The World Menders
Lloyd Biggle, Jr
204 pages
published in 1971

The World Menders is the second and last novel in Biggle's Cultural Survey series, somewhat of a thematic sequel to The Still, Small Voice of Trumpets; the events in that book are obliquely refered to at the start here. As with the previous novel, the hero Cedd, Farrari, is a Cultural Survey man borrowed by the Interplanetary Relationship Bureau, though this time it's not a desparate gamble but a deliberate policy that puts a CS graduate at every IPR base. The IPR being the service that prepares planets for Galactic Federation membership by bringing them up to the minimum required technological and democratic level, though this has to be done without the natives noticing they have been prepared. After all, "democracy imposed from without is the severest form of tyranny", something some liberals supporting the War on Iraq four years ago should've considered...

Farrari is posted to Branoff IV, a world which is hundreds if not thousands of years away from admittance, having stabilised around one proper civilisation, which is divided into two parts: a thin layer of aristocracy, the Racsz and a huge slave population, the Olz. The system seems stable, even though the Olz are treated abysmally while Racsz civilisation is in a slow terminal decline.

At first Farrari, unlike Forzon in The Still, Small Voice of Trumpets is content to stay at the IPR base, diving into the Rascz culture and quickly becoming a valued specialist by his ability to see and analyse cultural patterns to answer old questions. One of such leads him to predict the ruler of the Racsz has died recently and when this indeed seems to be the case, he is allowed to go on a field trip. This in turn lets him be much closer to the crowning ceremony of the new ruler than he ever imagined he would be...

Though all this is valuable work he's doing, Farrari slowly becomes convinced all he's doing is pointless without solving the mystery of the Olz, the always docile, ill treated slaves of the Racz king. He finally manages to persuade his superiors to let him infiltrate into Olz culture, but is horrified to find they have none and more horrified to experience first hand their miserable lifes. Eventually, he goes so far as to rebel against the IPR and attempts to start a one man revolt of the Olz, by letting him do what comes naturally: obey orders...

The World Menders, like The World Menders is a puzzle story, in which the riddle of the Rascz/Olz civilisation has to be solved. Unlike the previous book, the solution found here does not fit neatly and in fact is somewhat of a wheeze. This fits with the general mood of the book, much darker than The Still, Small Voice of Trumpets. Yet in the end, Biggle's optimistic spirit still wins through. Even if the solution Farrari finds is a dodge, something is done about the Olz and the Rascz.

The underlying assumption of both these novels is that it is possible to improve bad societies, to upgrade them from horrible tyrannies to something resembling a modern liberal democracy (though exactly how the Federation is governed is never made clear) and to do this selflessly, without becoming tyrants yourself. This old-fashioned liberal belief may seem naive these days, but its much more pleasant than some of the quasi-fascist attitudes of some science fiction...

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