Space Opera Fans discussion

In a lot of military SF there’s a war but no explanation of what triggered it, or else just “the enemy attacked us”. Better world building gives a believable motivation.

In one of Weber’s Call To books the motivation is just plain greed. Manticore has something that the enemy wants. In one of his Honor Harrington books the enemy has economic issues and starts a war in hopes of uniting the populace against outsiders instead of against their own government. I’ve seen variations of each of those in many books.

In Family Law by Mackey Chandler, a war is triggered for a more unusual reason. (view spoiler)[A human girl was adopted by a Derf, but while tourists in California, a prejudiced judge removes her from his custody. This breaks the treaty with the Derf, and nobody overrules the judge. So the Derf declares war but the humans think that’s a joke. They were sooooooo wrong.... (hide spoiler)]

So do you know of a book with an unusual motivation for war?

Is that so different from the world we live in?

There are conflicts all over the planet. Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa, the list goes on in on.

Many of the actors in these area would be hard pressed to provide an explanation as to what triggered it.

That may be because War is a Racket

As the old song goes, "We didn't start the fire, it was always burning, since the world was burning."

There's the old favourite from The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

The Vl'Hurg and the G'Gugvant restarting their centuries old war because Arthur Dent's "I seem to be having this tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle." was the vilest insult imaginable in the Vl'Hurg language.

In Stephen Baxter's Xeelee books, humanity goes to war against the titular aliens partly out of general xenophobia (humanity having been conquered by and freed itself from two other groups of aliens earlier in the series' timeline) but also because it is believed that the Xeelee's gargantuan construction, Bolder's Ring (a spinning ring of cosmic string millions of light years across, forming a singularity at its centre) is wrecking the universe. In fact the Ring is an "escape hatch" built by the Xeelee to travel to other universes because they are losing a much greater war with a race of dark matter aliens known as "photino birds".

James White has battles and wars triggered by cultural misunderstanding though the war, the major battle of which takes place at Sector General Hospital, is started by greedy politicians making use of cultural misunderstanding.

I strongly suspect that most wars against aliens are going to be either greed or culture clashes (misunderstandings or just calling the other guys practice of doing X inhumane/illegal). A lot of that is mirrored in wars here on earth of course.

Oh and revolutions of course.

Like the conflict in Gulliver's Travels where the two groups have a religious difference over which end of an egg you should eat from, most reasons can be traced back to something stupid.

I live in Washington State and we learn about a fight between the British in Canada and the young Americans over a pig.

Teresa wrote: "In a lot of military SF there’s a war but no explanation of what triggered it, or else just “the enemy attacked us”. Better world building gives a believable motivation.

In one of Weber’s Call To ..."

I think the real motivation for war in most cases is the desire of the ruling class to entrench their power over their domestic serf population, and creating fear is a good way to trigger primitive instincts that overrule natural caution and enhance the solidarity of the herd. Most of the time 'resources' or 'we were attacked' is an excuse, and isn't even true. There are also secondary parasites who benefit from this in the form of military contracts, control over resources in conquered territories, etc. However I don't think most science fiction writers (or historians) have quite a cynical a view as I do of politics and the true nature of government, so they tend to go with 'resources' and 'space'. This is extremely problematic.

It is so expensive to go into space and actually do anything there that almost nothing that's there could be worth fighting over, and if you had the capability of fighting over it on any scale and at any speed you could basically manufacture stars and convert any element to any other element for cheaper. This is not an exaggeration. 'Resources' is not a believable space McGuffin, even if it's extremely common. It's not all that believable on Earth, for that matter, but at least it's not quite as absurdly disproportionate.

Space is similarly problematic. Earth already could fit everyone in Texas with almost an acre to themselves. Between the Earth and the Moon there are several dozen Earths worth of space, actually much greater since these are total voids and not just the surface area we live on. And if you can go into space you can build massive space habitats far more cheaply than you could fly star to star and fight over paltry little planetoids and such rubbish.

What I believe to be the true motive of war - ruling class ambition, wealth transfer within the native populations, and ape-like tribal atavism - is actually a believable explanation for space war when these 'default' explanations really make no sense.