Course of Empire

An aging former colonies commissioner recalls humanity’s hapless efforts to staff planetary settlements according to cultural stereotypes—Bedouins for sandy Mars, an Englishman for rainy Venus, Americans for Jupiter—leading to mismatched supplies, a constructed pidgin lingua franca, and bureaucratic mishaps. Improvised planning and tight budgets produce comic failures, from liberated native animals to useless equipment, while ambitions to expand are stalled by limited knowledge. An alien species from the outer satellites then arrives and swiftly takes control of Earth, using simplified speech as a display of dominance. The story satirizes administrative incompetence and colonial hubris, turning the tables on colonizer and colonized with wry speculative humor.