This past Thanksgiving I ventured to southern Maryland for a big family dinner. My host happened to live just up the road from St. Mary's City, the site of Maryland's first colonial capital.
It's a very interesting site: there are reconstructions of some of the original buildings and some excellent exhibits about how archaeologists combine field work and archival research to determine what the structures were used for and who lived where.
I was struck by one of the reconstructions, the Van Sweringen Inn and Coffee House. This was one of the first taverns in the colony, and it was built by a Dutch settler, Garrett (or Gerret) Van Sweringen. He had a long and active life, persevering in the face of numerous setbacks. (You can read about him here.)
Van Sweringen had a large family, and they spread widely across the United States over the next four centuries. The villainous Al Swearingen from the television show Deadwood is based on a real-life descendant. In the late 19th century the magnificently-named brothers Oris and Mantis Van Sweringen were railroad tycoons in Ohio. Today there's a Swearingen aircraft company in Texas. If you Google "Sweringen" and "Swearingen" you get more than two million hits, spread from coast to coast.
All those Sweringens and Swearingens are descended from Gerret Van Sweringen.
What does any of this have to do with spaceships? It illustrates the importance of getting there first. If humans ever settle other worlds, either within or beyond the Solar System, the first ones there will have a disproportionate influence on the subsequent history of any colony. (Assuming, of course, that they survive. The first English settlers in America had no influence on the country's history at all because that colony vanished without a trace.)
The columnist Mark Steyn once observed that the future belongs to those who show up for it. People and cultures are not interchangeable. If you believe, as I do, that humans will eventually establish themselves off of Earth, and that we have a long future ahead of us, then who goes first is an important question.
Am I saying that America must settle Mars to keep the Commies off it? Well . . . yes, I am. Small things have big, long-term results. If you believe, as I do, that the ideals and habits of our culture are good things, then why leave them confined to one part of one world?
And when one is creating a culture for science fiction (or fantasy fiction, or a game setting), it's important to think about who the founders were, and how their influence has persisted over the years. A Mars colony established by anarchists will be very different from one founded by the DeBeers diamond consortium, or by the European Community. Even if the colonists have rejected their founders' ideals, that will have an effect on later history, too.
The lesson is clear: if you want to make a big mark, it helps to get in on the ground floor.
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