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.

Terraforming in the Works of Raymond Z. Gallun

 

“Terraforming in the Works of Raymond Z. Gallun”

© 2013

by

Jordan S. Bassior

Raymond Z. Gallun is one of the underappreciated great writers of the Golden Age of Science Fiction, primarily famous for just two stories:  “Old Faithful” (1934) and “Seeds of the Dusk” (1938); though he wrote literally hundreds.  One seminal aspect of his corpus is that he was one of the earliest writers to describe terraforming – the alteration of worlds to make them more habitable for Man – doing so even before Jack Williamson.

The first Gallun story to discuss terraforming is none other than “Seeds of the Dusk” (1938), and the terraforming is both key to the resolution of that story and to the setting of another story in the same setting, “The Eternal Wall” (1942).  This aspect of the tale is often missed, because it’s part of the denounement, but the story ends with the Seeds, having annihilated the Itorloo with their biological weapons, planning to terraform the Earth through a long-term project of canal construction, using their own vegetable bodies to pump the remaining water from the shrunken seas up toward the continents, thus expanding the remaining habitable surface area of the planet.

The interesting thing about this is the Seeds do not so much “terraform” the Earth as “aresform” it (make it more Marslike), and the version of Mars they make it more like is the Golden Age Mars of thin but breathable air and arid conditions alleviated by the canal system envisioned by Percival Lowell around the 1890’s and 1900’s.  Gallun himself earlier showed this Mars in “Old Faithful” (1934); it was of course the Mars used by H. G. Wells in The War of the Worlds (1895) and by most science fiction writers from the 1890’s until 1965, when Mariner 4 took the first close-range pictures of the planet and revealed the barren and lifeless surface that we know today.

The second interesting thing about this is that Gallun, in his very first try at writing about terraforming, hit upon one of the methods we are seriously studying today, namely biological methods.  The main power of the Seeds – and of real-life biological terraforming techniques – is that the self-replicating nature of life is used as a force multiplier.  The tailored life forms execute a chemical process, and though each individual organism is small and unable to do much processing, since the organisms can self-replicate, and keep on processing through many of their own generations, eventually the amount of chemicals that can be processed and transported may be immense.  This is, of course, exactly how Earth’s own ecosystem really works today.

Finally, as I mentioned, Gallun here anticipated Jack Williamson.  Williamson’s “Collison Orbit” wasn’t published until 1942.  I’m guessing that the idea of terraforming was being generally discussed in the science-fiction community from the late 1930’s to early 1940’s, but Gallun still may have provided the first plausible example.

We know that the project of the Seeds was successful, because half a million years later, by the time of the sapient prairie dog civilization depicted in “The Eternal Wall” (1942), the Earth is essentially as the Seeds intended it – though the environment has greatly degraded, a large-scale river system keeps the waters flowing from the seas to the higher regions.  The seas in “The Eternal Wall” are described as having “vanished,” which is probably because most of Earth’s water is now flowing through the canal network.  The Seeds themselves do not appear in “The Eternal Wall,” but this does not mean that they have vanished:  they would have had no problem with the prairie dog civilization if the Cynomys in turn refrain from trying to exterminate the Seeds (as had the Itorloo).

In “Big Pill” (1952), rebellious Titan colonists, frustrated with lethally-shoddy supplies and the cold and deadly environment of that Saturnian moon develop a special sort of hydrogen bomb, the titular “Big Pill,” which is able in one colossal detonation to transform by nuclear processes the elements on the Titanian surface into a chemical mix which will render Titan (in some years or decades, when the radiation dies down) shirt-sleeves human habitable.  This story is interesting not only because Gallun got the nature of the Titanian surface wrong (he saw it as rocky and with very little atmosphere) and in a way which was more accurate for the Jovian moons (which much Golden and Silver Age science fiction depicted as Earthlike), but also because the terraforming technique he described has never appeared to be practical, but was later used in Star Trek – namely, Gallun was the first writer to describe something like the “Genesis Device” used in The Wrath of Khan (1982).

Finally, in “Comet’s Burial” (1953), two rebellious Lunar colonists, frustrated with the bottleneck imposed on the development of the Moon by the shortage of water, which is described in the story as being in the Lunar rocks hundreds of miles down, deliberately crash a comet into the Moon to crack the crust and liberate the water and other volatiles.  This results in the Moon becoming more habitable and the colonists (who had been imprisoned for their actions) being released and hailed as heroes for their accomplishments.  The interesting thing here is that the method (cometary collision) has been (fairly recently) seriously discussed as a means of terraforming, but more to directly deliver volatiles than to release them through triggering vulcanism.  Another interesting thing is that both in “Big Pill” and “Comet’s Burial,” the actual authorities are opposed to the terraforming projects:  the heroes are rebels who are first fought by the forces of societies only too willing to accept a status quo unfavorable to the colonists.

