Re: Why Space Empires?


"Tux Wonder-Dog" <wes.parish@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:47a1b703@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Peter Knutsen wrote:

Michelle Bottorff wrote:

... and, I think if you look, you will discover that a great many
popular genre tropes are examples of doing precisely that: Magic, hidden
knowlege, superior technology, military hierarchies, amazing artifacts,
secret weapons, special talents, super powers...

Often, in fantasy, magical power doesn't lead to political powers. In
accordance with folk tales, users of magic, even people who have
excellent control over vast magica powers, live poor lives, in squaor
and poverty. And they live as outcasts, or even as outright outlaws.

Realistic? No, not at all. But in accordance with how witches and
sorcerers are usually portrayed in folk talkes.

Power in relation to "powers" in actual practice, tends to be restricted
to
localities - eg, the rural English "cunning man" attempting to control his
village; the Corsican "dream hunter" dedicated to the "spiritual" defense
of his village; etc.

The modern "equivalent", if such a thing exists, would be the
televangelist
or politician, working on mind-control through verbal means and long-term,
long-trained acquiescence.

I can't seen how that could at interstellar distances on unitary-culture
planetary populations ...

I can certainly see how Elvis or Gandhi, for example, could have great power
at great distances. Gandhi, at least, has been mentioned as being the
guidng force for planets in a story or more.


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