About: Report of the Special Committee on the Quality of Life   Sponge Permalink

An Entity of Type : dbkwik:resource/NLsgs1nZE7frr8SlNyITIQ==, within Data Space : 134.155.108.49:8890 associated with source dataset(s)

The story is premised on the idea that Spain under the reign of King Fernando and Queen Isabel had in place a bureaucracy of government agencies comparable to those found throughout the world in the 20th century. The story itself is in the form of a mock "report" prepared by one such agency, the Special Committee on the Quality of Life, and its chairman, Jaime Nosénada, prepared in 1491. We learn that this is the third such report. The first committee, chaired by Hernando de Talavera, recommended against Cristóbal Colón's plans in 1490 (just as it did in OTL). A second committee, chaired by Pedro González de Mendoza, also refused.

AttributesValues
rdf:type
rdfs:label
  • Report of the Special Committee on the Quality of Life
rdfs:comment
  • The story is premised on the idea that Spain under the reign of King Fernando and Queen Isabel had in place a bureaucracy of government agencies comparable to those found throughout the world in the 20th century. The story itself is in the form of a mock "report" prepared by one such agency, the Special Committee on the Quality of Life, and its chairman, Jaime Nosénada, prepared in 1491. We learn that this is the third such report. The first committee, chaired by Hernando de Talavera, recommended against Cristóbal Colón's plans in 1490 (just as it did in OTL). A second committee, chaired by Pedro González de Mendoza, also refused.
dcterms:subject
Collected
dbkwik:turtledove/...iPageUsesTemplate
Editor
  • Terry Carr
pub date
  • 1980(xsd:integer)
First Appearance
  • Universe 10
Genre
ImageSize
  • 180(xsd:integer)
Author
Publisher
  • Doubleday
abstract
  • The story is premised on the idea that Spain under the reign of King Fernando and Queen Isabel had in place a bureaucracy of government agencies comparable to those found throughout the world in the 20th century. The story itself is in the form of a mock "report" prepared by one such agency, the Special Committee on the Quality of Life, and its chairman, Jaime Nosénada, prepared in 1491. We learn that this is the third such report. The first committee, chaired by Hernando de Talavera, recommended against Cristóbal Colón's plans in 1490 (just as it did in OTL). A second committee, chaired by Pedro González de Mendoza, also refused. The most recent report is an analysis of Colón's proposed voyage across the Atlantic Ocean as a means of reaching Asia. The report, enumerating the various risks such a voyage would pose to the sailors and country as a whole, recommends that the monarchs reject the proposal. Implicitly, Colón never makes the voyage, with the consequences of that decision left to the readers' imagination. The story's satire of unimaginative bureaucrats is pointed. The chairman's last name, Nosénada, may be read as the Spanish sentence "No sé nada", which translates into English as "I know nothing." Obviously, the chairman indeed knows nothing, allowing his terror of the unknown determine the course of his report; he deems the risk of the voyage to far outweigh any benefits. Needless to say, Turtledove does not consider the potential good such bureaucracies can do, and so the story might be critiqued for its "one-sidedness". However, insofar as it takes aim at the negative aspects of government agencies, this five-page story succeeds quite well.
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