Actually the leader had at one point been part of the Household of the Queen, then of King Charles, who wound up on the wrong side of a palace coup. Been vastly easier if he HAD been Prince William.
Am I the only one offended by S.M. Stirlings Emberverse series?
- Thread starter Spartasman
- Start date
-
- Tags
- had to get it out.
@Petike
Holy cow! I just read through that thread you linked to and it was insane! A whole lot of uncomfortable shit in his books is suddenly starting to make sense. Thank you.
Holy cow! I just read through that thread you linked to and it was insane! A whole lot of uncomfortable shit in his books is suddenly starting to make sense. Thank you.
You are FAR from the only one.
I slogged through the first three novels because I really liked Havel and the Bearkillers.
I stopped as soon as it became Rudi Stu and the Wiccans Magical Adventures. Frankly, I'd have loved to see someone wipe out the MacKenzies to a man.
Count me as another person disgusted by his utter handwave that the United States and republican democracy would die off wholesale within months, but the British monarchy would somehow survive and claim half of Europe. America east of the Mississippi though? All that's left are cannibals.
The Change is an awesome idea utterly wasted by its author.
There was a supurb fanfic of it here, where rather than collapse, the USA rallies somewhat in parts under various military bases that maintain local government surrounding them, and over the next few years, link up and restore American rule across the continent. Places like Fort Lewis and Fort Leavenworth become craddles of the American way of life.
People always seem to overlook that the USA existed before electricity and the combustion engine, and while losing gunpowder sucks, going back to swords and crossbows wouldn't change that. Things would be much smaller and much more local, but America as we know it could survive as long as we show a modicum more restraint than we do in the Changeverse.
I slogged through the first three novels because I really liked Havel and the Bearkillers.
I stopped as soon as it became Rudi Stu and the Wiccans Magical Adventures. Frankly, I'd have loved to see someone wipe out the MacKenzies to a man.
Count me as another person disgusted by his utter handwave that the United States and republican democracy would die off wholesale within months, but the British monarchy would somehow survive and claim half of Europe. America east of the Mississippi though? All that's left are cannibals.
The Change is an awesome idea utterly wasted by its author.
There was a supurb fanfic of it here, where rather than collapse, the USA rallies somewhat in parts under various military bases that maintain local government surrounding them, and over the next few years, link up and restore American rule across the continent. Places like Fort Lewis and Fort Leavenworth become craddles of the American way of life.
People always seem to overlook that the USA existed before electricity and the combustion engine, and while losing gunpowder sucks, going back to swords and crossbows wouldn't change that. Things would be much smaller and much more local, but America as we know it could survive as long as we show a modicum more restraint than we do in the Changeverse.
This reminds me of one of the things I always found questionable in the series.
Firearms don't work. Okay. Motor vehicles don't work. Sucks, but okay.
Riot equipment DOES still work. Trained personnel with batons and shields are still a force to be reckoned with. Major city police departments have absolute loads of CS gas, not just in shot-shell form but in grenades (even the grenades that are fired from a blooper can be modified to work manually). So you have ol' Norm with a few of his reenactor buddies on this side, and you have 500 cops with riot agents, body armor (including stab-proof vests and hard hats), shields, and training to act as a cohesive team. Guess who is going to get their ass kicked?
For that matter Fort Lewis is right up the road from Portland, with several BRIGADES of trained infantry (bayonets still work) and the 75th Ranger Regiment (the Emberverse is almost ideal for Rangers, SAS, SEALS, and other SPECOPS trained personnel who have been given a graduate course on living off the land and killing an opponent with whatever they can find, up to and including a plastic spork)
Stirling ignored on of the uncomfortable, but great, truths. Armies always eat. Civilians may not, but armies ALWAYS eat.
Democracy? Might be in trouble, might not, depends on the local three star. Bunch of yabos with zero professional training defeating the 7th ID and 75th?
Not happening.
Yup, yup. Take away our guns, and soldiers are still a group of well-trained, well drilled and loyal brutes with muscles and tons of hand-to-hand combat training.
