# Does science fiction fear democracy? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 21, 2011, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-science-fiction-fear-democracy/582719 "2011-05-21T21:12:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2011, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-science-fiction-fear-democracy/582719/21 "2011-05-22T10:37:40Z")
> [@AtomicDog](#): > > The Star Trek Federation. Is the Federation really all that democratic, though? They have a president who’s elected somehow, but I don’t recall ever hearing about public elections, a legislature, or political parties (unless you count the Maquis). Given the whole cashless society thing, I always assumed the Federation government was more of a socialist meritocracy that draws its government leaders from the civil service. ---
**Author:** ![blindboyard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blindboyard/32/2833_2.png) [@blindboyard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blindboyard)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2011, 10:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-science-fiction-fear-democracy/582719/22 "2011-05-22T10:54:12Z")
I think the Fed has a decentralised government, with the Fedgov handing down a few basic principles, like no political murders and so on, along with whatever it is they do to support Starfleet and the unified foreign policy. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2011, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-science-fiction-fear-democracy/582719/23 "2011-05-22T11:25:54Z")
An opinion on the “Masses” in Science Fiction– > **[The Marching Morons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons)** > > "The Marching Morons" is a science fiction story by American writer Cyril M. Kornbluth, originally published in Galaxy in April 1951. It was included in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two after being voted one of the best novellas up to 1965..mw-parser-output .hlist dl,.mw-parser-output .hlist ol,.mw-parser-output .hlist ul{margin:0;padding:0}.mw-parser-output .hlist dd,.mw-parser-output .hlist dt,.mw-parser-output .hlist li{margin:0;display:inline}.mw-parser-output .hlist.inline,.mw... > [@](#): > > “The Marching Morons” is a science fiction story written by Cyril M. Kornbluth, originally published in Galaxy in April 1951. It was included in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two after being voted one of the best novellas up to 1965. > > The story is set hundreds of years in the future: the date is 7-B-936. John Barlow, a man from the past put into suspended animation by a freak accident involving a dental drill and anesthesia, is revived in this future. The world seems mad to Barlow until Tinny-Peete explains the Problem of Population: Due to a combination of intelligent people not having children and excessive breeding by less intelligent people, the world is full of morons, with the exception of an elite few who work slavishly to keep order. Barlow, who was a shrewd con man in his day, has a solution to sell to the elite. Is this a comment on Democracy? ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2011, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-science-fiction-fear-democracy/582719/24 "2011-05-22T12:14:46Z")
I think one of the most important themes of the new \*Battlestar Galactica \*was how democracies deal with times of extreme crisis - the most extreme crisis imaginable, in fact. Along the way, it dealt with the relationship between the government and the military, civil liberties during emergencies, with the balance between what the public needs to know and what it has the right to know, and how democratic leaders have to be dictators at heart in order to be able to do their jobs. Frankly, it dealt with these subjects as well as any other TV series ever has. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2011, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-science-fiction-fear-democracy/582719/25 "2011-05-22T12:48:36Z")
> [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](#): > > An opinion on the “Masses” in Science Fiction– > > [The Marching Morons - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons) > > Is this a comment on Democracy? The fear that the lower classes were outbreeding the elite goes back a century before Kornbluth. In America it was fueled by the increasing number of immigrants to the country, and became a major issue after immigration soared from the non-English speaking eastern and southern European countries. (In England, it pitted the lower classes against a faded aristocracy.) “Scientific” (i.e. bad science, sometimes outright faked) evidence about generations of inbred families, most famously the [Jukes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jukes_family) and the [Kalikaks](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kallikaks), creating