Interstellar Empire - John Brunner

This is really a collection of three novellas Brunner wrote, based around the notion of a steadily-disintegrating galaxy-spanning empire. The introduction describes an interest in ways to write "swords-and-spaceships" stories, and how the way to make it work is that the spaceships were in a sense inherited, or in this case, found by man in their early excursions off-world. So while humanity may have the ability to travel between stars in relatively short periods of time, they don't really understand how, and are thus unable to apply those scientific principles to other areas.

I think, though I'm not sure, that the stories - The Altar on Asconel, The Man from the Big Dark, and The Wanton of Argus - are set progressively further along in the decline of the empire. There seems to be less awareness of technology and more discussion of "sorcery", especially in Wanton of Argus. Though it's curious that in the first two stories, mutants are often exiled to the furthest reaches, if they aren't killed by a mob, but seem accepted in Wanton of Argus. The key player displays strange powers, yet no one tries to have him stoned to death, and his abilities are common knowledge. Maybe we're meant to read it as these worlds no longer can spare a ship to banish the unusual to the depths.

All three stores revolve around attempts to take control of a single world, although that world may hold the key to other worlds. There's always a manner of subterfuge, the person attempting to take control never what they present themselves as at first glance. The Man from the Big Dark is only 40 pages, so Brunner doesn't draw out the mystery as to what the person is like he does in the other two stories. The reveal is The Altar on Asconel is fairly clever, though I wonder how the main character so readily deduces everything correctly.

The reveal in The Wanton of Argus made me roll my eyes, as it involves time travel, and people from the future attempting to preserve their timeline and they've achieved utopia through mental powers that result in a level of interconnection undreamt of blah blah blah. I have yet to see the sci-fi story that could sell me on that sort of connection being a good thing.

Part of the issue was, I wanted Brunner to do more with the broader scenario, but that was outside the bounds of what he wanted to do. He makes repeated references to what the people who were either banished or voluntarily went to the edges of space are up to. How they're building and devising their own spacecraft, but their society is loosely organized at best, and any leader if vulnerable to overthrow at the first sign of weakness.

I was curious what it would look like. How do the mutants fit in, if they do? What's the overall quality of life? Do the different groups work together to prey on tradeships, or is it every group for themselves at all times? Stuff like that, but it's not what Brunner's into. Probably because he figures there's enough of that in human history already, but having access to advanced technology that's only vaguely understood and building an empire with it is something more rare.

"Now it happens also that a general who commands well in war does not rule wisely in peace. Something which does not happen, on the other hand, is that a man with no skill in strategy save in defending fishing fleets against the love-pat raids of our Klarethly pirates becomes a great Praestans."