instead, let's look at a really basic technology -- agriculture.  It was the transition from hunter-gatherer horticltural ways of life to agricultural ones which triggered civilization in general:  even primitive agriculture can support around 100 times as many people in most areas as can advanced hunting and gathering.  (This -- the "Agricultural Revolution" -- is a change so immense that even most fantasy writers sit up and take notice of it).  While some towns of a few hundred to few thousand inhabitants were possible in really favored areas (usually at rivermouths or lakefronts allowing multiple kinds of hunting, fishing and gathering), large towns of several thousand or more were impractical before the development of farming.  This started around 12,000 years ago, and by around 6000 years ago had reached the point of what we would consider small (though poorly-organized) cities in Egypt and the Fertile Crescent.  This is what we term the "Neolithic" to "Cuprolithic" period, because stone and other found-material tools were the basis of crafts technology, though by the end of this age they were being supplemented by copper for specialized crafts application.

Farming fundamentally changes the cultural game.  Hunter-gatherers live in fairly small numbers and with only limited social specialization:  every man has to know how to hunt and fight; every woman how to gather and practice crafts.  Limited numbers limit the size of the "social brain" which can consider problems.  Limited specialization limits technology because few can become real experts at anything.  Large projects are impossible:  one needs numbers and organization to build a Pyramid, or a Stonehenge.

With farming, population sizes can grow.  What's more, even though for economic reasons most people (90-99 percent, depending on the society) must farm as a full-time occupation, some people can instead study a craft specialty and make this occupation their primary source of income, trading their products to other people (including farmers and shopkeepers) for their (literal) daily bread.   Because they depend upon this specialty, they get very good at it.  What's more, they have an incentive to at least incrementally improve the practice of this craft.

The prices of specialization, unfortunately, are social inequality and anonymity.  Everyone in a hunter-gatherer community is roughly equal: at most, some families may be favored because of close kinship with a chief or shaman, though in small groups everyone is kin in any case.  As the village grows into the town or city, one is no longer "Jeff" nor even "Jeff the Potter," one becomes merely "a potter" or "a farmer," dealt with by ritual according to one's class and occupation rather than as a unique individual.  And if one's craft is more expensive, specialized and in demand, then one's status is higher -- the jeweler sneers at the potter, who sneers at the farmer.

Of course, the highest status occupations are those of priest and warrior.  The priest is important not only because he intercedes with the gods (even if they don't exist, this promotes social peace and harmony) but also because he normally has mastered some craft specializations of immense value, such as medicine or mathematics.  The warrior is important because he is much better at fighting and killing, a training which can be applied against foreign foes and dissident citizens alike.  The ordinary farmer may mumble cantrips or brawl with clubs or even hunt with spears, but farming is a full-time occupation most times of the year:  the farmer does not have time to master priestly or warlike skills, even if he is so inclined and there is no actual prohibition upon such studies.

Technological progress widens this divide.  The Neolithic warrior has only the advantage of skill over the Neolithic farmer (and in really primitive cultures is probably a farmer himself):  his weapons and armor, such as they are, are better by only a thin margin.  The Bronze Age warrior uses weapons which are functionally quite different from hunting weapons or farm implements, requiring the mastery of very different skills to use them, and his weapons and armor are expensive.

But the Bronze Age warrior also has a wider margin of superiority over the barbarian raider or rebellious villager:  his helmet, breastplate and shield can repel the arrows and spears of his foe, while his well-forged spear or sword can go right through their furs or leathers.  Due to the human desire for self-preservation, his mere appearance on the field, angry and hungry to kill, may put his foes to flight -- read the Iliad for a fairly-accurate depiction of such morale effects.

Hence, warrior elites appear beside priestly elites, and both become socially dominant.  They usually support each other in this dominance:  the temple sends forth warriors to enforce its demands for tribute to the gods; the temple consecrates a king to lead the warriors.  The threefold order known to medieval political science has appeared:  "those who work, those who fight and those who pray."  (For variety, compare the Eastern Indo-European Aryan concept, where there is a fourth fundamental class -- "those who trade.")

Generally speaking the specialized classes -- the priests, warriors, and elite merchants/artisans -- hold themselves above the mass of the people, who are farmers.  The exact balance of status varies from civilization to civilization, but usually two highest classes are the priests and warriors, in that order (often, priests and warriors come from the same families); and the merchants/artisans form a class between them and the farmers.

Organized by the priesthood and with this organization enforced by the warriors, the early civilizations develop irrigation and transportation systems which allow much greater crop yields per acre, and the transportation of the agricultural surpluses to the cities where they enable further urban growth.  One main functional difference, in fact, between a town and a city is that a mere town is usually able to subsist from its own surrounding farms, while a city requires a large agricultural hinterland, and must have the power or wealth to compel or purchase the surplus needed to survive, let alone grow.

The important invention which enables the growth of cities is writing, which enables larger-scale and more precise forms of social organization.  Writing, for instance, makes regular tax collection less disruptive, as specific taxation amounts or rates can be set, and enforced, upon citizen and subject alike.  It also makes it easier to organize large projects, such as the construction of irrigation networks or monuments.

We are now squarely in the historical realm emulated by most modern heroic fantasy -- a world of cities, farmers, wilderness, priests, warriors and kings.  On this most basic level -- the level of the peasant farmer and his relationship to the social elites -- human culture doesn't change all that much from around 4000 BC (the appearance of proto-writing)  to around AD 1750 (the dawn of the Industrial Revolution).

And this gets to the heart of why I hate medieval stasis fantasy.

Though it is usually glossed over by the more superficial fantasy writers, the fact is that this sort of  traditional agricultural civilization is built firmly on the foundation of a downtrodden peasantry.  What's worse, up to a certain limit (the point at which the agricultural workforce is so put-upon that it cannot grow, or even maintain its numbers), the civilization works better the more downtrodden the peasantry.  This is because the larger the taxes extracted from the peasants, the larger and more capable becomes the specialist classes who produce the goods and services which provide the civilization a competitive advantage over its rivals.

Now, there is a basic incompatibility here between economic and military needs.  Though the warrior elites provide officers for military organizations, they are not large enough to form complete armies, especially for the purposes of garrsion, engineering, and main battle duties.  The military must recruit for this purpose.  Since pre-industrial cities are unhealthy places save for the elites (until the 19th century AD, they were population sinks -- their death rates exceeded their birth rates, requiring constant attraction of new population from the countryside), this means that the (literal) rank and file of one's military must be recruited from the countryside.

But if one's peasants are to be enlisted in the army and trained to war, then this imposes a limit on how severely they can be oppressed, since past a point a militarily-competent peasantry will revolt.  There is a solution, a solution which provides a significant competitive advantage to any civilization which adopts it, and which consequently has been adopted by most pre-industrial civilizations.  It is a solution so horrible that it is one of the darkest stains in our history as a species.

That solution is slavery.

What one does is to degrade a mass of people -- they may be either war-captives, purchased foreigners or one's own economic failures -- below the status of peasantry, to the status of property.  They are almost always explicitly denied the right to wield weapons, or allowed to do so only in the service of elites.  They are used to perform the heaviest and most unpleasant agricultural or mining labor, often of a sort which causes rapid physical deterioration.  Some elite slaves may also be used for the less desirable sorts of crafts or scribal work -- there are even cases of slave-soldieries, though such often cease to be slaves save in name in a few generations.  And, of course, some slaves become favorites of members of the elites, and may enjoy a precarious comfort from such relationships (which often include routine availability for sexual degradation).  The Roman Empire is the (literally) classical example of a civilization based on a large slave underclass, and their dependence on slavery was one of the roots of their ruthlessness, since ruthlessness is necessary to manage a large workforce of slaves.

What a pre-industrial technological stasis means is that this horrible system, where most of the population is condemned to a dreary, short and unpleasant life as subsistence farmers -- and a large minority of them cease to be even human, in social terms -- is eternal.  One may defeat this or that Dark Lord who wants to make things even worse (perhaps by enslaving or slaughtering everybody), but not even the Good Guys are doing anything toward any long-term overall improvement in the surrounding society.  Indeed, to some extent the popularity of Dark Lords in this sort of story is to paper-over the essential hopelessness of the societies being presented -- because however bad things normally are, one can get behind fighting off the guy who wants to tear everything good down.