And Sterling has us getting killed off or absorbed by a bunch of middle aged SCA dorks or some Latin Kings probably going through withdrawl three days into the change? GTFO with that shit Sterling.
Funnily, Stirling isn't even the first one to use that idea either. A Czech author already wrote a novel based on the idea back in the 1990s (there's also been a revised edition since). Though he went for a bit of a dystopic angle, it was far better written and far more logical than anything Stirling did in the Emberverse. Only electricity stops working in Neff's scenario, but the impact on modern society is understandably huge, especially in a densely populated country like the Czech Republic. People also don't decide to recreate the Middle Ages within a week, the situation is more like after a nuclear war, everyone dependent on simpler but still industrial tech. A lot is made of the sudden surge in bike courier importance, as most other fast communication networks have broken down (no telephones, no mobile networks, no telegraphs).
I've been documenting some of the "Turtledove and Stirling stuff done better" timelines and fanfics during the last few years, but I'm not sure I've come across this one. Do you remember the title ? It might look good in that growing "we can write this better" collection.
As someone who's a regular viewer of this channel (probably the best one for info on 17th and 18th century North America) and has an interest in the technology, economy and culture of older periods, I concur. When you look at the late-medieval and early modern period, you can hardly call that time unsophisticated in terms of material culture. And that's even before we consider the progress achieved by the 18th century, particularly the progress already in place before people start attempting to build a steam engine.
Additionally, feudalism wasn't the exclusive order of the day during those periods of OTL. You had many different variations on government, up to and incuding several different types of republics (some more municipal and burger in focus, some more nobility focused). Several of these early republics included major or influential European countries, not just quirky postage stamp sized territories. I.e., yes, it is possible for US-style governance to survive in some capacity, though it would be a necessary throwback to the late colonial era. Unless someone invents wind-powered or animal-pulled trains or builds a lot of new man-powered rail draisines, the railways are probably out and a form of the "pony express" will have to be reintroduced.
Even though the lack of gunpowder would hinder certain aspects of warfare, policing, hunting and so on, early modern technology without guns was already fairly sophisticated. They didn't have steam engines, motors, assembly lines and mass production, but they did already have highly-skilled artisans, in fields like metallurgy, architecture, shipbuilding, woodworking in general, glassmaking, manufacturering of highly precise and decorated items... I could go on. If you look at some OTL 15th and 16th century plate armours, you'll often be genuinely shocked by how well articulated and generally comfortable they are. This was a pre-industrial era, sure, but it wasn't an era of shoddy artisans. If you count in other medieval and Renaissance technological innovations, such as optics, chemistry and even diving suits (no joke), we're really not talking about unsophisticated civilisation here. With the leftover pre-Change technology and surviving knowledge, post-Change America would have it even better, with several centuries of added knowledge. Bicycles ? All right, tyres might prove an issue, but the concept of such a vehicle survives. Even with 16th century level industry, you could manufacture new, albeit crude bicycles, and even velocars. Lowering the potential dependency on horses, donkeys or oxen/cattle. In ranged weaponry, crossbows and their derivatives would be king, and you could build some really advanced and powerful ones if you base them on those from the 15th-17th century. (We've even had debates over this exact "no guns world" topic on AH.com, multiple, many, many, many times.) Gastraphetes-inspired devices could maybe work as portable mini-artillery. But I think even guns could still survive ! The Italian-made Girandoni air rifle was designed in the late 18th century. At a time coinciding with the ARW, to go for the American comparison. Not only did it work, it was also one of the first repeating long guns, with a tubular magazine at that. Lewis and Clark - yes, them - used one even decades later, during their expedition. Historical inspiration right under the nose, but Stirling couldn't be bothered to consider it. Of course, making such military-grade airguns with pre-industrial technology would be expensive and time-consuming, but they aren't technologically out of the question. You could also have spring-loaded guns if airguns are too much of a hassle. 15th-17th century ? They already knew how to make quality (if archaic) screws and springs. Meaning that Stirling's assumption about "no gunpowder = no more guns, ever" is false. But, as I've said, he'd have to bother to do some research first...
