Birthright

forgotten man at the age of sixty-three.

Of course the next Coordinator, who until three years before had been the head of ASOC's video division, signed no agreements, mended the system's political fences with the Oligarchy, had Jorg Bomin assassinated within three months, nationalized the media, and went on to enjoy a reign undreamed of by Gile Cobart even during the halcyon days of his Administration. 13: THE ARTISTS

...In a way, the artists can be considered the revolutionaries of the middle Oligarchic period. Literature had just begun to reflect the fact that Man was dominant in the galaxy, and the classics of the previous few centuries had shown him overcoming, in various ways, the many threats posed to his primacy. Now it was the artists who began to buck the government line by finding beauty in alien forms and outrage in alien living conditions, and by showing tolerance of alien ways. They were, in a very real sense, the conscience of Man—and a very lonely conscience at that, distrusted by their own kind and frequently ignored or misunderstood by the very beings they wished to aid. Certainly the foremost writer of the period was Fillard Niis (5427-5510 G.E.), whose immortal cry of outraged conscience,The Steel Boot, sold more than six billion copies and was undoubtedly the most widely read book in human history up to that time... —Man: Twelve Millennia of Achievement ...Of Niis himself, very little is known other than the fact that he was considered to be the greatest author of his time, both in that peculiarly human literary form known as fiction and in the more traditional fields of documentary writing and philosophical essay. Even today, copies ofThe Steel Boot still exist. What little we know of Niis and of the book's origins are contained in the transcript of an interview made in 5502 G.E. some three decades after the book's first publication... —Origin and History of the Sentient Races, Vol. 8 THORRIN: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another edition of “Retrospect.” I am your host, Lornath H. Thorrin, and my guest this week is Fillard Niis, the author who achieved literary immortality during his own lifetime with the publication ofThe Steel Boot. Mr. Niis, for those of you who have been living in some other universe for the past three decades, is the author of nine best-selling novels plus literally hundreds of essays. He ran for the legislature on Earth in 5466, was elected by a narrow margin, and then resigned after claiming that wide-scale corruption made it impossible for him to function efficiently in that capacity. He then moved to the Deluros system, where in 5472 he wrote a book that dwarfed all his other achievements:The Steel Boot. It sold more than a billion copies during its first four years of existence, and is fast approaching the six billion mark, making it the bestselling book in the history of the galaxy. Looking back, what do you suppose accounted for the book's initial success? NIIS: To be honest, Lornath, I wasn't exactly an unknown writer at the time, and as I recall the book was given a pretty large publicity budget, which certainly didn't hurt matters any. However, I think the prime reason was that the book touched the conscience of the human race, a conscience that had been dormant for too long a time. For the past few centuries Man had been concerned only with clawing his way to the top of the galactic heap, to asserting his dominance over the other intelligent races. WhenThe Steel Boot was published, it was time to look around and examine the carnage we'd left in our wake.

THORRIN: As everyone knows, the book concerns the despicable treatment that the various alien races suffered at our hands during our periods of galactic expansion. But not many people know exactly what it was that triggered the writing of the book. Would you care to tell us? NIIS: Certainly. I had just put the finishing touches onA Handful of Dust —which, incidentally, was the last novel I ever wrote—-and felt the need to get away from Deluros, to totally free my mind from my work. I decided to take a vacation to Pollux IV, which was being heralded as one of the better new