Monument
Lloyd Biggle
173 pages
published in 1974

It's been a while since I'd read any of Lloyd Biggle's novels; the last one had been The World Menders back in 2007. I've always liked his writing, quietly liberal and anti-colonialist in a way that few other science fiction authors of his generation were. His belief in the idea that "democracy imposed from without is the severest form of tyranny" seemed especially apt during the darkest days of War Against Terror triumphalism. He is however, not a writer much read these days, having done the bulk of his writing in the sixties and seventies. He died relatively recently, in 2002, after a long illnes, having written only some six novels since the seventies.

Science fiction is often an imperialist, colonialist genre, in which it's taken as natural or even desirable for there to be a galactic imperium to which newly discovered worlds should be gently or firmly -- depending on the author's preference -- be persuaded to join. Sometimes this is dressed up as the need to avoid interstellar wars and even in stories with a Galactic Federation rather than an empire the need for newly discovered worlds to be assimilated is rarely questioned. Not so with Lloyd Biggle; several of his books question this mentality and Monument is one of them. Taken its lead from what was happening in e.g. Polynesia at the time, it's an sfnal attack on ill considered economic development imposed from the outside.

It all starts with tramp scout Cern Obrien, who finally struck lucky when he found a deposit of retron crystals, essential for interstellar space travel. But before he could get it back to civilisation however he had to crashland on an uncharted planet, a planet that turned out to already be inhabited by the descendents of a long lost expedition. Though inhabitable by humans, the ecosystem is largely incompatible with human life, making agriculture and the like impossible. The only way they can subsist is on a diet of koluf, a large predatory marine animal, whose meat is edible only after a long purification process. That and a few roots and berries is all that can be eaten on the planet.

Nevertheless, though its inhabitants do live on the edge of starvation when a hunt is unsuccessfull, they live a largely happy and peaceful life. Especially after Obrien manages to introduce some improvements to their hunting techniques, bringing them into the bronze ages. As the Langri, their beloved hero, he lived a long and happy life but now coming to the end of it he worries about the inevitable contact with galactic civilisation. But luckily he has a plan and he spents the last years of his life teaching the natives it, especially his great grandson, Fornri and his helper, Dalla.

Sure enough, some time after his death, the planet, now christened Langri, is contacted and sure enough once it's realised how desirable Langri is, plans are made to turn it into a tourist planet, something which would destroy the natives' lifestyle. Any tourism would destroy the koluf population through pollution and hunting and doom the natives to starvation. But they're not worried, they got the Plan their Langri left them and Fornri is determined to follow it to the letter, to the consternation of their allies among the galactics. It all ends well of course.

What's so likeable about Monument is that it is a story with a villain, Wembling, but not an evil person, just somebody who lets his greed overwhelm him, who still thinks what he does will not only benefit himself but the natives too, ignoring any evidence to the contrary. Wembling's not out to harm them, he just doesn't understand why they oppose him. And while the Galactic Federation is corrupt in some ways and he's able to use that corrupt, it's not so corrupt that it doesn't pay attention to the letter of the law. So the battle for the future of Langri is not only fought there, but also in the courtrooms.

Meanwhile the natives, including Fornri and Dalla, the leaders in charge of the Plan, aren't just mindlessly executing it, but have their worries about it. At first everything goes all right, following Obrien's scheme for how to deal with the scout ships that discovered them, but as the plans to introduce tourism firm up and they're defeated again and again trying to stop it using the courts, doubt creeps in. And their allies especially, which include Wembling's niece, who does have the best interests of the natives in mind, but who let's herself be bought off by Wembling buying a medical clinic for her.

In a novel of less than two hundred pages much of the action is of course only sketched out and the way in which the Plan manoeuvres the natives to victory is a little bit simplistic, perhaps, in what we see of it. There's also a bit of naivety in the essential good will of the federation; there are plenty of real world examples to show that if natives get in the way of progress and profit, violence, official or otherwise, is not uncommon. But those are quibbles. Because what Biggle is trying to show is that even with the best of intentions, good people can make mistakes that decimate a world.

A larger criticism you can have of Monument is that at no time does the planet feel bigger than a Polynesian island. The natives measure at most a few thousand, all villages seem to be in walking distance and climate wise the whole planet is described as having the same mild, semi-tropical climate. Again though, while not realistic, it fits in with the kind of story Biggle is trying to tell in the room he has for it. Making the planet more realistic would've only needlessly complicated the story.

In the end, Monument is a feel good novel tackling an important, contemporary issue. It's relevant in the best sense of the word as well as a nice romp to read. A good example of why Lloyd Biggle is one of my personal Golden Age authors.