In 1961, Carl Sagan – at the time just one of many young astronomers – would propose the terraforming of Venus, and the concept would become part of “serious” planetology.  But we should honor Raymond Z. Gallun, and others (including most famously Jack Williamson) for promoting the idea long before mainstream science accepted it.  And it’s quite likely that Sagan – who grew up a science fiction fan – may have been inspired by Gallun and Williamson.

Just another example of science fiction inspiring the development of real science.

END.

The Reason for Xenology

"The Reason for Xenology"

© 2013

by Jordan S. Bassior

Xenology – the scientific study of alien life and civilizations – is a science unique in that we haven’t yet found any alien life or civilizations to study.  Why, then, does the discipline exist?  After all, there are no real sciences of, say, demonology or unicornology, because we’ve never discovered any real demons or unicorns.  (Mystics and fantasists compile lists of imaginary demons, and fantastists and fangirls lists of imaginary unicorns, but this is not the same as “scientific study” of a subject).

The difference is that we have a very strong suspicion that alien life and civilizations do exist, for the very good reason that we exist, and the same forces which caused life and intelligence on Earth have probably caused life and intelligence on at least some other planets.  We bother to discusss the issue scientifically, even though we haven’t found any such life and civilizations yet, because for various reasons such alien life and civilizations, if and when discovered, are bound to be of great significance to both the study and the destiny of the life and civilization which has originated on Earth.

The Universe is very large.  As we learn more about its structure it becomes apparent to us that the natural forces which generated terrestrial planets around Sol have also generated terrestrial planets around other stars, and what we know of chemistry and paleontology make it very likely that these forces have also generated ecosystems on at least some of those worlds.  Terrestrial planets seem to be common enough that it is very likely that there are alien ecosystems in some of the nearby star systems – say, within 100 or so LY of the Earth.

Such ecosystems would be important to us because they would give us a wider informational base from which to study our own ecosystem.  As long as we have only one example of an evolved ecosystem (Earth’s) to go by, we cannot tell which aspects of that ecosystem are essential to being an ecosystem, and which are chance and incidental features of our particular ecosystem.  Also, since any ecosystem is essentially a colossal natural experiment, taking place over a whole planetary surface and lasting billions of years, it would be rather surprising if we didn’t find some unique and useful results from any particular new ecosystem we studied.

Paleontology tells us that it takes a planet merely a few hundred million years to generate an ecosystem, but billions of years to create sapient life.  Consequently, sapience should be much rarer than life.  It would be surprising if there was no alien life within 100 LY of Earth (indeed, it wouldn’t be particularly surprising if some existed in our own star system); it would not be all that surprising if there were no alien sapients within that radius.  Furthermore, since civilization (agriculture plus writing) occurred fairly late in the history of the ape family, and spacefaring fairly late in the history of civilization, we might expect to find many savage for each civilized sapient race, and many planetbound for each spacefaring civilization, unless of course existing spacefaring civilizations have already colonized many nearby star systems.

Everything I’ve said about alien life applies to alien sapience, civilizations and spacefaring.  Alien sapients would represent different experiments in being smart; alien civilizations in being civilized; alien spacefarers in being scientific.  We would learn through the study of such beings just which aspects of our current sapience, civilization and science are essential, and which accidental.  Additionally, we should be aware that alien civilizations, especially spacefaring ones, might pose a threat to us – it is obviously theoretically possible for such civilizations to attack us, and if they exist they might.  So from purely selfish, even insular motives, we should locate any which happen to be in our vicinity, and be on our guard against them.

Do we know for certain that any of this exists?  No, not yet, and that’s why this is a curious science, for it is studying something of whose reality we cannot be certain.  What is certain is that the more we study the Universe beyond our lonely planet, the wider the base of information we gain for an estimation of the frequency of alien life, sapience and civilization, and hence the more solidly-grounded becomes xenology.

It is dangerous to attempt to walk through our existence as a species with our eyes squeezed firmly shut – better to open them wide to the wonders of the Universe.  And, while we’re dong so, keep a lookout for the tigers.

