Dear Folks –
Jeffery replied to Bruce:
>> Such as ‘Space Viking’.. a novel that’s overtly about raiding less technologically advanced worlds for their valuables :-/
>
>Or Piper's "A Slave is a Slave", which has just about everything Imperium in it..
That’s pretty timely… I’ve literally just finished reading Space Viking, now I can go off and read another Piper novel – thanks!
BTW, there’s a short story somewhere in his future history centred on the Emperor of a large, stagnant Imperium, which has just had a tech breakthrough. I think it may have been the possible discovery of time travel, but that’s just a MacGuffin – the real issue (around which there is a lot of discussion) is that *something* was need to break out of stagnation, or the Empire would start either splintering off or collapsing in on itself.
Sound like a familiar scenario? ;-)