Talk:Master of the Void

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<Person> hmm. would really need to read it rather than the synopsis, but it seems like they started by establishing a community at sorta current-earth non-technological levels (say, an african hunter-gatherer tribe)
<Person> their society is being attacked by a technology; say, forest clearance for wood (happens often enough)
<Person> and their community leaders are unwilling to allow the changes to their society that would allow them to combat the invaders
<Guy> as for now you are right
<Person> although your article doesn't really cover enough of their motivation for the refusal, I am guessing they are hidebound "that is the way we have always done it" authority figures
<Person> which again, is pretty conventional for hunter-gather communities
<Person> an outsider who has been exposed to a more technical and weapons-orientated society, organizes some of the villages against the authority's wishes to obtain or build more advanced weaponry to combat the 
invaders
<Person> however, this places the outsider into a position of authority, and given his military background, this amounts to a military-dictatorship style of government
<Person> then, he is absent from the scene for some time, and returns to find someone else occupying his place
<Person> Power is more attactive to him now than obtaining his original goal, so he has the new leader killed so he can take his place
<Person> the kingmaker who put him in power originally now sees what he has done, and realises he has saved the people, but destroyed the society he used to know
<Person> all of this would work equally well if it were set in a african tribe, fighting land developers
<Person> the scifi is just decoration :)
<Guy> you are only a bit mistaken.
<Person> *nods* I have not read the book
<Guy> i'll explain now
<Guy> First, that outsider (Smartest) wasn't a direct ruler. He was a kingmaker. The guy who directly ruled the process was a local citizen Leon.
<Guy> And this outdider strikes the wall in the end.
<Guy> Killing for power case happened with Leon -- who's previous life was just hunting/etc.
<Person> *nod*
<Guy> Now, about this could happen in an African tribe.
<Guy> This did happen. But not in an african tribe. The point is, that for industrialization you have to pay -- either with time, either with money, either with lives. As you have no time and money, you pay with lives/blood. And military dictatorship is the only way in such situation. Any way you try it -- you'll come to something which people from outside would call military dictatorship.
<Guy> My point is that it partially explains what happened in first half of 20th century, e.g. in the Soviet Union. 
<Guy> I'm wrong?
<Person> I wouldn't know about the sovet union, but am willing to believe it
<Guy> in fact it's too complex, it's only an idea not truth
<Guy> but in fact, that "transition", just resembles in details early Soviet union: successes in industrial building paid with blood; leader able to hold the whole nation and people agree to work HARD because they trust him. And then -- psychology of "spiders in a jar eating each other": remains only one.
<Guy> i mean leaders: here remained only Leon. In soviet union, as well, old known revolutioners were jailed/killed.
<Guy> This point isn't stated in the book in open form, but... may be, it just was my perception of it.
ellol 21:04, 27 February 2007 (UTC)