large numbers of criminals and the “feeble-minded” convinced even rational people that nothing except forced sterilization could solve the problem. The whole eugenics movement of the early part of the 20th century was less about improving the upper classes than weeding out the lower classes. Movements started at the height of eugenics like [Technocracy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy_movement), a rationalized democracy controlled by scientists and engineers, became popular as a fix for the Depression. Technocracy was hugely influential among the first generation of Golden Age science fiction writers. Kornbluth, along with his sometimes partner Pohl, tended to satirize this thinking. But the satirists never have the power of the originals. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2011, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-science-fiction-fear-democracy/582719/26 "2011-05-22T13:13:25Z")
Two minor comments: On the Vorkosigan Saga: It started out as a TOS era fanfic. Beta is the Federation and Barrayar are TOS-era Klingons. It’s evolved considerably since then, but the roots do still show. On Harringtonverse: > [@aruvqan](#): > > The main enemy claims to be a republic but is more like the old Soviet Union, only one real party. It’s actually based on the pre-Napoleon French First Republic. You know, the Terror and all that. Rob S. Pierre, for crying out loud. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2011, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-science-fiction-fear-democracy/582719/27 "2011-05-22T13:29:55Z")
> [@E-Sabbath](#): > > Two minor comments: On the Vorkosigan Saga: It started out as a TOS era fanfic. Beta is the Federation and Barrayar are TOS-era Klingons. It’s evolved considerably since then, but the roots do still show. > > On Harringtonverse: > > It’s actually based on the pre-Napoleon French First Republic. You know, the Terror and all that. Rob S. Pierre, for crying out loud. I actually know that, but I have no idea of random people on the internet understand revolution era France. People in this time and place do understand soviet and single party … and if you like I can actually ask Lois if her universe started out as fanfic. Not sure if I can get her to join the dope and actually comment on here about it but you can join her mailing list and chat with her there, or on her list on the Baen boards. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2011, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-science-fiction-fear-democracy/582719/28 "2011-05-22T17:22:08Z")
Quoth **Exapno Mapcase** : > [@](#): > > Libertarianism is fundamentally incompatible with democracy. This is hardly surprising, given that libertarianism is fundamentally incompatible with libertarianism. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2011, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-science-fiction-fear-democracy/582719/29 "2011-05-22T20:14:40Z")
Jerry Pournelle is the kind of paleoconservative who does seem to have a problem with democracy as such (and probably laments the fall of Apartheid – even, one suspects, the fall of the British Empire). See [The Prince.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkenberg%27s_Legion) (Co-authored in part by S.M. Stirling.) The story of the Helots’ rebellion on Sparta is, as Pournelle states in the foreword, a study of Maoist low-intensity conflict from the POV of the state, i.e., how to defeat it. The Helots’ _casus belli_ is that on the planet Sparta, they have no votes – Sparta having an elaborate constitution designed by political scientists, so complex that even the heir to the throne once remarks, “I’d hate to have to explain how it works,” but one feature is that citizenship must be earned, by admission to a “phratry” and militia service, among other things; it is effectively impossible for first- or second-generation immigrants, of whom there are vast numbers. Notably – and quite preposterously, in light of the real-life history of struggles for franchise expansion – the Helots do not seem to have any **actual** grievance or suffer any socioeconomic disabilities just because of their exclusion from political participation. (Their only apparent ground for resentment is that many of them lived a cushy welfare-state existence on Earth (where “citizen” means “welfare bum” and the antonym is “taxpayer”) and then got deported to a planet where they are expected to work for a living; but none of the Helots’ leaders are making any promises to do anything about that.) In any case, the Helots are portrayed as Pure Evil – their leaders are cynical and amoral and power-mad, and all their followers are dupes and brutes. In the climax, there is a massive street-battle in the capital, in which the middle-class shopkeepers join forces with the elite and slaughter the lumpenprole Helots almost to the last man. The Middle and the High united against the Low in an utterly victorious war-to-the-knife. The pages of that scene fairly drip with Pournelle’s liberated semen. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2011, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-science-fiction-fear-democracy/582719/30 "2011-05-22T20:23:27Z")
