STORM FROM THE SHADOWS – snippet 53:
Michelle, like many people in the Star Kingdom, had found the idea of adding that many voters with absolutely no experience in the Star Kingdom's political traditions alarming. Some of those alarmed souls had been none too shy about calling the Talbotters "neobarbs," which Michelle, despite her own concerns, had found decidedly ironic, given the fact that Sollies routinely applied that pejorative to the same citizens of the Star Kingdom who were now using it about someone else. Yet even those who would never have dreamed of using that particular term, and who were prepared to accept that their new fellow citizens would have the best intentions in the universe, had to wonder if those new citizens would have time to absorb the instruction manual before they tried to take over the air car's controls. And, of course, there was always the concern — the legitimate concern, in Michelle's view — of what destination a bunch of voters from outside the Manticoran tradition might choose for all of them.
There'd been concerns on the Talbott side, as well, and not just from people like Nordbrandt. Or, for that matter, like Stephen Westman, although from what Michelle had heard so far, Westman seemed to have seen the light. Those with the deepest concerns appeared to have been worried about losing their own identity, although what many of them — especially among the Cluster's traditional power elites — had really meant when they'd said that was that they were worried about losing control.
In the end, however, the Constitutional Convention here on the planet Flax in the Spindle System had worked out an approach that actually seemed to satisfy just about everyone. Nothing could have satisfied absolutely everyone, of course, and some of the local potentates — like the oligarchs of New Tuscany — had opted out in the end and refused to ratify the new constitution. And, to be perfectly fair, it was unlikely that anyone was completely satisfied with the new arrangements. But that, after all, was the definition of a successful political compromise, wasn't it?
Of course it is, she thought. That’s one reason I’ve never liked politics. Still, in this case I’ve got to admit it looks like something that will actually work.
For all intents and purposes, the approved constitution had established what bade fair to become a model for future annexations. For example, the political future of the systems which had fallen into the Star Kingdom's sphere in the now defunct Silesian Confederacy was going to have to be resolved eventually, and it looked like Talbott was going to be the example for that resolution, as well. Assuming, of course, that it actually worked in Talbott's case.
Instead of adding all of those systems, and all of those voters, directly to the Star Kingdom, the Flax Constitutional Convention had recognized that the sheer distance between the planets of the Cluster — not to mention the entire Cluster's distance from the Manticore Binary System — would have made that sort of close, seamless integration impossible. So the convention had proposed a more federal model for the new "Star Empire of Manticore."
The Talbott Quadrant was a political unit consisting of the seventeen Cluster star systems which had ratified the proposed constitution. It would have its own local Parliament, and after a certain degree of bloody infighting, it had been agreed that that Parliament would be located here on Flax, in the planetary capital of Thimble. And when it came to electing that Parliament's members, the Quadrant franchise would, at the insistence of Prime Minister Grantville's government (and Queen Elizabeth III), be granted on the same terms and conditions as the Star Kingdom's franchise, which had probably had quite a bit to do with New Tuscany's decision to go home and play with its own marbles.
The Quadrant and the Star Kingdom (which some people were already beginning to refer to as "the Old Star Kingdom," even though Trevor's Star and the Lynx System had scarcely been charter members of the original Star Kingdom) would both be units of a new realm known as the Star Empire of Manticore. Both would recognize Queen Elizabeth of Manticore as Empress, and both would send representatives to a new Imperial Parliament, which would be located on the planet of Manticore. An imperial governor would be appointed (and there'd never been any real doubt about who that would be) as the Empress' direct representative and viceroy here in the Quadrant. The armed forces, economic policy, and foreign policy of the Empire would be established and unified under the new imperial government. The imperial currency would be the existing Manticoran dollar, no internal economic trade barriers would be tolerated, and the citizens of the Talbott Quadrant and of the Star Kingdom would pay both local taxes and imperial taxes. The fundamental citizens rights of the Star Kingdom would be extended to every citizen of the Talbott Quadrant, although the Quadrant's member planets were free to extend additional, purely local citizens rights, if they so chose. The new imperial judiciary would be based upon the Star Kingdom's existing constitutional law, and its justices would be drawn, initially, at least, from the Star Kingdom, although the new constitution contained specific provisions for integrating justices from outside the Old Star Kingdom as quickly as possible, and local constitutional traditions within the Quadrant would be tolerated so long as they did not conflict with imperial ones. And every citizen of the Quadrant and the Old Star Kingdom would hold imperial citizenship.
Although the Star Kingdom of Manticore had always eschewed any sort of progressive income tax except under the most dire of emergency conditions, the Old Star Kingdom had agreed (not without a certain degree of domestic protest) that imperial taxation would be progressive at the federal level — that is, the degree of the imperial tax bill to be footed by each subunit of the Empire would be based upon that subunit's proportional share of the entire Empire's gross product. Everyone was perfectly well aware that that particular provision meant the Old Star Kingdom would be footing the lion's share of the imperial treasury's bills for the foreseeable future. In return for accepting that provision, however, the Star Kingdom had won agreement to a phased-in representation within the Imperial Parliament.
any one see a little of the politcs of Charis cut and pasted here?
