The Prince (anthology)

The Prince is a science fiction anthology compiled by Jerry Pournelle and S. M. Stirling, belonging to the CoDominium future history series. Baen Books released it as a hardcover in September 2002 (ISBN 0-7434-3556-7). The volume brings together four novels that had been published earlier: *Falkenberg's Legion*, *Prince of Mercenaries*, *Go Tell The Spartans*, and *Prince of Sparta*. Pournelle wrote the first two novels alone; Stirling co-authored the last two. Pages 174 through 176 of the printed edition contain material new to this collection. The book’s title and themes draw from Niccolò Machiavelli’s *The Prince*.

The CoDominium is a formal but uneasy alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union, controlling Earth and pursuing a cynical, hegemonistic foreign policy toward other nations and off-world colonies. The stories take place between the 2060s and the 2090s. Humanity has developed interstellar travel via the Alderson Drive and colonized many planets outside the Solar System, either settling them directly or terraforming them with an unspecified Terraforming Package that makes alien worlds support Terran life—from bacteria to humans. A recurring theme is the CoDominium’s policy of shipping large numbers of voluntary and involuntary colonists from Earth to these planets. The involuntary colonists, accustomed to a welfare state existence in government ghettos called “Welfare Islands,” where drugs, alcohol, and entertainment are funded by productive “Taxpayers,” often cause trouble. The Bureau of Relocation (“BuReLock”) forcibly transports them to colony worlds to reduce Earth’s population, where they gather in cities and shantytowns, reverting to parasitic or criminal behavior. While some convicts and involuntary transportees assimilate, most band together against the original colonists. Political parties form to demand a consumer-oriented welfare state, ostensibly for social fairness but actually advancing the welfare state at the expense of responsible citizens. This welfare state requires cheap energy, consumer industry, and an unrealistically large tax base. Productive members of each planet’s society resent the encroachments and banditry that force them to yield lands or businesses they worked hard to establish.

Pournelle explores the soldier’s dilemma of obeying orders without regard for the consequences to colony populations.