JERRY POURNELLE’S FUTURE HISTORY
by Larry King
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Editor’s Introduction
Jerry Pournelle created one of the most interesting and well-developed future histories in the SF field, following in the footsteps of his two favorite authors, H. Beam Piper and Robert A. Heinlein. In the following essay, Larry King—the author of one of the Internet’s most thorough and well-researched author sites—dedicated to the worlds of Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, E.E. “Doc” Smith, Tolkien and the Babylon 5 TV series—gives us a fascinating overview of Jerry’s CoDominium/Empire of Man future history.
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The science fiction future history was invented by Robert Heinlein. Of course, science fiction authors had been creating possible futures long before 1939, but these had been used either for a single tale (Wells, Stapledon) or for a series of novels (Smith, Williamson). Heinlein’s future history was a playing field for dozens of unrelated stories—indeed, it was big enough to contain multiple series. You don’t have to read Heinlein’s D. D. Harriman stories to understand his Lazarus Long novels: they occur in the same universe, but share no characters or plot elements. You don’t have to read Larry Niven’s Gil Hamilton stories to understand his Ringworld novels. And you don’t have to read Jerry Pournelle’s Falkenberg stories to understand The Mote in God’s Eye.
So why do science fiction fans love to read all the stories in a future history? Why do they immerse themselves in an imaginary world, eagerly devouring every new story of the Technic Civilization, or Darkover or the Alliance-Union universe? Perhaps these readers recognize that a fictional universe is itself a kind of character—a creation that is revealed, bit by bit, in each story that uses it as a setting.
Some future histories are created haphazardly: each time a new story is written, bits of backstory are created to justify the plot. (The Star Trek universe is a good example of this.) The resulting timeline is devoid of any coherence. Pournelle’s future history, on the other hand, is extremely coherent: even a cursory glance at the timeline shows how much thought he put into how humanity’s future might develop, drawing on his study of sociology, history and politics.
Pournelle’s saga begins by positing two developments. Given these two hypotheses, human history unfolds over ten centuries in a reasonable—almost inevitable—fashion. (Until the Moties show up!)
The first development is the CoDominium. An American/Soviet military alliance may seem a strange idea in hindsight, but recall the state of the Cold War when Pournelle published the first CoDominium story (“Peace With Honor,” Analog, May 1971). The USA and the USSR were steadfast in their determination to avoid a nuclear exchange. Nixon and Brezhnev were negotiating an arms-control treaty under the banner of “detente.” The two superpowers seemed intent on avoiding a direct conflict, and yet they were waging a proxy war in Vietnam. Every time a regional conflict arose—India versus Pakistan, Israel versus the Arab states, Iraq versus the Shah’s Iran—the two superpowers chose sides. It was easy to see that the most likely route to nuclear holocaust would involve a regional conflict that spiraled out of control. After all, in 1962 it had been Khrushchev who decided to remove the missiles from Cuba; Castro had been willing to start a war.
How could the USA and the USSR guarantee that their Third World allies would never drag them into a real war? In “Peace With Honor,” Pournelle proposed a brilliantly unorthodox answer. The two superpowers form a pact with each other, and declare to the world that this new alliance—the CoDominium—possesses sole power to wage war on Earth and in space. No longer will Third World countries be able to call on the Americans or the Soviets to aid them in their regional conflicts. From now on, such conflicts will be suppressed by the combined power of the USA and the USSR, and any nation on Earth that dares defy this alliance will regret it. The rest of the world is profoundly unhappy with this development, but what can they do? Fight both superpowers at once? The result is a century of peace, albeit a very uncomfortable one.
The USA and the USSR remain two separate countries, with radically different political and economic systems. They don’t fully trust each other, but they trust the volatile Third World less. Each preserves a nominal national military force, but the bulk of their power is poured into the CoDominium Armed Services. The CD is governed by the Grand Senate, half of whose members are elected from the United States, and half appointed by the Soviet Union. In the USA, these changes require constitutional amendments and treaties, which are passed with the support of the Republicans and the Democrats; in the USSR, these changes are mandated by Communist Party fiat.
The second hypothetical development is human settlement of numerous nearby planets. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, an FTL drive is discovered. Each pair of neighboring stellar systems is connected by an “Alderson tramline,” which allows instantaneous travel between two fixed points in space. (Travel within a system must still be done the old-fashioned way.) When humans begin to explore the nearby star systems, they discover dozens of planets with breathable atmospheres and soil that will support Terran plants—and often edible native plants as well. With all this real estate available, there is no need to compete over territory. The most pleasant planets are the most desirable. The United States and the Soviet Union occupy many worlds, and other rich Earth nations establish colonies of their own on pleasant planets: Meiji (Japan), Churchill (Britain), Friedland (Germany), Dayan (Israel), Xanadu (China). Less pleasant worlds that can become hospitable with hard work are settled by eccentric groups of motivated colonists: Covenant by Scottish Presbyterian separatists, Arrarat by conservative Christian churches, Sparta by university professors who draw on classical models to create a constitutional dual monarchy. And unpleasant planets with valuable resources are gobbled up by mining companies that lobby the CoDominium to “reform” the prison system, sentencing criminals to involuntary servitude on sweltering Tanith or frozen Fulson’s World. Thus the “Great Exodus” of the early twenty-first century resembles the colonization of the New World in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
For much of the twenty-first century, there are no interstellar conflicts. The CD Navy has a monopoly on armed spaceships, and the CD Marines stamp out insurrections on the colonies.
