Plot: 7/9. This comical parable used an intergalactic stage to tell me how the humanity fell down owing to involving into the war between higher civilisations unfortunately.

Dendi, one of the members in the Galactic Federation, built bases with lethal weapons on Earth against “evil” Troxxt. They moved Washington just for recreation and let their sergeant receive the president of the United Sates. Their war against Troxxt was a living hell and one-tenth of the human died of the collateral damage.

The winner, Troxxtians, claimed Dendi was the true evil and earthlings were bilked. They hence only executed those who were favored by the last colonizer and used earthlings to build planetary defense after inviting humanity to join the Protoplasmic League. People then believed Troxxtians were actually their mentors albeit horrible industrial injuries.

Dendi came back and disintegrated all Australia into ash so as to annihilate Troxxtians there. They claimed earthlings were cheated naively by the Troxxtians and executed their translators by the name of collaboration.

The same scenarios which had repeated again and again greatly deteriorated Earth’s environment before the Troxxt and the Dendi found the Earth was no longer suitable for their war and left the godforsaken world behind.

After nine generations, people were yet incapable of recovering the industry and lost their absolute hegemony, let alone the civilization. But they still passed the tale of holy liberations from generation to generation and were satisfied with their current thoroughly liberation.

Core: 9/9. I love political satire especially because it still works today as long as there still exist nations who initiated wars on another lands but lured their stupid citizens that they were fighting for good name.

May local people in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, and so on live away from wars one day in the future.

Character: 5/9. I just couldn’t understand why the narrator was still brainwashed by two distinct phoney ideologies implanted by aliens had gone away many years ago. Meanwhile, the earthling in this story were too stupid, timid and subservient. But I was still a little moved by their optimism in the end.

World and Others: 5/9. It had depictions of intergalactic political structures and space war. It’s a little funny to see two species holding a long-running feud were so similar in essence.

Overall: 7/9. I would love to read more works by William Tenn because he not only rendered a good story, but also inspired me to believe in people’s realistic action rather than big words.