> [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](#): > > Because blowing up the Death Star makes for a better story than a leading a voter registration drive. No one wants to hear a tale of the space battlestation that didn’t get built because of galactic congressional budget cuts. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2011, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-science-fiction-fear-democracy/582719/31 "2011-05-22T20:30:33Z")
> [@E-Sabbath](#): > > Two minor comments: On the Vorkosigan Saga: It started out as a TOS era fanfic. Beta is the Federation and Barrayar are TOS-era Klingons. It’s evolved considerably since then, but the roots do still show. This is incorrect. It’s a rumor that’s been kicking around the fan community for years, but has no basis in fact, and has been [repeatedly denied by Bujold:](http://lists.herald.co.uk/old-archives/lois-bujold/971016-918) > [@Lois Bujold](#): > > ``` > Now, this Star Trek thing. This is going to be the third time I have > > ``` > > knocked it on the head _this year_. It’s getting profoundly > irritating. _SoH is not now, and has never been, a Star Trek story._ > Six _years_ before I started writing it, to entertain myself driving to > work, I had worked out a vaguely ST-universe two > enemies-lost-on-planetside scenario. You have only my word for this, by > the way, as I am reporting on my private thoughts here. Nothing was > ever written. When I did sit down in 1982 to write my original novel, I > used some elements from this scenario in the opening chapters, while > also drawing on not less than my whole life and everything I’d learned > in it. By the time the first word hit paper, I wanted to write my _own_ > books, thank you very much. And I did. > > ``` > While I do not wish to gratuitously insult Trek fans -- I consider them > > ``` > > a potential market for character-centered action-adventure stories with > something of the same economic lust that early 20th Century > industrialists used to look on the population of China, if only I could > push my product across their mental barriers – the suggestion that one > is incapable of making up one’s own stories is perhaps the most deadly > insult you can level at a writer. Please refrain from doing so. And > when you encounter this Star Trek rumor again – and it seems to be > everywhere – kindly disabuse the perpetrators for me. I don’t seem to > be able to catch up with them all. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2011, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-science-fiction-fear-democracy/582719/32 "2011-05-22T21:00:41Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > No one wants to hear a tale of the space battlestation that didn’t get built because of galactic congressional budget cuts. Except in the SW Universe itself, where that would form a three-episode plot arc in the hip new holodrama about the hard-working, idealistic staffers in the West Wing of the Emperor’s Palace. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2011, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-science-fiction-fear-democracy/582719/33 "2011-05-22T21:30:08Z")
> [@installLSC](#): > > But it does seem sf tends to focus on dictatorships or monarchies. You don’t seem to see many stories where people worry about getting initiatives through legislatures or trying to sway public opinion. Actually, in A Civil Campaign you do see Miles and his croneys working to get 2 initiatives through the Council of Counts and various mentions throughout the series of various laws being worked on or discussed. In the Honor Harrington series there are occasional governmental things being touched on, especially once Honor ends up as part of her government, and subsidiary books dealing with the slave trade have a few scenes of people working on governmental issues, and in the Herris Serrano series there is actually one entire book of political shenanegans as the government essentially gets destroyed and they have to pick up the pieces and make it function [it is a fight between people who serieally rejuvenate and people who dont] > [@E-Sabbath](#): > > Two minor comments: On the Vorkosigan Saga: It started out as a TOS era fanfic. Beta is the Federation and Barrayar are TOS-era Klingons. It’s evolved considerably since then, but the roots do still show. LMB: Ah, this one again. There is just enough of a grain of truth under this that I can’t deny it outright, but the real story is rather more complex. The Vorkosiverse actually got its proto-start in the very first novelette that I wrote, “Dreamweaver’s Dilemma”, back in late 1982. It never