However, as the decades pass, it becomes more and more difficult for the American/Soviet alliance to maintain control over the entire Earth. The CD military has a near-monopoly on existing weapons of mass destruction, but what if some nation develops a new kind of weapon? To forestall that possibility, the CoDominium begins suppressing scientific research. When ethnic minorities within the Soviet Union demand autonomy, entire peoples are deported to colony planets. Some disgruntled American Indian tribes are deported as well. The United States begins to supply free drugs to welfare recipients to reduce violent crime. But none of these measures fix the long-term instability in the CoDominium.
Moreover, mass deportations do not solve the problem of unrest: they merely export the problem to the colonies. When violent criminals are deported to an agricultural planet, they refuse to become farmers and choose brigandage instead. When life-long welfare recipients are deported to a planet with a subsistence-level economy, they expect to have their needs met without having to work. The results are often disastrous. A common theme in Pournelle’s stories is that cataclysm and misery are often caused not by deliberate evil, but by the unintended results of regulations made by inattentive bureaucrats.
In many science fiction stories, human expansion into the galaxy continues without interruption. But Pournelle, who had spent years dealing with real-life politics, was aware of the many reasons such expansion might end. As with the British Empire two centuries earlier, the expenses of the CoDominium’s colonization are borne by the taxpayers, while the profits flow to private corporations. So when the economy goes into a downturn and voters demand lower taxes, the Grand Senate makes drastic cuts to anything space related. The CD Navy and Marines are forced to abandon many planets. Now, when a colony is threatened by civil war or besieged by violent transportees, they can no longer call on the CD to help them. An era of mercenary armies begins. For a price, a colonial government can hire an armor brigade from Friedland, infantry from Covenant, or cyber-warfare experts from Meiji. When Colonel John Christian Falkenberg of the 42nd Regiment of Line Marines is cashiered for stepping on the wrong Grand Senator’s toes, he too becomes a mercenary, and most of his former regiment joins him.
These events form the backdrop for Pournelle’s tales of the twenty-first century. West of Honor, “He Fell Into a Dark Hole,” and “Peace With Honor” take place when Falkenberg is a CD officer. His mercenary career is chronicled in “The Mercenary,” “His Truth Goes Marching On,” “Silent Leges,” the new portions of Prince of Mercenaries, and “Sword and Scepter.” When these stories were published in paperback, “Peace With Honor,” “The Mercenary,” and “Sword and Scepter” were combined together as The Mercenary. Later, West of Honor, The Mercenary, and some additional material became Falkenberg’s Legion. Prince of Mercenaries incorporated “Silent Leges” and “His Truth Goes Marching On,” but was mostly new.
In 1988, Pournelle’s future history became a “shared universe” with the inauguration of the War World series of short story collections (and later, novels) set on Haven, one of the more distant worlds settled by the CoDominium. The War World stories exhibit every facet of Pournelle’s universe on one planet: Haven’s settlers include an insular religious group, involuntary transportees from Earth, venal politicians, mining corporations eager to make a quick buck and a regiment of CD Marines vainly trying to keep order. Pournelle initiated the War World project, but much of the work was done by Poul Anderson, Roland Green, Steven Shervais, John F. Carr and Don Hawthorne. After Pournelle went into semiretirement in the late 1990s he put Carr in charge of the entire project.
As the CoDominium becomes weaker in the late twenty-first century, unrest among Third World nations grows. The USA and USSR begin drifting apart, with hardliners in both superpowers agitating to end the alliance and resume the great struggle between capitalism and communism. A few forward-thinking individuals, led by Grand Admiral Sergei Lermontov, conclude that nuclear war is inevitable, and therefore the survival of the human race hinges on whether enough extrasolar colonies can become self-sustaining before Earth destroys itself. Two novels written by Pournelle and S. M. Stirling, Go Tell the Spartans and Prince of Sparta, narrate how Prince Lysander of Sparta, aided by several of Lermontov’s allies and one brigade from Falkenberg’s Legion, manages to establish a regime that can survive after Earth is gone. (These novels, along with all of the Falkenberg stories mentioned above, were reprinted in the hardcover omnibus The Prince; only “He Fell Into a Dark Hole” was omitted.)
