The System Works: Five SFF Organizations and Institutions Worth Defending

[james_davis_nicoll]

Not all systems and bureaucracies are corrupt.

The System Works: Five SFF Organizations and Institutions Worth Defending

Comments

[james_davis_nicoll]

Tor dot com article 549, 2025 article 18

451 articles to go to article 1000.

[dragoness_e]

The Lensmen were defined by the author as being incorruptible. They also exist in a deterministic universe where eugenics is a good thing, so reality got left behind in Doc Smith's space opera early on.

[armiphlage]

The Commonweal (and Second Commonweal) has a robust bureaucracy necessary to mitigate an excessive number of existential threats.

https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/series/commonweal

[oh6]

Galfed's various bureaucracies seem to work pretty well. Often enough things do go pretty seriously awry with various colonization projects, but they're pretty diligent about cleaning up in the event. I may have wondered before how Kinnear compares with Kiku.

The bureaucracy of the Middle Roman Empire in Peregrine: Secundus seems pretty benign. It may in fact be pretty crooked, but it's in the service of implementing Julian the Apostate's liberalization of religion.

I ought to try reading Becoming Alien at some point.

[(Anonymous)]

Reynolds' Panoply (in the Prefect series) seems to have good goals, and a majority of staff working towards those goals.

Stross's Commonwealth Guards seem to have their heads on straight as well, though their level of power makes one nervous

[dwight_benjamin_thieme]

I can't recall the name of the story, possibly by Eric Frank Russell or Matt Reynolds wherein a fresh young recruit is inducted into an elite government agency whose mission was removing outside 'agitators' who interfering with local politics in a very non-Prime Directive sort of way. Their mission was to track down and capture the elusive blighter a.k.a. 'Tommy Paine'. Turns out they - the elite agency that is - were the interfering do-badder 'Tommy Paine'. Can anyone identify this one? As a tween, I wasn't a terribly critical reader and the subtext went clean over my oblivious little head. Years later, it came as a lighter take on the events in The Quiet American. And when I say 'lighter' I mean Doctor Demento demented.

[ba_munronoe]

Ultima Thule

[dwight_benjamin_thieme]

Thanks! I knew it had to be either a Reynolds or a Russell or some pastiche.

[(Anonymous)]

Sector General, created by James White, seems to have its shit together most of the time, providing medical care across many species, and, as far as I can tell, free of charge. They don't even charge for the interstellar ambulance ride. ☺️

-Awesome Aud