END.

"Zarig - The Only Home For Life"

(c) 2012

by

Jordan S. Bassior

Many people are excited by the recent discovery of hundreds of extra-Sharan planets, including numerous small Zarigoid worlds.  From at least a couple of these, astronomers have detected the spectrographic signature of liquid water, an essential for life.

This has led certain optimistic fabulists to imagine that these small Zarigoid worlds could be home to life, even sapient life, and perhaps technological civilizations like our own.  This is, sadly, improbable, and in this article I will explain why.

As is well known, our homeworld Zarig has a mass of about 25 sextillion tons, which ensures that our crust is stable and avoids the crustal fracturing and motion which afflicts smaller zarigoid worlds over long periods of time, and would in theory prevent the formation of the great shield volcanoes (because the tectonic plates would move relative to them) which build the atmosphere which helps warm our world and is constantly abraded by the wind from our daystar Shara.  Why, on such unfortunate planets, the scraping against or even subduction of these plates would cause the very crust to shake:  how would a crystal forest ever get to grow? ...  and we well know the importance of the crystal forests in our ecosystem, only they are able to reach down through the ocean layers to bring up metals from the ocean floor up into the nitrogen-oxygen-carbon dioxide layer which higher life breathes!

Such small planets -- say of around 6-7 sextillion tons, like little lifeless Zag, the next world in from us around Shara -- would have trouble retaining air and water when their suns flared, which happens quite frequently.   A habitable planet, such as Zarig, has a surface atmospheric pressure of 100 or more pounds per square inch, which is what makes it possible to have a layer of air-crystal-plants which screens the surface from deadly sharan radiation, while collecting the useful energy and transmitting down to the surface through the airplants' root systems.

Indeed, crystallife might never evolve.   Computer models demonstrate that on a smaller zarigoid world, most of the vital heavy metals, including the radioactives, would almost completely settle to the center.   Life's own evolution would be slowed by the relative dearth of uranium and thorium, to name the two most common actinides, in the crust.

And would intelligent life evolve at all?  We gained our intelligence by the intellectual complexity required by our triphibious lives:  walking, climbing, spreading our wings to fly, and swimming through the oceans.  On a smaller zarigoid world, would the air even be thick enough for large animals to fly?  Would there be enough water to cover the entire planet?  All the smaller zarigoid planets in our own system either have no oceans or pathetic little oceans that are at most a few miles deep, from which the naked crust protrudes into the barren skies.

Civilization would be difficult.  Even if there were enough metals to support life, would there be enough to allow the construction of tools, houses and vehicles?  Even primitive Zarigians could get metals by felling the appropriate plants or slaying the appropriate beasts and extracting their nodules:  how would the hypothetical primitives obtain metals on a sub-Zarigoid world, where the plants and beasts had no such nodules?  They could hardly mine their ocean floors without first building all sorts of vehicles and machines for such a purpose, and they could not build such vehicles and other machines without first having the metals!

And how would this hypothetic race ever attain space travel?  On Zarig it was easy to float our airports higher and higher in the sky, until eventually we managed to build ones high enough above the atmosphere for our atomic rockets to easily attain orbit?  Would life on a subZarigoid world even have enough radioactives to build atomic rockets?  The weak forces of chemistry are of course inadequate to attain orbital spaceflight.

No, it is clear that the subZarigoid worlds now appearing in our space telescopes are either lifeless, or their life non-sapient, or forever bound to their planetary surfaces.  Let us shed tears of pity from all  of our eyes for such poor lost beings, if they exist; and waggle our tentacles and flash our skins in relief that we were born on the one and only planet in the Universe uniquely crafted by the Creator for the evolution of life, sweet benign Zarig!

AH - "The League of Nations Triumphant" (2001, 2012) by Jordan S. Bassior

"The League of Nations Triumphant!"

An Alternate History

(c) 2001, 2012

by

Jordan S. Bassior

Introduction:

This timeline is taken to 1964, and it details a world in which the League of Nations was an effective organization and, as a result, there was no global Second World War. The League of Nations dominates the world of 1964, though it is challenged by the Japanese and by colonized nations yearning for independence.  This version of the history incorporates valuable comments by Joseph Major, Logan Ferree and Johnny 1A.