The random cannibals are one of the dumbest elements of the setting. So Stirling thinks ordinary people who've gone hungry for a week or two would automatically turn into crazed cannibals ? Seriously ?! I mean, even if modern agriculture is no longer viable, there are still many ways to feed a huge amount of survivors. The idea that the only thing available to eat, even in the countryside, would be other people, is honestly idiotic. (I say this as a farmer and forester from a moderately densely populated and moderately agriculturally intensive area.)
Can you guarantee that, though? Can you guarantee that every soldier post-Change will try to rebuild the country? Because things are still going to hell in a handbasket with the loss of so much life thanks to the Change, and the loss of communications...all it takes is some bad-apple officers deciding that they want to be the ones in charge, and their soldiers deciding to follow them because they're scared, confused and General X seems to know what has to be done, and you've got statelets springing up ready-made.
Hell, that happened in-setting. Thurston Senior was an Infantry Captain, IIRC, but instead of trying to hold the whole country together he declared himself a General and President pro tem, and formed the 'United States of Boise'. Granted, he was a good guy, and he had as his ultimate objective remaking the country, but still...
I'm willing to bet if something like the Change happened, you would get military officers doing that. And if enough of them do, the US is gone.
Sure, you'd get some rogue agents, but by and large, there are two things that keep the military cohesive, despite being pulled from every walk of life, aside from a steady paycheck:
1) We all take the same oath - loyalty to the US Constitution and the American people, against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
2) Comradery and dependence on each other is nurtured - the war may be stupid, and the folks in DC even more so, but you know what we are willing to fight for? So Jenkins can go home to his kids again, or so Gates can kiss his wife one more time. And you will fight through the very hordes of hell to see that happen.
So the Change happens. It's 1998, so aside from troops in Japan, Germany and Korea, all of them are stateside, and most of the Navy is even in port. Military will be one of the first groups to realize what has gone down - at first we may reckon its some kind of nuclear war or EMP, but as soon as we notice that A) military bases aren't getting bathed in radioactive hellfire and B) guns aren't working, that its something more serious will sink in.
Here's where the military is lucky: they've had plans for some shit like this since MAD became clear in the cold war, and no guns are just another hiccup here. Bases go on full alert, contact is made between authorities on base and nearby civilian communities, and plans start getting drawn up. A lot of communities near bases have a large pool of veterans, giving them another pool to draw on.
For the average GI Joe, things will be tense for a while, but a few things keep him in line. Loyalty and comradery yes, but also the fact that the one known source of food and stability he knows for sure is there is the chain of command. If the soldier is married, his family is on post, giving him yet another reason to stay. There may be a few soldiers who crack - families on the other side of the country to name on example - but this is where that comradery and chain of command comes into play. A sit down with a sympathetic NCO may be enough to calm some nerves.
And if someone gets the bright idea to go all rapey rioter? Well the UCMJ is VERY clear on what is to be done with them. Hell, the no guns actually makes it easier - good luck getting the drop on a soldier in full battle rattle with several melee weapons on hand.
You are gonna have a few places where it will suck - submarines at sea, the rare urban base, and god help the poor bastards near DC or Norfolk - but by and large, these places will be islands in a sea of chaos. They also luck out that most are not within a day or twos walking distance of major cities. These islands that will grow as troops drill and restore order, little by little. Civilian control will either be there from the outset or restored within a year - again, there is protocol in many localities near military bases, and the upper brass in the military has always had civilian oversight of the military drilled into them. I see several of the closer bases linking up near term - For example, we could easily see a large successor state in the Midwest form from the combination of lots of bases and plenty of farmland. As they make contact with one another, very easily I see them meshing back together into something bigger.
Within 10, certainly 20 years, you would have a patchwork network of regions pieces together by former military bases fighting beneath the American flag. Only question is how much would they save, and how much can they reclaim?
This I can definitely believe - and it'd make a good story.
