Formula IN SPACE!

        The first few chapters of Andrew Moriarty's Trans-Galactic Insurance: Adventures of Jump Space Accountant resembles nothing so much as the first three issues or episodes of a mini-series which one would drop and later, after the series was complete, revisit now that one understood the importance of the interminable exposition to a serviceable but hardly exciting mystery. The initial reference to Belters suggested a story that was Solar rather than Galactic. The characters were sufficiently fleshed out to serve the plot but scarcely more than that, as is common espionage plots. The implication of a plucky girl who aids the protagonist also being a minor in modern Western sensibilities, and therefore a nod to Heinleinian heroine, was well executed by a single line. The portrayal of the ideal spy as too boring to cause casual notice was a relief from the flashy action heroes of so much science fiction.

               The greatest blemish in the plot-driven world-building is the use of the term ‘credit’ as a basic fiat unit of currency in a book starring an accountant investigating fraud! I realize that credit is a generic science-fictional unit of currency, but one would think that a story about financial fraud would be more aware of the specific financial meaning of credit and debit in balancing accounts. It is not that Moriarty should have chosen some exotic name for the currency, such as ‘quatloos'; but he should have used something other than ‘credits’ when the fictional economy uses a double-entry system. This must be the way that physicists and engineers feel about gross ‘errors’ in other science fiction novels. If you are looking for a series that begins with a space-based human civilization cut off from its parent, you should go read John Scalzi’s latest series, The Interdependency Trilogy, instead.

The Gilded Lily and the Golden As

[Note: Yes, I am using man meaning male; yes, it is a deliberate choice given the assumed audience.]

The Roman empire was built on military might and sound infrastructure, but monetary policy was not an area in which the Romans excelled (they probably farmed it out to the Greeks).. The Emperors had no budget - even if your idea of acquiring money is to take it at sword point from peasants, it is useful to know how much you can extract this year without having your sources dry up the next. The Empire did not understand this. When the Emperors needed more money, they made more money. The result was what one would expect from a basic knowledge of economic theory: inflation. When the Emperors discovered that make more money had not made them richer, and after they had failed to learn this lesson multiple times, they debased the currency: they used their dwindling supplies of the metals from which the coins had been wholly made in earlier eras and substituted a cheaper metal for the interior while coating the outside with the more precious metal. These later coins, although they looked the same, were not the same: gilded is not the same as golden, brazen not the same as bronze.

We use the word currency not only in reference to money, but to the qualities of men as well. An unearned award is like the gilding over the lead inside; rather than reflecting the accomplishments of the man who wears it, it deceives the world and misleads the public to believe that there is something of value where there is mostly dross. But coins and individuals do not exist in isolation. Once there are gilded coins mixed in with the golden ones, shrewd individuals will soon suspect that even the golden ones might be gilded. Once that suspicion has found fertile soil in the minds of men, the value of all the coins are reduced in the markets. It is likewise with virtue or character: it is hard won, but easily lost. The corruption of the individual, though it may often be invisible from the outside or to the unpracticed eye, once known, raises suspicions that other individuals who are in fact golden may be in truth gilded. And while in some cases this may be true, it is a human weakness to generalize from the worst to the entire group.

Thus a group which openly proclaims that its awards reflect moral values and are testaments of character must be vigilant against the debasement of its highest awards. It is far easier for the value of a coin or a medallion to be tarnished than for it to recover its former value. The latter may not be possible; then something which was bright and glorious has become sordid and stained, and the sublime reduced to the profane.