"No Truce With Kings" is a

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

novella by American writer

Poul Anderson Poul William Anderson (November 25, 1926 – July 31, 2001) was an American fantasy and science fiction author who was active from the 1940s until the 21st century. Anderson wrote also historical novels. His awards include seven Hugo Awards and ...

. It won the Hugo Award for Best Short Fiction in 1964, and the

Prometheus Award The Prometheus Award is an award for libertarian science fiction novels given annually by the Libertarian Futurist Society. American author and activist L. Neil Smith established the award in 1979, but it was not awarded regularly until the newl ...

for Classic Fiction (the Hall of Fame award) in 2010. The title is taken from Rudyard Kipling's poem "The Old Issue" (1899), in which kings represent tyranny or other forms of imposed rule, to be fought to preserve hard-won individual freedoms.

Plot

In a

post-apocalyptic Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction in which the Earth's (or another planet's) civilization is collapsing or has collapsed. The apocalypse event may be climatic, such as runaway climate change; ast ...

United States, the Pacific States of America are racked by wars backed on one side by the "Espers", a movement claiming their followers achieve great

psychic A psychic is a person who claims to use extrasensory perception (ESP) to identify information hidden from the normal senses, particularly involving telepathy or clairvoyance, or who performs acts that are apparently inexplicable by natural laws ...

powers. However, as we shall see, the Espers are a front for a weirder bunch. The story explores a couple of social forms -- feudal and super-state -- and warns of the dangers of forced civilizations. It begins on the east coast of the Pacific. After civilizational collapse following global wars, the area is traveled by independent clans with a few minor marxists claiming moral superiority by pretending to be centralized government agents. Suddenly, another war is started by the marxists in their drive to replace the independent clans with more/better centralized government agents. Unknown to the marxists, forces behind the scenes manipulate their flawed elections system through the "esper" colonies. Eventually, the clans realize the "espers" are a fraud; they use advanced technology to perform their 'psychic' acts. Knowing this, the inherent superiority of the independent clans inevitably defeats the marxist quest for a big top-heavy unwieldy mob of centralized government agents. In downtown San Francisco, artillery damage reveals the secret -- a San Francisco skyscraper houses an alien spacecraft. The aliens claim they are manipulating independent human individuals into a drone-like state of mindlessly following dictates from centralized government agents. Without help from the aliens, the aliens predict more wars between centralized government agents. After learning their interference resulted in wars, the aliens shrug their alien shoulders and admit they are still 'working out some kinks' in their alien predictions. Discussions between a) independent folks and b) true believers in centralised authorities distill the points of the parable: * individuals always think, * individuals always choose their culture instead of mindlessly accepting any artificial concept imposed by an outside group. According to Jerry Pournelle's foreword in " ''Day of the Tyrant: There Will Be War vol IV'' ", Poul Anderson says "The do-gooders get their comeuppance".

Reception

Algis Budrys Algirdas Jonas "Algis" Budrys (January 9, 1931 – June 9, 2008) was a Lithuanian-American science fiction author, editor, and critic. He was also known under the pen names Frank Mason, Alger Rome (in collaboration with Jerome Bixby), Jo ...

faulted the story as "a-flicker with confusing scene changes ndstuffed with narrative compressions and a pale army of sketched characters," suggesting Anderson's conception required lengthier treatment to be successful."Galaxy Bookshelf," ''Galaxy'', February 1965, p.155. However, other critical and fan acclaim is positive with the work winning the year's Hugo award.

References

External links

* {{Hugo Award Best Short Story 1961–1980 1963 short stories Novellas by Poul Anderson Hugo Award for Best Short Story winning works Post-apocalyptic short stories Works originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction