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Starforgers Concepts – Political Isolationism

The Star Series of books from the Starstrikers Universe are each set in a different time period. Starforgers takes place at the beginning of The Great War and Starstrikers takes place in the middle of that war. Starveyers of course, takes place after the war has ended.

If you have read Starstrikers you know that it has a very Military SF feel to it. It’s about a Special Operations force and the principle characters are mostly military men and women. The world building creates this universe at war where two opposing sides have been completely dedicated to fighting each other for hundreds of years. I was going for a very WWII look and feel with the technology and the attitudes of the people fighting it.

But for Starforgers, which takes place at the start of this huge, galactic war I needed to show how different the same universe was pre-war. People’s attitude towards galactic war were totally different. Think pre-WWII America. Our country was an isolationist when it came to the unrest that was stirring in Europe. Hitler was allowed to invade country after country and the US stayed out of it until Japan dragged us into the fight, kicking and screaming.

This is the tone and atmosphere of the politics in Starforgers. A few, insightful groups of people are trying to get the Federation to realize that it might need an interstellar fleet of warships to defend the many member planets and in order to do that the Federation needs to include as many planets in their union as they can, thereby changing it into more of an Alliance of worlds. Political change usually comes about as the result of a revolution or external conflict. In this case the later will prove to be true.

At the start of The Great War, the Federation is composed of a handful of Core worlds. There are many more planets outside the Federation than inside it. These Outer Rim worlds are trying to become members of the Federation so that they can enjoy protection and trade rights granted to member worlds. The Outer Rim worlds know there is a looming threat of being attacked by aggressive aliens from just outside known space. But for the average citizen or politician from the Core worlds, everything is just fine the way it is and they see no need to expand.

That’s when the Votainions begin to encroach into the Outer Rim and start laying waste to the moons and planets they come across. This forces the Federation to recognize that there is a threat to their peaceful way of life. But even after watching an Outer Rim world fall to the military might of the Votainions, the Federation does not see a need to interviene more than a little bit. Just like America sold weapons to Britain in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s but did not send troops to defend our allies. Not until Japan attacked Perl Harbor. In Starforgers, the home world of Selene is directly attacked by the Votainions in a similar fashion and that, not only caused the Federation to enter the war, but sets in motion a political revolution that will change the Federation into an Alliance.

There is no similar aspect of our history that is quite like the creation of the Alliance. It would have been as if Japan had attacked Washington DC as well as Hawaii and the result would have been the addition of Hawaii to our union. Of course Hawaii did eventually become a state in 1959. The practice of isolationism is common in peace time and that aspect is what I’m focusing on it Starforgers.

Next time I’ll talk about how the technology changes from Starforgers to Starstrikers.

 

 

 

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