I. The 1920's -- Global Recovery

In this timeline, Woodrow Wilson accepted better political advice than in OTL in handling both other nations and the US Congress. As a result, both the Versailles Treaty and the Charter of the League of Nations were better composed; Wilson paid greater attention to securing Congressional support for his policy, and in 1920 he succeeded in getting the US Senate to ratify American membership in the League of Nations.  Among his efforts included the formation of a League Council able to authorize actions on a two-thirds supermajority rather than requiring unanimous consent as in OTL.

Wilson died in 1921, worn out by the efforts of the hard shuttle diplomacy and politicking needed to secure passage of the treaty. He was mourned by a grateful nation as the man who had given his life in the service of victory and peace. His vice-president, Thomas Marshall, served out the remainder of Wilson's term, but was unable to win the 1924 Presidential election.

Under first the corrupt Harding and the competent but laissez-faire Coolidge Administrations, American financial interests saw the opportunities for investment in Germany, and lobbied to further reduce the harsher strictures of the Versailles Treaty. This accorded well with Britsh interests, and the British supported the amendment of the treaty terms. The French did not like this, but went along with it, since their security depended in part on Anglo-American support.

Treated well by the West, the Weimar Republic gained the respect of all but the most extreme German factions. Germany, like the rest of the West, enjoyed an economic boom during the decade, and both the extreme right and left were politically marginalized. Even the French fears began to fade as it became obvious that this happy and prosperous Germany was not about to attempt another invasion. The lights, all over Europe, were plainly coming back on.

By the mid-1920's, however, it could be plainly seen  that the Communists were going to be able to hold onto power in Russia. With Germany growing more cooperative, the fears of the free world became fixed upon the Communist menace. American and British diplomats saw Germany as the obvious Eastern bulwark of the League's world order.

During the late 1920's, a series of treaties were signed committing the Western Great Powers (America, Britain, France, Germany, and Italy) to guarantee the collective security of all Europe against a possible Russian attack. Restrictions on the German military were relaxed, and ultimately lifted. Mutual extradition treaties eased multi-national cooperation against agents of the Comintern. Finally, in 1928, the Alliance of Democratic States was formally created, its headquarters in the Hague, to cement the containment of Communism in Europe.

The Panic of 1928, which began in the New York Stock Market, momentarily raised fears that the good times were over. But J. P. Morgan, Jr. successfully engineered large international loans, especially from the Bank of London and the Deutschebank, to prevent any serious financial collapse. The crisis never got beyond a short American recession. By 1930, American economic growth had resumed, fuelled by the free trade common throughout the world.

II. The Early 1930's -- Fall of Communism

During the early 1930's, reports filtering out from the Soviet Union made it apparent that the Soviet dictator, Josef Stalin, was a psychopathic mass murderer on a scale dwarfing Genghis Khan. World opinion was outraged by the revelation of engineered mass famines and deportations which had resulted in the deaths of millions of people in the Ukraine alone.

These revelations, coupled with the growth of an increasingly prosperous middle class in virtually all the democracies, destroyed what remained of the reputation of Soviet Communism, even among democratic socialists. Intellectuals repudiated Communism en masse, and those who did not were marginalized. George Bernard Shaw spoke for a whole disillusioned class when he said: "I have been to the Soviet Union, and I have seen a nightmarish past reborn."

The crucial conceptual step was a speech by Winston Churchill in 1935. "An Iron Curtain must descend across the eastern boundary of Europe," he said, "to starve out Stalin and his foul Bolshevik order. The free world must shun the monster, and cast him out into the darkness." The League, answering his call, imposed a total embargo upon Russia, already suffering grievously from the engineered famine. And, covertly, the Alliance began contacting key elements among both the Red Army leadership, and among the ethnic minorites.

In the winter of 1934-35, with the Russian economy collapsing and famine threatening Moscow itself, Stalin ordered the Red Army to strip all the outer provinces of food and fuel, to sustain the center. Furthermore, he began preparations to purge the Army leadership itself, intending to use this command as a test to determine who was truly loyal.

Pressed by the embargo, Stalin had moved too fast. With the officers in fear for their lives, and the ethnic minorites among the enlisted men aware that Stalin's orders would mean the deaths of many of their relatives, the Red Army mutinied.

It began on a small scale, as enlisted men rose in protest, and officers joining them partially because if they didn't they would be shot on the spot by their own men. Commissars who tried to quell the mutiny were shot; sometimes hung; occasionally torn to bits.

