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Post by MinnesotaNationalist on Jan 26, 2016 23:07:08 GMT
Why is it that in Sci-Fi, we never see planets divided into multiple factions (like our planet), but they've all some how united into one great Planetary Federation? Even on our own planet, countries that make maybe a percent of the world's solid surface have a hard time staying together, what makes me think that an entire world can somehow stay united? Much less an interplanetary or interstellar federation?
Understandably, a creator doesn't want to go through the trouble to label all the different states on a given planet/solar system, but other that, I find fairly little realism in this.
What are your thoughts on this?
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westvirginiarebel
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Post by westvirginiarebel on Jan 27, 2016 0:56:55 GMT
I suppose it's easier to have a united society join your Federation/Empire. Some might have come together in response to a common threat. Many of the worlds in Star Trek for example, are mentioned as being made up of different states/nations. There also seem to be smaller "confederations" and alliances involving different worlds within the greater Federation itself. But mostly it seems to be for the same reason you don't see different races from the same species (with the possible exception of the Vulcans)-low budgets. There are some societies, such as in Babylon Five, that have religious/political strife, like the Minbari or the Centauri. The Bajorans on DS9 were also divided by religion. Earth on B5 was itself an alliance of different countries/corporations that eventually had a civil war.
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Post by punkrockbowler805 on Jan 27, 2016 1:30:02 GMT
I think in early times it was assumed any advanced society would be united by the time it started interstellar voyages.
Also, its easier to write for.
In my fiction I try to have space colonies with their own local nations and avoid the one big galactic empire trope. I did a setting where warp drive is developed and hideously expensive, so a space race between nations on Earth happens, then after a few colonies and giant starships are completed, this bankrupts all the major powers on Earth and then leads to a war between them. The colonies are stranded and form their own nations and the remaining ships either stick with their own or become mercenaries. I had a Mayan Zapatista planet, a Scientologist planet and some others.
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Post by punkrockbowler805 on Jan 27, 2016 1:32:20 GMT
The Scientologist planet fractured into separate countries. One run by the Sea Org, one ruled by the aristocratic descendants of Tom Cruise and John Travolta and such, after a civil war.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 27, 2016 2:09:50 GMT
yes I agree advanced races would have conflicts about ideology,religion,culture and have patriotism. Having a world united is incredible hard and space colonies would have independents moments and the like it is unlikely to happen. in my Sci-Fi planets are divided in to many nations with a United Nations type deal been the only planet wide body.
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Post by Kubo Caskett on Jan 27, 2016 3:06:52 GMT
I personally find this to be one of my biggest pet peeves (along with nukes somehow destroying the world), as it really strains my suspension of disbelief. Sure such works of fiction that depict such a planet can say it's not truly united but frankly I expect the whole unity thing to be temporary as earth-based supranational organizations would be competing and possibly fight with each other not just on earth but on the space colonies as well.
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Post by eDGT on Jan 27, 2016 3:08:20 GMT
yes I agree advanced races would have conflicts about ideology,religion,culture and have patriotism. Having a world united is incredible hard and space colonies would have independents moments and the like it is unlikely to happen. in my Sci-Fi planets are divided in to many nations with a United Nations type deal been the only planet wide body. Well maybe the case is that we only see the UN type bodies. For instance when I look at a country on a map I see that country, not all the counties and states and internal divisions which make it up. So maybe we see the same thing in the various planets of a Science Fiction.
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Post by abdulhadipasha on Feb 5, 2016 3:29:23 GMT
If it's a human-dominated scenario, single-state planets make some sense as most planets are likely less habitable for humans than earth and might have been settled by a single colony which maintains a unitary polity, especially if they have advanced communications.
But it shouldn't be universal.
I once had a galactic empire where the only other state in the galaxy was located on the imperial homeworld, where the state that became the empire was allied to a smaller one that was never conquered and subsequently left independent for various legal and illicit reasons. Sort of like the Space Caymans.
