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The Domination of the Draka (also called the Draka series or the Draka saga) is a dystopian science fiction alternate history series by American author S. M. Stirling.
The series comprises a main trilogy of novels as well as one crossover novel set after the original and a book of short stories.
The series focuses on Draka (later The Domination), a totalitarian, expansionist nation founded in Southern Africa by British settlers in the 18th century where an especially cruel manifestation of a slavery-regime plays an increasingly central role.
| 1 | Marching Through Georgia | May 1, 1988 | February 1991 | ||
| A Draka airborne unit attempts to hold a mountain pass against the Germans in Ossetia as the Domination launches its invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe. | |||||
| 2 | Under the Yoke | September 1, 1989 | December 31, 1991 | ||
| The Draka reshape Europe by turning the surviving population into serfs. Meanwhile an American agent infiltrates Draka society in an effort to gain contact with various resistance organizations. | |||||
| 3 | The Stone Dogs | July 1, 1990 | January 1, 1997 | ||
| The long-standing protracted struggle between the Domination of the Draka and the Alliance for Democracy turns hot when the Draka unleash a new secret weapon. | |||||
| 4 | Drakon | January 1, 1996 | June 7, 1999 | ||
| When an experiment goes wrong a female Draka is hurled into a parallel Earth and now seeks to pave the way for an invasion force. | |||||
| +Anthologies | |||||
| 1 | The Domination | May 31, 1999 | |||
| An omnibus edition of the Draka Saga was published in 1999, containing the first trilogy, Marching Through Georgia, Under the Yoke and The Stone Dogs. | |||||
| 2 | Drakas! | October 31, 2000 | |||
| In 2000, Stirling edited Drakas!, a collection of short stories by other authors who develop plots based on the Domination premise. | |||||
The new settlers rapidly assimilate the earlier Boer population. With their greater numbers, the higher firepower of the Ferguson rifle, and later augmented by German and Confederate expatriates, they overrun and enslave the native population. With its capital at Pretoria, the Draka develop into a Militarism slave-owning society controlled by a hereditary plantation slavocracy. Other societal groups include a Technocracy subclass of industrialists, a small Boer-dominated navy, and a secret police known as the Security Directorate; controlled by Confederate immigrant families out of “Skull House.”
Draka culture draws heavy inspiration from the Mughal Empire as well as classical antiquity. English is the only legally spoken language, and the Draka accent is described as being difficult for foreigners to imitate, with some Afrikaans influence. The economy is heavily dominated by known as Combines, though there is also a considerable small-business private sector. The Draka currency is gold-backed known as the Auric.
The majority of the Domination’s free population owns at least one or two slaves. Indeed, subject races are estimated to comprise 90% of the Domination’s population; slaves, or “Serfs,” have no rights and are thus viewed less as living beings and more as expendable fodder, to be used for a variety of purposes. Politically, the Domination is ruled by a parliament of elected senators chosen by the Citizens through a fair vote, which in turn conduct a vote among themselves to appoint an “Archon,” or head of state, who serves for a seven year term. Citizens have a considerable degree of free speech, but any fundamental criticism of the State or the slave system is forbidden.
While originally, serfs were Black people and citizenship was open to all white individuals, the Draka eventually began to see themselves as the one true Master Race; all non-Draka existed now as threats to be subjugated. Due to a societal fixation on military training from infancy, Draka citizen soldiers are depicted as being the equal of several elite enemy soldiers in combat; they give no quarter in battle and all prefer death to capture. The rest of the army is filled out by slave troops, known as Janissaries, who are less well-equipped but still formidable. Having leveraged conquered natural resources to offer research grants and incentives, Draka technology is shown to progress more rapidly than technology in reality; their military equipment is several decades ahead of their opponents, and by later books in the series includes genetically modified animals, combat spacecraft, and advanced computer viruses.
Over the course of the 19th century, the Draka conquer and enslave all of Africa, starting with Egypt Eyalet during the Napoleonic Wars and ending with the Congo. Other world powers are likewise much more expansionist in this timeline, with Brazil seizing much of South America, Gran Colombia never breaking up, and the United States eventually annexing all of North America as well as Spain's Caribbean and Pacific possessions. Massive Draka aid to the Confederacy fails to avert a Union victory in the American Civil War. The Taiping Rebellion succeeds, but a weakened China soon cedes large territories and eventually becomes a protectorate of Japan. Joining the Allies of World War I, the Draka seize Ottoman Empire and Bulgarian lands and then much of Central Asia from China, Afghanistan, and the collapsing Russian Empire.
