Star Maker, Olaf Stapledon [top rated books of all time .TXT] 📗
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life at last began to spread over this distressed world. It could not do
so till the super-tribes had been disintegrated by the economic forces
of mechanized industry, and by their own frenzied conflict. Then at last
the individual mind became once more free. The whole prospect of the
race now changed.
It was in this world that we first experienced that tantalizing loss of
contact with the natives just at that point where, having established
something like a social Utopia throughout their planet, they were beset
by the first painful stirrings of the spirit before advancement to some
mental plane beyond our reach, or at least beyond such comprehension as
we then had.
Of the other “Echinoderm” worlds in our galaxy, one, more promising than
the average, rose early to brilliance, but was destroyed by astronomical
collision. Its whole solar system encountered a tract of dense nebula.
The surface of every planet was fused. In several other worlds of this
type we saw the struggle for the more awakened mentality definitely
fail. Vindictive and superstitious herd-cults exterminated the best
minds of the race, and drugged the rest with customs and principles so
damaging that the vital sources of sensitivity and adaptability on which
all mental progress depends were destroyed forever.
Many thousands of other quasi-human worlds, besides those of the
“Echinoderm” type, came to an untimely end. One, which succumbed to a
curious disaster, perhaps deserves brief notice. Here we found a race of
very human kind. When its civilization had reached a stage and character
much like our own, a stage in which the ideals of the masses are without
the guidance of any well-established tradition, and in which natural
science is enslaved to individualistic industry, biologists discovered
the technique of artificial insemination. Now at this time there
happened to be a widespread cult of irrationalism, of instinct, of
ruthlessness, and of the “divine” primitive “brute-man.” This figure was
particularly admired when he combined brutishness with the power of the
mob-controller. Several countries were subjected to tyrants of this
type, and in the so-called democratic states the same type was much
favored by popular taste.
In both kinds of country, women craved “brute-men” as lovers and as
fathers for their children. Since in the “democratic” countries women
had attained great economic independence, their demand for fertilization
by “brute-men” caused the whole matter to be commercialized. Males of
the desirable type were taken up by syndicates, and graded in five ranks
of desirability. At a moderate charge, fixed in relation to the grade of
the father, any woman could obtain “brute-man” fertilization. So cheap
was the fifth grade that only the most abject paupers were debarred from
its services. The charge for actual copulation with even the lowest
grade of selected male was, of course, much higher, since perforce the
supply was limited.
In the non-democratic countries events took a different turn. In each of
these regions a tyrant of the fashionable type gathered upon his own
person the adoration of the whole population. He was the godsent hero.
He was himself p divine. Every woman longed passionately to have him, if
not as a lover, at least as father of her children. In some lands
artificial insemination from the Master was permitted only as a supreme
distinction for women of perfect type. Ordinary women of every class,
however, were entitled to insemination from the authorized aristocratic
stud of “brute-men.” In other countries the Master himself condescended
to be the father of the whole future population.
The result of this extraordinary custom, of artificial fatherhood by
“brute-men,” which was carried on without remission in all countries for
a generation, and in a less thorough manner for a very much longer
period, was to alter the composition of the whole quasi-human race. In
order to maintain continued, adaptability to an ever-changing
environment a race must at all costs preserve in itself its slight but
potent salting of sensibility and originality. In this world the
precious factor now became so diluted as to be ineffective. Henceforth
the desperately complex problems of the world were consistently bungled.
Civilization decayed. The race entered on a phase of what might be
called pseudo-civilized barbarism, which was in essence subhuman and
incapable of change. This state of affairs continued for some millions
of years, but at last the race was destroyed by the ravages of a small
rat-like animal against which it could devise no protection.
I must not stay to notice the strange fortunes of all the many other
quasi-human worlds. I will mention only that in some, though
civilization was destroyed in a succession of savage wars, the germ of
recovery precariously survived. In one, the agonizing balance of the old
and the new seemed to prolong itself indefinitely. In another, where
science had advanced too far for the safety of an immature species, man
accidentally blew up his planet and his race. In several, the
dialectical process of history was broken short by invasion and conquest
on the part of inhabitants of another planet. These and other disaster,
to be described in due course, decimated the galactic population of
worlds.
In conclusion I will mention that in one or two of these quasi-human
worlds a new and superior biological race emerged naturally during the
typical world crisis, gained power by sheer intelligence and sympathy,
took charge of the planet, persuaded the aborigines to cease breeding,
peopled the whole planet with its own superior type, and created a human
race which attained communal mentality, and rapidly advanced beyond the
limits of our exploring and overstrained understanding. Before our
contact failed, we were surprised to observe that, as the new species
superseded the old and took over the vast political and economic
activity of that world, it came to realize with laughter the futility of
all this feverish and aimless living. Under our eyes the old order began
to give place to a new and simpler order, in which the world was to be
peopled by a small “aristocratic” population served by machines, freed
alike from drudgery and luxury and intent on exploration of the cosmos
and the mind.
