Will Linden <-- redeacted --> writes: > On Mon, 2 Jun 1997, David Johnson wrote: > > > Yes. The question would seem to be then, who was this war between? In > > "Edge of the Knife" Piper tells us (through Chalmers) that there was a > > "unified world" in the period 2050-2070 AD (109-129 AE) with colonies on > > the Moon and Mars. This is a century after the Thirty Days War. Carr > > locates the demise of the First Federation and the formation of the Second > > Federation in 2125 AD (183 AE), nine years after Venus secedes from the > > First Federation. Was this the war, an interplanetary one? It must have > > been pretty gruesome to wipe out civilization in the Northern Hemisphere-- > > and it must have set back the pace of interplanetary (and interstellar?) > > expansion quite a bit. What are the relevant citations for all of this? > > In ULLER UPRISING there is discussion of how Little Boy-type fission > weapons went out of use. "There had been the H-bomb, itself obsolescent, > and the Bethe-cycle bomb [I think this comes back into use in the Space > Viking era], and the subneutron bomb, and the omega-ray bomb, and the > nega-matter bomb, and then the end of civilization in the Northern > Hemisphere and the rise of the new civilization in South America and South > Africa and Australia." This also fits the ethnic background of most of the > human characters. If the war was fought with anti-matter bombs, no wonder > northern civilization died. (I suspect Melbourne and Sydney must have been > pasted too, for Adelaide to become the academic center.) Yeah, I think it's pretty clear the Northern Hemisphere was devastated and "civilization" survived and grew from the Southern Hemisphere after that. The question is, I guess, just *when* and *between whom* "that* was. :) > Later we hear of "the old U.S. data that General Lanningham brought to > South America after the debacle in the United States in A.E. 114." I would > assume that 2055 was quite a bit after the Thirty Days War and the other > achievements of the Hartley administration. Yeah, but it's also in the period when Chalmers sees "a unified world" (2050- 2070 AD), so this "debacle" must not have led to war. > There is also a mention that Buenos Aires was nuked by terrorists in AE > 378. Hmm, that's well into the period of the Second Federation. I was looking through "When in the Course--" last night and one of the characters there mentioned fighting horse-mounted "barbarians" in Eurasia as part of a "reclamation effort" following the "Atomic Wars." Most of the characters are Southern Hemisphereans--or Venusian colonists. One character (a Terran) even mentions having difficulty using the "Atomic Era" dating system (he's still used to the Christian Era system) even though it's used exclusively by the Venusian colonists. In the "Chronology" in *Empire*, Carr places the secession of Venus from the First Federation and the formation of the Second Federation in the period c174-183 AE (2116-2125 AD). So it seems to me there are two likely possibilites: either the "Atomic Wars" that devastated the Northern Hemisphere were some sort of "civil war" in this period (and Venus bailed on the Federation to avoid being drawn into the war) or else it was a "war of independence" for Venus (and possibly other colonies on Mars and maybe Luna). David Johnson Net: -- redeacted -- Rockville, Maryland, North America Web: http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~david -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Visit *Melbourne Times* and the Earth Colonies Campaign Home Page URL: http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~david/Melbourne