62  ..."space opera" civilization"...

"It was not until the 1920s that the space opera proper appeared in the pulp magazines
Weird Tales and Amazing Stories. Unlike earlier stories of space adventure, which either
related the invasion of Earth by extraterrestrials, or concentrated on the invention of a space
vehicle by a genius inventor, pure space opera simply took space travel for granted (usually
by setting the story in the far future), skipped the preliminaries, and launched straight into
tales of derring-do among the stars.

The first stories of this type were J. Schlossel's The Second Swarm (Spring 1928) in
Amazing Stories Quarterly and Edmond Hamilton's Crashing Suns (August-September
1928) and The Star Stealers (February 1929) in Weird Tales . Similar stories by other writers
followed through 1929 and 1930; by 1931 the space opera was well-established as a
dominant sub-genre of science fiction.

The transition from the older space-voyage story to the space opera can be seen in the
works of E. E. "Doc" Smith. His first published work, The Skylark of Space (August-October
1928, Amazing Stories), merges the traditional tale of a scientist inventing a space-drive with
planetary romance in the style of Edgar Rice Burroughs; but by the time of the sequel,
Skylark Three (August-October 1930, Amazing Stories) which introduces the space faring
race of the Fenachrone, Smith had moved closer to a space opera mode.

Space opera in its most familiar form was a product of 1930s-40s pulp magazines. Like early
science fiction in general, space opera borrowed much of its style from established
adventure, crime, and thriller genres. Notable influences included stories that described
adventures on exotic or uncivilized frontiers, e.g. the American West, Africa, or the Orient.
The imagined future of space opera included immense space liners, intrepid explorers of
unknown worlds, pirates of the space ways, and tough but incorruptible space police.
E. E. "Doc" Smith's later Lensman Series and the works of Edmond Hamilton, John W.
Campbell, and Jack Williamson in the 1930s and 1940s were popular with readers and much
imitated by other writers. By the early 1940s, the repetitiousness and extravagance of some
of these stories led to objections from some fans."

-- Reference: Wikipedia.org

63  "... European explorers who "discovered" and "claimed" the New World for The
Holy Father, The Pope..."

"...On the death of Pope Innocent VIII (1484–1492), the three likely candidates for the Holy
See were cardinals Borgia, Ascanio Sforza and Giuliano della Rovere. While there was
never substantive proof of simony, the rumor was that Borgia, by his great wealth,
succeeded in buying the largest number of votes, including that of Sforza, whom, popular
rumor had it, he bribed with four mule-loads of silver.

Pope Alexander VI (1 January 1431 – 18 August 1503), born Roderic Llançol, later
Roderic de Borja y Borja (Italian: Borgia) was Pope from 1492 to 1503. He is the most
controversial of the secular popes of the Renaissance, and his surname (Italianized as
Borgia) became a byword for the debased standards of the papacy of that era.

Della Rovere was bankrolled to the cost of 200,000 gold ducats by the King of France, with
another 100,000 supplied by the Republic of Genoa. Borgia was elected on 11 August 1492,
assuming the name of Alexander VI. Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici, later to become Pope
Leo X, sharply criticized the election and warned of dire things to come:
"Now we are in the power of a wolf, the most rapacious perhaps that this world has
ever seen. And if we do not flee, he will inevitably devour us all."

-- Reference: Wikipedia.org

64  "...1493 AD -- "The Requirement"...

"The Requirement was published as a papal "bull", issued by the infamous Pope Alexander
VI, (Rodrigo Borgia), Roman Catholic Pope from 1492 until his death, is the most memorable
of the Popes of the Renaissance.
Because of the pre-existence of millions of people living in the Americas in 1493, the King of
Spain, had a small twinge of fear at the prospect that God might become angry at him for all
the murder, theft and mayhem he endorsed in the New World. So, he persuaded Pope
Alexander VI to sanction an official proclamation intended to dissolve the stain of bloody
culpability from the King's own immortal soul. This document, called "The Requirement",
was supposed to be read, whether translated into the native language of the inhabitants or
not, to the citizens of every foreign nation just prior to their conquest. The gist of the
proclamation was to inform the soon to be vanquished that their lands were being "donated"
to Spain.

The Requirement read, in part:

"I, (name of the Conquistador), servant of the high and mighty Kings of Castile and
Leon, conquerors of barbarian peoples, and being their messenger and Captain, hereby
notify and inform you ... that God Our Lord, One and Eternal, created Heaven and Earth and
a man and a woman from whom you and I and all the multitude begotten from these over the
past five thousand and some years since the world was made ... And so I request and
require you ... to recognize the Church as your Mistress and as Governess of the World and
Universe, and the High Priest, called the Pope, in Her name, and His Majesty (the King of
Spain) in Her place, as Ruler and Lord King ... And if you do not do this ... with the help of
God I shall come mightily against you, and I shall make war on you everywhere and in every
way that I can, and I shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and His
Majesty, and I shall seize your women and children, and I shall make them slaves, to sell
and dispose of as His Majesty commands, and I shall do all the evil and damage to you that I
am able. And I insist that the deaths and destruction that result from this will be your fault."
One of the first to hear The Requirement were the chiefs of the Maya, whose scale of time
for the creation of life on Earth did not begin a mere 5,000 years earlier, as suggested by the
Pope, rather the Mayan measured original creation in millions of years by the astronomical
calendars they kept, which tracked the solar year accurately to within a few seconds a year.
Their comment upon hearing The Requirement was, "The Holy Father has indeed been
generous with others' property".

The Requirement was originally intended as a response to complaints by Spanish clerics
that the wars against the Native American peoples were unjust. Comparing them to Spain's
wars against the Moors, the clerics claimed that Muslims had knowledge of Christ and
rejected Him, so that waging a Crusade against them was legitimate. In contrast, wars
against the Native Americans, who had never come into contact with Christianity were
unacceptable. The Requirement was intended as a legal loophole to place the native
population in the position of having rejected Christianity. It stated: "We protest that any
deaths that result from this [rejection of Christianity] are your fault…"

Many critics of the conquistadors' policies were appalled by the flippant nature of the
Requirement, and the priest, Bartolomeo de Las Casas, said in response to it that he did not
know whether to laugh or to cry. While the conquistadors were encouraged to use an
interpreter to read the Requirement, this was not absolutely necessary, and in many cases, it
was read out to an uncomprehending populace. In some instances, it was read to barren
beaches and empty villages, long after the natives had fled, to prisoners after they were
captured, or even from the decks of ships once they had just spotted the coast.
Nevertheless, for the conquistadors, it provided a religious justification for attacking and
enslaving the native population, and because of its potential to enrich the coffers of Spain,
the Requirement was not generally questioned."

-- Reference: Wikipedia.org

The net result of the "discovery" of the "New World" which wasn't really "new" as it had been
around as long as any other continent, and had a larger population than Europe, was as
follows:

1) hundreds of indigenous cultures were eradicated 2) approximately 100 million people
were killed by disease and war brought upon them by "aliens" 3) 100 million people from the
Gold Coast of Africa were enslaved, and/ or murdered by Europeans in an effort to replace
the "labor force" of slaughtered indigenous population of the Western Hemisphere 4) nearly
all of the priceless literature, history, cultural and artistic artifacts of the Western hemisphere
were destroyed 5) most of the gold and gems mined over a period of thousands of years by
indigenous people were stolen and shipped off the a handful of greedy, idiotic, uneducated,
filthy, disease-ridden, superstitious, murderous, thieves in Europe who squandered it on
mindless self-indulgences. -- The Editor