Item of Terminology popularized through the original television Star Trek, in which the Prime Directive – also known as Starfleet General Order #1 – prohibits interference with the "normal" development of a planetary or other culture; inevitably this is violated several times in the series and its sequels. Jack Williamson first introduced the term to sf in "With Folded Hands . . ." (July 1947 Astounding), but with a meaning far removed from noninterference: his Robots insistently give priority to the final clause of their programmed directive, "To Serve and Obey, And Guard Men from Harm." (> Laws of Robotics). Poul Anderson's "The Live Coward" (June 1956 Astounding) features a secret Prime Directive – so named – forbidding the lawmen of its interstellar Patrol to "kill any intelligent being".
In tales involving Forerunners and their relationship to the species they may have Uplifted, something like a Prime Directive may be evoked, usually to justify the secrecy of their role. Though their secret status is finally divulged to a select few, the Arisians in E E Smith's Lensman sequence (see his entry for dates) do not reveal their true selves, nor the Godgame they are playing with the species they have created, so as not to impose a fatal inferiority complex upon their descendants. Not called so as such, the general principle of noninterference also makes an earlier appearance in Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker (1937), in which "pre-utopian" worlds are "left to work out their own destiny. [. . .] Great care was taken by the Symbiotic race to keep its existence hidden from the primitives, lest they should lose their independence of mind." [DRL]
see also: Laws.
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