In 2103, the CoDominium government collapses and the Great Patriotic Wars erupt on Earth. The majority of its inhabitants perish. Earth will never again play an important role in humanity’s story.
For the next century and a half, Earth’s former colonies join together in various alliances and fight occasional wars. The most durable federation is led by Sparta and the Russian colony of St. Ekaterina. Their stable government—in which rights and duties are carefully balanced—helps them win the allegiance of much of the former CoDominium Navy. In 2250, after uniting all humanity under one government, Leonidas I of Sparta proclaims the “Empire of Man.”
Three and a half centuries of peace ensue. The Empire of Man expands to include hundreds of human worlds. Scientists achieve a profound understanding of physics; engineers create tethered space stations and other marvels; biologists are able to design vaccines based by analyzing the genetic structure of a virus. And in what may be the Empire’s greatest achievement, the planets New Scotland and New Ireland are rendered habitable after a century of terraforming.
But the planet Sauron has been breeding a race of genetic supermen, and has created an army of cyborgs. In 2603, they launch a surprise attack on St. Ekaterina. Sauron and its allies wreak tremendous carnage in the Secession Wars: battle cruisers are destroyed as fast as they can be built, dozens of worlds are completely depopulated. But eventually the secessionist advances are halted. In the final counterattack of 2640, the Imperial Navy destroys the rebel navy, and bombards the Sauron homeworld until magma begins to seep through the planetary crust.
The war is over. The secessionists have lost, but so has the Empire. Sparta is forced to abandon all but a small core of nearby planets, and some of their technology and scientific knowledge is lost. (In classic SF, lost information was a common trope. In Asimov’s and Herbert’s future histories, the galactic civilization does not even recall which planet humans evolved on! Given recent advances in digital storage technologies, it’s hard to imagine this happening.) Some isolated planets retain their industry, infrastructure, and even spacefaring capability. But many others, damaged by decades of bombardment and cut off from interstellar trade, regress to a pre-industrial stage—and sometimes outright barbarism.
Many parsecs from the core of the fallen empire, a lone Sauron ship has survived. They reach Haven, destroy all of its spacefaring capability, and make themselves masters of the planet. John F. Carr and Don Hawthorne’s War World novels The Lidless Eye and Cyborg Revolt tell of the Sauron occupation and the native peoples’ resistance. Over the next three centuries, the Saurons—despite their dominance—gradually become just one more of Haven’s tribal societies. In the novels Blood Feuds and Blood Vengeance, co-authors S. M. Stirling, Judith Tarr, Susan Shwartz, and Harry Turtledove transplant the classic tragedies of Sophocles and Aeschylus to Sauron-occupied Haven, with the last functioning Sauron computer playing the role of the blind prophet Tiresias.
Despite the loss of their empire, Sparta and its allies St. Ekaterina and Crucis have preserved their civilization. After two centuries of gradual recovery, they once again begin to expand their influence. In 2903, Leonidas IV proclaims the “Second Empire of Man.” Yet the Second Empire lives in the shadow of the First. There is no need to settle new planets; instead, they seek out existing human worlds that were settled long ago. Whenever they encounter a civilized planet with spacefaring capability, they invite it to join the Empire. Whenever they discover a world that has regressed into a pre-spaceflight state, they annex it and impose colonial rule. The Second Empire’s greatest fear is spacefaring worlds that refuse to join them; these “Outies” are often hostile, and must not be ignored—for the Empire has sworn that interstellar war must never come again.
Pournelle set no stories between the early twenty-second and the mid-twenty-ninth centuries. This entire period, which includes nuclear war on Earth, the rise of the First Empire of Man, centuries of peace during its height, the Secession Wars, the destruction of the Saurons, and the prehistory of the Second Empire were never directly treated. Instead, these events form the backdrop for his tales of the Second Empire. Why this chronological gap? Perhaps Pournelle found the Second Empire more interesting than the first, for it allows imperial rule to be seen from many perspectives at once. Inhabitants of primitive planets are in awe of the Second Empire, with its irresistible weapons and inexplicable scientific marvels. Yet the Empire’s ruling class know that their science is dwarfed by that of the First Empire, and yet they also remember that science and civilization were not able to save the First Empire from utter destruction. These complex dynamics are seen in the story of Prince Samual’s World and Makassar (Pournelle’s novel A Spaceship for the King, expanded into King David’s Spaceship) and the tales set on New Scotland (“Motelight” and early chapters of The Mote in God’s Eye, as well as the unpublished “First Patrol”).