That said: while I'm sure that there would be those who mesh back together, I'm less sanguine about it being that straightforward...or peaceful.
I'm not not sanguine necessarily because of rogue agents, mind. They're a possibility, but there's also other potential issues.
As an example...let's say that a General in Texas - let's call him General Blackstone - is able to cobble together a decent-sized region using the troops under his authority. Not doubting that he could do that. But... well, as a first step, he might not hand back power to civilians. Not because he wants power, but because he literally is worried that the civilians won't be able to do as well as he's managed. He's been able to cut through a lot of the red tape that characterises civilian government, he's got what needs to be done done, and he feels that since there's still a state of emergency, he should wait a while. So he does.
As a second step, his expanded territory meets up with another military-forged state. They say Hey, guess what, there's a provisional government in Houston and we're part of it. You'll join, of course.
Now, he could very well decide to. But after he's held power for a while, after he's worked his heart out to save the lives of as many people as he can, and after he knows he's made the area under his command a half-way decent place to live...I think it's fairly likely he might decide no. He might think 'Where the f*** were these people while my people were dying? And now they want me to join them? Piss off!' Or he might literally by now not trust anyone but himself and those he knows to do the job properly. Or he might just have come to enjoy power.
So, rather than a patchwork network of regions, you could end up with several successor states.
I could see that in a few cases, but at the same time, one gruesome silver lining to the Change - DC (or whereever the capital is) will be a LONG way away. Decentralization will be going beyond even a Libertarian's dreams here. We're easily back to the days prior to Teddy Roosevelt, when federalism was the law of the land.
Said General likes the way he runs things in Texas? Supurb. Long as its democratic, mold the state government however you see fit, send some tax dollars and soldiers when asked, and some Congressmen to where we're setting up the Capital.
Stirling's sole good contributions to the world are the term ISOT, Her Diamond Heart, Decades of Darkness,and the numerous Draka stomps, parodies, and deconstructions around this site and the internet at large.
Why yes, none of those are directly his productions, and all of them are reactions to his work, mostly by people who didn't like his work. What a coinkydink!
Why yes, none of those are directly his productions, and all of them are reactions to his work, mostly by people who didn't like his work. What a coinkydink!
Donald Reaver
Donor
An author that I have many issues with, managed to get through the first Draka book and came close to finishing the second. Read some others the General series was alright, but I can only handle so much of an author whose political views are more important than the story he is telling and you are paying for. Tried reading the first Emberverse book, never got past the first few chapters. Plenty of free sites out their if I want to read a political screed, about some viewpoint I despise.
RamscoopRaider
Donor
No Stirling has produced some really good work, just not on his own, mostly (opinions can vary on somethings, rarely heard anything bad about the Lords of Creation duology frex). Give him an outline, and ride herd on him a bit and he will produce great work, but he almost always needs a coauthor
The General Series is great (and available copyright free for download), the Flight Engineer Trilogy is great, a couple of his standalone fantasies he coauthored are great, but in all of those cases he was mostly given an outline by someone better at worldbuilding and plotting and set to work
I'm not a fan of "the villain wins" media in general, so quite aside from its other shortcomings (notably the infamous Stupid Virus and the completely unrealistic stats and specs of certain Draka weapons systems and vehicles, which Stirling was called on a number of times and always, ALWAYS stubbornly defended), that's why I haven't read the Draka books in many years now. Especially after the bait-and-switch ending at the end of Marching Through Georgia.
I do like the Island in the Sea of Time trilogy and still re-read it occasionally (I've always thought of it as being in some ways a palinode to the Draka books), The Peshawar Lancers (contrariwise to @Petike , I don't think the book is meant to be taken altogether seriously; my impression always has been that it's essentially a homage to the great adventure novels and movies of yesteryear, buttressed by the fact that there are a LOT of shout-outs to such media if you know where to look for them), and Conquistador, though that last one has a pretty damn questionable worldview where it tacitly asserts that the Commonwealth's settlers are basically right in their rejection of 20th/21st-century society and adoption of paternalistic neofeudalism, not to mention their distinctly retrograde views on race and gender.
