Through a Faceted Lens of History:

The Trek to the Legion of Superheroes:

A HISTORY OF THE POST-FEDERATION AND PRE-LEGION ERA OF THE WOLD NEWON UNIVERSE

The article A CASE OF A CASE OF SECRET IDENTITY RECASED: A Brief History Of The Super Heroic Era Of The Wold Newton Universe by John Allen Small was the first indication that the Legion of Super-Heroes would exist in the Wold Newton Universe and that this future was the future of the United Federation of Planets and Starfleet as portrayed in the various incarnations of Star Trek. That Star Trek was the most probable future of the Wold Newton Universe was first discovered by Win Eckert as can be seen in his Original Wold Newton Crossover Chronology.

At first glance the Legion of Super-Heroes may seem incongruent with the Star Trek Universe. Star Trek does not have people with superpowers; and the history of the Earth and other planets mentioned in the Legion of Super-Heroes comics often seems at odds with the chronology of the Star Trek Universe. Yet an examination of some of the alien races that the crews of the Enterprise encountered over the years have demonstrated what could be termed as superpowers.

Here is a short list:

Betazeds-powerful telepaths and empaths

Organians -ability to manipulate matter at will

Q -ability to manipulate time/space and matter at will

Vulcans-superior strength, telepathy,

Romulans- superior strength, telepath

Klingons-superior strength, redundant biology that allows for great stamina, resistance to injury

Talosians- create realistic hallucinations by telepathy

Medusians- physical forms drive human beings insane.

El-Aurians-great longevity, can sense disturbances in time and space,

Inhabitants of Pyris VII- possess the technology to transmute matter and generate illusions.

Melkot-create realistic hallucinations by telepathy

Minarans- empathic abilities, ability to heal the wounds of others

Sahndarans- strong telekinetic powers

Scalosians- super speed

Cherons- ability to generate strong electromagnetic fields

Excalibans- telepathy, ability to shapeshift,

Apollo and the Beings- energy matter conversion by thought

Gagarians- cause aging in other human beings.

New Halana-psychoprojective telepathic abilities

Argelians -- empathic priestesses (probably a mutant subspecies of the main race) have limited telepathy and can receive flashes of postcognition

Orions -- green-skinned dancing women (probably a mutant subspecies of the main race) possess certain animalistic qualities, including sharp talons

Thasians -- telekinesis, matter-energy conversion at will, immaterial bodies; can teach their powers to humans

Deltans -- ultra-powerful pheromones

Elasians -- males have great strength, females exude chemicals in their tears that cause men to feel a nearly unbreakable erotic fixation

Ormarans-generate a powerful electrical shock with their bodies

So as you can see we have more than enough ample evidence for the existence of superpowers within the Star Trek Universe. Yet there seems to be a discrepancy in that most of the Legionnaires with a few exception all seemed to be quite human despite their extraordinary powers. There is also the historical issue to deal with, that is that the history of Earth as seen in the Legion of Super-Heroes books seems to differ from Star Trek chronology.

The history of the Legion of Super-Heroes in the comics is convoluted, contradictory and a victim of DC comics need for retroactive continuity. This was to explain their editorial decision to eradicate most of their comic books forty plus years of history after the Crisis reshaped their books into a simpler, more understandable historical continuity, or so they had hoped.

The history of the Legion is truthfully uncertain, the future changes in minute amounts day by day. These changes occur because of the decisions made in the present day or in the future. There are also temporal eddies, resulting from direct and inadvertent tampering with time, which transfigure the timeline abeit … temporarily… These add up to an shifting perception of the future, yet despite the changes that can occur, there are some static events and situations which although may be altered in some particulars remain generally true. Although our task is, as always, to shift through the fantasies portrayed in the comic book stories to find the underlying truth, in this particular case our research is even harder due to shifting realities and temporal paradox.

One person provided the means which would allow human beings to gain extraordinary powers; many also said he was the person who had inadvertently caused the break up of the United Federation of Planets.

This person was named Odo and for years he was the constable of the orbiting space station above Bajor, known as Terek Nor or Deep Space Nine. He had worked under the Cardassians who occupied Bajor and then for the Bajorans when the Station became Bajorian once more. Deep Space Nine was a joint operation between Bajor and the United Federation of Planets. Odo preferred to live on the station because for years he believed that he was the only member of his species. He had been discovered inside a small canister which was said to have come out of the wormhole. He would eventually meet another shapeshifter of his species who had also been found in such a canister. However this particular individual had grown bitter from his experiences among humanoids who considered him a freak. Odo was forced to kill this shapeshifter. When the stable wormhole near Bajor allowed for travel between the Gamma Quadrant of the Galaxy and the Alpha Quandrant Odo discovered that he was not the only existing member of his race. There was a entire civilization of shapeshifters in the Gamma Quadrant and they wished for him to join them. Their shape shifting ability gave them the ability to meld into one gestalt consciousness. Yet Odo prized his individuality too much to accede to their request to join them. The shapeshifters were called The Founders because they had founded a great empire named the Dominion ruled through their proxy administrators the Voorta and their ruthless solders the Jem Hadar. The Voorta and Jem Hadar were the results of genetic engineering and advanced cloning techniques of which the Founders had a great knowledge

The Dominion resented even the peaceful incursions of the Federation into their territory and threatened war unless the Federation stayed on their side of the wormhole. Bajoran colonists however formed a colony on a world inside the Gamma quadrant. This colony named New Bajor in was savagely destroyed by the Dominion.

The Dominion's Founders were xenophobic to the extreme that they felt that all other races were a threat to them unless these races were dominated by the Founders. They saw the Federation as a threat and began a campaign to undermine and then conquer it.

Believing that the Founders were a great threat to the Alpha quadrant, the Romulan Star Empire and the Cardassian Union formed an alliance and sent their elite intelligence agencies, the Romulan Tal Shiar and the Cardassians Obsidian Order, on secret mission to destroy the Founders home world. The allied fleet was met and surrounded by an overwhelming force of Jem'hadar ships. The Romulan-Cardassian fleet was destroyed.

This had been one of the Founders traps. One of the shapeshifting Founders had assumed the form of Romulan Colonel Luvok, who had instigated the joint venture of the Romulans and Cardassians to attack the Founders' home world.

The Klingon Empire then attacked Cardassia on the pretext that the Detapa Council were overrun by Founders. The Klingons also but soon turned to attack Deep Space Nine because Commander Sisko and intervened and rescued the Cardassian civilian government putting them aboard the Defiant Through cold and calculating manipulation on the part of the Founders, political instability spread throughout the Alpha Quadrant. When the Klingon Empire could not force the civilian Detapa Council out of the sanctuary of Deep Space Nine the landmark Federation/Klingon Khitomer Treaty was dissolved. When this alliance ended a major stabilizing alliance within the Quadrant ended. With Cardassia in ruins, Federation and Klingon hostilities rising, and Romulans lapsing into seclusion after the Tal Shiar disaster, the Quadrant was at its most vulnerable.

Ambassador Krajensky of the Federation was also replaced by a Changeling. He gained access to the Defiant but his true nature was discovered before he could sabotage the ship. His plan had been to initiate warfare between the Federation and Tzenkethi by taking the Defiant and launching an unprovoked attack upon the Tzenkethi System. Odo killed the Changeling to save the Defiant and the Federation, but he broke the law of nonviolence held sacred among his people, and was to suffer later.

Odo was forced to stand trial for his crime on the Founder homeworld, and his punishment was severe indeed -- the removal of his ability to shapeshift, the identifying trait of Changelings.

During his trial, he was implanted with the suspicion that Gowron, head of the Klingon high council, was a Changeling. When he revealed this piece of information to Commander Sisko, who later relayed it to Starfleet, the Federation sought to cease warfare with the Klingons by revealing Gowron was a Changeling. Sending Sisko, Odo, O'Brien and Worf in undercover operations, they were ready to kill Gowron when Odo suddenly realized that General Martok was, in fact, the Changeling. The Martok Changeling was eliminated with the combined firepower of 53 Klingon Disruptor shots.

The Klingon invasion on Cardassia had destroyed Cardassia's industrial base and left the Cardassian Union weaker than it had ever known. The assistance of the Federation in rebuilding Cardassia shamed its people, and Gul Dukat took matters into his own hands. He negotiated with the Dominion secretly for the Dominion's military might in return for the Cardassian's allegiance. Dukat was subsequently named head of the new government when negotiations were closed. With the Cardassian/Dominion alliance in place, the Dominion could position their ships and Jem'Hadar within striking distance of any of the main governments within the Alpha Quadrant, and they in return only had to do small favors for the Cardassians.

With the looming Dominion threat overshadowing other matters within the Alapha Quadrant, the Klingons re-signed the Khitomer Accords with the Federation and the two powers stood together in fronting a defense against an imminent Dominion invasion. When the fleet awaiting the fleets of Jem'Hadar that were showing up on sensors, they were surprised to find nothing coming towards them. Instead, behind their backs, a Changeling impersonating Dr. Julian Bashir flew a runabout directly into the Bajoran sun, carrying with him with a bomb which had the capability of making the sun go nova. The Changeling and the runabout were destroyed before the mission was carried through but left everyone dazed at the ingenious designs and technology of the Dominion.

The Dominion War transpired with the Dominion and their Cardassian allies against Starfleet and the Klingon Empire. The Romulan Star Empire was brought into the war on the side of Starfleet through a covert operation authorized by Captain Sisko.

The mysterious Breen race joined the Dominion's alliance. Chafing at having become a virtual slave state to the Dominion the Cardassian Union began to rebel against the Dominion. The Federation and its allies attacked the Dominion stronghold on Cardassia Prime but they were outclassed by the Breen's weaponry. The Federation and its allies seemed on the verge of collapse when the Cardassian ships attacked the Breen and Jem'Hadar ships

In 2374, startling news of a plague within the Great Link was revealed to Constable Odo when Weyoun Number 5 confided in him about the fatal disease that plagued the entire Link. This disease had infected all Changelings except for Odo and perhaps the other Changelings that had been sent away as infants. This piece of information would prove to be a key elment in ending the Dominion war. Odo had been infected with the disease which had been created by Starfleet's Section 31, this was a secretive black ops agency which had gone rogue shortly after its creation. Odo had been deliberately infected with the hope that he would unwittingly transmit it to the great link, which he in fact did. Only Dr. Bashir's medical genius saved Odo from certain death.

