The Falling Tree: Roots of the Great Collapse and How We Avoided It

The following is excerpted from The Falling Tree: Roots of the Great Collapse and How We Avoided It by Sasha Marco Gillespie, Professor of Political Science at the Lunar University of Naniwa, and consists of the introduction to her book looking at the Insurrection - its causes, its consequences, its mistakes and its lessons. It is reproduced here with permission.

The Falling Tree: Roots of the Great Collapse and How We Avoided It Professor Sasha Marco Gillespie, LUN

A modern audience familiar with the problems of a modern, interstellar community of human colonies that has been ravaged by an unfamiliar xenocidal enemy for nearly three decades, it can seem quaint to say that the so-called “Golden Age” experienced their own trials and tribulations. To most people, the period between the start of extrasolar colonisation and the beginning of the Insurrection, spanning from 2170 to 2492, a period of just over three centuries. Saying that “nothing of note” happened during this time is simply ludicrous. In fact, looking at the progression of those three centuries of “nothing”, you can see the emergence of the Insurrection at virtually every stage. More sobering, as some historians have noted, you can see how we might have avoided it with a little care and forethought. In 322 years, humanity’s habitation swelled from a single star system to more than eight hundred colonies, bringing with it social and cultural movements that would also give rise to the most devastating conflict in human history until the onset of the Human-Covenant War.

Although the “Golden Age” is generally regarded as having begun at the end of the Jovian Moons Campaign and the signing of the Callisto Treaty in 2170, it is more accurate to start it in 2291, more than a century later, with the invention of the Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine. Developed by an international team headed by Doctors Tobias Shaw and Wallace Fujikawa, the SFTE enabled, if not a technological revolution, then an economic one. Previously bound by a single star system, and with a growing earthbound population facing increasingly catastrophic weather and economic depression after the war, the development of a means of extrasolar travel faster and safer than any previous proposals was the start of an economic boom as companies set out to mine the New Frontier, and shipyards hired millions to build the ships that would carry them to the stars and back. The increase of new resources would jump-start the Sol economy, allowing the development of technologies that would relieve climate pressures, relieving the farming industry. Time limits meant a journey to our closest neighbour, Alpha Centauri, could still take months, and travelling to more distant stars could take years. To preserve resources, the first extrasolar travellers were automated mining and construction drones, guided by artificial intelligences of various degrees of sophistication. While “dumb” AIs had an unlimited lifespan, they lacked the creativity of more advanced “smart” AIs, who were better able to adapt to new circumstances but suffered psychological problems that made their use in extrasolar mining problematic. The Colonial Administration Authority and Colonial Military Administration were established in 2310 by the UEG to oversee the administration of these extrasolar colonies, and by 2341, the first wave of human colonists set out on ships that could traverse Shaw-Fujikawa Space in a drastically shorter time, though still necessitating cryonic preservation of the crew during transit to conserve on-board resources. These first colonists would find prefabricated cities waiting for people to inhabit them, the legacies of their robotic predecessors. In some rare cases, however, they found oddities – the remnants of the inevitable degenerative state smart AIs undergo at the end of their lifespans. In some places they found strange monuments erected, or evidence of self-destruction. In other colonies, the remains of bizarre drone wars waged as the “dumb” AIs charged with operating the drones came into conflict with their rampant companions. These oddities have been overlooked by the Great Colonial Narrative – of humans taking to the stars and mastering them themselves. Advocated of AI rights have campaigned for their stories to be brought to light, largely unsuccessfully.

