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[Note for non-British readers – Tony writes using UK English spelling, punctuation, and grammar.]
[A word of caution or warning or whatever you wish to call it, from the author: – A small proportion of readers wrote critical reviews of the first book because, in their opinion, it criticised America and promoted communism or extreme socialism.
[I suppose most of them will not read this second book in the trilogy, but I would like to remind readers that this is a story, a work of speculative science fiction.
[That an empire somewhere in the galaxy is able to make communism work, prevent all wars and rid their worlds of poverty and disease, does not mean that I would advocate it for use by humans in any country in the 21st Century.
[I reiterate, the Federation Trilogy is a work of speculative science fiction, not a promotion of any particular political system. Enjoy it for what it is – a view into one possible future. Tony Harmsworth.]
[There is a glossary at https://harmsworth.net/glossary.pdf which you might like to bookmark.]
Author Rummy Blin Breganin, a citizen of Daragnen, wrote his Federation Trilogy when he discovered that the Earth had been prohibited from all space flight and use of quantum technology, the key to interstellar travel.
His first book, written long after the events described in this second book, follows the story of Earth’s first contact with the Federation.
Initially things seem to go well, but the Federation’s economic system conflicted with that of Western Europe, the United States of America and many other countries. Its similarity to communism immediately caused suspicion and distrust.
The leaders of more than twenty countries were each taken to visit five Federation worlds, including one new member world and the capital of the Federation, Arlucian.
Gradually, President Spence of the USA began to be won over by all of the benefits of membership, but he realised that the Federation’s economic system was going to be a hard sell to the wealthy minority who held much of the power in western democracies. They would have to forego their wealth in order to allow the general population to benefit.
The Federation began to make sense to him.
Its economic system relies upon automatons. Over several hundred thousand years, the manufacture of robots has been perfected. They can do anything and everything people could ever be asked to do. On Earth in the twenty-first century, we consider that a robot which can pick strawberries is the height of sophistication, but utility robots in the Federation can handle any task. Most are not designed to perform one function well, but to use their AI minds to work out how to do virtually anything. If a robot were asked to peel a grape, it would do so perfectly and then go on to prepare a seven-course gourmet meal or strip an engine and perform a complete mechanical rebuild.
Those same utility robots can also handle many other jobs from caring for paraplegics, handling all of their hygiene and other needs, to fetching and carrying in homes or industrial workplaces. A domestic robot could be asked to go and do the shopping. It would find out what was needed by examining the contents of the refrigerator, the store cupboards and freezer. Before it left it would even ask if anything special or unusual was required. Saying, ‘Yes, get everything for a barbecue for eight people this Sunday, too,’ would not result in a further string of questions. The robot would then get into the autonomous vehicle and go shopping.
Of course, some robots have more specialised functions. Medibots diagnose and treat all manner of medical problems and some are even more specialised to conduct surgery, from repairing cataracts to stenting blood vessels.
In an industrial or farming setting, robots would carry out all duties ever handled by people, from planting to dealing with cattle insemination programmes. If they ran into problems, they would ask for help – no, not from a person, but an overseer bot or monitoring system. During visits to worlds by leaders during the last book, some bots told the leaders they had not had contact with a living being in hundreds of years of manufacturing.
The upshot of the expertise of robots and other AI systems is that people no longer have anything to do. Profit from all the state-owned businesses goes into a pool and is distributed equally so that everyone shares in the wealth of nearly a quarter of a million worlds.
However, if people want to work they can do so and all are encouraged to work about ten per cent of their time. Inventors suddenly have the time to come up with new ideas and innovations and can get access to the equipment and machine shops or laboratories they might need. This means that, instead of having to develop it themselves, including all of the hassle of raising finance and running the business, they can hand over the idea to robots. They produce the items, keeping in production the successful products. They also keep stocks of more niche items which would never be profitable, but add to the life satisfaction of people. Inventors also receive small bonuses as reward for their ideas but it is never excessive, perhaps the value of another off-world holiday that year.
The system was of course seen by some as communism, a reviled system which reared its head on twentieth century Earth. It was so despised that many people were unable to get their heads around the fact that, in a world where the work was all done by automatons, it could actually work. In fact it was the obvious solution to the capitalist system which exploited people, often in other countries, to make others into billionaires. This saw wealthy countries ignoring poverty, starvation and disease in poorer countries; and consuming resources to the serious detriment of the general population and the environment.
In the Federation, the system resulted in everyone having a great standard of living, all receiving the same level of medical attention, living anywhere they wished on-world or off-world somewhere else in the galaxy. Poverty is non-existent in the Federation, but so is obscene wealth. Whether it be a person in a rural setting on Veroscando or the Federation president itself (a sexless budding creature), the income was the same. Volunteers could participate in the Federation rapid-reaction force to deal with natural disasters and unexpected outbreaks of disease, or they could volunteer as carers or write books, produce films and develop the arts. Anyone could do anything they wished to do which did not hurt others or their planets.
Eventually, President Spence achieved some progress with politicians and industrialists, but then there was an unexpected power grab by Vice President Slimbridge who had the president arrested for treason, claiming that he was about to hand over control of the United States to communist aliens.
The president suddenly found himself in prison, but the FBI soon realised that the charges were trumped up and helped him break out with the house minority and majority leaders, the main democratic candidate for president and several of the captains of industry who had been with the president at the time of the arrest and arrested as co-conspirators.
From the outskirts of Washington, they escaped in a Chinook helicopter to New York where they were going to claim diplomatic asylum in the UN complex. However, Vice President Slimbridge, with all the resources of the military, pursued them and had the helicopter shot down as it reached the UN building.
The UN had called a meeting to approve an application for Federation membership and Slimbridge intended to veto the vote. Unknown to him, President Spence and the other Chinook passengers had been rescued by the Federation from the helicopter an instant before it exploded. UN troops arrested Slimbridge under a warrant from the International Court of Justice in the Hague when he arrived for the debate.
Then, with Spence back in charge, the meeting was rearranged, and all the leaders of the world met at the UN HQ. In the meantime, the US military sprung Slimbridge and plotted against Spence.
On the day of the vote, Slimbridge had a small nuclear bomb exploded under the UN building killing all of the world leaders and the entire Federation diplomatic team. Virtually all of New York was destroyed in the explosion.
A new Federation ambassador was appointed and, after discussing the situation with the Federation Cabinet, it was decided to visit the UK prime minister. That chapter is included below and will bring you up to date.