The Founder refused to call off the attack force and was content to let all of her forces die, taking as many of the enemy as they could with them. Only after Odo had linked with her and healed her disease did she change her mind. She agreed to sign a peace treaty and to stand trial as a war criminal in exchange for Odo returning to the Link and healing the rest of the Changelings.

Odo rejoined the Link as part of his bargain. Odo also  he saw that what the Founders believed in and practiced was wrong and based on fear and suspicion. He left behind Kira and the world he had known in the hopes that his experiences would change the Founders perception of solids, and end the Dominion's history of violence and oppression.

One of his first actions was to begin the gradual process of freeing the Jem'hadar and Vorta from their genetically induced blind obedience to the Founders. Odo also wished to allow the Jem'hadar to be freed from the constraints that had been placed upon them by the Founders.

Their lifespan was short: they were engineered for accelerated growth and rarely lived pass the age of 20, at which stage the Jem'Hadar was considered an honored elder. The blood chemistry of the Jem'Hadar was designed to collapse without regular intake of an isogenic enzyme, Ketracel White, an additional guarantee of their loyalty to the Founders. Born within a birthing chamber, a Jem'Hadar infant would reach full adulthood within 3 days, ready to fight and vulnerable to the addiction to Ketracel White. White could not be reproduced through regular means and was only handed out by the Vortas, who were in turn supplied by the Founders. Jem'Hadar that went without the White experienced severe withdrawal and eventually died. Before death, they would slaughter any and all living creatures in their vicinity. Once weakened by a lack of White, their various functions, such as cloaking, were impaired and eventually dissipated.

Odo had found a few Jem'Hadar who did not die at twenty and who also achieved an immunity to ketracel white. He knew it was possible for the Jem'Hadar to achieve a civilization on their own if these two major shackles were removed. He sent one of these long lived and non ketracel white addicted Jem'Hadar to Deep Space Nine to learn from the Federation and Bajor and start to create better relations with between the Gamma Quadrant and the Alpha Quadrant.

To a lesser extent, Odo attempted to instill the Vorta a sense of independence from the Founders, although the Vorta as a species had been designed to be so manipulative and submissive to the Founders, he was never quite certain if they actually were achieving some measure of independence or they just let him believe they were to please the Founder.

In addition to bringing his knowledge and experiences to the Great Link in which the Founders joined physically and mentally into one gestalt creature, Odo also brought his strong sense of individuality and his deep distaste for losing himself in the group intelligence. He was able to hold himself apart from the group intelligence while still being joined to it. Other Founders would eventually pick up these traits and the Great Link would be altered forever.

Although in the wake of the Dominion War it seemed as though the Alpha Quadrant would never achieve any sort of cordial relationship with the Gamma Quadrant, the Founders possessed a technology and a primary resource that the Alpha Quadrant would find most useful and would bring together the two separate regions for a short time. It would also drastically alter the nature of the Federation and cause death and destruction of untold magnitude.

In the aftermath of the Dominion War, although the Klingon, Romulan, and Cardassian empires all had a better relationship with the Federation than prior to the Dominion War, yet all three of these great powers and the Federation as well used post war era of peace as an opportunity to jockey for position and strengthen their borders by expansion and increased colonization of worlds within their spheres of influence.

It had been discovered back in 2164 that terraforming worlds and rapid colonization caused great damage to the galactic ecology. No one had even considered that the galaxy might have an ecology that could be affected by great alterations in the biodiversity of planetary systems. This was the same type of thinking that led many industrial worlds to severely damage their planets before they realized what great harm they had done to their own world's ecosystem. Earth and Vulcan and to an extent Klingon recovered from their period of ecological ignorance before they had ruined their home planets beyond repair but the Cardassians had stripped their own planet of natural resources. The period of ecological disaster that followed had turned the Cardassians into harsh, ruthless militaristic opportunists who carried out the same policies of planet stripping on other worlds. The Cardassian example of a greatly ruined ecosystem was one example of how civilization could be adversely affected by a ecological ruin.

Another such example was the virogen plague of 2374 which demonstrated just how vulnerable terraformed planetary ecologies were susceptible to an introduced pathogen. It was also revealed the Ambassador Sarek had once belonged to a group, the Symmetrist Movement which was dedicated to the preservation of galactic ecology in opposition to the Federation's charter for unlimited exploration. When the group became fronted by terrorists, Sarek left it.(1) Sarek and the early members had made one startling prediction by factoring in the growth of the Federation, the rise of population and the rate at which planoforming was carried out. The Federation would suffer a cataclysmic ecological event circa 2400. They however could not predict the opening of the Gamma quadrant and the Dominion War so the event did not happen until 2427.

In the post war era terraforming new worlds continued despite growing opposition because it was viewed as a necessary evil for the expansion and consolidation of Federation territory. The only viable alternative was to alter human beings and other Federation species to adapt to the planet. This was not even considered an option for many years because of the stigma that genetic engineering had from the Eugenics Wars and also its revival by Colonel Green during the Optimal movement. It was generally believed that genetic engineering inevitably lead to men like Khan Noonian Singh and Colonel Green. This was a prejudice of course, a stereotype similar to the earlier forms of racism that once plagued Earth, Klingon and Vulcan. (2) This stereotype was however allayed by Dr. Julian Bashir. Dr. Bashir's parents had arranged for him to receive illegal gene therapy when he was child. Unlike others who had been similarly treated, Julian Bashir was a successful candidate. His strength, motor skills, eye hand coordination and intelligence were increased. Dr. Bashir was exposed as a recipient of illegal gene therapy but was allowed to keep his Starfleet commission because of his outstanding record. His medical achievements were vast.  It was his curing of Odo of the degenerative disease that afflicted the shapeshifters that was one of the key factors in ending the Dominion War. Dr. Bashir became a tireless champion for the other hidden genetically enhanced, especially for those whose treatments had left them with severe liabilities as well as great abilities.

His efforts to eliminate the flawed genetic enhancements in his fellow enhanced were frowned upon by Starfleet medical authorities. Odo offered to aid Dr. Bashir out of friendship and also because he believed that the gesture would help bridge the gap between the former enemies of the Dominion and the Alpha Quadrant. The Dominion had a wide knowledge of genetic engineering techniques which Odo made available to Dr. Bashir. Dr. Bashir discovered that the DNA sequencing of the Founders made the perfect bridging plasm for recombinant DNA. Its fluid nature made it able to take on the multiple and diverse genetic characteristics and recombine them so that they would make a new and functioning whole.

Dr. Bashir was able to cure the unfortunate victims of botched gene therapies, they in turn became productive citizens and helped belie the notion that genetic engineering was inherently evil. Dr. Bashir did much to eradicate the stigma attached to the genetically enhanced since the days of Khan. His efforts also aided the illegally genetically enhanced from being viewed as second class citizens within the Federation.

The genetically enhanced proved their worth to the Federation in 2427 when the ecological crisis Sarek and the Symmetrists had predicted struck the Federation. The so-called Nomad virus spread from system to system with a great rapidity. The Nomad virus was not a virus per se nor did it derive from Nomads. Rather the name came from the function of the virus and the historical legend with some similarity to it.

As part of a terraforming project, a swamp was to be cleaned out of bacteria which would be harmful to the introduced species and to the human beings. The bacteria seemed to have not true ecological benefit to the ecosystem. The means to eradicate the harmful bacterial was a nanite designed to seek out and sterilize this particular form of bacteria. Unbeknownst to the creators of the sterilization nanite the bacteria acted in symbiosis with another unrelated bacteria. The symbiosis only manifested when either of the bacteria became attacked by another microscopic predator such another bacteria or a nanite. The defensive bacteria successfully attacked the exterior coating of the nanite's protein sheath and caused damage to its internal programming. The altered nanites targeted any foreign microscopic infections and began the process of sterilization. The altered nanites attacked all forms of bacteria, cellular life and even the unaltered nanites. The nanites replicated rapidly and in a few months sterilized the entire world.

An automated supply ship carried the sterilization nanites to a Starbase and from there the nanites were spread throughout the Federation and into the Romulan Star Empire and the Klingon Empire. Because it spread like a virus and because it was a machine intelligence, the sterilization nanites were given the name of the Nomad virus.

Dr. Bashir and several of his genetically enhanced colleagues were able to were able to come up with a nanite that resisted the sterilization enzymes created by the nanites, attach to the sterilization nanites and render them inert.

For the first time in hundreds of years it was finally generally acknowledged that terraforming could have serious consequences there was serious discussion in the Federation Council on lifting the ban on genetic engineering. This was still being debated when the Federation came under attack by a threat which made the Nomad virus seem mild in comparison.

Fleets of Borg cubes entered Klingon and Romulan territories whereupon they were immediately attacked. The Borg fought their way through the Klingon and Romulan territories and entered Federation space. Conventional wisdom and tactics were to attack the Borg on site, which the Federation did. Starfleet took some losses before Admiral Troi working with Seven of Nine discovered that the Borg's intentions were not hostile, they had little desire to assimilate the Federation into the Borg collective they were merely passing through the Federation. The Borg were frightened, they fled something that even struck fear into the primarily emotionless machine intelligence.

What the Borg feared were colossal planet killing machines whose only purpose was to eradicate life. The super hero group the Four had encountered once such machine early in their career and were able to disable it and divert it from the Solar system. The colossal machine had been previously damaged and so the Four had been able to encounter it while it was still in a state of weakness. Its self repair program took centuries but in the 24^th century it had become almost fully functional and began destroying planets with life. It was encountered by Commodore Matthew Decker of the Starship Constellation and then by Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise. Using the derelict starship Constellation, the Enterprise was able to disable the weakened planet killer. That ship however was an earlier model and did not have the sophisticated artificial intelligence that the later models did. Like the Borg the planet killers adapted to changing conditions although not as rapidly as the Borg, unlike the Borg the planet killers were not programmed to assimilate but to annihilate.