sold at the time. (Later, it was printed in the Boskone SF convention souvenir collection _Dreamweaver’s Dilemma_ when I was GoH there in the mid-90’s.) Beta Colony and the Wormhole Nexus generally got its (somewhat off-stage) start in that tale, plus the history of jump ships, the initial colonization disapora from Earth, etc. Barrayar did not yet exist. Scratching around for what to write next, in December of 1982, I bethought me of a TOS scenario that I had made up to entertain myself while driving to work at OSU Hospitals at least five years prior. Which was, indeed, a female Federation officer and a Klingon captain (pre-ridged-rubber-heads; these were the old-style fuzzy-eyebrows morph) down on a hostile wilderness planet who had to cooperate to trek I-don’t-remember-where for I-don’t-remember-why; the mental movie was never written down. There was no more to it. Whether or not this long-vanished train of thought qualifies as “fanfic” seems to me a question for debate. By someone other than me. Walking around behind the notion of Klingons to the actual historical Earth militaristic cultures upon which they were based, I considered both European and Asian models, especially the samurai. A key work under this (besides a 3-volume history of early Japan I’d read back-when, and a history of the Meiji era) was _A Daughter of the Samurai_ (1928) by Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto, a memoir of a woman who was born just prior to the Meiji era as the daughter of a rural two-sword samurai, and who ended teaching Japanese at an eastern American university in the 1920’s. The notion of a planet with that sort of abrupt generational socio-political transition came from that reading. Lost colonies being an SF staple, one with such a traumatic rediscovery yielded my Barrayar pretty quickly. It slotted very neatly into my wormhole diaspora background from the novelette, Aral’s boots appeared in the mud in front of Cordelia’s nose, and the rest was, so to speak, future history. Note that the rest of the series, not to mention the rest of that book, was not yet in my mind: just getting to the end of My First Novel quite filled my plate. (Working title _Mirrors_, final title _Shards of Honor_ (1986)) You may copy and quote this in full if you wish. Ta, L. There are many reasons I love hanging out on a mailing list belonging to a favorite author, social conviviality with fellow readers aside, we frequently get into very long discussions about what is going through peoples minds as they read the books, and what the author had going through her mind writing them. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-science-fiction-fear-democracy/582719/34 "2011-05-23T00:04:26Z")
> [@aruvqan](#): > > and if you like I can actually ask Lois if her universe started out as fanfic. Not sure if I can get her to join the dope and actually comment on here about it but you can join her mailing list and chat with her there, or on her list on the Baen boards. You don’t have to. Firstly, it’s mildly obvious. Secondly, she already said as much in Dreamweaver’s Dilemma. I love her work, by the way, or I wouldn’t have made the effort of tracking that down. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-science-fiction-fear-democracy/582719/35 "2011-05-23T00:16:37Z")
Ah, yes. You actually did write to her. I thank you, and I ask you to pass along my admiration for her work and her style. God knows I can’t do it. I’ve tried. I can’t even do fanfic, it winds up flat and with a single voice. > [@](#): > > Which was, indeed, a female Federation officer and a Klingon captain (pre-ridged-rubber-heads; these were the old-style fuzzy-eyebrows morph) down on a hostile wilderness planet who had to cooperate to trek I-don’t-remember-where for I-don’t-remember-why; the mental movie was never written down. There was no more to it. Whether or not this long-vanished train of thought qualifies as “fanfic” seems to me a question for debate. By someone other than me. That’s where it started. It’s not a bad place to start, and it’s certainly different now. God knows I prefer it over TNG era Klingon inanity. It’s not that it is fanfic, it’s not that it has remained fanfic. It’s just that I can see the roots of it going back to a medical officer in a velour miniskirt and a noble Klingon officer fantasy. She gets the tone beautifully in Shards of Honor. Different, but both strong willed, but from different worlds entirely. So few people can pull that off. It’s like saying I can see the roots of the Federation series being based on Gibbons’ History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Or Battlestar Galactica in Mormon theology. Or, of course, Star Trek’s roots in Hornblower. It’s all but gone once Miles shows up. But the first bit, I can see the set and the uniforms and makeup. And I’m certainly not complaining at all. It just bleeds through a tiny bit, enough for me to see the old velour uniforms. (Feel free to share my statements with her, I hope she understands what I had to say is not disparagement or criticism.) ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-science-fiction-fear-democracy/582719/36 "2011-05-23T00:29:00Z")
