They make effective weapons in their own right, and when not being used like a longstaff by the enlightened to subdue to upstart proles, the trained guard bears can have them to gnaw upon...
“An armed society is a polite society.”
Robert A. Heinlein
Heinlein nailed it.
Given his proclivities, I’m unsurprised.
A student of history knows that utopias usually require governments to use armed force against citizens to try to achieve that utopian state.
Alas, we are not like that.
That fellow on the other side of the hill is not nearly as enlightened as I am. I know he has a powerful weapon -- which is why I also have a powerful weapon: I'm no fool.
The guy next to me who is holding -- *chuckle* -- a quarterstaff? Yeah, he's a fool.
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A quarterstaff can be quite lethal.
Think six foot long baseball bat.
Seems to me he’s looking at this from the top down. What weapons should a GOVERNMENT be allowed to use.
I don’t see him advocating disarming the citizen.
Why are you surprised? Sci-Fi is for nerds and dorks who gobble pizza and have a pile of filthy jerk socks under their computer desk and a hard drive filled with Japanese cartoon "anime" porn of little girls in sailor suits. They're half queers, at a minimum.
Sci-Fi authors are the KINGS of the dorks and nerds I described above.
Not saying that the Sci-Fi dorks and nerds aren't important, mind you. They staff NASA and electronic and mechanical engineering departments for military contractors.
And, that's why when they finally invent something awesome and dangerous like an airborne laser or an Atlas V rocket, it's taken away from them for the good of Mankind by the same grown up jocks who humiliated them in high school who now wear General's stars.
Sci-Fi dorks dream of a universe where their awesome brain power will finally be acknowledged by all as the final arbiter of all things related to Mankind's destiny and their own individual success at money, love, and respect. Pretty soon, Angelina Jolie will be knocking at their door dressed in her 'Tomb Raider' getup wanting to breed with them.
People like that need constant slapping in the head to keep them focused on the very narrowly defined jobs we allow them to do.
What’s that about a quarterstaff being non-lethal?
You could beat an armored knight to death with one.
Maybe they are “non-lethal” in the same sense that a brick thrown at a police officer is “non-lethal”. That is, lethal, but youhave to work a little harder.
They make effective weapons in their own right, and when not being used like a longstaff by the enlightened to subdue to upstart proles, the trained guard bears can have them to gnaw upon...
Translation: Only the “rights givers” have any rights. But of course, it’s for YOUR OWN GOOD, don’t you know!!!
I’ve loved much of Clarke’s works. It’s sad to see that he understood so little about good and evil and the right to defend yourself whether you are an individual or a nation.
We could tweak this a little:
1. When a distinguished but elderly science fiction writer states that something is possible, he is almost certainly talking out of his rear end. When he states that something is impossible, it has probably already happened.
2. Venturing too often beyond the limits of the possible to give you an understanding of what actually is possible eventually gets you confused about what is possible and what is impossible and about everything else.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from science fiction (or vice versa, I forget which).
In the Jasper Fforde book 'One Of Our Thursdays Is Missing' (2011) he writes about Clarke's Second Law of Egodynamics: "For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert."
In the first non-Asimov Foundation novel, Foundation's Fear, the emperor declares, "If technology is distinguishable from magic, it is insufficiently advanced". This is a paraphrase of Gehm's Corollary to Clarke's Third Law, "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced".
Sortta exemplifies some inherent dicotomies in writers. Clarke was a major player in the development of radar circa WW2, then decided to pursue aquatic pursuits in the Western Indian Ocean. He continued to write authoring such stories as “20001, A Space Oddesy” and its sequals.
I’ve long suspected his choice of residence was strongly ifluenced by local mores, (or lack thereof) regarding his long-term homosexualo realtionship..... >PS