Infodump.
I really do think this series has expanded itself too far. Weber spends so many words explaining his universe that sometimes the stories just come to a halt. This “snippet” format exagerates that, as it is merciless at revealing slow sections of the book.
One has to wonder at the makeup of the Imperial Parliament and how it got passed by Manticore’s current Parliament.
Hmm…
Home Rule and Dominion governments…
Or… provincial governments and federal government…
Lynx System + Lynx Terminus System + Trevor’s Star + Medusa + Manticore = SKM
SEM = SKM + Talbott + Silesia
What about assorted territories like Hancock or Grendelsbane?
I don’t mind these long explaining passages in books, but you feel it different in the snippets :-) In snippets you wait for two days wondering what would happen next :-)
Hancock and Grendalsbane don’t have any habitable planets, which is probably why they’re not mentioned. I suspect they are simply possesions of the SEM.
Also, we don’t know what’s been done with Silesia, other than that it’s under Manticoran control. I don’t think it has the franchise yet.
@Brian (5)
Yes, we do know what the current status of Silesia is: it’s not been settled yet. Part of the infodump was that the new Constitution would be used as a pattern for Sileasia – if it worked.
The most interesting news in this snippet is that New Tuscany decided “to go home and play with its marbles.”
Gee, a planet not in the SEM but right in the middle of the Cluster, and already suffering from a lot of internal unrest. I wonder what the OFS will do with that….
@Mike(2)
Well, it depends on what’s being infodumped. I think the current piece could be eliminated by taking the half dozen or so points that are critical for understanding the plot and covering them elsewhere, at one or two sentences each. For example, a couple of sentences about when the elections for the Quadrant Parliament will be held would say everything needed about there being a Quadrant Parliament until it becomes a significant plot issue (assuming it ever does).
I assume that the strategic implications of New Tuscany not being part of the Quadrant will be discussed when Kumahalto and Henke sit down to work out deployments.
The infodumps on military hardware are a bit harder; it’s work to collect that information from scattered bits and pieces! Collecting the information in Appendix A (and B for the political side) could work.
@ Stephen
Actually New Tuscany isn’t in the middle of the Cluster/Quadrant. It is almost directly opposite from Lynx and fairly near the edge of the “circle” that defined the Quadrant. It is also one of the planets furthest from League.
Does anyone know if DW is planning a book or story on Admiral Sarnow(?) and Silesia?
@10…
It seems to me that it would be a good set up for a low intensity type of book. My guess is probably not though simply becuase of he starts anything signifigant there it will give him three fires to put out not just the two he’s got started already. Anyway its pretty obvious that nobody cares about Silesia anymore unless that person is an Andermani or a Manticoran and since they dived the confederacy between them and are allied it would seem highly unlikely that any more trouble short of pirates and rogue confed navy types would be around to shoot at.
off topic but worth discussion I think. I wonder if DW has given any consideration to what lies beyond the northern reaches of Silesia, South of the League, East of Erewhon, or West of Matapan? I’ve always been curious about that.
Iggy, what I’ve always wondered about is how a 3-dimensional galaxy can be recreated as a two-dimensional galaxy just by saying “galactic west” rather than “west” (etc.).
Surely it makes more sense for “spheres of influence” to actually be spherical in this context, but instead everything is portrayed as being two-dimensional.
what about san martino ????
dont they get a huge say in this as well ???
@13
That would be Trevor’s Star, they are part of the “Old Kingdom” Since their planet was integrated into the Star Kingdom, they are part of that Parliament and presumably part of the Empire Parliament.
Just what any place needs another layer of government.
Fellow Snippet-Addicts:
First of all, admit it, we are all snippet-slaves. If we were not, we would not be here – ergo, complaining about “slow” passages is a little ironic, particularly – as someone previously noted- so-called ‘slow’ passages blow right by when you have the book itself. Let me also note that context counts for a lot – and we all rely on the context of the “Honorverse” – bitching about the level of detail is a bit like being willing to swap dinner later for the aperitif NOW. It is the context that creates the richness. It is also the context and detail that sparks speculation and real thought in the reader’s mind. If you are only looking for space-battles, well…there is lots of lesser military science fiction that will deliver that but it gets stale after a while, or if you are a real addict, read E.E. “Doc” Smith and be sated. I rather have books I might actually read multiple times, overall.
If some of you think the politics are tricky, try to work out how to handle the economic aspects. For instance, a one to one swap of local “soft” currencies for “hard” Manticoran specie is a difficult proposition and very similar situations, in the ‘real’ world, has led to serious economic trouble in the recent, Terran, past. What about non-trade barriers? Protection of so-called ‘infant’ industries? Reconciliation of technical and other standards? Sounds dry? Remember the Great Depression? Sounds dull? How did FDR bend the constitution on one sub-clause to gain jurisdiction over nearly everything in the U.S? God is in the details and the successful absorption of the Talbott Quadrant will, almost certainly, (…at least if it were the real world…) predicate the success, or failure, of the “Star Empire of Manticore.” How DW, handles such intricate themes, even if he leaves them in the background will not only govern the immediate verisimilitude of the later “Honorverse” books but, potentially, the series longevity, as a regularly read corpus beyond the first decade or two after its publication.