Real history can be pretty depressing.  There is a tendency for the same, stupid things to happen over and over again; a repetition of cruelty and oppression, fanaticism and witch-hunting, one disaster after another as civilizations rise and attempt to build something beautiful in the world, only to go down before barbarian invasion, climate change, or the exhaustion of local resources.

But there is one inspiring thing about our history.  No matter how bad things have sometimes gotten, there is an overall rise in civilization and technology, a path leading upward to the transcendence of this or that human liimitation, to the stars.

Absent this path, history -- and life -- are hopeless.

I prefer fantasy which does not block this path in the name of nostalgia.

END

Examining the Concept of 'Post-Scarcity' Societies"

"Examining the Concept of 'Post-Scarcity' Societies"

© 2009, 2013

by

Jordan S. Bassior

Some science fiction authors, trying to get beyond the Dismal Science of Economics, posit futures in which tremendous wealth and technology have rendered "post-scarcity." What this means is that any citizen of such a society can, at a mere wish, have whatever he wants made and delivered to him as instantly as the laws of physics allow, and that the satisfaction of such wishes is so easy as to render them essentially "free goods."

Economically, a free good is anything which is in such ample supply, such as breathable air on the surface of a habitable planet, or water in most areas of regular rainfall and ordinary civil-engineering, that there is no real point in attempting to price and sell it: the effort to do so would be more expensive than the profit which could be made from selling the good. As technology advances, the per capita wealth of the individual increases. Could this reach a point where all goods became essentially free?


The essential question to answer first is, what does one mean by "all goods?" The precise nature of this question dictates the answer, and as I will show, dictates it rather directly because of physical and human nature.

Yes ...

Does one mean "all goods such as we currently consume?" If that is the question, the answer is an unqualified "Yes." The goods which anyone, even billionaires, consume in the modern world are of finite quantity per capita, and of a fixed nature. Assuming continued economic growth (through both access to previously-inaccessible resources, and the more efficient use of the resources we have), we might eventually reach a point where the cost of even vehicles with the capabilities of modern spacecraft, yachts, jet liners and limousines; housing with the quality of modern mansions; and so on became trivial compared to the productivity controlled by the average citizen. In this case they would essentially become "free goods," or at least (if the society still insisted on having a market in them ) as cheap as are, say, candy bars to the average corporate executive.

This is not only possible but quantifiable. One can measure the energy controlled per capita, assume this energy increases at some modest rate of investment return (say 2-3%) per annum, and calculate the point at which the typical individual commands an amount of energy equivalent to say, the whole modern United States of America. Depending on one's assumptions, it's "only" a few centuries to millennia from now -- a long time by our standards, but a short time in the history of a whole species.

This has, in fact, already happened with regard to some societies in our present history. The typical member of the underclass in modern America, living off welfare and occasional side deals, enjoys a level of wealth such that the comforts accessible to a typical middle-class Sumerian or Egyptian of c. 3000 BCE -- roughly 5000 years ago -- are "free goods" from his point of view. He could, for instance, obtain equally healthy housing by squatting in a derelict building, equally wholesome food by raiding garbage cans, and equal safety in his life by living in a typical slum, and so on. The modern slum dweller is actually likely to have a better life than the High Ancient bourgeoisie, because he has access to health care (hospital emergency rooms, free clinics) and entertainments (TV, radio, CD player, buyable cheap at thrift stores) beyond the Sumerian's wildest dreams.

From ancient Sumeria's POV, modern America is already a "post-scarcity" economy.

And this reveals the reason why the real answer to the question is an unqualified "No."

... and No

For, of course, the modern slum dweller cannot get anything that he wishes. He enjoys a way of life far beyond that of the Sumerian, but while we have invented ways to essentially make the goods and services the Sumerian wanted "too cheap to meter," we have also invented far better goods and services, which the slum dweller cannot afford, or can afford only with great difficulty.

The slum dweller can buy basic foods with food stamps, or scavenge them from garbage bins. He cannot enjoy the best meals, which are far better than anything that was seen on the tables of the Sumerian kings. The slum dweller lives in housing more sturdy and luxurious than the best Sumerian mud-brick buildings -- but there is even better housing in America which he cannot even hope to rent. Even though he can get a cheap TV at a thrift store, he knows that there are better TV's which are beyond his economic reach. And so on.

