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general media World Governments In Sci-Fi: Are They Overdone?


Denim&Venöm

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Seems like every depiction of humanity has one unified government. UNSC for Halo. Systems Alliance for Mass Effect. Earth Alliance for Babylon 5. Earth Federation for Mobile Suit Gundam. You get the idea. One government representing all of humanity and it's diverse peoples, nations, cultures and ideologies. And it's not just humanity. Just about every alien race is presented with a unified government on a planet wide scale.

Has this trope been done too often? Would it make more sense for individual nations to begin their own interstellar agendas before considering the rest of the world? Is competition and conflict between nations, factions and opposing cultures within a species not been explored enough in Sci-Fi?  

 

 

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I think it’s not just overdone, but ultimately impracticable. People don’t get along well, and future people will be no exception. Depending on the level of technology, fragmentary governments and independent colonies would not at all surprise me. In fact, that is part of why the Spartans of the Halo universe were created was to repress rebellion and secession on further out colonies.

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34 minutes ago, Denim&Venom said:

Has this trope been done too often? Would it make more sense for individual nations to begin their own interstellar agendas before considering the rest of the world? Is competition and conflict between nations, factions and opposing cultures within a species not been explored enough in Sci-Fi? 

I think the problem is that space is an unusually unique barrier that doesn't favor constant fighting. It could in the far off future with enough colonized worlds I suppose, but only after a point where most of the "want" has been eliminated. And with the removal of "want" also removes a lot of the reasons for war. It's much harder to visualize war in a more realistic space universe because cooperation to become a spacefaring race in the first place is almost definitely a necessity otherwise nobody would ever get off the planet without being taken out first (and also, Kessler syndrome would put such a dense debris field around the Earth that nothing would survive orbit). Space magics that make things far easier for such scenarios, such as warp drive and shields typically don't become a thing until AFTER we've been out there for a while.

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