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Post by heliosmegistos on Feb 8, 2016 10:07:42 GMT
It bothers me as well to be honest but I'm nto sure we can say it's unrealistic, Earth might be united or at least there might be unified groups of worlds forming their own galactic entities etc.
We can't know for sure, besides unification might happens via a varity of means including force of arms and strong arms authoritarianism. Self Determination, democracy and rights don't mean shit when you can bombard places indiscriminately from orbit, just saying.
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Post by MinnesotaNationalist on Feb 8, 2016 20:47:39 GMT
It bothers me as well to be honest but I'm nto sure we can say it's unrealistic, Earth might be united or at least there might be unified groups of worlds forming their own galactic entities etc. We can't know for sure, besides unification might happens via a varity of means including force of arms and strong arms authoritarianism. Self Determination, democracy and rights don't mean shit when you can bombard places indiscriminately from orbit, just saying. Well, those things don't really matter either when you can be bombard places indiscriminately by sending suicidal extremists there, but we have to carry on somehow.
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Post by eDGT on Feb 8, 2016 21:07:06 GMT
It bothers me as well to be honest but I'm nto sure we can say it's unrealistic, Earth might be united or at least there might be unified groups of worlds forming their own galactic entities etc. We can't know for sure, besides unification might happens via a varity of means including force of arms and strong arms authoritarianism. Self Determination, democracy and rights don't mean shit when you can bombard places indiscriminately from orbit, just saying. Well, those things don't really matter either when you can be bombard places indiscriminately by sending suicidal extremists there, but we have to carry on somehow. Reminds me of Red Faction: Guerrilla. Earth in that was basically a military-police state run by the EDF, there was even mention of civil unrest in Central Asia being basically annihilated by their latest space cruiser before it set course for Mars to crush the Red Faction. Shame they fucked up the sequel, the Red Faction series was awesome.
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Post by Michelle R. Wood on Feb 12, 2016 20:39:20 GMT
It's for this reason that I love the unappreciated Babylon 5. While the people of the various planets in this universe were "united" in terms of a government, each planet had numerous sects and groups that were often in competition with each other, with huge impacts on domestic and intergalactic politics. It still streamlined things a bit, since there's only so much a TV show can effectively present while still telling a compelling story, but it did better than almost anyone else in embracing the idea of complex alien societies.
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Post by punkrockbowler805 on Feb 29, 2016 4:33:41 GMT
They mentioned to make the EA there was some kind of war with some countries and a lot of Earth colonies seceded when Clark was President.
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Post by punkrockbowler805 on Feb 29, 2016 4:46:09 GMT
Interestingly, on Blakes 7, they show the Federation, a powerful dystopian fascist state, doesn't totally control Earth and large groups of agrarian people called Outsiders live outside the cities and outside Federation control and some resistance groups in some episodes Blake or Avon team up with hide out there. They show alot of planets with their own societies and internal divisions as well.
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Post by petros on May 14, 2016 20:16:12 GMT
Space Traffic Control and Massive Communication.
When a planet is involved in interplanetary or interstellar context, some organization is keeping asteroids, comets, and other projectiles from hitting it, and keeping contraband, undocumented migrants, or active threats from landing. This organization controls orbit. It will not be inevitable that planets in an interplanetary society will unite, but the organization that controls orbit will tend to dominate, eventually in a formal sense.
It may be that we are living in a golden age of cheap world travel, but I think that access to global communication will only improve and expand, even if the price of travel increases. So in the same way that improvements in communications (roads and a postal system in this case) led to the rise of nationalism (I say 'marrying distance'), it will also lead to the rise of globalism, at least once there are other planets that are further out of contact. Anyone on the planet can speak to anyone else instantly, so they will develop a global culture; but it will take hours to correspond with others in the same system, or if we figure out something like an ansible, it could be prohibitively expensive to communicate beyond that.