Since any disloyalty meant death, units which even expressed dissent quickly moved to open rebellion. The mutiny began in Leningrad, and spread like wildfire. NKVD attempts to suppress knowledge of the revolt failed miserably, as individual agitators carried the word by train, motorcar, and aeroplane. The Alliance-financed "Voice of Democracy," broadcasting from Poland, made it impossible to keep the secret in Byelorussia or the Ukraine. As border units
joined the revolt, the "Iron Curtain" was lifted to allow copious quantities of Alliance-supplied munitions, food, fuel, and other supplies to flow to the rebel forces.

Russians, though crushed by over a decade of Communism, everywhere rediscovered their courage and turned on the tyrant (In Kiev, a local Party official named Nikita Krushchev attracted wide admiration, and assumed a leading role in the revolt, when he subverted a loyalist column by climbing on the leading armored car, banging on its hatch with his boot until the confused commander opened it to hear what was going on, and then haranguing the troops until they cheered him, joining the rebels whom they had previously been prepared to gun down!)
The "Russian Federation" was declared, and the Federal forces marched on Moscow from all sides.

By the spring of 1935, the forces loyal to Stalin (mostly secret police) were being mopped up, and Stalin cowered in a bunker beneath the Kremlin as the Federal armies battled his last forces in the streets of Moscow. Stalin's fate is uncertain; the legend is that Molotov shot him with his sidearm and then burned the corpse with a petrol bomb improvised from a vodka bottle and a scarf (1). A badly charred corpse was later discovered, but it was so damaged that it was difficult to discern its identity. Fanciful rumors persist that his head is being kept alive in a jar somewhere -- perhaps in Japan.

The disastrous 16 1/2 year episode of Communism was over, and Russia breathed a sigh of relief. A surviving Romanov was found to serve as a figurehead for the Russian Federation. At last, Russia could begin to recover from the disaster that had befallen her over 20 years ago when she first marched off to war.

Fortunately, Communism had not lasted long enough to completely demoralize the society, and by 1940, Russia was definitely on the path to the same prosperity enjoyed by the rest of the democratic world.

The one good thing that came out of the Russian ordeal was the concept of "crimes against humanity." When the archives of the NKVD and the gates of the gulags were opened, the world was horrified to realize the magnitude of the Communist atrocities. The peoples of the League, including many in the new Russian Federation, demanded that the Bolshevik leaders be punished for their actions.

The St. Petersberg Trials, held from 1936 to 1937, saw many of the top Communists called before a special tribunal sanctioned by the World Court. Some were sentenced to long prison terms; others (such as the loathsome Yekov and sadistic Beria) were hung. Many have since complained that others (including some not in Russia at the time, such as Trotsky) also deserved punishment, and that the sentences of many were later commuted to help build support in the
subsequent crisis, but it was a start towards a recognition of the principle that justice is superior to sovereignty.

This, of course, completed the ruin of the reputation of Communism. On the college campuses, this was the "White Decade," in which even legitimate criticism of the Romanovs tended to be ignored amidst the hagiography, and capitalism enjoyed the highest reputation ever (2). "Commie" became a standard imprecation, sometimes used against even non-Communists with whom a speaker disagreed.

With Russia now a member both of the League and the Alliance, the balance had tipped decisively in favor of League global dominion. The Italian conquest of Ethiopia, which had occurred while the League was preoccupied with the liberation and reconstruction of Russia, did not seriously disturb this dominion, especially as the League customarily sided with the colonial powers -- unpopular in America, but a necessary compromise to secure Anglo-Franco-Italian support on more important issues.

III. Late 1930's -- The Gathering Storm

The great fly in the ointment was Japan, which had used the same period of distraction to invade Eastern Siberia, seizing Vladivostok; then marched from Korea to secure Manchuria, under the pretexed of putting down warlord attacks on Japanese and their properties. The League protested these aggressions, but the Japanese insisted that control of these areas was vital to their national security.

In 1937, the League compromised: Japanese "protectorship" of "Manchuko" and Korea would be acknowledged as a League Mandate, if the Japanese withdrew their "Army of Assistance" from Russian territory. Eastern Siberia was returned to the Russian Federation, and only China (and to some extent America) was concerned by the Japanese conquest of Manchuria. The Japanese might have continued to enjoy their territorial gains, if their easy success hadn't rendered them overconfident.

Basically, the Japanese didn't believe that the League could -- or even would -- fight.