And this logically applies to any possible future, because the human capacity to invent new and better things, and to desire these new and better things, is INFINITE. I can get an intercontinental jet plane just by asking for one? Fine, but I'll have to pay my hard-earned credits if I want a Moonship. A few centuries later, maybe the Moonship is free, but if I want to fly to Jupiter that'll really cost me. And so on, in every possible field. Even if what we think now to be dear becomes cheap, there will be new and better things which will be dear.

Even if we assume vast improvements in the means of production, this remains true, because we will always devise new things that require rare resources to operate. If we develop fusion power, some things will still take such vast quantities of energy that they will be expensive. If we mine the whole Solar System, some things will still take so much matter that they will be expensive. We may develop nanotech fabricators that can make anything given the pattern, energy and matter, and there will be forms of matter or amounts of energy which will be difficult to obtain.

What forms? Physics already gives us hints that exotic forms of matter and energy are possible, and that subatomic particles may be malleable under the right circumstances. Eventually we will learn to find or make such matter and energy, and discover valuable properties in them, and obtaining them will be harder than using the forms of matter and energy readily available in this corner of spacetime, and thus they will be scarce.

Why would anyone want to use vast quantities of matter or energy? To make exotic matter or energy, to build very long-distance spacecraft, for mega and giga-engineering projects such as building huge habitats or whole worlds. To rip open spacetime and make wormholes to other times and places. For other reasons of which our science cannot yet conceive, any more than Sumerian artisans could have conceived of the computer on which I am typing this missive.

And beyond that, more, of which even my prodigious imagination cannot conceive.

The "poor" of CE 7000 might look as fantastically wealthy to modern Americans as a modern American slum dweller would to a Sumerian citizen, but this will not matter, because the poor man of CE 7000 will judge his status according to his desires, not ours, and he will see many goods and services in his time that he cannot afford. He will not care that we would find him wealthy, any more than the modern American slum dweller cares that what his food stamps buy him is richer, more abundant, tastier and healthier food than what the Sumerian noble was served at his table.


The rich shall we always have with us, and the poor, and economics: for scarcity is eternal.

Like it or not.

END.

Historical Cycles and the Anachronism Argument as Applicable to Space Opera

Introduction

I have often heard the complaint, addressed to space opera from more serious sorts of science fiction, that space opera is anachronistic. Star-spanning empires? Future religions? Feudal interstellar intrigue? Surely those are the features of the past, not the future. Mankind went through all that in the Roman Empire, rise of Christianity and birth of the West respectively.

I. The Assumption of Succession of Economic and Ideological Systems

The underlying assumption of this argument, though not all who make it are fully aware of its basis, lies in Marxist economic history. According to Marxism, each age is dominated by a "means of production" which results in an "ideological superstructure" which reconciles men to the means. The "means of production" of Classical Antiquity was chattel slavery; that of the Middle Ages agricultural serfdom, that of the Early Modern world (*) commercial capitalism, and that of the Late Modern world industrial capitalism. The Marxists, of course, expected industrial capitalism to be succeeded by a state socialism which, as the state "withered away," would become "full" or "true" socialism (which we might call today "anarcho-socialism.")

And indeed, if we leave out the part that hasn't happened yet (and is very unlikely to ever happen), this is pretty much the pattern we have seen in the history of the Western world from around 500 BC to the present day. We even see a long-term trend toward state socialism, of an authoritarian to totalitarian variety.

By this logic, how could we ever have interstellar "empires," of the Roman sort? The Imperial system was created to stabilize and justify a system supported by slavery, where the importance of stabilization was to prevent falling into slavery being too easy and thus interfering with personal economic planning. Christianity was adopted first to stabilize the Empire, and then the feudal states that the barbarian kingdoms formed in order to raise armies, within the limitations of a pre-industrial agricultural serfdom. Why would either messianic religions or feudal magnates appear, absent those reasons?

But there is another way to look at history, and in this view, a recurrence of roles appears exceedingly likely.