This change-over to a simpler life happened in several other worlds not
by the intervention of a new species, but simply by the victory of the
new mentality in its battle against the old.
3. NAUTILOIDS
As our exploration advanced and we gathered more and more helpers from
the many worlds that we entered, our imaginative insight into alien
natures increased. Though our research was still restricted to races
which were in the throes of the familiar spiritual crisis, we gradually
acquired the power of making contact with beings whose minds were very
far from human in texture. I must now try to give some idea of the main
types of these “non-human” intelligent worlds. In some cases the
difference from humanity, though physically striking, and even mentally
very remarkable, was not nearly so far-reaching as the cases to be
described in the next chapter.
In general the physical and mental form of conscious beings is an
expression of the character of the planet on which they live. On certain
very large and aqueous planets, for instance, we found that civilization
had been achieved by marine organisms. On these huge globes no
land-dwellers as large as a man could possibly thrive, for gravitation
would have nailed them to the ground. But in the water there was no such
limitation to bulk. One peculiarity of these big worlds was that, owing
to the crushing action of gravitation, there were seldom any great
elevations and depressions in their surface. Thus they were usually
covered by a shallow ocean, broken here and there by archipelagos of
small, low islands.
I shall describe one example of this kind of world, the greatest planet
of a mighty sun. Situated, if I remember rightly, near the congested
heart of the galaxy, this star was born late in galactic history, and it
gave birth to planets when already many of the olders stars were
encrusted with smoldering lava. Owing to the violence of solar radiation
its nearer planets had (or will have) stormy climates. On one of them a
mollusc-like creature, living in the coastal shallows, acquired a
propensity to drift in its boat-like shell on the sea’s surface, thus
keeping in touch with its drifting vegetable food. As the ages passed,
its shell became better adapted to navigation. Mere drifting was
supplemented by means of a crude sail, a membrane extending from the
creature’s back. In time this nautiloid type proliferated into a host of
species. Some of these remained minute, but some found size
advantageous, and developed into living ships. One of these became the
intelligent master of this great world.
The hull was a rigid, stream-lined vessel, shaped much as the
nineteenth-century clipper in her prime, and larger than our largest
whale. At the rear a tentacle or fin developed into a rudder, which was
sometimes used also as a propeller, like a fish’s tail. But though all
these species could navigate under their own power to some extent, their
normal means of longdistance locomotion was their great spread of sail.
The simple membranes of the ancestral type had become a system of
parchment-like sails and bony masts and spars, under voluntary muscular
control. Similarity to a ship was increased by the downward-looking
eyes, one on each side of the prow. The mainmast-head also bore eyes,
for searching the horizon. An organ of magnetic sensitivity in the brain
afforded a reliable means of orientation. At the fore end of the vessel
were two long manipulatory tentacles, which during locomotion were
folded snugly to the flanks. In use they formed a very serviceable pair
of arms. It may seem strange that a species of this kind should have
developed human intelligence. In more than one world of this type,
however, a number of accidents combined to produce this result. The
change from a vegetarian to a carnivorous habit caused a great increase
of animal cunning in pursuit of the much speedier submarine creatures.
The sense of hearing was wonderfully developed, for the movements of
fish at great distances could be detected by the underwater ears. A line
of taste-organs along either bilge responded to the ever-changing
composition of the water, and enabled the hunter to track his prey.
Delicacy of hearing and of taste combined with omnivorous habits, and
with great diversity of behavior and strong sociality, to favor the
growth of intelligence.
Speech, that essential medium of the developed mentality, had two
distinct modes in this world. For short-range communication, rhythmic
underwater emissions of gas from a vent in the rear of the organism were
heard and analyzed by means of underwater ears. Longdistance
communication was carried on by means of semaphore signals from a
rapidly agitating tentacle at the mast head.
The organizing of communal fishing expeditions, the invention of traps,
the making of lines and nets, the practice of agriculture, both in the
sea and along the shores, the building of stone harbors and work-shops,
the use of volcanic heat for smelting metals, and of wind for driving
mills, the projection of canals into the low islands in search of
minerals and fertile ground, the gradual exploration and mapping of a
huge world, the harnessing of solar radiation for mechanical power,
these and many other achievements were at once a product of intelligence
and an opportunity for its advancement.
It was a strange experience to enter the mind of an intelligent ship to
see the foam circling under one’s own nose as the vessel plunged through
the waves, to taste the bitter or delicious currents streaming past
one’s flanks, to feel the pressure of air on the sails as one beat up
against the breeze, to hear beneath the water-line the rush and murmur
of distant shoals of fishes,
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