Against Peace and Freedom is a 2011 Science Fiction novel by web personality Mark Rosenfelder.
The story takes place in the first fifty years or so of the 50th century. In these days, humans have colonized a number of worlds within a sphere of about 50 light-years. Due to the logistical absurdity of maintaining an interstellar empire, the human worlds are managed by the Incatena, a loose economic and social alliance held together by a treaty. The treaty is enforced by agents of the Incatena's intelligence arm, backed up by Interfleet, the Incatena's police and military arm.
The protagonist is one Agent Morgan, an agent dispatched to the planet Okura in order to topple the planet's authoritarian government and restore democracy according to the terms of the treaty. With extremely limited resources, Morgan must organize and/or manipulate whoever is necessary to accomplish the mission objective. Digging deeper, Morgan uncovers a conspiracy that threatens to destabilize the Incatena, and with it, human civilization.
Tropes
- Agent Provocateur: Morgan's mission objective is to stir up trouble on Okura in order to foment revolution and affect the return of democracy.
- All According to Plan: Morgan likes to make people think it was all part of The Plan. In reality, Morgan relies on an exceptional ability to roll with the punches.
- All There in the Manual: A nice overview of the Incantena 'verse can be found on Rosenfelder's website
. - Ambiguous Gender: Both Morgan and love-interest Ba can be interpreted as either male or female, depending on the preference of the reader.
- Big Brother Is Watching: The Peace Party and the Home Ministry like to keep close tabs on the citizenry.
- Bizarre Alien Psychology: Mild example: a species called the Dzebyet occupies another planet in the same system as Okura. It's possible to interact with them, but humans consider them strange and somewhat baffling. Whether the reverse is true is unclear; they may find us just as baffling, or may just enjoy messing around with us. Morgan goes to their embassy on Okura to sound them out, but it is somewhat difficult to make them care about the Okuran dictatorship, partly because of this trope and partly because they are much more advanced than us and are unthreatened by anti-alien rhetoric emanating from Okura. They do ultimately agree to some token efforts on their part, in return for humans sending missionaries from a variety of our religions and ideologies. They aren't going to convert but will incorporate anything interesting the missionaries mention into their own religion.
- Brains and Brawn: Pasty and Nasty, of the Evil Duo variety.
- Cunning Linguist: Morgan speaks about 20 languages.
- Crystal Spires and Togas: The Incatena is based in a building called the Incatena Spire, and business formal dress consists of robes.
- Cyanide Pill: Incatena field agents have a tooth embedded with an explosive powerful enough to vaporize the agent, and if the agent so chooses, their interrogator.
- Foreign Queasine: New Bharati cuisine consists heavily of the local insects and reptiles.
- The Fundamentalist: Meillet. He's also a complete Hypocrite.
- Info Dump: The exposition can be a little heavy-handed, but thanks to the Second-Person Narration, is easily dismissed as normal mind-wandering.
- Reactionless Drive: Lepatine drive, which uses an external energy source (referred to ambiguously as "Dark Energy" to accelerate to speeds of up to 95 PSL, may or may not be an example.
- Single-Biome Planet: Averted with Okura and played straight with New Bharat, which is nothing but desert.
- State Sec: The Okurinese Home Ministry.
- Translation Convention: Only in a few brief scenes in the middle are the characters actually speaking 21st century English.
- Wretched Hive: Roshi's, a secret retreat in the mountains of Okura catering to any and all vices, run by the Oji.
- Yakuza: The Oji are a combination of this and The Triads and the Tongs.