The Mote in God’s Eye, which began Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s famed collaboration, is set in this timeline. Niven found Pournelle’s future history interesting, but suggested they add a new element: intelligent aliens. The “Moties” they created for the book are one of the most ingenious and carefully designed alien species in science fiction. The Mote in God’s Eye is a drama in which the humans must deal with the tension between their political, religious, and familial obligations. It is also the best “first contact” story ever written, in which the reader sees the Moties as terrifying yet endearing aliens, while also seeing the humans as profoundly alien through the eyes of the Moties.
Niven and Pournelle sent the first draft to Robert Heinlein, who suggested that—given the complexity of the backstory—the book should include a timeline. He suggested it might begin with something like “1969: Neil Armstrong sets foot on Earth’s Moon” (Letter to Niven and Pournelle, 7/20/1973, reprinted in The Virginia Edition: The Complete Works of Robert A. Heinlein). The authors agreed, and from that point forward, every book in Pournelle’s future history has contained a timeline that begins with Heinlein’s seven words. When I discovered The Mote in God’s Eye at the library in the 1970s, the timeline fascinated me, with its rises and falls of civilization as humans expanded into the galaxy.
Two decades after Mote, Niven and Pournelle published a sequel, entitled The Gripping Hand (in the UK, The Moat Around Murcheson’s Eye). This book examined the repercussions of the decision made at the end of Mote, and described the asteroid civilization in the Mote system that had only been hinted at in the first book. It also contained the first scenes set on Sparta, the Imperial capital, since the CoDominium stories set almost a millennium earlier.
Jerry Pournelle has a reputation for being a “political” author. If this is taken to mean that he puts a lot of thought into the implications of political systems in his stories, that’s quite true. But this does not mean that his books offer simplistic responses to difficult questions. When John Grant, John Christian Falkenberg, and Rod Blaine are forced to make difficult decisions, they continue to agonize over them afterward. Pournelle’s future history stories address some very difficult moral questions: If you are convinced that victory for a certain candidate will precipitate nuclear war, are dirty tricks and ballot-stuffing justified? Is it permissible to preemptively kill thousands to save hundreds of thousands? Could there ever be a justification for slaughtering an entire intelligent species? Does a soldier owe loyalty to a commanding officer who has abandoned the purpose for which they were fighting? Even when his characters answer these questions, one cannot be certain that their answer is Pournelle’s answer.
Some pundits objected to The Mote in God’s Eye for depicting an aristocratic society. In the essay “Building the Mote in God’s Eye,” Niven and Pournelle responded to these critics. “Do we, they ask, really believe in imperial government? And monarchy? That depends on what they mean by ‘believe in.’ Do we think it’s desirable? We don’t have to say. Inevitable? Of course not. Do we think it’s possible? Damn straight.” If these pundits had read more carefully, they would have seen that if Pournelle’s stories have a central political thesis (which is a very debatable point), it is certainly not that monarchy is the best form of government. Rather, it is that the way to create a just and stable regime is to ensure that rights correspond to duties. In the Second Empire, the imperial heir is required to serve in the armed forces before he ascends to the throne. In The Mote in God’s Eye, Rod Blaine recalls hearing that Admiral Plekhanov “had the Crown Prince—now Emperor—stretched over a mess table and whacked with a spatball paddle when His Highness was serving as a midshipman in Plataea.” A generation later, when Kevin Renner visits Sparta in The Gripping Hand, he eavesdrops on the aristocracy in order to determine whether they are focusing on their duties or only on their privileges. The price of civilization is eternal vigilance.
The earliest stories set in this universe were published in the 1970s; they placed the founding of the CoDominium in the year 1990. Falkenberg’s Legion (1990) pushed its founding back to sometime “between 1990 and 2000.” Then in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. The fall of history’s longest-lasting totalitarian state was certainly welcome news to Pournelle—but it rendered the CoDominium impossible. Pournelle and Stirling responded in Prince of Sparta (1993) by proposing that the USSR’s collapse was followed by years of economic turmoil, leading to the USSR’s rebirth and then the creation of the CoDominium around the turn of the century. A decade later, Pournelle—rather than revising the timeline again—declared that the CoDominium “has moved into the ‘alternate history’ category” (The View from Chaos Manor, View 202, 4/22/2002).
Yet the future history created by Pournelle is still alive. War World novels and stories continue to appear; Falkenberg even makes an appearance in War World: Jihad. Jerry’s daughter Jennifer Pournelle wrote Outies, a sequel to Mote and Gripping Hand that delves into the religious and political currents in the Trans-Coalsack Sector, as well as presenting new Motie subspecies in a very unexpected setting.
A bibliography, reading order, and timeline of this universe can be found at www.chronology.org/pournelle.
The following story is the first published tale of John Christian Falkenberg (“The Mercenary,” Analog, July 1972). Pournelle would subsequently write stories set chronologically earlier and later than this one. “The Mercenary,” set soon after Falkenberg has been cashiered from the CD Marines and begun his mercenary career, is an excellent introduction to this famous character.