Sikhs vs. Klingons vs. Nietzcheans! Fight!

If there's one thing you can depend on in any Sci-Fi action/adventure, its this: Somewhere out there, there's an entire race that's devoted itself to pride, honor, and killing each other. In fact, odds are good that one member of the rag-tag crew of misfits is a member of this race, and in between acting macho and shooting his way out of every problem, he'll probably spend a fair amount of time explaining just how superior the warriors of his race are compared to us puny humans.

(Two notable subversions: In Firefly, the Tough Guy is basically a thug, albeit with excellent comic relief value, and is notable for having even less pride and honor than the rest of the smuggler/space pirate crew. Also, in Alan Dean Foster's The Damned trilogy, humanity itself is the proud warrior race, and are the only species not shocked and repulsed by the prospect o killing other sentient beings.)

Three examples spring immediatly to (my) mind: Worf, a Klingon from Star Trek; Teal'c, a Jaffa from Stargate SG-1; and Tyr, a Nietzchean(!!)* from Andromeda. They all serve essentially the same role: criticize the main hero for not using enough violence, then act surprised when he manages to out-violence them when the need arises.

The typical basis for such militarily-minded cultures is, of course, human. Spartans are the classic warrior race, though feudal Japan runs a close second. Another favorite is the Viking/Indian Brave, for a more barbaric feel.

Proud warrior races are standard fare in sci-fi because they're one of the few one-dimensional cultures that might actually have a chance. Usually, they have about the same level of technology as the humans, meaning that epic space battles between the two are evenly matched. A victory usually leads to the humans noting how important free thought and innovation are to survival; the rare loss is probably a chance to inflict a Pyrrhic victory and go down in a blaze of glory.

Needless to say, the PWR and the humans will join forces against that invasion of world-eating bugs/robots, possibly with a "we're not so different after all" thrown in for good measure.

My roomate last year was a Sikh. The Sikh are one of those culture/religon combos, and come from the Punjab region of northern India. A fairly new religon (as far as religons go; it was founded around 1498), it is the fifth-largest organized religon in the world, though the majority of its adherents are clustered in Punjab. It's actually fairly interesting; they're monotheistic, but believe in a non-anthropomorphic god.

Because of a history of conflict with the Muslims of that region (which borders Pakistan), the Sikhs have a long military tradition. Sikh units are among the most decorated in the Indian Army, and are famed for fighting to the last man at the Battle of Saragarhi (the Indian equivalent of Thermopylae).

And my roomate was quite proud of this. Having recently gotten back in touch with his tradition, he is possibly the most Sikh Sikh on campus. He practices gatka (a Sikh martial art that apparently revolves around spinning swords - get it?) twice a week for three hours, leads the Sikh Student Association, etc, etc...

And of course, his grades were trash this semester. And due to some weird vagarities of the registration system (wherby you can only repeat a course once), he's probably not going to graduate on time. Which goes to show, maybe, the problem with being a Proud Warrior Race: sooner or later, that war's gonna end, and then you'll wish you knew a bit more about farming and industry and calculus.

And when the British East Indian Company (yep, those guys) shows up on your shores with more cannons than you have swords, maybe it'd be nice to have a plan that doesn't involve dying to the last man.**

Next Time: Hyperdrives & the Pragmatic Maxim
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Footnoted:

*The Nietzcheans claim to follow the philosophies of Friedrich Nietzche, but even a cursory understanding of his school of thought will tell you that somewhere along the line, they got it very, very wrong. Nevertheless, Tyr still manages to be some sort of Ubermensch, and if I ever download the two non-crappy seasons of Andromeda, I'll definitely talk about that.

**Alright, that's not exactly how the First Anglo-Sikh War went down, but its pretty close. Yes, the East Indian Company were a great example of how true capitalism involves being a douche to absolutely everyone.