One Borg cube did stay in Federation space and aided the Federation in the future battle against the planet killer machines. This was the Borg collective headed by Hugh. These individual cyborgs had taken over a Borg cube when their world was destroyed. They were given a planet named Yod but named it Colu. Colu became a haven for cyborgs, androids and otehr forms of machine intelligence. It also became a short lived haven for the independent holograms. Seven of Nine and Commander Data and their families made their homes on Colu.

The planet killers swept into the Breen system by the hundreds, then into Romulan system, the Klingon system and Cardassia. The  military might of these three renown martial civilizations accomplished the destruction of the majority of these planet killer vessels. Yet despite their valiant efforts the planet killers still advanced. Unfortunately the hubris and enmity of the Breen, Klingon and Romulans towards each other prevented them from working in concert even in the midst of annihilation, although towards the end the Romulans and Klingons did combine forces. The survivors fled in the millions towards the Federation. The planet killers followed in their wake. (3)

The singled minded planet killing, life eradicating machines were called many names but the one that seems to have been most widely used was the Berserkers(4)The Berskerker war was a hard fought war of twenty years by Starfleet and the remnants of the Klingon, Romulan, Cardassian forces. Although the combined fleets slowed the advance of the Berserker ships, the war dragged on as the Berserker ships scattered in several directions. The relentless drive of the Berserkers kept a steady stream of refugees moving towards the center of the Federation towards Earth. Among the systems destroyed was Betazed whose refugee population was settled on Titan, one of the terraformed moons of Jupiter.

As several Beserkers moved towards the Bajoran system, Odo made arrangements with the independent Vorta and Jem'Hadar to send fleets into the Alpha quadrant, to help the Federation and also to guard Bajor, which had been Odo's home for so many years. Odo also led a contingent of Founders who, like Odo, had come to prefer being individuals. They wished to experience direct contact with individual solids and improve relations between the Founders and the Federation.

The combined forces of the Federation and the Gamma Quadrant were able to defeat the Berserkers heading for Bajor but it was a near thing. At the height of the battle when all seemed lost, all contact with Bajor and Deep Space Nine was lost. It was thought that a Berserker had circled around the defense perimeter and destroyed the Bajoran system but this was not the case.

The entire Bajoran system was gone as if it had never existed. There was also no sign of the wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant. Odo believed that the wormhole aliens believing that Bajor's existence was threatened, had widened the wormhole to incorporate the Bajoran system and moved it in toto to the Gamma Quadrant. That they had the ability to do so was staggering to contemplate.

Odo and all of those he had brought from the Gamma Quadrant were trapped in the Alpha quadrant, seemingly forever.

After the Berserker War, when the last of the Beserkers had been destroyed, the Vorta, the Jem'Hadar and the individualistic Founders settled on planets in the Alpha Quadrant. Many of the inhabitable and terraformed worlds had been destroyed in the Berserker Wars. The Federation lifted its ban against genetic engineering to avoid the possibility of an ecological disaster caused by terraforming. The Klingons, Romulans and Cardassians either remained in the Federation and became Federated worlds or they traveled outside the Federation territory to re-establish their empires, although they were starting nearly from scratch.

The Federation had fifty years of relative peace and quiet as genetically altered people colonized planets once considered unable to be colonized. As humanity and the other races of the Federation once again began to spread out, the transplanted Vorta and Jem'hadar also began to multiply in large numbers and spread throughout the galaxy.

The Vorta called themselves the Dominion after their former masters and they in turn became conquerors and masters of subject races. They established a rigid caste system distinguished by the size of tattoos on their foreheads. To the Federation they became known as the Dominators. They used intrigue, infiltration, diplomacy and guile to achieve their ambitions as their Vorta ancestors had.

The transplanted Jem'hadar were among the first generations freed of dependence on ketracel white and a predetermined short life span. They still retained their warrior sensibilities. They were conquerors as well and their rule was often harsh and brooked no opposition. They called themselves the K'Hadar, the Free Warriors. The Federation came to know them as the Khunds.

Odo and the transplanted Founders settled on a planet no one else wished to have, their shape shifting powers made them readily adaptable to the surface of the world. This world had undergone a civil war in the distant past and the residual radiation would have been imimical to any species other than the Founders. The world was called Durla  (5)

The United Federation of Planets survived the planet killing Berserker invasion although with great casualties of life and territory. Yet the Federation, in this timeline at least, would only survive for another seventy-five years and its end was brought about by the smallest of problems. Well that is not quite true, the problems were actually quite far ranging but the cause of them was quite small.

In 2370 it was learned that warp drive engines caused subspace instabilities and subspace rifts. All Federation ships were ordered to use Warp factor Five as their maximum speed unless in cases of extreme emergency. (6) Work on a less danger warp drive engine was begun and completed by 2371 when the Voyager was launched. As it turned out the newer engines were not safer; it just took longer for their effects on subspace to manifest. When they did manifest the effects wreaked havoc. It was not known for many years after the fact, that the various catastrophes that began to occur derived from one source. The cause was subspace distortions which created new subatomic particles that affected various delicate systems that the Federation had grown dependent on.

The first indication of trouble were transporter accidents which increased despite efforts to isolate the problem.

There were frequent glitches in replicators as items would be flawed, ill formed or molecularly incomplete often these molecular changes would result in food or drink actually being harmful to those who ingested it.

Hologram suites began functioning erratically with the programming of the holograms becoming jumbled. What is even worse was that the safety protocols often became disengaged.

There were warp engine failures, often explosive ones, as dilithium crystals inexplicably ceased functioning.

There were also increases in computer malfunction causing communication, life support and various other systems to go off line or act erratically.

These incidents occurred not only on starships but also on terraformed colonies or where ever matter/anti-matter energy was used as a power source.

Since these malfunctions were not known to have a common origination there were many theories about the underlying cause of each.

One of the most common beliefs was that these occurrences were not natural or due to technological malfunction, rather they were deliberate acts of terrorism. This was a viewpoint that was encouraged by a mysterious hidden race which wished to destroy the Federation.

In the various television series depicting the future under the United Federation of Planets we are shown a future in which poverty, disease and for the most part conflict has been eliminated. The driving force of civilization for millennia which has been the pursuit of wealth and the accumulation of materials goods has replaced by a desire to work for the betterment of mankind. This fundamental change in attitude among mankind was accomplished by the perfection of matter/energy technology accompanied with the perfection of solid light holography. All physical wants could be manufactured; from foodstuffs to material goods. Any physical environment could be recreated by the holo technology which used combinations of matter replication, three dimensional force fields and advanced computer technology to convincingly fool those in a holographic environment. A person could live in a single room and believe that they had a planet to themselves if they so desired. They could live on a asteroid without a natural atmosphere in a small cabin with an antimatter/matter engine and believe that they lived in San Francisco on Earth if they so desired.

Our view of the Federation is derived from a mainly military point of view with only infrequent glimpses at the civilian population of the Federation. Also much of what is seen of the civilian life is very much militarily influenced, since what we see is usually on Starbases or civilian colonies undergoing some crisis in which Starfleet must intercede. Usually the civilians who interact with the crew of the Starships or starbases are scientists, diplomats or members of the crew's families.

There are always a small segment of people in any given society who are explorers, frontiersmen, soldiers, sailors, scientists, authors, artisans while a majority of people are not so inclined to live lives which take them out of the ordinary cycle of hearth and home. The average person's existence is guided by the instinct of survival to provide food, shelter and clothing for themselves and their families. The matter energy converters ended the need for the citizens in the Federation to work. Once the need for work or to earn a salary was eradicated people could be freed to pursue their dreams of art, culture, exploration, to do what ever they wished. The needs of survival had been taken care of and the desire for violence, war and conquest which all grew out of a desire to control resources necessary for survival had been all but eliminated. In this timeline at least, the great majority of the population of the Federation became content to live in the holographic environments of their choice. In essence the common place Federation society was a more technological version of the society foreseen by Philip Jose Farmer's Riders of the Purple Wage. One can imagine that the main society of the Federation was disconnected from each other living in self contained environments. This may be why the Federation Council seems to act without an electoral process, at least we never see elections or votes on issues in any of the shows, very few people, even less per capital than currently, bother to vote.

It has been effectively argued that the Federation is a Communist dictatorship, while the article which makes this claim does cite some evidence for this theory, his theory is primarily based upon the same lack of concrete evidence about the civilian population of the Federation as we do. The theory also seems to be ideologically influenced by the notion that a society without capital is an anti-capitalist society, therefore a communist or socialist one. (7) However matter energy conversion eliminates the fundamental need for capital and so renders economy nearly obsolete, at the very least it would be minimalist, as people who desire non-replicated goods would barter with one another. The idea that the Federation as a communist dictatorship just does not feel right. What does seem more realistic, at least given the idea that the main Federation society is disconnected from its surroundings, is that the Federation Council seems to act paternalistically and unilaterally because it is in essence acting in a vacuum, operating on behalf of a populace who does not feel obligated to vote or otherwise participate in its governance.

Although humanity in the Federation achieved a semi-utopia in which racism, class struggle, poverty, disease, war and for the most crime have been eliminated, the Federation is a fragmented society, divided into classes by default, a small class who participate and a majority which does not. Those who participate become the politicos, Starfleet and they govern the Federation as they deem best. True this can be seen as a paternalistic attitude but from the outset the Federation has been somewhat paternalistic. Their efforts to aid less civilized worlds often led to tragedies, which led to the Prime Directive being created. Although the Prime Directive was created to quell the, some would say natural, imperialistic tendencies of humanity and also to prevent interference on worlds which had not reached the level of space travel so they could develop "naturally". While the anti-imperialism origin of the Prime Directive is understandable given Earth's history, the non-interference directive is at its core paternalistic.