===
(*) I am using here the scheme of Perry Anderson, probably the best of all the Marxist economic historians. He correctly saw that Marx and Engels conflated the Medieval and Early Modern worlds as "feudal," when in reality Western European "feudalism" had pretty much died by the late 15th century, and the national monarchies that replaced it were something very different: "absolutism," to use his term.

===
II. Historical Cycles

The concept of cyclicism in history is very old (it dates back at least to Aristotle), but requires some explanation. The basic idea is that human cultures tend to follow a natural pattern of change that eventually returns to its starting point, in terms of economics and politics. The proviso is very important, because technology is not cyclic: technological change, as far as we can tell from the 10,000 or so years that we've enjoyed rapid progress, is progressive. Technology has a "ratchet effect" and it is rare for a technology to be forgotten unless it is replaced by a more effective one.

The Ancient concept of cyclicism did not have this progressivism, mainly because their technology was advancing too slowly for most individuals to perceive in the scale of their own lives, or even known familial histories. Think of the Ancient cyclicism as a potter's wheel, turning but going nowhere; by contrast, Modern cyclical theories view the wheel as mounted on a vehicle progressing along a road. The wheel spins, and winds up further along the road with each turning.

The best-known Modern cyclical theories are those of Spengler and Toynbee. Spengler noted great similarities in the histories of different civilizations when he put their timelines side by side; for instance, messianic prophets and great conquerors tended to appear at roughly the same stages of development for each culture. A particularly useful site outlining this is found at Spengler's Future (http://www.johnreilly.info/title.htm).

Spengler noted that the West seemed to have reached its height of cultural productivity, and that while we might have a long future ahead of us it would in many ways be downhill from here (the early 20th century). This is why his most famous book is entitled The Decline of the West). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decline_of_the_West).

Toynbee attempted something even more ambitious. He catalogued "civilizations" as entities, and showed how they were arranged in "generations," with civilizations not only rising and falling but giving birth to successors, sometimes by a phoenix-like resurrection, sometimes by an almost sexual combination (for instance, he saw the Greco-Roman Classical civilization as having combined with the Western-Semitic one to produce Eastern Christendom and with the Western-Semitic and Germanic ones to produce Western Christendom).
(http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/philosophy/history/toynbee_study_history.html).

In the view of both authors, history does not repeat precisely, but it does fall into patterns -- patterns which emerge from basic human nature as expressed through culture, economics and politics. In consequence, history does repeat itself roughly.

Toynbee saw the life cycle of a civilization as having four stages, which he termed "Spring," "Summer," "Autumn" and "Winter" (on Classical-Chinese historical models).

In the Spring stage, a civilization is born (usually from the ashes of and/or combination of predecessors). Its basic culture forms -- during this period, it is very susceptible to foreign influences. Wars are almost continual, but usually small in size. For the West, this happened during the Middle Ages. This is generally an extremely chaotic and violent era, often remembered as a "Heroic Age."

In the Summer stage, a civilization grows and explores its possibilities. During this stage it often expands greatly beyond its original homelands. Economic growth is rapid, and there is considerable cultural growth as well, though the civilization is no longer as plastic as it was in Spring. Wars are less frequent but larger in scope. For the West, this was the Modern era from the Renaissance roughly to 1914.

In the Autumn stage, a civilization consolidates. Economic expansion is slower but steadier, and geographical expansion also slows, with an emphasis on fuller exploitation of existing territory. Wars are now infrequent but very large when they occur. During this period the number of Powers is reduced; by the end, one Universal State will emerge which will rule all or nearly all of the territory controlled by the civilization. The West entered the Autumn stage around 1914, and is probably still in it today.

In the Winter stage, a civilization stagnates and dies. The Universal State, once flexible and relatively free, hardens and grows totalitarian. Economic expansion slows, eventually becoming contraction. Geographical growth also slows and then reverses; if any colonies are founded they will not be held. Wars are now either civil (within the Universal State) or are inflicted on the Universal State by more vigorous rivals; in the end the Universal State will go down before the blows of "the barbarians."

From the ashes the phoenix rises again. The barbarians who bring down the Universal State imbibe its culture in the process, and the Winter of the earlier civilization becomes the Spring of the successor civilization. And the wheel has turned, and goes on turning ...

