At 06:07 AM 8/18/2006, you wrote:
> Have you read G:T IW? I can, reluctantly, handle the UN becoming the
> world government, but as the text indicates in one paragraph, the
> first world nations were still pretty much in control and dominated
> things.
The way I read it, this 'world government' started out as a fig leaf
to cover the power-grab by the first world. Two generations later,
the numbers of the third world started to make themselves felt. If
anything, there are too few Chinese and Indians ...
If the first world, specifically the US and EU, were the driving
force, then I can see good old fashioned nepotism and nationalism
favoring those nations while passing over the others.
> How is it then, that after the captain of the ship that made
> first contact, pretty much no one was from the first world in the
> NPCs and pretty much no one from the first world was shown to
> contribute much at all?
Let us take a look at p. 41-47, the 'Biographies' section. Among
the Terrans, we have
* Strider: American.
* Hasegawa: Japanese. Not first world by your count?
* al-Ghazali: Arab.
* Albadawi: Half-Arab, half-Spanish. Half first world, then.
No offense to any Spaniards on the list, but I wouldn't count Spain
as being a first world country. Five hundred years ago, yes, but not
in the 21st century. Second world, absolutely.
* Kovacs: a colonial Terran. Beyond that, from the name we can
guess he's European.
* Estigarribia: Peruvian, quarter-Basque and quarter-Japanese.
I make it three and two half out of six.
I guess the problem isn't a lack of first-world people, it is the
lack of first-world names for those people :-)
And of them, only one comes from a country that's currently got
anything in the way of a military that would form the core of
anything that might be considered a "world military". I'll give
Japan it's due, for Japanese nationals, as they have the economy and
ambition, but the others? I just can't see it.
> The Vilani, while we all know they lost the IWs, are portrayed as
> something akin to a bunch of interconnected Mafia families with a
> whole lot less common sense and ability to communicate.
Well, effective Vilani should have won. We couldn't have that ...
You can be effective and still make the wrong calls on the
intelligence. I see the IW as analogous to the mid/late 1930s
through 1941 or early 1942 with the Germans being the Terrans and the
rest of the world being the Vilani. Politics aside, for the most
part, the decision makers were oblivious to the threat and what
warnings they did have, they misread.
Also, I think *how* first contact was made played a big part in the
opening years. I've always said, if first contact is to be made, let
us be the ones doing the contacting someplace other than our home system.
Kurt Feltenberger
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
TEOTWAWKI Fiction And Discussion http://www.teotwawki.net
"To our Country! In her intercourse with foreign nations,
may she always be in the right, but our country, right or wrong!"
~Stephen Decatur
_______________________________________________
GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]>
http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
