Essay by Gluph Shiddo, Ph.D, Skulden Chair of Galactic History, People’s University of Marang

Historiography, both as a field and as a process, never stops; it is continuously moving. In ordinary times, this constant motion happens in the shadows of academia, out of the gaze of the general public. But these are not ordinary times. In a galactic metacivilization that is still very much in recovery mode after several generations’ worth of civil war (or, possibly more accurately, one very long multiphasic civil war punctuated by periods of uneasy peace in between its phases), a historiographic question elbows its way to the front: what was all of that? What was all that fighting actually over? To put it bluntly: was that a material conflict, or a spiritual one?

This is no abstract question! The course of galactic reconstruction hinges on the answer. Surely everyone who is simultaneously lucky and unlucky enough to have lived through any part of it (lucky in that they survived; unlucky in having had to experience it) agrees that “Never again” must be one of our guiding principles. But how exactly to safeguard against an “again” changes quite a bit depending on whether we are trying to safeguard against another material political crisis or against the return of what might be flippantly but accurately described as an evil wizard.

My good friend and colleague Dr. Stang Raxdor examines this question in admirable detail in this volume; while I might disagree on some particulars, I have great respect for her methods and work ethic, and I was honored when she asked me to add my own thoughts on the matter in this preface. And so I shall, albeit at a considerably more abstract and brief level than Dr. Raxdor.