This first generation of colonists faced pressures never faced by their ancestors – whereas a colonist of the Americas or the Pacific might face harsh weather, an unfamiliar environment and attacks from the indigenous peoples who already made their home there, the colonists who populated humanity’s first extrasolar colonies usually faced a totally inhospitable environment, but with no pre-existing rivals to compete with. On the contrary, this lack of competition gave rise to its own problems as corporations persisted in calling these fledgling worlds “corporate holdings”, even as their populations swelled through immigration and increased birth rates. The CAA and CMA assisted in the transition of these colonies to full, represented colonies of Earth, with worlds such as Tribute, Circumstance and Reach serving as flourishing examples of human ingenuity – terraformed or partially-terraformed terrestrial worlds settled as comfortably as Mars or Earth. The 210 colonies settled by 2390 would come to be known as the Inner Colonies – the core of human-settled space, the economic centre of humanity’s bourgeoning interstellar empire. The terms “Inner’ and “Outer” colonies have been hotly debated subjects in recent decades, with accusations of elitism behind their use. In a sense, the situation is analogous to the old “First” and “Third” Worlds, the divide between developed and developing nations on Earth before the establishment of the UEG. Inner Colonies have become largely urbanised consumerist societies, using resources from the Outer Colonies. These second-wave colonists faced similar conditions met by their first wave predecessors, with some significant differences. Drone mining had fallen out of use as an economically viable alternative to on-site human operators, so they did not have the benefit of pre-existing settlements when they arrived, except in a few far-thinking cases. Meanwhile, medical advances had made it increasingly possible for humans to inhabit colonies less Earth-like with fewer serious side-effects, making terraforming less of a necessity. For the first half-century, there was significant cultural blur between Inner and Outer Colonies as migration offset cultural isolation. As the frontier grew further and further away from the boundary between Inner and Outer Colony, however, many new start-up colonies were able to develop their own unique identities without the influence of Earth or its Inner Colonies due to relativistic lag. As they did, economic resentment began to set in as vast disparities between the older, prosperous Inner Colonies and the newer, struggling Inner Colonies became apparent. Living conditions on the frontier were inevitable poorer than among the Inner Colonies, a product of the industrial economy they were based on, while the Inner Colonies enjoyed cultural prosperity, often in open-air environments, a contrast to the more modest accommodations Outer Colonists were forced to put up with. Worse still, the CAA was becoming increasingly out of touch with the reality of the new frontier, overwhelmed with the burden of managing a trade empire spanning hundreds of worlds. Increasingly, the task of managing struggling industrial colonies was being given to armchair bureaucrats who had never ventured further than the upper atmosphere of their homeworlds, rather than by the on-site administrators who had managed the transitional periods of the Inner Colonies. Outer Colonists felt they were being given the cold shoulder by a complacent populace indifferent to their hardships. Worse still, the CAA often left corporations, naturally unsympathetic to talk of establishing planetary governments that would mean the transition of their “holdings” to the new colony, to manage their holdings themselves. As populations grew among the frontier worlds, these corporations began to suppress talk of emancipation from corporate control, using increasingly intrusive and forceful measures, while simultaneously denying the problems existed to their Inner Colonist backers.

It is therefore not hard to see the seeds of rebellion, though the outbreak of the Insurrection was still far-off. By now, the CAA was largely staffed by well-off Inner Colonists out of touch with the reality of the frontier and believing colonial unrest to be the result of lax economic policies. The CMA, while it recruited among the Outer Colonies to fill its ranks, nevertheless had an elite officer corps recruited from the Inner Colonies, creating a cultural separation between the enlisted ranks and their officers – a powder keg for insurrection. As the CAA tightened their control, and the complaints of the Outer Colonists fell on unsympathetic ears, the organisations lobbying for increased colonial autonomy became increasingly frustrated at the CAAs stubborn refusal to believe them, increasing disillusioned with the political process, and increasingly radical new members, eager to pursue their goals with a vigour that would shock their older compatriots. Though the leadership of the CAA and CMA would prove totally obstructionist, they nevertheless made connections among the enlisted corps who, as soldiers throughout history have done, connected into a growing black market of weapons and equipment to the colonies who sought ways to fight back against their oppressors. The first skirmishes are often not counted as part of the Insurrection at all – many of the localised rebellion outbreaks were either put down quickly by mercenary troops, or successfully toppled their corporate offices and declared themselves as full governments. Nevertheless, these precedents would feed into the later Insurrection’s two defining traits among rebel movements – the willingness of corporate administrators to call in private military companies to suppress rebellions brutally and efficiently, and in the success stories, the lack of involvement of CAA or CMA personnel. In their defence, the CMA and CAA often refused to intervene on the corporations’ behalves either, a fact often ignored by colonial sympathisers, though this was usually the extend of any pro-colonist sentiments in them. To the colonists, it was further proof that the “elitists” from the Inner Colonies were either actively hostile or totally indifferent towards them – if they wanted their independence, they would have to do it themselves.