The second book, Under the Yoke, depicts Europe under Draka rule. The Draka, having long applied modern science to the practice of slavery, ruthlessly crush any resistance and obliterate old institutions. Their methods even include the use of a thermonuclear weapon on the rebelling city of Barcelona. The third book, The Stone Dogs, depicts the cold war between the Draka and the Alliance, known as the Protracted Struggle, which is fought mostly on interplanetary colonies throughout the inner Solar System. The Alliance also intensifies its efforts to recruit Draka defectors, of which there are few. The Draka, due to their willingness to sacrifice human life for scientific gain, leapfrog the Alliance in biotech considerably, leading to the creation of the first transgene animals-the Ghouloons: part Gelada Baboon, part canine, part hunting cat, part human (for very basic intelligence and opposable thumbs) the Ghouloons are added to the Draka ranks as loyal guardians and shock troops, to the disgust of the Alliance.
In the 1970s, the exposure of an Alliance covert operation against a Hindu nationalist party leads to India formally seceding from the Alliance, only to be conquered and enslaved by the Draka within less than a week. Even so, long-term trends are depicted as favoring the Alliance; its larger economy and free population give it an advantage in physics and computer research. Both sides engineer a superweapon for the expected Final War; the Alliance creates a sophisticated computer virus which causes any Draka war machines to self destruct should they go to war-footing, while also secretly constructing a starship known as the New America, ready to escape to Alpha Centauri in the event of total defeat.
The Draka have more advanced biological sciences; by experimenting on slave subjects, Draka geneticists eventually develop a virus known as "The Stone Dogs," a heavily derived strain of HIV which can induce homicidal madness in those affected, which they infect most of the Alliances leadership with. To prevent losing the virus's secrecy following a breach in security, the Domination uses it preemptively on the Alliance in a surprise attack. In the resulting war, costing hundreds of millions of lives on both sides, the Alliance is narrowly defeated; a truce between Draka Archon Eric Von Shrakenberg and Commander Fredrick LaFarge allows the remaining alliance personnel to launch the starship. The Draka conquer the Earth, now devastated by a years-long nuclear winter. All remaining free humans are enslaved or granted limited Draka citizenship, allowing for their children to eventually vote and join the military.
The Domination eventually imposes “The Final Society,” securing their grip over the Solar System. Soon, baseline humans are hunted to extinction by the newly ascendant Homo Drakensis, who then produce a new variant of the species known as Homo Servus that is genetically tailored for servility, as well as unable to breed with the Draka "Master Race." Only a few isolated groups of baseline humans are said to survive and are kept locked in a Stone Age existence, with their former homelands used as Hunting Preserves by the Draka.
The fourth novel, Drakon, starts in 2442 when research into wormhole technology, or “Molehole” technology, needed to bridge the gap between Earth and the Alliance colony of Samothrace at Alpha Centauri, ends up sending a single Drakensis and a pursuing Alliance cyborg into an alternate 1995–2000 where the Draka never existed. In the original timeline, the Draka barely beat back a wormhole-enabled Alliance assault from Alpha Centauri, while in the alternate timeline, the Cyborg manages to prevent the Draka from reopening the wormhole and invading. Using technology captured from the interlopers, the alternate Earth begins to prepare for the next incursion of the Draka.
Fredric Smoler called the series "eerie", "distressing" and "perhaps the most haunting of dystopian alternate histories", commending Stirling for his courage to portray a dark, alternative scenario from which others writers may "recoil from".
The series has been criticized on the internet for being historically and technologically implausible. When asked about these criticisms in an interview, Stirling answered:
There's a small internet industry of 'proving' that the Domination couldn't happen. I consider this a complement . How many people go on at great length trying to prove that vampires and werewolves don't exist? Interview with Stirling
Stirling's use of the Draka as point-of-view characters has led to accusations that he has some sympathy with them (for example, in his entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction), to his dismay. He describes the Draka series as based on "supposing everything had turned out as badly as possible, these last few centuries."
In 2000 the series has inspired an Internet website related to the BDSM subculture, a "Master/slave Registry... that enables Masters to register their slaves by number".
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