Who decides what is the natural course for a civilization to develop?  If it mirror's Earth's history and technological development? The non-interference directive has been used for good and for ill. While it prevents stone age peoples from having atomic weapons and bombing themselves into extinction, it also could cause the Federation to allow a world to die from a virulent disease that could be cured by Federation medicine. Also for those alien species which do not abide by a Prime Directive is Starfleet supposed to stand by and allow for an alien race to interfere in the primitive civilization? Is this natural development? A paternalistic element is also present in the Federation deciding that pre-warp civilizations are not advanced enough for even limited contact. It is not hard to imagine the reaction of human beings if they discovered that all our present efforts in contacting alien civilizations were successful but were studiously ignored because we are considered too primitive. This reaction can if fact be seen on the Star Trek series Enterprise which takes place nearly fifty years after first contact had been made with the Vulcans. The Vulcans are resentfully viewed by the Earth humans as paternalistic and patronizing because they do not believe that humans are intellectually or emotionally advanced enough to encounter other species, to the point of not providing any technological information to Earth.

Matter/energy conversion freed humanity and much of the Federation from want; yet it also enchained it in a gilded prison. What happens when the technology which not only is the lifeblood of society but the actual provider of food, shelter and material goods suddenly becomes undependable. What happens when a society which has never known want suddenly finds that the technology upon which they have become so dependent fails?

As the failure of dilithium and of matter/antimatter technology increased geometrically tensions rose dramatically throughout the Federation.

People on the various Federation planets which were dependent for survival on antimatter/matter technology for life support, gravitational control or food resources either had to rapidly adapt to the conditions of the colonized worlds or flee them. As a consequence the genetic engineering of colonists increased as did the populations of worlds whose terraformed status were secure. However as the failures of the anti-matter/matter technology increased the resources on the terraformed worlds were overtaxed and the populations were once again forced to deal with the prospect of competing for resources. Those who had various forms of education beyond the basics were better equipped than those who had lived in their holographic worlds to compete for resources. The were better able to use their knowledge to survive in the absence of the matter energy conversion technology. Learned knowledge also became a premium since most of the stored knowledge was kept in computers or in holographic memory banks which also used the same power sources as the rest of the technology the Federation was dependent upon.

The value of knowledge led to resentment on the part of those unskilled citizens, who unfortunately comprised a majority of the Federation populace.

This resentment led to fear and hatred, which although suppressed in humanity for generations, when push came to shove for survival they fell back on their primate origins. Many people decried the technology which had made humanity so dependent, this resentment spilled over into a hatred for those who were technologically trained. The unskilled majority committed unthinkable acts of violence against the skilled elite, causing social unrest on several worlds which Starfleet and the Federation Council were forced to intervene. The Federation re-established a monetary system by which resources were allocated to those who participated in society by doing something constructive. The institution of an economy based on goods and services was immediately abused by a segment of society who became profiteers. The division in society between the elite skilled and majority of the unskilled populations caused a rift in Starfleet and the Federation Council. Members of a group of Profiteers seized control of the Federation Council through bribery and buying of seats. They became known as the Consilium and for all intents and purposes they became the rulers of the Federation. (8)

Another belief which gained acceptance in wide parts of the Federation, even among otherwise intelligent people was that the Berserkers were somehow behind this wave of technological failure. This anti machine bias was also transmitted to sentient technology, the androids and sentient holograms. After retiring from Starfleet Commander Data had gone to work with the Immortal Mr. Flint and Rhea to create more androids. Data and hologram "The Doctor" had used their influence to gain freedom for the sentient holograms sentenced to lives of virtual slavery because they were not considered sentient beings. After their freedom many chose to be downloaded into android bodies.

When resentment turned against them, the holograms and androids took refuge on a planet of their own named Colu.

The rate of antimatter/matter technology ceased at a geometric rate as the subspace rifts widened and more of the interfering particles flooded normal space. As the antimatter/matter technology failed all across the Alpha Quadrant the Federation collapsed as space travel was relegated to non-warp technology, as the matter energy converters failed and people were forced to use non replicated resources to survive.

Many worlds collapsed into civil war as society fell into chaos. Starfleets great ships were stranded where they had been when the General Directive to no longer use the antimatter/matter technology that they were dependent upon for power. These ships were eventually abandoned or destroyed in violent antimatter/matter explosions as Starship Captain's pressed their luck one too many times.

Earth and many of the planets of the former federation were on their own. Those genetically enhanced to live on the conditions of their planets thrived. A Dark Ages descended upon the Earth as conflict escalated into a world war in 2550. This was known as World War V. (9) Mankind climbed back up to a technological state only to fall prey to its baser nature as another devastating World War broke out in 2610

By 2670 Earth had once again united under a democratic form of government. They had regained knowledge of the old impulse drive ships and once again started interplanetary travel. They discovered that Venus and Mars have banded together against a Federation of the Moons of Jupiter ruled by a religious group calling itself the Adepts of Jupiter. Earth joins with Venus and Mars to create the Triplanetary Alliance. Although the Adepts of Jupiter are defeated and the Triplanetary Alliance remains as a federation between the three planets, space travel in the Solar system was still dangerous as space pirates plagued the spaceways. The Triplanetary Service was formed to combat space piracy, interplanetary drug travel and other criminal enterprises.

The unknown leader of the space pirates was known as Gray Roger. Gray Roger was only nominally a pirate and only nominally a human being. His true mission was to keep the Earth in a state of primitivism or at least confined to the Solar system. Gray Roger was actually an Eddorian, a shapeshifting race from another dimension, according to writer E.E. Smith. The Eddorians were driven to conquer and control as many planets as they could in the Universe because their minds were so powerful they could not be content unless they were striving to accomplish something concrete.

The Eddorians had in fact used technology to augment the creation of the subspace particles which interfered with the antimatter/ matter reactions. The Eddorians had been directly involved on Earth using their influence to cause the World War which led to the fall of Atlantis, the fall of Rome, the First and Second World Wars. Once a nuclear war had been initiated in the 2050 (10) Gray Roger, or as he was known on Eddore, Gharlane believed that Earth was out of the picture and turned his attention to further areas of the Galaxy.

Gharlane was chagrined to discover how Earth had recovered from the nuclear war and had quickly spread throughout the Galaxy to form the United Federation of Planets. Gharlane had used technological catastrophe and social chaos to bring down the Federation. He stayed in Earth's system after the fall of the Federation to make certain that it stayed that way.

Gharlane and the rest of the Eddorians were opposed by the Arisians, a race of humanoid beings whose mental powers outclassed even the Eddorians. The Arisians carefully hid their existence from the Eddorians. The Arisians had planned a stratagem that would eventually defeat the Eddorians but it was dependent on the Eddorians believing that the Earth was not that a great a threat to them. The Arisians also prevented the Eddorians from learning that the Earth and other aligned planets were aided by an advanced race lest the Eddorians develop weapons and strategies which could defeat Civilization.

According to E.E. Smith the Arisians were a humanoid race which had developed great mental powers. They seeded the Galaxy bringing humanoid life to millions of worlds. They were aware when the Eddorians arrived in the Galaxy. They were aware of the chaos, destruction and hostility towards civilization that the Eddorians brought to play against the civilizations of the world, how they toppled the Tkon Empire and that of the Iconians.

According to E. E. Smith The Eddorians were originally from another Galaxy and another dimensional plane, their planet had entered our Galaxy when the two Galaxies began to intersect. I believe that Smith was correct in that they originated in another Galaxy and that their species had inhabited several worlds in that Galaxy but that had fled from that Galaxy attempting to escape an uncontrollable rise of radiation levels that would eradicate all life. Although they had millennia to escape the rise in radiation levels several ships of Eddorians left the Andromeda Galaxy. (11). After the first ships departed the Eddorians discovered how to create hyperspatial tubes by which they can move entire planets. Four planets of Eddorians were successfully moved by using this method before one of the Omni created the Galactic Barrier, an energy barrier that isolated the Galaxy and kept out extragalactal threats such as the Eddorians. (12) One of these Eddorian planets ends up in the Delta quadrant and becomes the ancestors of the Founders. They retained their xenophobia and desire for conquest although over time forgot their origins. Another group of Eddorians may have been the ancestors of the shapeshifting beings on Antos. IV. If so however they adapted a more humanoid form over the years but retained their shapeshifting and great mental abilities. They also abandoned the cold, calculating desire for conquest to become philosophers and healers. Although never stated in the annals of E.E. Smith, the Eddorians on Antos IV were undoubtedly influenced by the Arisians to reject their ways of conquest and violence.

To aid the Earth to bring Civilization to the Galaxy since their earlier effort the Federation had been countered and stalemated by the Eddorians, the Arisians arranged for the Earth centered Triplanetary Alliance to receive two major innovations that would drastically alter the destiny of the Galaxy. On a small backward aquatic world a race of amphibious beings discovered a method for traveling faster than light which did not use the principles of warp drive or enfolding space, although its exact principles are unknown to us, even E.E. Smith did not describe it accurately, it is known as the inertialess drive.

Although first contact between the Nevians and the ships of the Triplanetary led to an inter planetary war, this was due at first to the Nevians inability to communicate with the Triplanetary fleet and also because the Nevians had believed that they were the only intelligent beings in the Universe. The intertialess drive was powered by iron, something that the mineral poor Nevians thought was a treasure until they discovered that it was one of the most common elements in the Universe. (13)The Triplanetary forces forged an alliance against the Nevians against the ravaging pirates who also attacked the Nevians. This alliance allowed the Triplanetary ships to obtain inertialess drives, which enabled the Solarian citizens to once again traverse the galaxy in faster than light ships.

The Triplanetary Alliance was however not completely stable in itself, for Earth the primary motivational force in the Solarian system was not united. In the wake of the two devastating Wars that followed the collapse of the Federation, the Earth had become a collection of nation states. The North American Confederation lead the world in all but name however it was divided as many of its politicians and corporations were not only corrupt but actively working with Pirates.

The head of the Triplanetary Police, Virgil Samms was determined to rid the Triplanetary Alliance of the corruption. He received a summon to go to the mysterious planet Arisia where he received a Lens. The Lens was a device which was strapped to the recipient's wrist and resembled a wrist watch only the watch section was a scintillating gem of many facets throwing off a rainbow of color. The Arisians only gave a lens to a person who was incorruptible. The Lens allowed for the wearer to understand nearly any language and would automatically translate, a Lens could, within certain limitations, read the mind of whoever a Lensman concentrated upon, it also allowed for instantaneous mental communication between the wearers of the lens. The Arisians however impressed upon Samms that for the evil and corruption that Samms needed to eradicate was not confined to his solar system but to many, to this end he would need Lensmen from outside the Solarian system.

Samms formed the Galactic Patrol. The Galactic Patrol first eradicated the corruption on Earth by having one of its members, Rod Kinnison run for the Presidency of the North American Confederation as the Cosmocrat party nominee and expose his Nationalist Party's opponents' connections to drug traffic, piracy and slavery. Once Rod Kinnison had been as head of the North American Confederation, he led the way to a unified Earth, which in turn using the new technology of the inertialess drive and the security of the Lensmen paved the way for a Galactic civilization composed of hundreds of worlds, many human, many alien but all known under the title of the Concordiat. Lead by a Galactic Council the head of the Council was the Galactic Coordinator who also was usually the First Lensmen. Although candidates for the Galactic Patrol and the Lensmen Corps were taken from all over the Galaxy, there remained a bias against genetic enhancement, humanoid candidates had to meet specific criteria. There was apparently a structured grading system since the various races were often referred to as being humanoid with within parameters of earth norm. Although this was a decision of Virgil Samms rather than the Arisians, human candidates for the Galactic Patrol could not have been the result of genetic enhancement or selective breeding. This latter is ironic given the secret selective breeding project by the Arisians that had resulted in Virgil Samms and Rod Kinnison and their descendents.

Although the account given to us by E.E. Smith makes it appear as thought centuries have passed between First Lensman and The Galactic Patrol in actually it was little over a century. Kimball Kinnison, the penultimate male of the Arisian breeding program graduated from the Galactic Patrol Academy in 2890 with the rank of a Lensman. Since he had tested so high he was immediately offer command of his own ship, which carried an experimental weapon to be used against the Space Pirates.

Kinnison lost his ship to a pirate vessel but gathered some necessary intelligence before dispatching his crew in lifeboats. While avoiding the pirates Kinnison and his companion in the lifeboat discovered worlds under the domination of the Overlord of Delgon who used mind control devices to make beings under their domination virtual zombies. Kinnison and his companions destroyed the Overlords of Delgon before returning to Earth. Kinnison was created a Gray Lensman, an elite corps who planned and carried out their own missions.. Kinnison investigated a planet known as Aldeberan II which had been settled by a race resembling a wheel which he names the Wheel-Men. (14)

The Wheelmen were allies of the Boskone pirates. Kinnison was severely wounded but recovered. After being healed Kinnison decided to go to Arisia for advanced training, something no other Lensman had previously considered. This appears to have been intentional by the Arisians they had set up the Lenses so that the first person to conceive of advanced training would be the first one to actually have advanced enough mentally to survive it. Kinnison was nearly mentally destroyed by this ordeal of training by emerges with even more formidible powers. He realized that the Lens was not merely a telepathic enhancer but also a psionic enhancer which allowed Lensman with an advanced mentality a host of psionic abilities.

After rescuing a captured Patrol hospital ship, Kinnison discovered the whereabouts of the Boskone Grand Base and entered it. He encountered Helmuth, the supposed leader of the Boskone pirates and killed him in single combat. The Galactic patrol realized that Boskone was not an individual organization but a collection of organizations. Kinnison doggedly pursued the leads, going undercover several times. His search led to the Second Galaxy (15) which was entirely subjegated by the Boskones He was captured and tortured by allies of the Boskones and nearly killed. Kinnison's mind had been hidden behind a false telepathic identity. Although infected with an organism that made his limbs grow into monstrosities, he had them amputated and regrew his limbs. During his stays at the Patrol medical center he and Clarissa MacDougall, his nurse became romantically involved, just as the Arisians had arranged millennia ago. Clarissa MacDougall was the penultimate woman of their breeding plans, Kinnison's destined mate. (16) An invading fleet of Boskone came to the Earth via hyperspatial tubes and were destroyed by the Galactic Patrol's superweapon the Sunbeam which concentrated all of the Sun's energy into a concentrated beam. The Jarnevon, the planet upon which Kinnison had been so cruelly tortured was home to beings as cruel and ruthless as the Boskones. The Galactic Patrol destroyed it by colliding two planets into it, these planets driven by inertial less drive. (17) Another planet Jalte was destroyed by a Negasphere (18)

Kinnison and a select few Lensman infiltrated the Second Galaxy, leading rebellions and dismantling the structure of the Boskone's evil empire. Kinnison continued to rise through the ranks of the Galactic Patrol. Kinnison eventually discovered the true leader of the Boskone and of the Second Galaxy, Fossten, the Prime Minister of Thrale. From his formidible mental powers Kinnison deduced that the entire Boskone conspiracy to ruin Civilization had been run by a renegade Arisian. The Arisians did not correct him of this error for it served their purposes to allow him to think so. In actually it was the Eddorian, Gharlane.

With the threat of the Boskone finally over, Kinnison assumed the post of Galactic Cooridinator, married Clarissa MacDougall and had five children. These five children were the culmination of the Arisian breeding program. It turned out there was a power controlling the Second Galaxy's Boskone after all: the mysterious planet Ploor. The daughters and son of Kimball Kinnison and Clarissa MacDougall, the Children of the Lens, investigated four separate lines of inquiry and learned the truth: that Ploor was but the final link in the chain leading to Eddore itself. They assisted their father in defeating Ploor with another new Patrol weapon. This was a planet brought forth from another space where the speed of light is greater than ours. The planet broke through into our plenum with literally infinite energy. Then the Children of the Lens united the massed minds of every Lensman in creation to destroy Eddore with a mental bolt of sheerly irresistable poignancy, and finally, they rescue Kimball Kinnison from the distant exile to which Eddore has hurled him. The galaxy was safe once more, and the Arisians departed, leaving Civilization in the capable hands of the Kinnison children, and their eventual descendants. (19)

Who were the Arisians, what was their purpose and what was their breeding program truly meant to do? One wonders why the Arisians, if their powers were so formidable why they hadn't used all of their efforts to destroy the Eddorians early on? Why hadn't the Arisians used their combined mental powers to eradicate the them and save the Galaxy many years of unnecessary cruelty, enslavement, death and destruction? This seems to be because saving the universe from, and eradicating the threat of the Eddorians seems to have been secondary to their primary motivation which was to ensure the survival of the human race and to ensure their mental evolution.

The Arisians were members of those mysterious beings of Earth human descent who had evolved into being of Energy and were able to manipulate time, space, matter and energy. They traversed the corridors of time attempting to preserve the timeline in which they evolved from Earth humans. Their efforts caused as many historical divergences as they attempted to stop. These beings have been known variously as the Q, Organians and a host of other names although the one that fits them best might be the Omni for they appeared to be Omnipresent,, Omnipotent and Omniprescient. Although E.E. Smith stated they were of humanoid appearance they revealed to Kimball Kinnison that their true form was that of a huge, floating disembodied brain. Actually their true form was whatever they chose it to be at the moment. Kimball Kinnison did perceive their true form of Pure Thought but his mind automatically translated this into a visual image of a large brain.

The Arisians seem to be a subsect of the Omni which believed that conflict was needed for mankind to evolve, although the conflict had to be strictly controlled lest mankind be destroyed by itself or another species. Although the Arisians manipulated events in the Universe to a certain extent they allowed history in most timelines to develop naturally and only became directly involved when humanity was ultimately threatened with extinction as it would have been in a universe ruled by the Eddorians. Yet the Eddorians also served a useful purpose in helping a certain segment of humanity to evolve to physical and mental heights previously unknown.

The Arisians chose two particular bloodlines which they carefully manipulated to achieve this physical and mental perfection. The Arisians made it so that these two bloodlines would never crossmate until the time was right, they would then produce the final phase of the program. One family was the Kinnison family line in which they carefully bred the best male from each generation culminating in Kimball Kinnison. The other line was the what could be called the bronze line since the best person be it male or female of each generation from his line was carefully manipulated to mate and produce even better offspring. This family line was noted for its bronze hair coloring and tawny gold flecked eyes. If these seem like familiar physical characteristics to a member of the Wold Newton family you would be correct.

Although Virgil Samms was the First Lensman, the Arisian program had produced a candidate which had Richard Seaton's version of the inertialess drive created a fleet of space vehicles bring mankind to the stars a few centuries ahead of when they actually had done so, then he would have become the First Lensman and his companions the First of the Lensman Corps. This candidate was James Clark Wildman who was publicly known as Doc Savage. At it was Doc Savage through his wife Monja and grandson Chip Savage was the ancestor of Virgil Samms and Clarissa MacDougall. Doc Savages cousin Pat Savage and her husband Rex Hazzard were also ancestors of the Samms and MacDougalls.

In the Lensman series in addition to defeating the Eddorians and removing the threat of the Second Galaxy, the Arisians have another purpose which is to train another race to succeed them as the Guardians of the Universe. In a sense this is true, once the Kinnison family had grown into physical and mental maturity, the Arisians' next step was to step aside and allow the Lensmen to achieve greater mental and physical heights by imbuing them with responsibility and imposing severe limits on them. The Arisians had come to understand the growing resentment that many worlds in the loosely held Galactic Confederation had towards the Lensmen. This had been a contributing factor in the upsurge of popular unrest during the twenty year period after the Boskone evil empire had seemingly been destroyed. The Eddorians had taken advantage of this to once again nearly destroy Civilization.

Once the Lensmen had gained control of the Galactic Council during Virgil Samms tenure as Director of the Lensmen, it had dominated the military and law enforcement structure of the Galaxy. Always autocratic, under Kimball Kinnison's tenure as Galactic Coordinator the control that the Lensman Corps exerted did not slacken even when there was no apparent threat to the peace or security of the Galactic Confederation. In times of crisis many beings were quite willing to give up their individual freedoms in the hope of increased security and will follow those who promise to protect and eradicate the threat to their life and security. However when the threat is gone, the same beings want the protectors gone and their freedoms back. In many cases however the protectors do not willingly give up their control, some because they have come to enjoy the power that they wield, others because of paternalistic bent, in effect the protectors know that they are best suited to decide what threatens peace and security. While Kinnison and the Lensmen were not fascists, they certainly had some fascistic elements in the organization. The Arisians foresaw that these protofascist elements could come to dominate the organization if their power was left unchecked

The Lensmen were headquartered on Arisia and the Lensman Corps was limited to Second Stage Lensman. The Lenses remained with a Lensman until their deaths, unlike the previous Lenses the Lenses did not disintegrate when a Lensman died. They remained inert except for broadcasting a summons to the nearest person with Second Stage abilities. When a worthy individual found the Lens or has it passed onto them by a dying Lensman then the Lens had a new owner. (20)

The few Lensmen were given wide areas to patrol and their missions were limited to overt criminal activity and giving aid to those threatened by imminent harm. They were not to interfere in the social or political development of the Worlds under their jurisdiction unless so ordered directly by the Mentors of Arisia. The few Lensmen were given large sections of space to patrol, few and far between they exerted less control on the structure of the Galactic Confederation. Without the Galactic Patrol to bind the various worlds together, the Galactic confederation collapsed as long held resentments between various worlds came to a head. The Mentors of Arisia did not interfere with the few interplanetary wars that broke out or with the widespread economic depression that gripped much of the former worlds of the Galactic Concordiat. This latter came about with the abrupt end of trade restrictions previously imposed by the Galactic Patrol to combat illegal trafficking and rise of trade wars.

The Arisians also had not interfered with the slow but certain spread of the Dominators and Khunds throughout the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. The Dominators and Khunds had been aided in part by the Eddorians and Boskonians but mostly they had just left them alone and allowed them to conquer without interference. The Dominator and Khund expansion throughout the Alpha and Beta Quandrants further destabilized the area and gave the Lensmen another problem area to divert their attention from the Eddorian's campaign to destroy Civilization.

The Arisians or Omni did not interfere because they realized that the Lensmen were but one avenue in this particular set of timelines which led to the Earth humans evolving into beings of Thought. The Arisians realized after its culmination that the Lensman method of evolution while it had a good chance for successfully evolving human beings into beings of Energy, it was a however a program with limited success since the gene pool which produced second stage Lensman had been kept deliberately small. The gene pool wherein humans had manipulated their genes to adapt to various planetary conditions was seen to provide a fertile ground for directed evolution. However during the Lensman epoch the stigma of genetic manipulation still plagued Society. genetic As before conflict and the need for security would provide the spur for the necessary evolution.

With the fall of the Galactic Concordiat and the economic chaos which followed there was a movement by many worlds to regain their lost "independence", a sense of planetary nationalism arose and with it many worlds became insular and isolated. Although the Lensmen did what they could to prevent crime they could not intervene to prevent conflict. Out of the Corps Diplomatique Terrestrienne, the CDT, rose one man whose efforts to prevent conflict or at least mitigate it and to promote understanding between diverse worlds and cultures would eventually led to the formation of the United Planets. This man deliberately kept a low profile and as such very little real information is available about his career. It is known that he was a mid-level diplomat for the majority of his career since his unconventional methods of achieving diplomatic goals and his refusal to allow the convention wisdom of career diplomats to guide his actions. Author Keith Laumer received some information about this superlative diplomat of the far future from his encounter with a lost fourth era time traveler, (21) Besides Jame Retief's key diplomatic missions which paved the way for a renewal of understanding and cooperation between the planets, two other factors which contributed to the formation of the United Planets were financial security and growth and also a means of transportation which was even faster than the inertialess drive. These two factors went hand in hand and were brought about by the most unlikely of persons.

Rene Jacques Brande who was mainly known as R. J. Brande, a entrepreneur based on Earth first made a fortune using alien technology to capture cosmic gases and kindle them into a new star, he did this three times for planetary systems whose main stars had were in the last stages of their life cycle. His price was 2% of the gross profits for the entire solar system which had needed the star for a period of five years. He used the profits from these sun making projects to finance the creation of the stargate system. Stargates had existed for aeons, the Ancients built a system of stargates which spanned the universe when the universe was young yet these were abandoned by the Ancients as they began evolving into the Omni. Many of the stargates were destroyed by the Omni who forsaw that the technology would prevent the development of space travel, a necessary factor in what they knew to the be the evolution of Mankind. The Iconian Star Empire discovered a few existing stargates and was able to duplicate the technology. However the Iconian Empire gates generally ceased to function when the Iconian homeworld was bombarded by dissident worlds of their far flung empire and the remaining Iconians fled through the gates and shut them down behind them. Another set of Stargates built by the some of the Ancients, which included a couple of gates on Earth,(22) were discovered by the parasitic dominated Goa'uld who used them to conquer far reaches of the Universe and seed it with Humanity. Since the Goa'uld were helping to maintain humanity, the Omni did not interfere except when it appeared as though events were not proceeding as history dictated, then they took an active part in the struggle of humanity against the Goa'uld . (23)Prior to the Third World War, in the 2040s the war against the Goauld ended as the Goauld succumbed to a genetically engineered pathogen which was released not by Earth humanity but by the vengeful Tollan. The Tollan were one of the many cultures seeded throughout the galaxy by the Goauld from Earth but the Tollan had surpassed the Goauld in technological achievement and felt that they were not a threat. The Tollan refused to give their technology to less developed worlds such as Earth. The Tollan were nearly wiped out by the Goauld system Lord Anubis who used Ancient technology to get around the Tollan's advanced defenses.

With the passing of the Gouald, the stargates stopped functioning as their power source, naquadah, was removed from many Stargates and as many Stargates were destroyed by the Tollan. R. J. Brande knew where some still functioning Stargates were functioning and was able to discover the elemental make up of naquadah. He was soon able to manufacture naquadah in enough quantities that he was able to create a new system of stargates which also utilized some of the existing but defunct stargates.

Through this nearly instantaneous travel between the far flung planets, R.J. Brande and his associates were able to bring several planets into an economic and social alliance which eventually grew into the United Planets. Planets which had never developed space travel were invited to join the United Planets such as Daxam, Orando and few others. Although the majority of the populations of these worlds were generally enthusiastic about having contact with other cultures and species which would provide not only greater economic opportunity but also cultural exchange there were xenophobic elements which saw this opportunity as cultural and social tainting. They also saw it as a physical threat to the health and well being of their world. This was especially true on the planet Daxam. The planet Daxam had the physical attributes and powers of Kryptonians yet they had a built in terminal weakness to lead. (24) They were basically imprisoned on their world due to the danger of lead contamination which was one of the more common elements in the Universe. Their relative safety because of isolation had come to an end a few years before the United Planets had been formed. The Daxamites had feared space travel for aeons despite having the ability to do it. This fear was heightened when the Prophet of Rao, Jaf-El had appeared to the people of Rao, taught them the precept of Rao and then took off in a spaceship never to return.

A nearby moon of Daxam looked promising in that it contained an element not found on Daxam which scientists believed could cure them of their fatal lead weakness. This turned out to a blind end so far as the lead research was concerned however, the new element did provide them with a power source which enabled them to erected a defensive shield about their home planet and on the moon. Because the element found on the moon was so valuable a permanent mining colony had to be established. Among those who volunteered to live on the moon were descendent of Halk Kar named the Gand family. In 2960 a lone wrecked spaceship flew near the moon asking for assistance. The ship was instructed to land a distance from the Lunar dome and people with containment suits would come to the ship to render medical assistance. The lone traveler took the rescuer's hostage and then blew up the lunar dome, even with their superior bodies most of the Daxamites perished since they were unable to get into containment suits in time.

The lone traveler rounded up any survivors and demanded that they turn off the defensive shield. He killed hostages until he found one that would acquiesce. When this one had turned off the defensive shield, the lone traveler killed the rest of the hostages. He had overlooked a young girl who had been placed in a containment suit by her over protective parents who were among the first hostages taken. Aiming a drilling laser at his head she fired it full blast and killed him. She turned the defensive shield back on in time for it to destroy the Khund invasion force that had been sent to decimate Daxam. Because of this incident, the Daxam government realized that they could not afford to be isolated any longer. The young girl was Lar Gand who became quite a hero to the Daxamite population. However she was placed with relatives who were among those religious fanatics who were violently xenophobic. After Daxam joined the United Planets the White Triangle cult, the xenophobic, racist religious organization exported its message and soon had subsidiary organizations based on other worlds, including Earth. One of these Earth based White Triangle agents was close enough to R. J. Brande to sabotage his efforts in making the United Planets a viable concern.

The White Triangle spread several rumors about the dangers of the stargate technology . Because of these rumors the Planet Winith began making noises about returning their stargate. To dispel these rumors R.J. Brande took passage on a commercial flight from Winith, to Braal to Titan to Earth. Brande had been maneuvered into taking this flight and assassins were on board to kill publicly kill him as he exited the ship at Earth's space port.

Also on board were Irma Ardeen from Titan, Garth Ranzz from Winith and Rokk Krinn from Braal. Irma was traveling to Earth to join the Science Police. (25) Garth was a runaway from Winith, looking for his older brother who had previously runaway. Rokk Krinn was a up and rising sports star in the Braalian sport of magno-ball which had suddenly become popular on other worlds with the cultural exchange brought about the by Stargates.

Irma was a powerful telepath like most of the people of Titan, who were descendents of Betazoids who had fled their destroyed world during the Berkserker age. She heard the unshielded thought of a plan to assassinate R. J. Brande. She quickly assembled a team to stop this threat. She chose Garth Ranzz, whom she had become aware of because he was actively fantasizing about her. Intrigued by this she had discovered that he also had a power which could be useful, since he was from Winith. (26).She also chose Rokk Krinn the magno-ball champion because she believed his Braalian derived powers of magnetism could be useful. (27) Under Irma's direction, Rokk and Garth found the would be assassins and subdued them once they made a move against Brande.

Once R. J. Brande was apprised of the threat and the manner in which the three young people had abrogated the threat, he saw these three individuals from three very different planets had worked together, especially in the case of Titan and Braal (28)he realized that this was a perfect way demonstrate how the feasability of the United Planets concept. It would also help young people to shy away from the prejudices and preconceptions of their parents and truly create a unified society. R. J. Brande also believed that in addition to providing an example to how society could work that an organization of young people would be able investigate areas that the Science Police could not, such as youth gangs. According to Legion lore which has transcended each of the differing versions of Legion continuity, the founder of the Legion of Superheroes was R. J. Brande, the wealthiest man in the United Planets

Brande requested a meeting with the three young people and told him of his idea of the Legion of Superheroes. He offered to bankroll their organization if they were interesting in helping the United Planets as symbols of unity and as actual law enforcement officers. All three of the young people agreed and they began recruiting idealistic people with diverse powers.

Although in the history of the Legion according to DC comics there is a precursor of the Legion of Superheroes named L.E.G.I.O.N. this was merely an attempt by DC comics to do a sort foreshadowing and provide an antecedent for the Legion of Superheroes to provide inspiration for the Legion. According to original Legion of Superheroes continuity Superboy was the inspiration for the creation of the Legion of Superheroes. However in the wake of their post-Crisis continuity reboot Superboy never existed and all tales about him were considered apocryphal. However the L.E.G.I.O.N. series did have one thing correct, R.J. Brande was indeed a shape-shifting law enforcement officer centuries before the formation of the Legion.

R. J. Brande was known to have a fascination with the twentieth century, he was reputed to have been a law enforcement officer of some type. It is later revealed that he was in fact a shape changing Durlan who was stuck in human form.

As mentioned previously the Durlans were Founders who had become infected with individuality because through Odo and discovered that they preferred it. They had emigrated to the Alpha Quadrant just prior to the Berserker era. With individuality came conflict and the Durlans had become a group of beings much given to unrest. It took centuries before they learned to form a cooperative society of individuals. Odo tried his best to steer the society to one under the rule of law, once he felt he had succeeded he once again began to live among humanoid, for he missed their company. It should be remembered that Odo had been raised among humanoids. During the Lensmen era he had become a first stage Lensmen. After the Lensmen had disbanded, Odo took on a fully human persona and explored the cosmos for a few decades before coming up with the idea of the stargates. It was during this period he was exposed to Yorrgian fever which robbed him of his shape shiftng abilities. He had hid them anyway since Durlans were still regarded with suspicion. He borrowed advanced technology to create suns and also to recreate the stargates. The element which had powered them which the Goa'uld called naquadah he was able to manufacture with the help of the people of the planet Trom.

For many years as constable on Deep Space Nine, Odo had pursued Quark. Yet this pursuit although ultimately fruitless so far as criminal activities were concerned, Odo had gain valuable knowledge about the art of the deal and managing finances from studying his Ferengi opponent. As R. J. Brande accumulated wealth and position but did so in a fashion that adhered to his strict code of ethics. His fascination with the twentieth century began while he was working on Deep Space Nine and became friends with the sentient hologram Vic Fontaine, who had been based on a twentieth century entertainer. Captain Sisko had also had an interest in the twentieth century although it was rather specialized in the areas of cooking, baseball and social history. Although there wasn't an organization named L.E.G.I.O.N. Odo had spent time as a law enforcement officer on Deep Space Nine and later as a Lensman.

R. J. Brande was for the first several years of the Legion's existence its sole means of financial support; it later received subsidies from the United Planets. The Legion was always able to look to him for financial or political help. His great knowledge of the twentieth century also proved invaluable as he brought to their attention the legends of super powered individuals which had once provided security and protection to the people of earth. The people of the twentieth century had often recorded their histories in the form of cheaply produced, colorful magazines which were intended for young people. R. J. Brande had accumulated the only known existing collection of so called comic books in the 30^th Century. However this was only a collection of ten volumes published in various years. (29) As can be seen the histories that the Legion relied upon were not accurate to any great degree. This would play a large role in their bringing superman into the future as we will delve into later.

R. J. Brande was able to finagle support for the Legion from the United Planets Council and also get the Legionnaires commissions from the Science Police. This completed they began recruiting other members, by inviting the other worlds to send the best young representatives of their worlds. They also had Legion try outs. One of the first who was interested in joining was Luornu Durgo, R. J. Brande's personal assistant. Luornu was from the planet Carggg, a triple-sunned world.(30) and had the ability to split into three fully functional people without a reduction in mass or size. She was an expert in the Cargggite marital art known as trijitsu.

(1)See Avenger by William Shatner and Judith and Garfield Reeves Stevens, Pocket Books 1997

(2)With the advent of advanced cloning technology in the early twenty first century there was a ferocious debate over the use of gene therapy and various other biomedical procedures. It was revealed how Khan and his supermen had manipulated governments from behind proxies in the nineties. This resulted not only in a backlash against genetic enhancements, cloning, stem cell research etc but also a growing suspicion against those persons who had superior abilities such as Superman and the Four. As this suspicion against such persons grew, superpowers began being seen as arising from illegal genetic enhancement despite their true origins. As such persons known to possess such abilities were segregated from society for their own safety. As a consequence anyone who possessed such abilities hid them, explaining the lack of superpowers from the 22^nd to 25^th centuries.

(3) The planet killers primarily used hyperspace drives which were slower than warp speed vessels but still allowed to travel rapidly. However due to the Borg's attempt to assimilate this new technology, the planet killers also gain limited transwarp capabilities, it is speculated by some scientists that the planet killers also gained their limited ability to adapt from the Borg as well.

(4) Science Fiction author Fred Saberhagen was given information about the Berserkers by an unknown source who apparently wished to plant cautionary information about the threat that lurked in the future for mankind. Saberhagen's tales while accurate about the various actual battles, and even the names of many of the protagonists, were distorted as far as the length of the Berserker Wars and the background history of the future of humanity. The alien race most mentioned in Saberhagen's Berserker Saga, the Carmpan, did exist but they did not make contact with the Federation until the Berserker threat was upon it.

(5) Over the course of time, especially in the chaos which was yet to come, many sources stated that the shapeshifters on Durla were the descendents of the original inhabitants and their shapeshifting abilities came from the radiation. The shapeshifters on Durla did form their own culture based on the new individualism given to them by Odo, it quickly formed into a hierarchial system with advancement based on conflict, often physical conflict.

(6) See the Star Trek The Next Generation episode Force of Nature

(7) "The Economics of StarTrek" http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/Trek-Marxism.html

8. The Consilium appear in the Star Trek novel Crossroad by Barbara Hambley
(9) The war which occurred after the Effram Cochrane's flight to Alpha Centauri was for many years known as the Optimal War but since it had actually including much of the world the name was changed. There was a great deal of distaste at having used the name Optimal War due to the Colonel Green's used of genetic manipulation and selective breeding to achieve Optimal results.

(10) Even though the World War in Triplanetary is depicted as happening in 199-, E.E. Smith was writing with only partial information from his source who had been to the Future. His dates were off slightly.

(11) In 2268 the crew of the Starship Enterprise would encounter one such ship of the Eddorians whose ship had been damaged. See Star Trek By Any Other Name. Although these Eddorians stated that they were from the Kelvan Empire. In a sense this is true since it was one of the many such star empires ruled by the Eddorians in the Andromeda Galaxy. Despite having killed Starfleet personnel the Kelvans convinced the Federation that they would be good candidates to colonize planets in the Federation, which may have been a sign of their great mental powers

(12) The being who created this barrier was by legend the first human being to achieve the non corporeal status of being pure Thought. He is often known as the Time Trapper because of his placement of a barrier at the beginning and end of time to prevent further observation of the Beginning or the End. One there had been on time line and in this timeline humanity had eventually evolved into beings of pure thought. Yet some of these vastly powered beings had traveled from near the end of time to observe the Beginning. Observation changes Events and so it was that the timeline split. All efforts to rejoin the fractured timeline caused more divergences. The Omni realized that they could not restore the original timeline but they could preserve the events which led to their creation.

(13) A variation of the inertialess drive had been discovered by Richard Seaton circa 1925, although he disappeared shortly thereafter. It is believed that he too was an agent of the Arisians and aided civilizations on the fringe of the Galaxy to wipe out the Eddorian sponsored threat of the Fenachrone.

(14) Although the Terran name for the home planet of these Wheel-Men was Aldeberan II, the Wheelmen named it Lalorlong, Simon Wagstaff landed here in his search for the meaning of existence circa 3069. The beings Wagstaff encountered were the decadent descendents of those Wheelmen who had survived the Galactic Patrol's retribution for their torture of Kinnison.

(15) E.E. Smith was writing a space opera based on partial information and so many of his more grandiose statements are dramatic exaggerations, although he was often surprisingly accurate. The Second Galaxy was not actually extragalactic but rather referred to a Nebula inside Beta Quadrant)

(16) Clarissa MacDougall would become the first woman to wear a Lens Known as the Red Lensman..

(17) These were probably asteroids, this being Smith's version of mass drivers, which are large asteroids routed to deliberately bombard a world.

(18) an antimatter bomb which seems to be the first use of the rediscovery of antimatter.

(19) The Lensman novels http://www.geocities.com/stevejohnson.geo/lensman.html

(20) Although the Lensmen become less important in the scheme of things from this point on they did continue to maintain a presence, although the Lensmen were barred from Earth during the 30^th century. However in the 57^th Century a rather odd Lensman acquired a Lens. This I think is worthy of a small diversion. In the 57^th Century a cryogenic chamber was unearthed from the Antarctic by an archaeological team which included a Lensmen. The Lensman examined the body with his sense of perception. He discovered that life still existed however dimly, that a mind still existed however dimly, that this mind had been touched by a Lens far in the past. His sense of perception also told him that this mind had the capability to become a Second Stage Lensmen. The body was taken to Arisia where it was thawed out and cured of its physical ailments and made youthful once more. The brown haired and grey eyed man bore an uncanny resemblance to Kimball Kinnison of centuries past. Genetic comparison soon proved that the man was in fact in the Kinnison line of descent. The Arisians discovered that the mind inside this body was quite ill and needed to be repaired. On Earth of the 20th Century the man had fancied himself a superhero and later as the embodiement of God's Wrath. He was a murderer many times over but he was not inherently evil. He had been a test pilot for the United States Airforce. He had been sent to survey a downed unidentified flying object. His plane had been abducted by the Zeta Reticulans and he had been subjected to various painful and humiliating experiments that had nearly driven him mad. The Zeta Reticulans had also had another person that they had captured whose vessel had in fact been the ship which had crashed and the human pilot had gone to investigate. The crashed ship and pilot been retrieved by the Zeta Reticulans because it had appeared above Earth's atmosphere and entered the atmosphere at a great velocity and nearly hit the Zeta Reticulan ship.

The man had lenticular device on his wrist which caused death to any who tried to remove it. Despite severe torture the man had refused to divulge his secrets. Something odd happened when the two men were placed in proximity to one another, the lenticular device pulsed a polychromatic light when near the earthman. The crashed alien eventually succumbed to his injuries. As a test the dark lenticular device was placed on the wrist of the Earthman , it flashed with an radiant light. The Zeta Reticulans subjected the pilot to more intense experimentation to understand the nature of this device. Since the pilot did not know what the nature of the device was this was a futile line of inquiry. Unable to withstand the torture any longer the pilot unknowingly harnessed the power of his mind combined with the Lens and blasted a hole in the orbiting ship. His Lens protected him as he fell through the atmosphere but the untrained mental blast had caused severe brain trauma causing a functional brain disorder. Although he still retained at times the mental strength of a Second Stage Lensmen, most times he did not. Since he was no longer a viable Lensman The Lens slipped from his wrist as he crossed through the New Mexico Desert.

The pilot had reported his experience to the Crash Investigation Team who believed he was disoriented from crash and had walked away. Military Intelligence and the CIA were not so certain. They interrogated him and as part of their ongoing MK Ultra experiments conducted a section of the interrogation using LSD, Electro-Convulsive treatment and hypnosis. He spent six months "recuperating" from the crash. He was programmed by the CIA to become a civilian assassin if given the correct key words and code phrases. This was merely done to see if it could be done. After his recuperation Jordan was released from the Air Force with a honorable discharge and set up with a job testing planes at Ferris Airplane. While he was working her, something triggered his deep psycho training. The conflict between his deep hypnotic personalities and his regular personality caused Hal Jordan to become psychotic, a violent psychotic capable of carrying out acts of theft, murder, terrorism and find some logical excuse to justify it, the logical excuse that his mind developed was that he was a superhero carrying out acts of heroism. Some theorize that Jordan's inner conflict was complicated by the fact that he had been given psycho surgery by the aliens that had picked him up. No one believed his story about the aliens but they do match descriptions of the Zeta Reticulans otherwise known as the Roswell Grays. His mind transformed them into the inscrutable Oans. . For years it was believed that Hal Jordan's having witnessed Robert Bruce Banner transform into the Hulk in 1961 somehow triggered part of his programming. However more recent evidence has uncovered another reason.

This account cleared up the mystery of what had happened to one of the missing Lensman, although it was still puzzling why his hyperspatial tube had also caused Abin Sur to travel through time. Having discovered Hal Jordan's madness and the root cause of it the Arisians also realized that he would be forever a man out of his time if he was cured of his mental illness in the 57^th Century, they decided to wipe his memory and instill in him a new persona, one based on an imaginary character from his unconscious mind. Hal Jordan was freed of his insanity and of his identity and he became Pol Manning, one of the 57^th century's premier Lensmen. Later Pol Manning discovered that he had originated in the twentieth century under another name and persona. As an experiment, he used all of his mentality focused through his lens to contact his younger self in a far distant century. The contact was sharp, clear and profoundly disturbing. His younger self could not handle the sharp influx of thought and emotion and his mind shattered, leading to madness. Somehow the younger self remained linked to Pol Manning so much that he believed that he was actually experiencing these adventures himself. See the Green Arrow article for details.

(21) In Laumer's book Dinosaur Beach, The first era of time travelers took no precautions and made a mess of history. The second era took extensive precautions, and made a worse mess. The third era attempted to undo the damage, and just made it worse yet.. The hero of this story is Ravel, who is a *fourth* era agent, which means that he and his companions are working to repair the damage done by all the earlier eras -- as well as fighting agents of all the earlier eras, who think they know better. This corresponds with the early attempts by the Ancients to correct the history and restore the original timeline. The fourth era time traveler's tales also provided Laumer with many of his other time travel stories such as the The Great Time Machine Hoax, Time Trap, as well as glimpses of the future such as the Bolos series and the Retief series. Laumer used information about Jame Retief and his own diplomatic experience to create stories which were part future history and also part lampoon about the United States Foreign Service during the 1950s and 1960s.For more about Retief please read the collection of Retief stories available at the Baen Library http://www.baen.com/library/0671318578/0671318578.htm.

(22) one in the area now known as Egypt another in the Antarctic which may have been one of the sites of Atlantis as seen in

(23) In the Stargate television series there are beings known as the Ascended ones or the Oma Desala. There is some evidence that the Ascended Ones are the Ancient ones who originally built the stargates and who have ascended into a non corporeal form. The Ascended Ones represent part of the Omni..

(24) For more on how the Daxamites and the Kryptonians were related, please see Krypton Decrypted by Dennis Power and Dr. Peter Coogan.

(25) The Science Police had originally been known as the Space Patrol but that brought back unpleasant memories of the Galactic patrol for many people so the name had been changed. The Science Police were the law enforcement branch of the United Planets. They only enforced United Planetary law and left local law enforcement to the local governments unless the locals requested that the Science Police undertake that duty or if it were proven that the local government and local law enforcement were corrupt. The Science Police was the brain child of R. J. Brande)

(26) Winith is also known as Amarta, had originally been settled by people from Ornara. These people had once been a technological race but dependent on a drug supplied by the Brekkians. They had freed themselves of this addiction and reverted to a simpler lifestyle, becoming an agrarian. The Ornarians possessed the ability to generate electrical currents. See Star Trek the Next Generation: Symbiosis. The Ranzz family was unusual because it possessed the ability to channel electrical current into bolts of power. This ability is supposed to have come from an Earthling ancestor named McCormick or Dillon. The Earth ancestor may have also been why the Ranzz family possessed the unfortunate trait of having single births, most births on Ranzz were twin births, single births were looked upon as a distressing anomaly

(27) The planet Braal was colonized after the Berserker Wars for strategic purposes. It was a planet which had been an experiment in terraforming, the terraformers had attempted to create a synthesis of the original flora and fauna as well as terran type flora and fauna. It had a fluctuating magnetic field and was home to animals whose hides were metallic although they were not a silicon based life. They were however inedible to Terran life forms containing high quantities of various minerals in their bodies. The reverse however was not true. The Braalians were genetically engineered to generate magnetic fields to compensate for the fluctuating magnetic fields and also as a defensive weapon against the metallic animals. This genetic enhancement seems to have been partially psionic in nature which allowed the Braalians to manipulate a magnetic field through some form of telekinesis. The terraformed area of Braal was never large and so only a few families remained as settlers, since their agricultural was small they had to depend on many imports. Although Braal was rich in metals the Braalians were the only ones who could safely mine them  so the main occupations for those who chose to remain on Braal were mining or farming Due to a limited resource base many Braalians had to find work off world to support their families.

28. A conflict had risen between Braal and Titan some years before due to some unscrupulous Titanians using their mental powers to persuade some Braalians to hand some valuable mines over to them and also to mine them without compensation. Although these were criminals Braal blamed the entire planet of Titan for these misdeeds. The resolution of this conflict had been one of the obstacles R. J. Brande had accomplished prior to the formation of the United Planets
(29) Further investigative research would discover that none of these were the original comics or even the original stories in the comics. These "histories" that R. J. Brande possessed were composite creations, attempts by later publishers to restore the originals by piecing them together from tattered, burned and other wise greatly damaged works. When presented with fragments they often used color and dialogue to piece together the stories. For example there was a big controversy whether Superman's girlfriend was Lois Lane or Millie the Model. A Marvel's Finest comic possessed by Brande had Grimm the Swamp-Thing teamed up with Batman to combat Lex Luthor and Captain Zod.

(30) The people of Cargg can split themselves into three identical forms all three forms have identical personalities. Those Cargggites whose other bodies exhibit differing personalities are sent to mental institutions and reprogrammed. According the legends of the planet the triple sun caused the splitting ability or it was evolved to fight off monsters that lived on the planet. Actually neither of these legends is true. Carggg was settled by religious cultists who worshipped the Trinity. They chose a triple sunned world on purpose. They were also one of the first people who took advantage of the relaxation of the strictures against genetic enhancement or genetic engineering. The cultists wished to experience the Trinity first hand and so had geneticists find a way for them to do this. They wished to become Three and also Three who are One. Using a modification of Founder DNA the geneticists were able to create a unique set of humanoid beings. Originally the intent of the splitting was to experience the world from three different perspectives which would become one experience as the bodies rejoined. Cargggites are concieved as a single cell then they split into identical triplets, however they merge into one baby prior to birth. They remain one child until they reach their third birthday which is when the splitting begins to manifest. The Trinity Cult was discredited through a scandal after the colony was formed and all efforts to suppress its existance were made. One of these was to make certain that the idea of experiencing the universe from three different vistas was expunged, the Cargggites forced themselves, quite unnaturally, to have one personality spread out in three bodies.
 
 

© 2003 Dr. Peter Coogan
© 2003 Dennis Power