All that being said, though, I've never been in the least interested in the Emberverse series, as I don't like the entire concept to begin with (and I've never been a fan of the whole "After The End" genre in the first place, which is why you'll never see me playing Fallout, to cite another example).
I do like the Island in the Sea of Time trilogy and still re-read it occasionally (I've always thought of it as being in some ways a palinode to the Draka books), The Peshawar Lancers (contrariwise to @Petike , I don't think the book is meant to be taken altogether seriously; my impression always has been that it's essentially a homage to the great adventure novels and movies of yesteryear, buttressed by the fact that there are a LOT of shout-outs to such media if you know where to look for them), and Conquistador, though that last one has a pretty damn questionable worldview where it tacitly asserts that the Commonwealth's settlers are basically right in their rejection of 20th/21st-century society and adoption of paternalistic neofeudalism, not to mention their distinctly retrograde views on race and gender.
All that being said, though, I've never been in the least interested in the Emberverse series, as I don't like the entire concept to begin with (and I've never been a fan of the whole "After The End" genre in the first place, which is why you'll never see me playing Fallout, to cite another example).
But I explicitly mentioned earlier that The Peshawar Lancers is a clear "don't take this too seriously" pastiche. Thing is, I think it fails even as a cheesy 19th century adventure pastiche. The idea itself is fun, but knowing other things about Stirling, I get the impression a lot of the stereotypes he loaded the novel with are meant dead-seriously (i.e. in line with the author's beliefs), despite them being over-the-top.
The big issue with any "it's meant to be that kind of novel" defence: Stirling does over-the-top characters in virtually everything he writes, and that's why The Peshawar Lancers is hard to decipher as a pastiche. Additionally, it isn't even all that comedic about it. And even comedic villains, like the Afrikaner guy or the ev000l cultist-tsarist Russians, could have a bit of debt, tongue-in-cheekness notwithstanding. As Thande and others have pointed out, the Afrikaner guy is so one-dimensional, that he wants revenge because the heroes didn't allow him to do "his usual racist things". Yeah, because every single Afrikaner in history has been nothing but a pointy-toothed supremacist obsessed with making black people miserable.
Even a super-racist villain can be shown with some degree of depth and subtlety, despite ultimately being a wretch and a fool.
Last edited:
OK, I guess I did miss where you said that. That being said, I think you did make an error in your previous post discussing this book where you said that the Russian Tsar's family had adopted a Satanic cult based on the Druze religion. I think you may have meant the Yazidis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yazidis
who do venerate the Peacock Angel, or Melek Taus. The thing about the Yazidi religion is that the identification by other Abrahamic religions of the Peacock Angel with Satan is a thorough misconception; in Yazidi scripture, the Peacock Angel is an ambivalent figure, capable of both good and evil in his role as ruler of the world, and only fell temporarily from favor with God. Interestingly enough, the Aubrey/Maturin series has a somewhat more accurate take on the Yazidis; at one point, Jack Aubrey engages a gentleman from Mesopotamia to be the Surprise's cook. This fellow, who is so gentle and inoffensive that he wouldn't even hurt the rear wings on a fly, and makes superb desserts to boot, is discovered by Stephen Maturin to be a Yazidi, and he and Jack talk about this at some length. IIRC, Jack and Stephen decide to go to some considerable pains to keep their cook's religion confidential so that he doesn't become the object of contumely or persecution by other members of the crew.
The big issue with any "it's meant to be that kind of novel" defence: Stirling does over-the-top characters in virtually everything he writes, and that's why The Peshawar Lancers is hard to decipher as a pastiche. Additionally, it isn't even all that comedic about it. And even comedic villains, like the Afrikaner guy or the ev000l cultist-tsarist Russians, could have a bit of debt, tongue-in-cheekness notwithstanding. As Thande and others have pointed out, the Afrikaner guy is so one-dimensional, that he wants revenge because the heroes didn't allow him to do "his usual racist things". Yeah, because every single Afrikaner in history has been nothing but a pointy-toothed supremacist obsessed with making black people miserable.