So for both these reasons, planets with multiple polities will, when they are in the context of a society with more than one planet, in more than one stellar system, tend to form a single polity.
And, as other posters have said, when we are settling planets, they could begin from a single colony, which expands to a single planetary government. So long as the only people living off-world are in small colonies like this, I would say that Earth will remain disunited. Once the colonies start to approach the Earth-based legacy powers, Earth will tend towards uniting.
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Post by AnachronistRocketeer on May 15, 2016 9:54:19 GMT
While it can seem odd, it does make sense to me that a Unified Government could be likely. After all, it's quite likely only a few powers would have the ability to create such expensive space infrastructure, and then suddenly they really have all the cards in a negotiation both economically and militarily. As well, petros made a good point, that increasing globalism could lead to a decrease in tensions between the citizens of such countries in order to, over the long term, form a more cohesive society in face of the other.
That is not to say it would be equally if not more interesting than several powers in a solar system, but it is still a possibility.
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Post by Oceano on Oct 17, 2016 7:35:09 GMT
Look at the origins.
The first sci-fi writers were often anti-nationalist, pacifist, pro-globalization, left and right both types who believed that the future way to peace is for all nations to unite in one great global federation or something. You can see that a lot in, say, H.G Wells writing, or even Olaf Stapledon. Even in dystopia, there's a evil One-World Government that seems to defacto hold pretty much everywhere.
To these people, nationalism is wrong, we should all rally together under the "Brotherhood of Man" or something, and national problems are "petty" and nation-states (or kingdoms or what have you) are "tribal" (newsflash bro: Humans are tribal). Also aparently all these massive cultural/religious chasms are irrelevant, and in fact those authors seem to disregard religion except as a means of manipulation and control.
Also there's a strange assumption that to afford space travel (especially inter-stellar), the world needs to be first unified, which to me is like Europeans only colonizing America after Europe is unified.
As a avid nationalist I'm very unconfortable with the idea. Partly because it either implies massive widescale opression, and partly because most of these federations seems like varieties of "USA in Space". Even the non-americans are americans. As a Brazilian, and someone who knows the USA used to dream of dominating and conquering the entire new world, that's really unsettling. When I say "everyone's the same", what I really mean is "Everyone's like me/us" (therefore they would love being under our oh-so benevolent, caring, efficient rule).
I think the most "realistic" space government is probably something like the Imperium of Man. When space travel is hard and takes a certain effort and time, every planet is defacto autonomous, but degrees of autonomy vary, there's good reasons both to leave and to stay, and there's a lot of bureocratic kerfuffle and planets have all sorts of weird traditions and multiple sorts of governments and countries and nations and tribes are actually common and so long as everything is on the up and narrow, the central government won't give you a hard time.
Also, without all the xenos and demons surrounding it, the Imperium would desintegrate in five minutes flat, because its a hellish opressive dystopia that only holds because the alternative is being eaten by tyranids, possessed by demons or genocided by alien invaders.
Which brings to another classic trope, aka "World unifies because aliens". People unite together to fight the invader, sure, but they also often turn-coat and help the invader in their own benefit. Or they team up and then fight over the spoils once the threat is over.
In the 80s this seems to have been discredited by another trope, the Corporation Dominated Cyberpunk World, where the nation states is either entirely super-seeded by the mega-corp (I presume all these huge armies swearing loyalties to those old flags just decided to simultaneously retire and get rent-a-cop jobs?), or ultimately turned irrelevant by the Mega-Corps, which dominate every aspect of it.
Another problem: Nationalism has become no-no in certain circles and places. I've been hearing that in Western Europe, many people think that Nationalism = You're a swastika-flag weaving, goose-stepping, Hugo Boss-dressed nazifascist goon. EDIT: And that seems to apply to religion too, there are many places where people consider you weird if you publicy display your religion.
And lastly: Nobody writes interesting sci-fi with non-unified planets because sci-fi is defacto dead.
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