ALT.SF4M

  Super Barbarians

   • j********o@***.com
     19/10/1996 00:00:000 UTC

     In the past, barbarians with a mastery of one or more technologies

     particular to them defeated and/or destroyed civilizations that were
     much

     more advanced than them in general terms (usually horsemen from the

     steppes of Russia). No matter how hard the Romans or Chinese might have

     tried, they could never have matched the Huns at their style of warfare.

     (The other tribes who eventually defeated Rome don't necessarily count
     as

     Super Barbarians.) For that matter, of course, the very effort to match

     the enemy may be inconceivable to a civilization: it just doesn't have

     what is needed in its collective psyche to recognize the problem or

     contemplate the solution. Dune could be categorized as such a universe,

     where the Fremen still know how to fight and defeat the armies of their

     too-civilized victims, but that's not a really convincing scenario;

     besides, I'm more interested in life-styles that develop peculiar skills

     and technologies rather than a merely more agressive attitude.

     I suppose that the technological milieu of the present is broad enough
     to

     prevent such a thing: change being the rule prevents any society with a

     habitual life-style from having an advantage for long, but what about

     futuristic Belters? They're usually portrayed positively, vesus a

     tyrannical centralized Earth government that won't let them go free, but

     that's an analogous situation where habits of long-term space living
     could

     be compatible with a barbarous mentality. So we could have these brutal

     thugs ruling the Earth from orbit, while we meek folk of the Earth wait
     to

     inherit it back. Up there, life might be cheap, child-birth dangerous,

     etc., producing a macho society made up of clans, where a man's honor is

     more valuable than his life, there is no law, and they learn how to tune
     a

     mining laser and a fusion drive before they reach puberty. Only the
     smart

     and agressive survive, and they have a natural basis for both deserved
     and

     undeserved resentment towards Earth, leading to eventual conquest. After

     the hostilities begin, the dirt-boys can never keep a ship in space for

     hours without it being shot down, so they can never master even the
     basic

     skills these guys have been learning for generations from birth, despite

     having more advanced general technology and a vastly larger population.

     In another vein, if technology ever plateaus, having a life-style

     advantage in one technology might give Super Barbarians an advantage,
     but

     this implicity assumes that they are equal in other technologies too, so

     they aren't really barbarians. Besides, other issues will come into play

     long before then (self-reproducing machines, etc..)

     Gorno

       • j*******i@i*.******m.com
         20/10/1996 00:00:000 UTC

         In <549m9d$***@n*******.****.***l.com> j********o@***.com
         (JohnGorno)

         writes:

         >In the past, barbarians with a mastery of one or more technologies

         >particular to them defeated and/or destroyed civilizations that
         were

         >much more advanced than them in general terms (usually horsemen
         from

         >the steppes of Russia). No matter how hard the Romans or Chinese

         >might have tried, they could never have matched the Huns at their

         >style of warfare.

         Usually the barbarians are absorbed into the mainstream of the
         society

         they conquer. Within a few generations Kublai Khan (as a typical

         example) was indistingushable from an average Chinese Emperor. The

         exceptions (the Roman or Han Empires) were at a time when multiple

         epidemics had depopulated the area to the point that an empire could

         not be sustained.

         It might be worth noting that in most of the Roman areas conquered
         by

         German barbarians, the people speak languages descended from Latin.

         The exceptions were at the fringes of the empire.