All this science fiction must be weakening my mind. I've been musing about Star Trek, of all things, and realizing just how much I dislike the Federation's "Prime Directive."

Sure, it sounds all noble at first. Hands off the little guys. We don't want to negatively influence them. Let them grow at their own unique pace. But what if it were applied to us? What if we were the primitives? Not so nice then, eh?

Imagine for a moment that there really was a benevolent Federation of manlike beings out there, just like in the movies. I know it’s improbable, but work with me. They know we're here. They have observers watching us, and they maintain a strictly observed embargo. Unless and until we invent faster-than-light travel for ourselves, we'll be left to sink or swim. Is this really such a great idea?

All their advances in medicine, science, industry and agriculture, not to mention the arts, faiths, and philosophies of a thousand worlds are…simply off-limits to us. What a raw deal. No way to trade for them, even at the most disadvantageous rates we’d be willing to accept. No scholarships for our bright young people. No way for them to deadhead their way off-world. No firewater and blankets for us old folks. No missionary-run clinics, no trading posts, no tawdry transistor radios, no nothing. Lucky it's for our own good. Is this what we would really want for ourselves?

I think not.

I think most people in the real world would prefer to take their chances at being swindled by the sky gods. Rather than assigning ourselves the role of hapless savages, I think we would try to emulate the nineteenth century Japanese. But not the twentieth. It would be better all around that way.

But say we did it their way and eventually invented the freaking warp drive. Okay, so we’re grown-ups now, and the mighty Federation deigns to reveal its existence. Uh, come again? Are we any more “mature” as a civilization than we were at this time last year? Nope. We simply can no longer be ignored. Barring the unpleasant “Gort” option, there’s not a lot they could do with us at that point, except to preemptively colonize all of the best real estate around us. Hey, in the movies they’re already doing that!

As a former co-worker of mine used to say, “It’s just a Conspiracy, perpetrated by The Man to keep The Brother down!”

Again, if such a situation were really to occur, would we thank our new alien overlords for allowing us to marinate in our own squalor, disease, and poverty for so long? I think we would hate them for it.

The idea that benign criminal neglect is enlightened didn’t start with Roddenberry. It’s all over the damn place. In 1961, Poul Anderson won the Hugo for best short fiction with a story called “The Longest Voyage.”

A brief synopsis is in order. It’s a lost colony story, set hundreds of light years from Earth, which is very far off the beaten path. After surviving the loss of their high-tech civilization and having endured centuries of dark age barbarism, the human colonists in one small area of the planet have struggled back to a roughly Elizabethan level of culture. Captain Rovic, a swashbuckling, vaguely Francis Drake-ish type is engaged in the first circumnavigation of his world.

Having reached the antipodes, he has discovered his world’s equivalent of Polynesia, and on one of those lovely tropical isles he discovers a marvel, a grounded starship, almost completely intact. The pilot has been marooned there for years, a permanent “guest” of the local priesthood, but he is still in his right mind, and given the right materials (basically, a bucket of quicksilver) he could get his ship up and running again.

What to do?

If his ship is repaired, he’ll light out for home. Not a problem as such, he seems a nice enough sort. But when he gets there he’ll tell everyone about those poor retrogressed savages out past the frontier. Cultural Engineers will soon start arriving, with the scary glint of Good Intentions in their eyes. No Prime Directive for them. Much good needs to be done.

Again, what to do?

This is one of those moral litmus-test stories that english teachers should presumably love. I can’t imagine why they haven’t cottoned to it. They seem to like “The Cold Equations” well enough. Anderson’s story would allow the kids to explore their own moral frameworks by trying to second-guess the Captain. Bleh.

(Spoilers ahead)

I was in high school myself the first time I read this story. I guess we can take it as evidence that I’ve experienced some sort of moral growth, given that my opinion of Rovic’s choice has undergone a full 180 since then. Moral change at least, if not an improvement.

Let’s recap his two options.

One, do nothing. Sail on towards home and leave the spacer stranded. Remember, Rovic is from the most advanced culture on his world, equivalent to Europe in the age of discovery. Most other folks are still at the Aztecs and Incas stage, or worse. They will all be doomed to spending centuries (well, their descendants anyway) climbing back to what we would consider an acceptable standard of living. On the plus side, they’ll retain any cultural uniqueness that they acquire along the way. Anderson always was a bit Volkish.

Two, he can help the spacer on his way, and eventually face an onslaught of kindly strangeness from the sky. The stranded pilot has told them what life is like out there, and it’s a lot like Captain Picard’s Federation. No disease. No hunger. No war. No poverty. No crime. Rovic bridles a bit at that last one, but comes to accept it as fact. If a man does something criminal, the pilot explains, he is swiftly caught, and forced to undergo sure and certain treatment. By the time the doctors are through with him he is absolutely incapable of committing a crime, and as such, he is highly honored, trusted by all, and considered fit for high office. Creepy, isn’t it?

Well, Rovic is a decisive kind of guy, and he doesn’t take kindly to either option. He decides to follow a third way, and blows the ship up.

It’s the only way to be sure.

If they simply sailed on, who’s to say what might follow? Some other joker might happen along and fork over the quicksilver, and then where would they be? On the wrong end of an uneven cultural exchange, that’s where. So despite every famine, or plague, or war of dynastic succession that follows, despite every baby dead of cholera, every raped serving wench or flogged to the bone apprentice or hanged poacher, despite, in fact, every avoidable horror that will afflict millions in the centuries to come, his fellow natives should actually thank Rovic for preserving their cultural autonomy. Because that’s what’s really important.

I can’t believe I ever approved of that choice. And for a fact, I don’t believe Anderson did either. He was just telling a tale.

How lucky we are that it’s only science fiction, and that such men don’t exist in real life.

Don’t get me started on “The Day The Earth Stood Still.”