Subject: Pournelle and Stirling: Prince of Sparta

From: [email-masked] (Dani Zweig)
Date: Fri, 26 Mar 1993 05:24:17 GMT

"Prince of Sparta" ends the story begun in "Prince of Mercenaries" and
"Go Tell the Spartans" -- the story of the fall of the CoDominium, which
is to Pournelle's future history what the Federation was to Piper's.  The
center cannot hold, and things are going to hell in a handbasket.  This
story focuses upon Sparta -- a world which seems to be the joint brainchild 
of Lycurgus and the Chicago School of Economics.

Since it's Pournelle and Stirling, you know it's going to be military sf,
but it's military sf of a particularly messy kind.  The twentieth century
has seen a dramatic rise in a messier (from the military perspective) kind 
of warfare -- in which armies slap at guerillas and insurgents and
irregulars as ineffectively as at any blood-draining swarm of mosquitoes.
The authors see this trend accelerating, spurred on by the growth of an
underclass which has no stake in the established society.

We already know (from further-in-the-future novels) that the problem is
going to be 'solved' when the CoDominium becomes an Empire, and a failed
democracy gives way to monarchy.  I'm not sure what to think of that.
The book is thought-provoking, as sf ought to be, and the authors have
done their homework.  On the other hand,  when democracy fails, aristocracy
succeeds, liberal ideals fail and plant the seeds of their own destruction,
and only hard-nosed pragmatism can deal with society's home-grown 
barbarians, it seems to be entirely by auctorial fiat.  To the extent that
the authors have a 'case' to make about the directions our own society
is headed, they have opted to dramatize their case, rather than to make
a case for it.

This book, and its predecessors, *are* thought-provoking, because they
dramatize some of the nastiest dilemmas of today's society.  They don't
have much beyond wish-fulfillment in the way of answers, though.

-----
Dani Zweig
[email-masked]

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
 Are full of passionate intensity." -- W.B. Yeats