Ken Fabian
Registered Senior Member
Not quite sure where this thread should go - SciFi and Fantasy, World Events or somewhere else. A comment a much as a question. Has this notion has been explored more formally/academically? Does it have merit?
Current events brought this writer's works to mind - The Moon Goddess and the Son and Geta aka Courtship Rights. I think it was more explicit in the latter, as Getans recovered their pre-colonisation Earth history and noted the ongoing race within warfare between the expensive, advanced weaponry in the hands of an elite and cheap and easy to produce in the hand of the masses. A cycle of brutal elite rule followed by uprisings and bloodbaths. The Getans were appalled but their solution wasn't exactly one I could recommend - religion/government having the absolute power of life and death with various kinds of testing, where failure put you on the dinner menu (corpses being the only meat).
I don't have the books to refer to so my recollections may vary but a succession of examples were there; [paraphrased memories of| cavalry beaten by pikes and ditches, guns defeating the castle, armoured knights having the winning edge until longbows/bodkins and hammers turned the tables, advanced guns beaten by cheap guns etc. In the MGS story (a bit aged from the US vs USSR era but no cannabilism) a bitter Afgani refugee builds a cruise missile out of parts bought off the shelf to attack the Kremlin and triggers nuclear war.
Thinking of Ukraine's drones. And right now - relatively cheap missiles in Iran's hands taking out hugely expensive targets.
Current events brought this writer's works to mind - The Moon Goddess and the Son and Geta aka Courtship Rights. I think it was more explicit in the latter, as Getans recovered their pre-colonisation Earth history and noted the ongoing race within warfare between the expensive, advanced weaponry in the hands of an elite and cheap and easy to produce in the hand of the masses. A cycle of brutal elite rule followed by uprisings and bloodbaths. The Getans were appalled but their solution wasn't exactly one I could recommend - religion/government having the absolute power of life and death with various kinds of testing, where failure put you on the dinner menu (corpses being the only meat).
I don't have the books to refer to so my recollections may vary but a succession of examples were there; [paraphrased memories of| cavalry beaten by pikes and ditches, guns defeating the castle, armoured knights having the winning edge until longbows/bodkins and hammers turned the tables, advanced guns beaten by cheap guns etc. In the MGS story (a bit aged from the US vs USSR era but no cannabilism) a bitter Afgani refugee builds a cruise missile out of parts bought off the shelf to attack the Kremlin and triggers nuclear war.
Thinking of Ukraine's drones. And right now - relatively cheap missiles in Iran's hands taking out hugely expensive targets.