From: Hugh Fisher <laranzu@o...>
Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 22:09:53 +1000
Subject: [GZG] [SILLY] Sheepish Superpowers
Sheep, despite being infamous on this list, are an animal that I know very little about. I decided to do some background reading, but quickly discovered that while the shelves of bookstores and libraries are overloaded with books about horses, dogs, and cats, there's nothing about sheep. Even poisonous snakes get more coverage. Eventually I bought a second hand copy of "The Great Arc of the Wild Sheep" by James L Clark, a hunter and museum specimen collector. In his own words: "This book has come into being through my long standing interest in and deep respect for the sturdy, power-packed wild sheep." The book has lots of hunting stories, photos, and names for many different breeds of sheep. And while reading it, I realized that the distribution of wild sheep (not the half-wit domestic ones) perfectly explains the power ranking of nations in the GZG universe. The wild sheep are only found north of the equator, which is why none of the southern hemisphere nations appear in Fleet Book 1. You can't aspire to Great Power status with llamas or wildebeeste. The largest populations of wild sheep are in the cold mountain chains of northern Asia and America. Thus the ESU can draw on numerous different breeds, from the long horned Marco Polo to the mighty Siberian. The NAC can match the ESU with its own range of sheep from the Alaskan Whites to Rocky Mountain Bighorns. The countries that make up the FSE and NSL have only small scattered populations of Mouflons, enough to give them the edge over smaller nations but not the equal of the NAC or ESU. The CalTex republic has the Desert Bighorns, few in number but irresistable in hot and dry conditions. The Islamic Emirates have Anatolian, Armenian, and Isfahani sheep, but vicious infighting weakens them compared to the other powers. And if India ever tries to break free from the ESU, they have the Kashmiri and Punjabi sheep. Further investigation is needed into the settlement sheep in space during the 22nd century :-) cheers,