Talk:Master of the Void

The following talk may be helpful for ideas of further edits in the article. May be not, too. Any way, you are free to use it or not.

<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)