It isn’t possible to have equality. It’s been tried again and again in history, giving everybody a vote, and it’s always failed—always, in a few gene… - Poul Anderson

I walk beyond town, many of these nights, to stand under the high autumnal stars, look upward and wonder.

I was trying to avoid the cliché all too common in science fiction, even today, of a whole population feeling itself oppressed and waiting only for a leader to rise in a body against its overlords. No government for which that was actually the case could last a minute. There must always be a majority who have some stake in things as they are, whether that stake consist of wealth and power or simply of law, order, and predictability. Moreover, most people cannot really imagine any system working which is very different from the one they are used to. Hence they find rationalizations for it. Even slaves often do this.

Holger wished he had read the old tales more closely; he had only a dim childhood recollection of them.