EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION TO
THE STAR PLUNDERER
Can there be barbarians in an interstellar civilization? Many of the best science fiction writers have thought so. H. Beam Piper postulated several ways that planets could “decivilize.” Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series was built on the premise.
Even so, at first thought the notion is absurd. Star travel requires high technology and complex equipment; how could ignorant savages have all that?
But of course the savages need not invent high technology, nor even be able to build or maintain it; it is enough that they could obtain it and make it work. One needs no understanding of electronics to operate a television or video cassette recorder; one need not understand very large-scale integrated circuits to use a computer; few automobile drivers can explain the theory of internal combustion engines, fuel injection, or even Kettering ignition.
Indeed, we can think of contemporary examples. Consider terrorists, whether ideological or religious fanatics. All seem perfectly capable of obtaining and using high technology. Perhaps the notion of “space barbarians” is not quite so silly as we thought.
For that matter, those who do understand technology may not much care for other aspects of civilized behavior. “When I hear the word ‘culture’, I reach for my revolver,” said Reichsmarshal Goering; yet Goering was an air ace, successor to von Richthofen as commander of the Flying Circus, and quite at home with what was then quite advanced technology. Nor were his education and background any bar to his amassing as large a collection of pure loot as has any human in history.
One should not forget: the sailing ships of the Napoleonic era were highly complex, considerably more difficult to operate properly than most modern ships. It would be easier to learn how to operate a space station than a one-hundred-gun ship of the line. Obsolete doesn’t mean simple.
Finally, of course, new designs continue to make really complex equipment easier to use without understanding. Artificial intelligence and computer systems may well make it possible for savages to operate starships.
Poul Anderson majored in physics; but he has long been an avid student of history. This story was written before sputnik, long before the first men went to space, decades before computers. It’s surprising just how well Poul’s technology holds together. It’s not a story about technology anyway.
Communications change. Weapons change. The nature of man may not keep pace. Here a tale of the founding of empire.