The West has not yet entered the Winter stage, but it is plainly approaching. The likeliest Universal State for us will be America, though a late upset is not beyond the bounds of possibility. IMO (not Toynbee's, as he believed interplanetary colonization to be impossible) the West will colonize other worlds, but lose control of them as the demands of the increasingly-totalitarian Universal State of America grow insupportable, and these other worlds may well be the breeding grounds for the "barbarians" who will bring us down in the end.

The most famous case of a civilization which went through all those stages is that of Greco-Roman Classical culture. Their Springtime came after the fall of Troy; their Summer began with the Persian Wars and continued into the time of Alexander; their Autumn saw the rise of the Hellenistic Successor States (of which Rome was one by choice); and the Roman Republic became their Universal State. The Republic became an Empire, and their Winter saw Rome, which had conquered the Classical world, ossify and slowly lose control of the West to the Germanic barbarians ... who then spawned our Western Civilization from the ashes of the Western Roman Empire.

The interesting thing here is that there are traces of an earlier civilization, the Minoan-Mycenaean culture from whose ashes the Classical Greco-Roman culture rose. Their Springtime is lost to prehistory, but there are archaeological traces of a Summer in which the Minoans colonized the Aegean basin, and mythological traces of an Autumn in which great kingdoms arose both on Crete and on the mainlands, and in which the Mycenaean monarchy became the Universal State by defeating rivals including Minoan Crete and Ancient Troy, only to finally succumb to a Winter in which it perished in the coming of the Sea Peoples, including the Dorians.

III. Applicability to Space Opera

Now, imagine yourself a person living in (say) the Roman Republic of the 2nd century BCE.

Suppose that a poet writes what we might call a "hypothetical epic," in which a hero of the future has adventures like those of Odysseus, trying to return home after an apocalyptic battle but being constantly taken off course by ill-fortune and hostile tribes (we'll leave out the monsters). By virtue of his heroic cunning and fortitude, he triumphs and returns home to his petty kingdom.

Call this a "wine-dark sea opera," by analogy with "space opera." Is it reasonable?

"No!" you would protest, if you are a well-educated Roman. "That sort of thing happened in the Heroic Age, a thousand years ago (*), but now we live in a civilized age in which the Mediterranean has been mapped and strong states exist almost everywhere. Surely in the future these states will grow, until bandit kingdoms and pirates have been eradicated from Our Sea."

And you would be right. In the very next century, Pompey put down the pirates, and the Roman Republic extended its sway over everything West of the Rhine and south of the Dacians, to the Sahara.

And you would be wrong. Five centuries after his own time, the barbarians would flood over the frontiers, and bandit kingdoms and pirates would dominate almost everywhere. The wheel would have turned back to the end of Winter, and the Springtime of the Western Civilization would be its "Heroic Age."

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(*) While Greco-Roman Classical culture did not have "archaeologists" in the modern sense, they did have traditional history reaching to before their written records. Because this included genealogies, they could make guesses about when things happened, and these guesses turned out in most cases to be roughly right -- the Classical Greeks and Romans were correct as to the approximate periods of the Fall of Troy and the Foundation of Rome, for instance.

===

Conclusion

The same applies to us.

Yes, the West has for the most part put aside monarchy (as America did in CE 1776, and as Rome did in 510 BCE). But that doesn't mean that our future doesn't hold Empire (as Rome's did in 33 BCE), or a return to feudalism (as Rome's did in the 6th century CE) or even absolute monarchies.

Will they be the same as what we knew in the Middle Ages or Early Modern Era? No, especially not technologically. The "serfs" of some future Solar Civilization won't be tilling the soil with oxen -- perhaps they'll be grubbing the lithospheres with swarms of nanobots, or tending vast orbital solar power collectors. The "kings" of that future era won't sit on thrones in crowded courts -- maybe they'll inhabit vast computer networks, or occupy powerful space dreadnoughts as if they were their own bodies.

But the flavor of the culture and politics will be similar. And that's all the similarity you need for good space opera science fiction.

Which is as serious as any other projection of an inherently-unpredictable future.