I'm not sure that The Peshawar Lancers is supposed to be a "parody" in the sense of being broadly comedic, as you suppose. I think Stirling was going for a straight homage, as I said, which was supposed to be light-hearted if not laugh-out-loud funny; whether it succeeded in that objective is, I think, kind of a subjective judgment. (As the old saying goes, drama is easy, comedy is difficult. There are quite a lot of media things that most people think are hilarious that leave me flat cold.) I'll stipulate your point about the one-dimensional stereotyping of the villains (you might also have mentioned the Russian character, who I think is a direct lift from one of George Macdonald Fraser's Flashman books - Royal Flash, IIRC)*. However, I don't think there are really any three-dimensional characters in the book, even the main protagonists; every character seems to be a stock figure of one type or another, drawing upon a wide range of tropes and stereotypes (the way the books and movies which provided the inspiration did). Stirling seems to have given a bit more depth to his Afrikaner characters in Conquistador, but then he went and made his Russian character into the type of the stereotypical "New Russian" Mafioso.
*The Flashman series is, obviously, one of the things that Stirling pays homage to in Lancers. Paradoxically, perhaps, Fraser's attempts at satire in that series probably come off a good deal better than Stirling's, in the minds of many people.
I believe Stirling should be commended. Few others have works that people want to improve upon and (unlike fan fictions where they made the protagonist an ammoral sociopath with a harem and omnipotence about incorrec theories form when it was written) succeed. Like Turtledove I think all reading alternate history should read several of his more famous books. They can stop after that, of course. They probably should. How disappointing some of his stuff was. To find the last Draka book at a university book sale several years after reading the entirety of the rest of the series in a single book... What a let down. I never bothered reading past the first couple thirty pages or so of the last Island in the Sea of Time Book either. And I think I stopped reading the Emberverse books somewhere around the time they had the Virgin Maey telling a priest to follow a Gary Stu neo-pagan who... Bleh, it got boring past Iowa anyways. Still can't believe how a state based upon having their presidential caucuses before everyone but New Hampshire would give up that part of their culture so easilly. I would say they would have adored using it, and had politicians moving up and down the Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio rivers talking at settlements as well, so as to not feel like they are alone in the world.
That last book in the Draka series - I had to look it up to remember what the title was (Drakon), that's just how bad it was that I even forgot what it was called - was so awful that it's no wonder that Stirling never went ahead with the planned sequel which was to have been tentatively titled Unto Us A Child. Now that I've been reminded of it, I mainly remember that one of the main purposes of Drakon seems to have been to fire Take Thats at celebrities that Stirling doesn't like (for example, expies of Ted Turner and his then-wife Jane Fonda) who were not-at-all-subtly portrayed as sucking up to the title character. It wasn't just Ian himself who took on the project of rewriting the Draka TL to make it more realistic; there was a big collaborative-writing project underway some 15 years ago to produce another realistic version of the Drakaverse circa the time of the Eurasian War, chiefly concentrated on eradicating every trace of the Stupid Virus and making said war the Domination (plus Japan) against the entire rest of the world, with the tipping point that pissed everyone off beyond recall being the murder of the Pope during the Sack of Rome. I remember Stirling coming on the main message board for that project and getting into the huge fight I alluded to about the specifications of the main Draka ground-attack aircraft; IIRC, its weight including armor was WAY too heavy for it to be able to fly, even if the engines had been powered up dramatically, and everyone kept pointing that out - but Stirling, as I said, was as stubborn as the proverbial Missouri mule and stuck to his guns, asserting that he was right.
EDIT: It was called the Drakafic Universe, and there's still an index up at Stardestroyer.net:
http://www.stardestroyer.net/Armour/ShepStuff/Website/DrakaWB/
At least some of the stories are still up. SD.net wasn't the only website this shared universe was discussed on; the contretemps between Stirling and the writers I mentioned above happened on another forum called Salamis (IIRC), which is, I think, long since defunct.
