To Carol, with love
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Carol, Sharon, and Michael, as always; to Andrew Greig for listening about light-years; and to Farah Mendlesohn for reading and commenting on the first draft.
There is no middle path between these two, for a man must either be a free and true commonwealth’s man, or a monarchical tyrannical royalist.
Kingly government governs the earth by that cheating art of buying and selling, and thereby becomes a man of contention, his hand is against every man, and every man’s hand is against him; and take this government at the best, it is a diseased government, and the very city Babylon, full of confusion.
—Gerard Winstanley, The Law of Freedom in a Platform (1651)