Books reading recommendations Five SF Works About Building a New Nation Sure, societal collapse is inherently dramatic — but nation-founding can be exciting too! By James Davis Nicoll | Published on August 3, 2026 Comment 4 Share New Share Nations have a natural progression from (presumably) optimistic formation to eventual collapse. Collapse has obvious dramatic potential (see here, here, and here for some examples); thus the many works set amid crumbling or recently expunged civilizations. However, the early days of new polities can be just as exciting. The first few volumes of Canada’s Hansard are one nail-biter after another! Not everyone has access to records of century-old Parliamentary debates to fill the quiet evening hours. Happily, authors have been happy to fill that gap with tales of young nations, some so young that technically they do not yet exist. Consider these five vintage examples of nation-founding tales. “The Inspector’s Teeth” by L. Sprague de Camp (1950) Relativistic travel, making for easy travel between the cluster of civilizations near Sol, could be a recipe for disaster. An Interplanetary Council aims to give the interstellar community a minimal bureaucracy that will draft and enforce a few necessary regulations, thus averting strife and war, and ensuring general prosperity. There is, of course, a catch. The Council requires its founders, all species sufficiently ambitious enough to have crawled out of the mud to reach the stars themselves, to set aside their personal ambitions in the name of an abstract greater good. Can human and alien agree on what this might be? The answer is found in a curious anecdote about an Osirian’s school days on Earth. To be honest, the Interplanetary Council isn’t exactly idealistic. Their main fear is that interstellar anarchy could lead to a space-Genghis Khan getting his grasping appendages on starships and nukes1. Still, the proposals are better than nothing. Luckily for the Council’s prospects, de Camp is in his “wacky college days” mode and not his considerably grimmer “Judgment Day” mood. Quatre Montréalais en l’an 3000 by Suzanne Martel (1963) Founded by Francophone survivors of the Great Destruction, the underground city of Surréal, deep beneath Montreal’s Mount Royal, has provided its inhabitants with comfort, safety, and civilization. In stark contrast to Surréal, the surface lands are still uninhabitably radioactive. Or so people are free to believe, as nobody has checked in centuries. When a tremor opens a passage to the surface, young Luke P9 explores. To his astonishment, the surface is a verdant wilderness. Furthermore, it is inhabited… by Anglophones. Can the two solitudes unite after two centuries apart or is strife inevitable? I know this book as The City Under Ground, which I remembered as a comparatively upbeat recovery-after-the-bomb juvenile novel. It’s still possible to read it that way, as long as you don’t stop to wonder at the event that enables a new Anglo-French alliance: both groups are threatened by a third. A group that existed when the book was first published. And still exists. And might have strong feelings about being villainized. The Tangent Objective by Lawrence Sanders (1976) Independent since 1958, the tiny African nation of Asante is ruled by King Prempeh the Fourth. While Prempeh may not always prioritize Asante’s prosperity, he does have a keen instinct for his own financial well-being. This is a problem for Starrett Petroleum, who would like to exploit Asante’s newly discovered oil reserves without the bother of revenue-sharing with Prempeh. Solution: a sudden change in government, to be orchestrated by Peter Tangent, agent for the oil company. Tangent’s choice? Captain Obiri Anokye, who has every virtue a greedy oil company could want in a would-be coup leader. More virtues, in fact: Anokye has a grand vision of the nation Asante could be… as part of a unified Africa, finally taking its place as one of the world’s great powers. Starrett thinks Anokye is their pawn. They are simply one of Anokye’s. There are not many 1970s books about brilliant African nation-builders. This is definitely one. The bad news is that The Tangent Objective is very much a disco-era lurid, sex-filled thriller, with all the carefully crafted prose and subtle characterization—or rather, lack thereof—that implies. It does not, however, lack for energy. The Eye of the Heron by Ursula K. Le Guin (1978) The Brasil-American exiles who founded Victoria’s lone City value the pacifists in nearby Shantih Town. Shantih Town provides the City with an ample workforce to abuse and exploit. In return, the City provides Shantih Town with exploitation and abuse. It is the perfect symbiosis. The flaw in the City’s reasoning is that Victoria is a planet, most of which is nowhere near the City. Shantih Towners could simply migrate far from the City and found a community to their liking. A bold proposition! Or as the City would frame it, flagrant theft of City property: their serfs. I don’t think there was ever a sequel to this story, so we don’t find out how matters play out over the centuries. Did the City reform? Did it collapse without its workforce? Did it set out on a campaign of planetary conquest? Worst-case scenario, the Shantih Town migrants bought themselves time, which isn’t nothing. Nor Crystal Tears by Alan Dean Foster (1982) By the era that is the setting of Icerigger and The Tar-Aiym Krang, Foster’s imagined Humanx Commonwealth is simply a backdrop, a vast, wealthy, powerful and efficient polity that enables peace and prosperity on a galactic scale. However, a neutral observer might wonder how it came to be. Why would the beautiful insectoid Thranx even consider partnering with hideous soft-skinned humans? First contact between people and humans goes poorly. Humans are even uglier than the lizardoid Aann and no doubt even more violent. Clearly the Thranx must protect themselves from the humans, who are doubtless egg-eaters. Eccentric Ryo disagrees; perhaps there is some good in these space-horrors. Easy enough to prove… provided Ryo doesn’t mind committing a legendary crime spree. Every SF author gets their one impossible assumption. In Foster’s case, it is that something lacking an exoskeleton might not be the monster that they appear to be. This is hardly a comprehensive survey of the young nation genre. I didn’t even mention the Antarctican Republic! If I have overlooked your favourites, please mention them in comments below.[end-mark] See Poul Anderson’s The High Crusade for a comedic exploration of what might happen if Crusades-era Englishmen were handed a spaceship and nukes. ︎ The post Five SF Works About Building a New Nation appeared first on Reactor.