I will stand up for DW’s “richness of tapestry” and be damned to nit-picking details of how slow a passage seems in snippeting – it is a HUGE story with many threads and I want to know about all of them!
– Pyrrhic
@12…
I’ve always try to think of it in terms of if you were to have an overhead veiw of the map that is what it would look like assuming that the ‘Z’ vector is not seen because of trying to represent a 3D situation in a 2D environment. Ideally what you would do is place Manticore at 0,0,0 and make everything relative to Manticore in terms of light years in the three axes. So every system would have a + or – number denoting light years above of below the Manticore plane. That map is what I’d like to see. I bet if a guy was so inclined he could use CAD to do just that. If I had a CAD license and more information on the Z vector of each I would be happy to do it. Alas I do not.
All that being said I doubt DW will ever let us know what lies beyond the boreds of his map which is too bad becuase I’m curious. Especially what is beyond the League. As the League falls apart in the next few novels it might become important.
@Pyrrhic
I salute you. Everybody who bitches about such info-dump-chapters should either forego the snippets and wait for the full book, or abandon the series completely.
What we have seen as snippets so far where maybe 60 pages. 60 pages out of 1000+ the last books of DW where. That are less than 6%. In these 6% we have been given an sociological, political and technological context into wich we can place the actual story.
That WE don’t have this story at the moment, well, tough luck. If you don’t like it, skip the snippets.
Of course it would be possible to set up an raw framing for the story, reduce the whole politics to “there are some things going on!” and start at the war from the foot soldiers perspective. I don’t know if any of you could stand that for long. I couldn’t.
DW gives us an vibrating, living universe with good and bad. With bright examples of the right thing and the deepest abysses of wrongness. That of course you can get everywhere. But DW gives us everything in between.
Who was damming Westman for doing what he saw as the best for his home, his planet?
Anybody here who wasn’t disgusted by the politics this Solly-captain in CoS made?
Khumalo, an political admiral set into place for his political reliance to the old corrupt order, shines through his high moral decissions.
But without the systems that make such compromises neccessary we couldn’t appreciate such persons.
Exactly.
Life’s complicated. There’s no reason why a civilization spanning millions of cubic light years and hundreds, if not thousands, of planets will be any simpler than that of a single planet. Weber revels in that complexity.
If you look, there are far more comments here than on the snippets for anything else, and a lot of it is discussion on very detailed points. Obviously there’s something about that complexity that we like. Infodumping is a big part of the background for that complexity. Yes, it’s annoying when there are three snippets in a row of an infodump on an arcane point, or just on personal interactions, but it’s a small price to pay.
These Dumps are what make life intresting it gives you something to speculate on and wonder what will happen next. And just because these last few ones have been technical means nothing infact that is what brings to life the universe for me.
“Obviously there’s something about that complexity that we like.”
Have you read Bujold’s essay on the difference between SF and Romance? In a nutshell, she says that by writing non-SF she has discovered something she never noticed while immersed in SF — SF is all about politics. The more political her books are, the more her SF fans like them. Weber seems to be feeding on that.
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=164952151&blogID=423204224
If you think this is complicated, read Tolkein. The only reason this seems long is because it is a weekly snippet, so you can’t just read through it and go on. Any time an author tries to create a universe as well as a story, which they need to do anytime they write a series of books, they will have to spend some time explaining how things work. While Weber tends to use similar methods, such as “conversations”, as a way to explain to the reader how things work, doing so is necessary and makes the work better. It may seem to slow the pace of the novel, but it allows the reader to understand WHY the Queen cannot simply throw High Ridge out of office. I have a very high tolerance for explanation, since I like having a highly developed backstory in anything I read. That’s why I hope Weber will one day explain how Mesa got started, write a story about the transformation of the original Republic of Haven into the People’s Republic, and someday write a short story/novella prequel about the Fall of Kontovar.
Any time you read any book, there are going to be sections you don’t like. But when those sections are necessary to the plot or the reader’s understanding, complaining about them is counterproductive. It’s like wanting J.K. Rowling to neglect her descriptions of Hogwarts, or not bother explaining Voldemort’s past. Even though I frequently speed-read through descriptions of technical details such as acceleration rates, I recognize that, like C.S Forester, Weber has a world to create. I wasn’t always interested in the types of sails a Napoleonic era warship carried, but such things are part of any series. The point to “nonessential” sections like these, which aren’t necessarily interesting in their own right, is to establish a framework for “essential” sections which focus on important characters and the problems they face. That way, when a particularly engrossing scene arrives, the reader is not confused by background details, which have been cleared away. Elizabeth cannot dramatically refuse High Ridge permission to form a coalition government(in a truly appropriate reversal of his refusal to form one when she asked him) without the reader first understanding that the Monarch’s permission is necessary to form any new coalition government.
Hopefully, we’ll soon find out more about what the Mesans are planning. In the meantime, keep in mind that no author writing a series can do without some “infodumps”. Patience is necessary in reading any series book. Later on, this will probably be important; we just don’t know how yet.