And, in the spirit of the staircase, I should add that I hesitated between ‘drabble’, ‘fantasy’ and ‘fanfic’ in the original post, and chose ‘fanfic’ as the most respectful of the possibilities. Fantasy may have been more appropriate, but it struck me as slightly denigrating. Further, if you can convince her to join to post, even once, I would be delighted to fork over for a year’s membership for her. (It is as close as I can come to a palanquin littered with rosepetals, in this curs’d electronic format.) Not that you should make any effort that way, simply that if she is so inclined, I state I shall do such a thing and am willing to be called on it. ---
**Author:** ![ENugent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/4af34b/32.png) [@ENugent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ENugent)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-science-fiction-fear-democracy/582719/37 "2011-05-23T00:32:06Z")
> [@installLSC](#): > > And if not, what good sf could you recommend that does focus on the democratic method? Heinlein’s _Double Star_ is pretty much all about democratic politics (in a constitutional monarchy). ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-science-fiction-fear-democracy/582719/38 "2011-05-23T00:36:50Z")
There seems to be a lack of balanced, constitutional democracy in most SF, there is democracy ,yes., but they are pathetic, cowardly, defeatist, idiots as in Star Trek or the New Republic in Star Wars, high ineffective as in the Old Republic in Star Wars and generally has a “mob” comparble in intelligence to the worst of the Third World dictatorships. Apparently even though technology has massively advanced the average man has become more and more ignorant. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-science-fiction-fear-democracy/582719/39 "2011-05-23T00:39:56Z")
For content, I’ll agree that Eric Flint’s 1632 series is entirely within the realm of science fiction. Social science rather than hard science, but science nonetheless. Make a thing happen, have the happening event be the focus of the story, see what happens next. At least as much as Asimov’s Nightfall is. Just because it’s an alternate past doesn’t knock it out of the running at all. And god knows it’s all about small town politics, county wide politics, small country politics, and empire-wide politics… even military politics at some points. I adore it. And it’s very pro-democracy. > **[Eric Flint](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Flint)** > > Eric Flint (February 6, 1947 – July 17, 2022) was an American author, editor, and e-publisher. The majority of his main works are alternate history science fiction, but he also wrote humorous fantasy adventures. His works have been listed on The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Locus magazine best seller lists. He was a co-founder and editor of the Baen Free Library. > Born in 1947 in Burbank, California, Flint worked on a Ph.D. in history specializing in southe... I think it’s harder to write democracy well. You can write about a small group of people easily, but mass movements and backbench fighting all at once can be a pain in the rear on anything short of a thousand page scale. Especially if you’re trying to cover anything else, like a heroic battle against evil. The 1632 series focuses on democracy _as_ a battle against darkness and repression, so it works well there. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-science-fiction-fear-democracy/582719/40 "2011-05-23T01:01:52Z")
There used to be a theory that transportation and communications technology would limit the number of people, and the amount of territory, that could be effectively governed by a democracy. If the polity got above that limit, then the ability to respond quickly to a crisis would take priority over the legislative and bureaucratic niceties. This idea gave a quick, simplistic explanation for why Rome went from republic to empire, and why China had never been a republic. A galaxy-spanning civilization would certainly be over such a limit. Also, there is an element of wish-fulfillment in a lot of science fiction. If your hero rescues The Galactic Emperor’s daughter from the space pirates, he can be rewarded much more lavishly than if he rescues some prime minister’s daughter. This is not unique to science fiction, by the way. A whole lot of romance novels are set in 17th Century to 19th Century Europe, and their heroes are often titled aristocrats. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-science-fiction-fear-democracy/582719.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-science-fiction-fear-democracy/582719.md?page=3)