Bittercon: Different FTL Mechanisms -- Implications for Governance and Conflict
This Windycon panel discussion topic caught my eye because one of my first college papers was for a class in the literature of science fiction, in which I discussed decentralization as a characteristic of supraplanetary polities. In my essay, which is now posted in the writing section of my personal website, I argued that interplanetary and interstellar political organizations would tend toward some form of federal system, with individual planets having a fair amount of self-governance and the overgovernment focusing primarily on relations between the member planets and relations with other polities (assuming that the overgovernment is not a Universal State of all humanity in a 'verse absent of intelligent aliens).
I used as my examples the Galactic Empire in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, the Ekumen in Ursula K. Le Guin's Hainish 'verse, and the Imperium in Frank Herbert's Dune series. Each of them has a different approach to FTL travel, and it shapes the polity that we see in it.
In Asimov's 'verse, FTL is pretty much a standard Space Is an Ocean system, used readily by both the Imperial government and civilian commerce until internal decay leads to technological regression and the loss of the ability to build new spaceships or even maintain the existing ones. The Galactic Empire is modeled upon the Roman Empire in its final centuries, so it's hardly surprising that its equivalent of Rome should be the ecumenopolis of Trantor, a world completely built over with metal, Asimov's home of New York City writ large. Because FTL travel is easy, Trantor can try to manage the entire empire in much more detail than would be possible without it -- but as Foundation begins, it's beginning to hit its limits, and those limits will be the Empire's downfall (perhaps because there is no FTL communication apart from sending a spaceship, since the Galactic Empire is modeled upon Rome, a pre-telecom empire).
Le Guin takes the opposite approach: in the 'verse of her Hainish Ekumen, physical FTL travel is impossible, and spaceships must creep along at relativistic speeds, passengers subject to time dilation and its various knock-on and knock-off effects. However, thanks to Shevek the Cetan mathematician's invention of the ansible, a form of FTL telecom, in The Dispossessed, information can travel instantaneously between far-flung worlds.
However, there seems to be a fairly harsh bandwidth constraint on the amount of information that can be transmitted via ansible. We only see it being used to transmit relatively short declarative or interrogative messages -- informing distant stations of events on one's world or asking questions about their situations, rather than transmitting extensive technical information or even photographic and video transmissions. It's a telegraph, not a fax machine, let alone an Internet.
As a result, the Ekumen is a tenuous thing, as much an idea as anything resembling a functioning government. Isolated worlds that have not yet accepted the existence of the Ekumen are off limits, but this seems to be as much an honor system among star travelers than something that is enforced from above. However, it fits with Le Guin's Taoistic ideals of wu wei (non-action) that aren't precisely anarchism, more on the order of mind-your-own-business-ism.
Herbert's Dune 'verse lies somewhere in the middle. FTL travel is possible, but it is a monopoly of the hyper-secretive Spacing Guild. Even the Padishah Emperor must pay to send his forces to distant worlds, and must abide by the rules the Spacing Guild lays down or risk losing his travel privileges.
As a result, the structure of the Imperium is feudal in nature, with a very hierarchical society and almost no social mobility (the faufreluches system). Individual planets are given by the Padishah Emperor as fiefs to the various Great Houses, and these can be altered or revoked at will -- Dune itself begins with the Atreides family having to vacate their lush world of Caladan at Imperial command to take over Arrakis, which their enemies the Harkonnens had held in a "quasi-fief" focused on the mining of the spice melange, which is publicly known for its anti-geriatric properties but which in fact has far more critical applications for the Spacing Guild, making it a sort of stand-in for Middle Eastern oil.
If I were to rewrite that essay now and not be confined to the books covered in the course for which it was originally written, I'd want to include a wide variety of other authors' works. For instance, take James H. Schmitz's Federation of the Hub with its psionics, including psi machines, or the Thousand Stars of Sherwood Smith and Dave Trowbridge's Exordium series, with its government in which contradictions are deliberately built in through the Covenant of Anarchy. Both are 'verses in which FTL space travel is as common as sea or air travel in our own world, yet while they both have governments deliberately limited in order to protect the liberties of their citizens, they accomplish it in very different ways.
