"Mark S. Geston - Lords Of The Starship" - читать интересную книгу автора (Geston Mark S)

LORDS OF THE STARSHIP
by Mark S. Geston


ACE BOOKS, INC.
1120 Avenue of the Americas
New York, N.Y. 10036


Copyright (c) 1967 by Mark S. Geston

All rights reserved.


Cover by John Schoenherr. Map by Jack Gaughan




DEDICATION:
To "Home"




PREFACE


Historians, as a rule, are particularly fond of "golden ages." They
delight in pointing out how those condemned to live in current times come out
so poorly when compared to the august citizens of later days. But it seems
that in the years immediately following the Dorian Restoration, even the
darkest chroniclers could not contain their admiration for their own times;
even more remarkably, they chose to write about it while it was going on, not
waiting until we had fallen into the inevitable pit.
Because of this ebullience and of the massive writings that it prompted,
we should be in a unique position to answer the question that is connected to
all golden ages: why did they fail? It is, therefore, all the greater tragedy
that it seems that there is really no sure way of even approaching the
question; the libraries that have survived for our scrutiny contain vast
numbers of works on history, sociology, and the like (but most are oddly
deficient in works of science) which appear to be virtual carbon copies of
each other. Almost all of them are brimming with confidence in their own age
and an almost irrepressible optimism about the future. Their titles (_The
Finest Age_, _Now Forever_, _Millennium of Gods_, _Present Perfect_) give mute
testimony to the temper of the times . . . and further notice that the authors
of these books were not crackpots or blind utopians, but acknowledged
authorities, men of substance and learning. Of a Fail we can find no mention;
it is difficult enough to find mention of the mere possibility of decline.
But while explicit mention of the beginning of the end is absent, one