PROLOGUE
“Listen, are we helpless? Are we doomed to do it again and again and again? Have we no choice but to play the Phoenix in an unending sequence of rise and fall? Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, Rome, the Empires of Charlemagne and the Turk: Ground to dust and plowed with salt. Spain, France, Britain, America—burned into the oblivion of the centuries. And again and again and again. Are we doomed to it, Lord, chained to the pendulum of our own mad clockwork, helpless to halt its swing? This time, it will swing us clean to oblivion.”
– A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. (1959).
Miller's vision of an apocalyptic world nearly became all too real when the Pan-Asian Union declared war on the Russian Confederation in 1996. Viewed through the lens of history, the specific reasons for this conflict, which we now call the Last War, now seem petty and spiteful. What remains clear is that both sides welcomed the war at first. Sadly, as weapons and armies of unparalleled destructive power were unleashed, the social and economic collapse of these regions resulted in a global economic depression. This, in turn, prompted many other countries to scramble for what resources they could, fanning many regional conflicts and much more bloodshed. Years of warfare including fallout from limited nuclear strikes proved to be the final nail in the coffin for the natural environment. As crops failed year after year due to nuclear winter and the oceans themselves yielded only a fraction of the sustenance they once did, millions, then hundreds of millions of people died due to starvation. Many hundreds of millions more died due to exposure or disease (particularly the gruesome Red Plague), or were preyed upon by military forces that had in many cases been reduced to roving bands of armed marauders. By 2006, when most of the combatant nations were so far shattered that no semblance of government remained, more than 6 billion people lay dead.
Had the damage been just a touch more destructive, humanity's recovery might very well have taken the hundreds of years that Mr. Miller had imagined in his story. Fortunately, pockets of civilization remained. In North America, California and Texas fared the best, as both states were too populous, too powerful, and too well-armed for most contenders to try and subdue. In the north, Alaska and the Northwest Territories emerged with some semblance of civilization due to their isolation. In Asia, Nepal shut its mountainous borders to all and no one dared to come take them. Island nations such as Australia, New Zealand, and Taiwan also tended to fare better. Amazingly, both the British Isles and Japan survived with approximately 15% of their pre-war populations, a miracle in that age. In the Chinese industrial city of Guangzhou a warlord styling himself as a benevolent dictator ruled over two million ragged survivors. In Africa, the island of Madagascar survived nearly untouched; any boat that approached within 200 miles was sunk, any plane that approached their airspace was shot down. South America and the Middle East fared the worst, however, each having been reduced to a charnel house.
In the end, it took nearly twenty years for the remaining governments to resume a meaningful level of cooperation. Tired to no end of war, most of the world voluntarily banded together in a cooperative agreement that, by 2025, was formalized as the Terran Republic. The most notable concept of the Republic is the concept of Citizenship. While basic rights such as life, liberty, and freedom from persecution are granted to all, other rights must be earned. Full Citizenship is only granted after a long period of voluntary civic, military, or governmental service. This is not to say that Civilians can't enjoy fruitful lives or rise positions of prominence, quite the contrary. However, unlike Civilians, Citizens may vote in elections, run for public office, and may have more than two children, among many other privileges. It should be noted that a Military career, in particular, is pursued in conjunction with the ultimate goal of Citizenship. The path to Citizenship, although certainly not impossible, is highly challenging. Thus, roughly only 20% of the population can claim Citizenship at any given time.
Meanwhile, the damaged Earth has slowly recovered. Vast areas that had succumbed to rampant human habitation are now again overgrown wilderness, and the eerie, ruined cities are home to all manner of flora and fauna. Vast areas of farmland throughout the world have reverted to prairie or are being reclaimed by forest. In North America, the first great Bison migrations in nearly two hundred years have been observed.
Historians generally agree that only three good things resulted from the Last War.
First, there has been a general acceptance that humans are, under certain circumstances, selfish, short-sighted, and adversarial. This has prompted a widespead social awakening in regard to how each individual may overcome, or at least channel in a positive way, these primal behaviors. The popular view is that only in doing so may each person grow as an individual and thus also as a member of society. Most people are deeply vested in improving themselves in meaningful ways.
Second, most people now reject the view that humans have the right to simply take whatever they want from the natural environment with no regard for the future. Far from being lip service, participation in conservation and environmental restoration are viewed as important pursuits for Citizens and Civilians alike.
Thirdly, just before society ground to a halt, the military advancements of the Last War resulted in an entirely new area of science called Trans-Newtonian Theory. Intially developed with the goal of projecting missiles to targets on the other side of the globe in minutes rather than hours, Trans-Newtonian technologies thankfully never entered service during that conflict. However, decades of peacetime research have finally yielded amazing results: a simple Trans-Newtonian shuttlecraft can now reach the Moon in less time than it once took to fly a jetliner from Denver to Atlanta, while the most humble spacetug can make the trip to Mars in less than a day. Most importantly, it also granted humanity the technology needed to detect jump points.
By 2027 humanity had colonized Mars, and by 2035 the first extrasolar colony on Horizon had been founded. In 2047, the fledgling Terran Republic, just emerging from the ravages of the Last War, finds itself reaching out with a sense of newfound wonder and hope into a dark, mysterious cosmos.