What other books and fictional 'verses have you found interesting in terms of the relationship between forms of space travel and forms of governance?
I used as my examples the Galactic Empire in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, the Ekumen in Ursula K. Le Guin's Hainish 'verse, and the Imperium in Frank Herbert's Dune series. Each of them has a different approach to FTL travel, and it shapes the polity that we see in it.
In Asimov's 'verse, FTL is pretty much a standard Space Is an Ocean system, used readily by both the Imperial government and civilian commerce until internal decay leads to technological regression and the loss of the ability to build new spaceships or even maintain the existing ones. The Galactic Empire is modeled upon the Roman Empire in its final centuries, so it's hardly surprising that its equivalent of Rome should be the ecumenopolis of Trantor, a world completely built over with metal, Asimov's home of New York City writ large. Because FTL travel is easy, Trantor can try to manage the entire empire in much more detail than would be possible without it -- but as Foundation begins, it's beginning to hit its limits, and those limits will be the Empire's downfall (perhaps because there is no FTL communication apart from sending a spaceship, since the Galactic Empire is modeled upon Rome, a pre-telecom empire).
Le Guin takes the opposite approach: in the 'verse of her Hainish Ekumen, physical FTL travel is impossible, and spaceships must creep along at relativistic speeds, passengers subject to time dilation and its various knock-on and knock-off effects. However, thanks to Shevek the Cetan mathematician's invention of the ansible, a form of FTL telecom, in The Dispossessed, information can travel instantaneously between far-flung worlds.
However, there seems to be a fairly harsh bandwidth constraint on the amount of information that can be transmitted via ansible. We only see it being used to transmit relatively short declarative or interrogative messages -- informing distant stations of events on one's world or asking questions about their situations, rather than transmitting extensive technical information or even photographic and video transmissions. It's a telegraph, not a fax machine, let alone an Internet.
As a result, the Ekumen is a tenuous thing, as much an idea as anything resembling a functioning government. Isolated worlds that have not yet accepted the existence of the Ekumen are off limits, but this seems to be as much an honor system among star travelers than something that is enforced from above. However, it fits with Le Guin's Taoistic ideals of wu wei (non-action) that aren't precisely anarchism, more on the order of mind-your-own-business-ism.
Herbert's Dune 'verse lies somewhere in the middle. FTL travel is possible, but it is a monopoly of the hyper-secretive Spacing Guild. Even the Padishah Emperor must pay to send his forces to distant worlds, and must abide by the rules the Spacing Guild lays down or risk losing his travel privileges.
As a result, the structure of the Imperium is feudal in nature, with a very hierarchical society and almost no social mobility (the faufreluches system). Individual planets are given by the Padishah Emperor as fiefs to the various Great Houses, and these can be altered or revoked at will -- Dune itself begins with the Atreides family having to vacate their lush world of Caladan at Imperial command to take over Arrakis, which their enemies the Harkonnens had held in a "quasi-fief" focused on the mining of the spice melange, which is publicly known for its anti-geriatric properties but which in fact has far more critical applications for the Spacing Guild, making it a sort of stand-in for Middle Eastern oil.
If I were to rewrite that essay now and not be confined to the books covered in the course for which it was originally written, I'd want to include a wide variety of other authors' works. For instance, take James H. Schmitz's Federation of the Hub with its psionics, including psi machines, or the Thousand Stars of Sherwood Smith and Dave Trowbridge's Exordium series, with its government in which contradictions are deliberately built in through the Covenant of Anarchy. Both are 'verses in which FTL space travel is as common as sea or air travel in our own world, yet while they both have governments deliberately limited in order to protect the liberties of their citizens, they accomplish it in very different ways.
What other books and fictional 'verses have you found interesting in terms of the relationship between forms of space travel and forms of governance?