'The Only Thing We Learn' was published three years after the end of World War II. Mr. Kornbluth was a survivor of the Battle of the Bulge, and it left him with a strained heart that failed him in 1958, when he was 34.

The protagonist of this story is a history professor giving a lecture to the students in his Archaeo-Literature 203 class. He talks about the battle that led to the formation of their empire as known through old, middle, and new epics. He tells them that what they learned before wasn't exactly true, as archaeology has shown. We get snippits of the epics. I was not impressed.

The scene suddenly shifts to the historical battle from the Home Suns People's point of view. Wing Commander Arris is severely annoyed with drunken Glen, the chief archivist. Glen tells him something that makes Arris believe there's been a security leak, but it's only Glen's knowledge of history. Glen whispers something in Arris' ear that the Wing Commander doesn't believe. We're not told what it was, but when the scene returns to the lecture, we can guess.

I was a history major in college, so I gave this story an extra half-star for the professor pointing out what science has shown was wrong in the old epics. ( )

A fun story about the making and breaking of Empires. ( )