"H. Beam Piper - Federation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

Federation, reminiscent of the Cargo Cults much in vogue among Pacific
Islanders after the parachute drops of W.W.II.

Piper also paid great attention to historical detail, more so than any
other major sf writer since Olaf Stapledon. In Space Viking he gives the
names of over fifty-five planets and goes into some historical, sociological,
and political detail on about twenty of them. This detail ranges from a
short clause to pages of exposition concerning Federation history, past
wars, and historical figures, and comments on their political and
sociological foibles.

Piper himself had a cyclical view of human history, one based on his
study of history and certainly influenced by Arnold Toynbee, the English
historian whose A Study of History had a great impact on the historical
consciousness of the mid-twentieth century. Piper's TerroHuman Future
History, which covers the fall of the Federation, the Sword-Worlds, and at
least four Galactic Empires, has much of the depth of Toynbee's major
study of human civilizations. Furthermore, it can easily be shown that
Piper's civilizations pass through many of the same phases, the universal
state, the time of troubles, and the interregnum, that Toynbee used to
describe past civilizations.

Where Piper and Toynbee diverge is on Toynbee's belief that psychic
forces determine the course of history. In The Study of History Toynbee
says, "The Human protagonist in the divine drama not only serves God by
enabling him to renew His creation but also serves his fellow man by
pointing the way for others to follow" Piper, althoughтАФ or maybe
becauseтАФhe was the son of a minister, was a confirmed agnostic.
Although fascinated by psychic research, and a believer in reincarnation,
he was outwardly antagonistic towards organized religion, be it Buddhism
or Christianity. There is no analogy in Piper's work to the early Christian
Church, which Toynbee saw as the womb of western culture after the Fall
of Rome. Throughout Piper's history, religion is played down or is the butt
of satire, as in Space Viking, where he gives the following description of
the pious Gilgameshers: "Their society seemed to be a loose
theo-socialism, and their religion an absurd potpourri of most of the
major monotheisms of the Federation period, plus doctrinal and
ritualistic innovations of their own."

It is clear from his conception of history and his TerroHuman Future
History that Piper believed no human civilization would ever be more than
a short stanza before the next verse of human history. Lucas Trask, near
the end of Space Viking, says, "It may just be that there is something
fundamentally unworkable about government itself. As long as Homo
sapiens terra is a wild animal, which he always has been and always will
be until he evolves into something different in a million years or so, maybe
a workable system of government is a political science impossibilityтАж"
This is a political reality which Piper accepts as neither good nor
badтАФjust a law like the Second Law of Thermodynamics.