Page 6 - The Perpetrations of Captain Kaga

Foreword

command retained its monopoly on the means of warfare, and
manufacture of weaponry engaged but a tiny proportion of surplus
productive capacity. Computer technology became absorbed into all
levels of organized activity; economic and social policy was
increasingly dictated by holistic logic rather than personal or ethnic
interests.
Space travel developed slowly, despite the possibility of another
attack from the unknown enemy. In retrospect, it is obvious that a
breakthrough in gravitronics was essential to stimulate the design of
practical interstellar vehicles. About the time hyperspace was first
being considered as a field of exploration, the discovery of the hoax
was made by a manned mission searching for traces of the invasion
fleet. Since Waderski had not yet been identified, the VidLit of the
late twenty-nineties abounded in speculation about and dramatization
of the events leading to the revolution everyone was thankful had
occurred.
With the threat removed, transgalactic exploration began with a
less belligerent attitude than would otherwise have been the case. A
century and a half of radio-telescope studies had provided no leads to
locating other scientific cultures; this also contributed to setting a
peaceful tone to the first period of exploration. New developments in
micro-electronics and neurolinguistics enabled an early model of the
Languex to be ready in time for inclusion in the maiden voyage of the
Galileo in 2113. The story of that expedition is too well-known to
bear repetition here; suffice it to say that the universal interpreting
device first rendered an alien language into Basic English on a small
Earth-type planet 9.4 lightyears from its laboratory of origin, and the
PKU could not function without it.
The Protectorate of the Known Universe evolved gradually from
the terrestrial United Nations during the twenty-second century. The
program of exploration and discovery of inhabited worlds is ongoing.
Human colonies are established only on planets not already claimed
by a species of intelligent life.
By 2200 Earth was at the periphery of a vast interstellar network of
trade and communications. As yet no alien civilization equal or
superior to Homo sapiens in technology had been found, but the
statistical likelihood of such an encounter prompted the extension of
military government into each new galaxy as it was added to the
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