They had observed the Russian Crisis with interest, and had noticed that League interference had been limited to the embargo, propaganda, and arms shipments. They were certain that an embargo could not prevent a Japanese conquest of China, because they had adequate coal to move their troop trains, plenty of metals and timber in Manchuria, and could get food by stripping China bare to feed their own population. They knew that Japan did not pose the sort of ideological threat to the democracies that the Soviet Union had, and were skeptical of the ability of any embargo to last very long. America and Russia were hostile to Japan, but American leadership was resented by the French and Italians, and Russia was still weak from her sufferings under Stalin.

The Japanese began pushing China further and further. In 1939, the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, provoked by the Japanese, was used as the excuse to launch a massive invasion of China proper. When League mediation was spurned by Japan, the League imposed a global embargo on the Japanese Empire. The stage was now set for a wider war.

IV. Early 1940's -- The Chinese War

Everything, for Japan, depended upon a rapid victory. American and other Western business interests were deeply opposed to the loss of trade which the embargo entailed; if China's ports could be secured, Japan would effectively control the China trade as well, adding to the financial pressures on the Alliance governments. The key would be a Chinese surrender on terms: as long as the war continued, a lifting of the embargo would be perceived as "defeat" in the eyes of the populations, and hence be too politically unpopular to contemplate, no matter how much corporate money poured into dovish coffers.

Unfortunately for the Japanese, the Chinese did not submit so easily. The Nationalist regime had been receiving considerable aid from the League even before the Japanese attack, owing to the persistence of unregenerate Communist rebels, led by the murderous Mao Tse-Tung. With outright Japanese defiance of the League, this assistance was increased.  Encouraged by League support, the Chinese refused to surrender. Though forced to retreat from the coastal provinces time and time again by better-organized and better-led Japanese forces, they continued the fight from the interior. It became a war of attrition -- and while the Japanese were killing many Chinese for every Japanese soldier who fell, the Chinese could afford the casualties, while the Japanese could not.

Clearly, decisive victory would require the ability to achieve rapid and sudden penetrations, to shatter the Chinese headquarters, and disrupt the supply lines from the rest of the League. It had been demonstrated by the Russian Crisis and was being demonstrated again on the battlefields of China that the only way to do this was with massed air and motorized forces. The Japanese began building more trucks, tanks, and aircraft.

But these vehicles needed oil, not coal, to operate. Now, the limitations of Japanese pretension to autarky were laid bare: their Empire did not contain any oil wells, and the many Western corporate-backed tankers which secretly supplied them -- in defiance of the League embargo -- were inadequate to support the thirsty Japanese spearhead forces.

In 1941, the use of new raiden-go  ("lightning-victory") tactics enabled the Japanese to knock the Chinese back onto the ropes, but most of the new-style forces were now obliged to go over to the defensive, as army oil stockpiles dipped dangerously low. It became mathematically certain that, if the Empire could not find any new oil supplies within a year, the Japanese would have no
choice but to withdraw from China by 1943 at the latest.

This realization led the Japanese to a desperate act. The oil they needed was available in Dutch Indonesia, but (as the embargo tightened) the Dutch were now effectively closing the tap on those reserves.

The Japanese decided that a swift, decisive naval strike on Indonesia could seize the oil wells, and secure the supplies they needed to win the war with China.

The Netherlands were weak: their navy had no chance against the Japanese (even given the oil shortage). But Holland was not only a League member, but the seat of the Alliance. And America, the most powerful member of the League, had bases in the Philippines, directly athwart the Japanese supply lines.

Would the League intervene? Would America?

The Japanese thought not. The "Alliance of Democratic Nations" had never actually fought a war. America, in particular, was known for her pacifism. The decision was made to attack Indonesia without first knocking out the powerful American Pacific Fleet.

It was a decision the Japanese would regret.

V. Early to Mid 1940's -- The Pacific War

The Japanese invasion of Indonesia commenced on June 6th, 1942. Consternation reigned in the League Council chamber. The League had already embargoed Japan, and supported China. What else was there to do? But, no matter how many weapons they gave the Dutch, there was no way that the tiny Netherlands could hope to defeat Japan, given their small population and distance from the theater of conflict.

It was then that the Russian Ambassador -- that same Nikita Krushchev who had performed so bravely in the streets of Kiev, changed history. Removing his shoe, he pounded it on the table, rivetting the attention of all the representatives.

"What are we afraid of?" he snorted contemptuously. "We are the whole world: Japan is but a few islands. Japan, we will bury you!!!"

The cheers resounded deafeningly.