EDIT EDIT: P.S. - If you want to retrieve Drakafic stories from Stardestroyer.net, you probably would be well-advised to do this soon. I found this thread on another forum while googling for "Drakafic":
https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/what-killed-mike-wongs-stardestroyer-net.5417/
It appears that SD.net has fallen on VERY hard times lately, to the extent that its founder hasn't been active there in quite a long time and even its certificate has expired a couple of months ago and not been renewed.
- was so awful that it's no wonder that Stirling never went ahead with the planned sequel which was to have been tentatively titled Unto Us A Child. Now that I've been reminded of it, I mainly remember that one of the main purposes of Drakon seems to have been to fire Take Thats at celebrities that Stirling doesn't like (for example, expies of Ted Turner and his then-wife Jane Fonda) who were not-at-all-subtly portrayed as sucking up to the title character. It wasn't just Ian himself who took on the project of rewriting the Draka TL to make it more realistic; there was a big collaborative-writing project underway some 15 years ago to produce another realistic version of the Drakaverse circa the time of the Eurasian War, chiefly concentrated on eradicating every trace of the Stupid Virus and making said war the Domination (plus Japan) against the entire rest of the world, with the tipping point that pissed everyone off beyond recall being the murder of the Pope during the Sack of Rome. I remember Stirling coming on the main message board for that project and getting into the huge fight I alluded to about the specifications of the main Draka ground-attack aircraft; IIRC, its weight including armor was WAY too heavy for it to be able to fly, even if the engines had been powered up dramatically, and everyone kept pointing that out - but Stirling, as I said, was as stubborn as the proverbial Missouri mule and stuck to his guns, asserting that he was right.EDIT: It was called the Drakafic Universe, and there's still an index up at Stardestroyer.net:
http://www.stardestroyer.net/Armour/ShepStuff/Website/DrakaWB/
At least some of the stories are still up. SD.net wasn't the only website this shared universe was discussed on; the contretemps between Stirling and the writers I mentioned above happened on another forum called Salamis (IIRC), which is, I think, long since defunct.
EDIT EDIT: P.S. - If you want to retrieve Drakafic stories from Stardestroyer.net, you probably would be well-advised to do this soon. I found this thread on another forum while googling for "Drakafic":
https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/what-killed-mike-wongs-stardestroyer-net.5417/
It appears that SD.net has fallen on VERY hard times lately, to the extent that its founder hasn't been active there in quite a long time and even its certificate has expired a couple of months ago and not been renewed.
Last edited:
Active duty forces would follow their command. Despite what a lot of folks seem to think, folks in the military tend to be MORE dedicated to the democratic process and civilian oversight/control of the military (that goes all the way back to Washington). Would there be a ton of martial law declaration? Undoubtedly. A bunch of two & three stars deciding to declare themselves President for Life? Not so much.
The real problem would be HAVING a continent-spanning country without things like the electric telegraph.
The thing that Stirling got right, although not exactly with full accuracy, is the incredible vulnerability of major cities, especially those in Southwest. Food runs out in a week or ten days, which is obviously a disaster, but the REAL killer is water. LA, San Diego, Dallas, and many other cities are almost entirely reliant of imported water (as an example, most of the water for eh SF Bay Area comes from Hetch Hetchy which is located 100 miles away and has to be pumped over the Coast Range). There is enough stored water in the various metro areas to keep things going for a few weeks, except most of that is 15-20 miles from the population centers and it is impossible to get the 24-32 pounds of water every person would require for basic hygiene and drinking from point A to Point B.
Southern California, the Bay Area, major cities in Arizona, Las Vegas, etc. are pure death traps. Same goes for the Bos-Wash Metro and places like Miami. Pretty much any city much over 100K will literally wither on the vine from lack of water. By the time things got so bad that cannibalism is actually a "reasonable" option, most of the populations will have died of thirst and water borne diseases from drinking contaminated water. Of course folks dropping over from dehydration isn't a great bit of drama, so...
Last edited: