Cultic Totems, Cultic Brotherhoods

[DeJaVu]

(12 August 3071)
Markesan [Markesan Academic Review]—
Cultic Totems, Cultic Brotherhoods
Trishanne Wallace
Effulgent Vision Books, 3071
Universal Media Code: EFVB3071-W357919687
49 C-Bills
One would think that writing an examination of the founding and development of the Clans would be simply a matter of examining the historical record - meager though it may be in sources readily available to Inner Sphere scholars - and constructing an interpretation that takes into account both the context into which their society was born and the needs and limitations of a culture with an expressed focus on warfare but with limited physical resources with which to wage it. In Cultic Totems, Cultic Brotherhoods, Trishanne Wallace instead approaches the topic as if it were a game to build the most implausible and nonsensical house of idiocy, a consciously counterfactual exercise in irrationality and absurdity. One almost wonders if she isn't in on the joke or if perhaps this book was written on a dare. Surely that is the only way to explain such an insane mishmash of cargo cult legends, One Star mysticism, Danikenian cosmology and Third Generation Dadaistic Apocalypticism.
The arrival of the descendents of Kerensky's Exodus in the early 3050s finally answered one of the long-standing mysteries of the Star League era and opened up whole new areas of study for scholars in fields as diverse as population genetics and media studies. Hundreds of papers, books and monographs examining every aspect of Clan culture flooded the market, especially after the end of the invasion in 3061 saw the faltering beginnings of exchange between the Inner Sphere and Clan Space. History, too, was one of the disciplines that benefitted from greater contact with the Clans, though you would not know it to look at Ms. Wallace's latest opus.
Steeped in credulity, this book reaches back nearly a century prior to the fall of the first Star League to postulate that Aleksandr Kerensky was the culmination of centuries of specialized controlled breeding to produce a new race of "space gods" who would lead humanity to enlightenment. His actions during the Amaris Civil War are interpreted as a messianic winnowing of unbelievers to pave the way for the ascendancy of what she calls "Universal Man," a supposed savior race that would subsequently make contact with a secretive Galactic Astrogarchy and prosyletize a creed seemingly congealed from this decade's most inane self-help vids. This beneficent new race died aborning at the hands of the evil and corrupt House Lords, leading Kerensky to flee into the Deep Periphery, where his message and superior genetics could be further shaped. The return of the Clans in 3050, therefore, is merely the prelude to a racial rapture that will paradoxically bring an end to all human conflict. And it only gets worse from there.
I'm not a reviewer given to hyperbole or even strong admonitions, but avoid this book as if the fate of the universe depended on it. Spending any amount of time with Wallace's crackpot theories is almost certainly guaranteed to result in massive brain trauma. And really, why would you want to take that chance?
-- F. Vasquez