On July 18th, the League declared its sanction for "a war to preserve the peace in the Pacific." American, British, Dutch, French, and Russian fleets launched a coordinated series of attacks against the Japanese naval and transport forces. In a daring raid, American carrier-based aircraft caught the main fleet of Admiral Nagumo in port at Okinawa, sinking many battleships before they could fire a shot.

Japanese Admiral Isoruko Yamamoto called this a "day of infamy," but it was clear that the Japanese war plan had gone very wrong. Though the IJN fought well in some night actions, the Alliance forces defeated them in battle after battle, gaining mastery in, above, and under the Western Pacific waters. The IJN was hamstrung at every point by its lack of oil reserves.

In December 1942, Operation Torch -- the Allied amphibious landings in Southern China -- began. Though defects in doctrine were revealed, the Allies were everywhere able to secure their beachheads and march inland, linking-up with Chinese forces. The Japanese motorized forces, thirsty for oil, could only sluggishly react to these moves, and in most cases the Japanese forces were fixed and defeated in detail.

In the spring of 1943, Russian forces drove down into Manchuria, severing the land supply routes from Korea to China. Meanwhile, the Allies advanced up the Chinese coasts, using submarines and light craft to raid as far as Japanese itself. Heavy bombers, operating from Chinese and Manchurian bases, attacked targets in Korea and Kyushu. By August 1943, China and Korea were both liberated, and the way was now clear for the final Japan against Japan herself.

Amazingly, Japan did not sue for peace. Faced with the hostility of the whole world, any other nation would have done so, but the Japanese were lost in a dream-world of propaganda and Shinto-inspired fanaticism. Japanese forces, even when surrounded, fought to the last man. And the Japanese people placed their faith that bushido spirit and the ancient gods of their homeland would somehow save them from an enemy whom they believed utterly merciless.

In the spring of 1944, the final campaigns of the war began. A pan-Allied force comprising largely of American, Australian, British, Canadian, Dutch, and French elements invaded Kyushu, while a Russian force staged a diversionary invasion of Hokkaido. The fighting was extremely fierce; suicide planes and boats attacked the Allied fleets, while civilian militia and guerilla forces
launched desperate attacks on the well-armed Allied troops and tanks.

But the Japanese resistance was hopeless -- all it did was to further anger the Allies, leading to a relaxation of all the rules of war. The new giant Boeing and Tupolev strategic bombers launched mass incendiary bombardments of Japanese cities, triggering terrible firestorms, killing tens of thousands of civilians. More Allied forces mobilized, and by the summer of 1944 Kyushu was firmly in Allied hands, as was most of Hokkaido.

Honshu, the main Japanese homeland, was now endangered from two directions. If the Japanese resisted on Honshu as they had on the lesser islands, the carnage among Japanese civilians would truly be terrible.

At this point, a coup toppled the Japanese junta. The Emperor himself took the unprecedented stop of appealing personally to his people on the radio, declaring that he desired that his Ministers sue for peace. They did so.

The League gladly consented. The civilian death toll on Kyushu had horrified public opinion; it was already being whispered that to do what would be needed to take Honshu would "make us as bad as the Commies." An Armistice was declared on August 14th, 1944.

The Pacific War was over, though the treaty negotiations would stretch into 1945, and some of the subordinate clauses would take a decade to hammer out. The Japanese turned certain of the generals most obviously responsible for war crimes over to the League Tribunal, though many simply committed suicide. And the world returned to peace.

The war had proven beyond any doubt that the League was willing to fight, if need be, to keep the peace. The power of the democracies had been demonstrated, and without wrecking the world on the scale of the Great War. The peoples of the Earth could now proceed, as Winston Churchill exultantly declared, "into the bright sunny uplands of a new dawning."

VI. Late 1940's to the Present - The League Mandate

These new "uplands," however, were tainted by colonialism.

The Great War, the Russian Crisis, and the Pacific War had all bred a distaste for ruthless measures on the part of the democracies. It had not escaped the attention of the more progressive Western thinkers that what the Europeans had done to each other on the Western Front; what the Communists had done to the Russians; and what the Japanese had done to the East Asians; were simply special cases of a more general evil which the democracies of the League, even now, were not entirely innocent.

The Britrish ruled India and much of Africa essentially through the threat of force. The French rule over Indochina and North Africa was nakedly brutal. Even America, anti-colonialist and proudly pointing to her recent grant of independence to the Philippines, oppressed her own Negro population.

