Cherryh has described her work in progress as "a stage by stage chart of the interrelations of immanent and consequent technological developments in space, with their logical sequence of social development, which is and will be the background of a majority of my books." In this vast scheme, The Faded Sun is an early development of one brief human-alien conflict, as the trading regul yield their economic domination of a small corner of the universe to a technologically advanced and expanding Terran culture. The resolution of the problem of the mri in their new service to humanity may form a vital chapter in Cherryh's fictional history of the future, as yet impossible to study as a whole, where her brilliantly-conceived and impressively presented alien civilizations contend against an enervated Terran empire and its rebellious colonies. In its heartbreaking depiction of the mri's lonely justification of their...