Forward
The critical decades following World War III were years of chaos and stubborn courage. Looking back across the millennia at the colossal challenge our twentieth-century ancestors faced, we must salute the sacrifices they made to restore their shattered world. While mourning the follies of violent ages gone by, we humans can take pride in this: after each disaster, our species keeps on striving, like a trampled plant once more struggling towards the sun.
Of course in this case as in all cases timing as well as determination influenced the outcome of events. If World War III had erupted much later than 1958, perhaps no amount of heroism could have saved civilization from extinction. As it was, the East-West exchange of “nuclear Christmas presents” left key areas of both sides in radioactive ashes. Local wars followed global war; plagues succeeded famine. Civilization spun down toward darkness.
The first spark of hope kindled in Europe when Valti’s theories of sociosymbolic logic proved themselves in practice. We who take psychodynamics as much for granted as hyperlight physics may find it difficult to appreciate what those first crude equations meant. No longer would we stumble through each day as it came; the future could be adjusted to fit the common good. To insure this happy outcome, the Psychotechnic Institute was founded. It became the self-appointed torchbearer for our race.
The United Nations, revived by the First Conference of Rio in 1965, was an effective instrument for putting the Institute’s discoveries into action. This intimate and largely fruitful collaboration continued for more than a century. Together the Institute and the world organization presided over the rehabilitation of Earth.
Their first task was to preserve the hard-won peace. Our initial volume, The Psychotechnic League, recounts four significant episodes in the process. Guided by the new social science, men with “dirty hands and clean weapons” destroyed potential dictators before irreparable harm was done. Sacrificing the few today on behalf of the many tomorrow was the ethic that shaped an era.
With the return of peace came plenty. Once people could safely grow food and produce goods again, output surpassed all expectation. Automated equipment compensated for population loss. Pent up demand following decades of want sent the postwar economy soaring. The need for alternative energy sources to replace those ruined by the war was met by solar power and synthetic fuels with superdielectrics for storage. Once power-beaming satellites went into orbit, Earth’s energy worries seemed over.
Earth grew green again. There was a keen, well-nigh universal desire to preserve whatever beauty the war had spared and restore what it had ravished. Acute ecological awareness would soon inspire foundation of the Pancosmic religion, a faith that continues to attract many adherents, human and nonhuman alike.
Zeal for reclamation plus the practical experience gained from building undersea settlements prepared Earthlings to colonize the Solar System. Soon domed cities rose on Luna, the asteroids, and even distant Ganymede. Bold terraforming schemes made Venus and Mars habitable after nearly a century of heartbreaking toil. The independent Order of Planetary Engineers (originally the UN’s Planetary Engineering Corps) distinguished itself in all these projects but the “enterprise beyond the sky” was truly a species-wide concern. Mere survival did not suffice: Mankind was out to leave its mark on the universe.
But the Psychotechnic Institute foresaw that this burst of energy would fade. Remolding worlds was simpler than remodeling humanity. While continuing to chart and influence the behavior of whole societies, the Institute also experimented with individuals. For a time, an elaborate holistic conditioning system known as Tighe Synthesis seemed an excellent way to maximize human potential. Although a few receptive subjects benefited from the training, this promising discovery was never widely applied. Not only was it impractical to condition the entire population adequately, the process put too much power in the hands of the conditioners.
Yet despite its shortcomings, the science of psychodynamics was our margin of survival. Institute-trained personnel were indispensable in that first critical century following World War II. Foremost among these heroes were the UN-Men cloned from a maquis named Stefan Rostomily. (Humble, gifted, and steadfast, the Rostomily Brotherhood was destined to outlast the Institute that had created it.) United Nations agents were everywhere in those days but perhaps their most admirable feat—one which redounded to the Institute’s credit—was the liberation of Venus from a bleak Stalinist tyranny in 2065. With the collective state gone, the colonists speedily developed a fiercely parochial clan-based society whose romantic folkways were celebrated in popular entertainment for generations afterwards. Political historians still analyze Venus as an experiment in local autonomy.
By the opening of the twenty-second century, the Psychotechnic Institute’s power and prestige reached their zenith. The bright future it had planned for humanity seemed inevitable. High technology was triumphant. The blessings of the Second Industrial Revolution were available to all. No one went hungry or homeless anymore. Work had become a privilege instead of an obligation. From sophisticated Earthlings to roughneck colonial, mankind shared a common, semantically rigorous language called Basic. The space navy of the newly formed Solar Union stood guard from Venus to the Belt. The New Enlightenment bathed Sol’s children in the cool radiance of reason.
But there were shadows . . .