Agitation was growing for reform. India asked for independence, pointing to Britain's own democratic traditions and the loyal service of Indians in the Pacific War. Rebel movements grew against the French in Indochina and Algeria. In America, liberal lawyers pointed to elements in both the League's resolutions and the American Constitution to support their demands for Negro
civil rights.

Right after the Great War, the League had dealt with the question of captured Turkish territories by issuing "mandates" to govern their disposal. Now, a movement grew to govern the colonial issue in much the same fashion.

America, which possessed no colonies, was of course in the forefront of this movement, both out of idealism and in order to take the moral high ground from her diplomatic competitors. Of the colonial powers, Britain was divided: the Tories (led by Churchill and Halifax) vehemently opposing such mandates, and the Liberals (and tiny Labour Party) (3) strongly supporting them. The French didn't want to disgorge their colonies: they had a powerful nationalist wing
which outright insisted on maintaining the French mission civilatrice. Russia insisted that with the coming of the Federation, the "nationalities" were no longer "colonies," but rather, inherent parts of "Greater Russia."

The debate over this issue continues to this very day (1964), though the liberals seem to be slowly but surely winning. Britain led the way, by embarking upon a phased program of decolonialization, starting with the granting of Dominion status to India in 1948, and full independence in 1956 (4). The former colonies, such as India, Egypt, and Korea, as they attained
League Membership status, have gradually shifted the weight of the Council to support the Decolonization Mandates.

VII. Early 1950's -- A New Peril Emerges

In 1936, German scientists had split the uranium atom (5). In 1942, the first experimental uranium fission reactor was turned on in an East Prussian research facility; the resultant meltdown killed half the research team, and rendered the facility unusable. Undaunted, the Germans persevered, and in 1944 – too late to affect the Pacific War -- they succeeded in creating a stable, self-sustatining uranium fission reaction.

Atomic power offers great prospects for Mankind: a new source of energy, requiring very little fuel and producing very little pollution. The most daring thinkers even hope that it can be harnessed to rocketry, someday enabling us to fly into orbit!

However, from the start, it was realized that the Einsteinian equation also implies the possibility of tremendously destructive weapons. An atomic explosion could concentrate the force of a whole air force's high-explosive payload into a single package, producing a bomb theoretically capable of destroying a whole city in a single detonation.

The League had no interest in developing such weapons. Their members already dominated the world, and a war between the democracies was deemed unthinkable. Nobody wanted to see a replay of the Great War, let alone one employing such frightful engines of destruction.

Thus, it was an unpleasant surprise to the world when, on May 15th, 1953, the Japanese announced to the world that they had succeeded in detonating a 20-kiloton atomic explosive device, in northern Hokkaido. Stunned populations watched the films. Several League scientists were taken on a (carefully supervised) tour of the test site, and verified that the detonation had indeed taken place.

What was worse, the Japanese admitted that this had been but one of three identical weapons they had constructed. Japanese science had stolen a march upon the world, they stated with smiles, and henceforth Japan would expect greater respect from the League Council, or there would be "fearful consequences."

On May 29th, however, the Japanese ambassador to Germany found himself invited, along with some other prominent Japanese nationals, to a bunker in the wilds east of Koningsberg. There, they donned tinted glasses, and were given the privilege of witnessing the detonation of the first German atomic bomb, a 40-kiloton device, and a more portable one at that. They were then informed that the plans to build such weapons were, even now, being revealed to the other Great Powers of the League, and that Germany, in cooperation with the Alliance, could easily outproduce the Japanese in both such devices and the aircraft needed to deliver them.  There were some suicides in Tokyo, a wholly unjustified persecution of the Ainu, and the brief Japanese atomic monopoly was over.

Notes

(1) - Which is why this weapon became known as a "Molotov Cocktail."

(2) - This was true even in popular culture, where the first full-length animated movie, Disney's Anastasia (1939) represented Lenin as a Satanist vampire.

(3) - Labour had once looked as if it would replace the Liberals as the major British party of the Left, but a quarter-century of prosperity coupled with the disgrace of Communism sapped its support.

(4) - The independence of India is widely considered proof of the superiority of the British decolonialization program, as it was accomplished virtually without loss of life despite intense religious hostilities, thanks to the British retaining operational control over Indian army and police forces well into the 1950's.

(5) - German scientific dominance has been profound through the century, and Germany has also led in many other cultural areas. One undoubted reason for this is her large and highly talented Jewish minority, which amounted by 1964 to some one and a half millions. They included some of the world's greatest physicists, chemists, psychologists, writers, and artists.