Despite the claims of CAA and CMA propaganda, most early rebel groups were not political extremists. Much has been made of the various monarchist, socialist, fascist or theocratic groups who rose up during this time, with their opponents parading them as examples of the catastrophe waiting to overtaking the Inner Colonies. On the whole, however, most rebels were in favour of democratic systems of various types. If the political extremists had indeed been as radically disparate as the CAA claimed they were, the political unification of vast swathes of colonial territory under the banners of the various large, interstellar rebel alliances that emerged in the 2510s. Isolated “brushfire” incidents increasingly became interstellar affairs, with the exchange of personnel, materiel and intelligence, and the consolidation of numerous small, localised cells under unified command structures. Ironically, it was a UNSC defector, Colonel Robert Watts, who would emerge as the figurehead of rebellion, as Eridanus II rose up in massive revolt using captured CMA or scratch-built equipment, throwing off their corporate managers and CAA administrators, and declaring them independent from an Earth that had never cared about their problems. By this point, it had become obvious to the Inner Colonies that the CAA and CMA were mismanaging the situation catastrophically, and the UEG stepped in to change the situation – the UNSC would enter the fray. While the CMA had powerful internal elements sympathetic to the Insurrectionists, the UNSC were largely recruited from the Inner Colonies, especially the Solar System itself. Further, it was a smaller, more professional, better equipped military force than the CMA, which often relied on mass production, conscription, and overkill. Earth hoped that the UNSC would prove a better answer to the problem than the CMA had been, and 2013’s Operation: TREBUCHET was its chance to prove it. Recapturing Eridanus II, timed with simultaneous operations against rebel strongholds on other colonies, the UNSC proved that it was a superior fighting force, though occupying the gains made proved a problematic affair. Nevertheless, pleased with the results, the UEG allowed the CMA to be absorbed by the UNSC. While the CMA was dismantled, its personnel screened before being transferred to the UNSC or released from duty and its materiel incorporated into the UNSCs various branches, the CAA was simultaneously being shredded. The Inner Colonies were increasingly self-sufficient, and the Outer Colonies were increasingly resisting to acknowledging its authority.

Much has been made of the effect a long, prolonged war between a vast number of resource-rich Outer Colonies and a smaller number of more established Inner Colonies would have had on the existence of the human race. Some insist that this was a political war, that would have resulted in the creation of a new political dynamic of independent interstellar nation-states rivalling Earth and the colonies that remained loyal to it. Others believe it would have been the end of the nation-state altogether, that it would have resulted in the total collapse of a unified interstellar human community and the onset of technological barbarism, a Great Collapse to follow the Golden Age. Personally, I think the extreme argument is exaggerated, especially by military analysts, but at the same time, it is hard to see an end to the conflict that would have left a political infrastructure in any way similar to that which had preceded it.

In a way, the catastrophes of the Human-Covenant War may have been a blessing in disguise – although we emerged with a substantial loss of life and a radically reduced territory, we also had a political opponent to unify against. An entire generation raised on Inner/Outer Colony rhetoric was faced with the existence of an enemy that cared nothing for the differences, and a new one was raised to think in terms of Human or Alien. Outliers still exist and give trouble to the UNSC – Venezia being the largest and most intransigent of them. In my lectures, I use an odd historical example – Britains Seven Kingdoms, and the emergence of the English state. Faced with invasion by the Vikings, the Kingdoms of Britain were swallowed, one by one, either by the Danes or by the Kingdom of Wessex. Whereas before it had been a matter of different Anglo-Saxon tribes, the situation became one of Englishmen facing the Invader. Considering the atrocities the Covenant have committed against us, I would say that the Vikings look tame by comparison. But the unification that eventually produced the nation and society that gave us Shakespeare, Elizabeth I, Newton and Turing, isn’t a bad analogy for a future to be hoped for.