Star Maker, Olaf Stapledon [top rated books of all time .TXT] 📗

in our wanderings we came upon a wonderful diversity of

customs and institutions, but I must not pause to describe even the most

remarkable of them. I must be content to outline the activities of the

typical waking worlds, so as to be able to press on to tell a story not

merely of particular worlds but of our galaxy as a whole. When a waking

world had passed through the phase of radical social reconstruction, and

had attained a new equilibrium, it would settle into a period of steady

economic and cultural advancement. Mechanism, formerly a tyrant over

body and mind, but now a faithful servant, would secure for every

individual a fullness and diversity of life far beyond anything known on

earth. Radio communication and rocket travel would afford to each mind

intimate knowledge of every people. Labor-saving machinery would reduce

the work of maintaining civilization; all mind-crippling drudgery would

vanish, and the best energy of every one of the world-citizens would be

freely devoted to social service that was not unworthy of a well-grown

intelligent being. And “social service” was apt to be interpreted very

broadly. It seemed to permit many lives to be given over wholly to

freakish and irresponsible self-expression. The community could well

afford a vast amount of such wastage for the sake of the few invaluable

jewels of originality which occasionally emerged from it.

 

This stable and prosperous phase of the waking worlds, which we came to

call the Utopian phase, was probably the happiest of all the ages in the

life of any world. Tragedy of one sort or another there would still be,

but never widespread and futile distress. We remarked, moreover, that,

whereas in former ages tragedy had been commonly thought of in terms of

physical pain and premature death, now it was conceived more readily as

resulting from the clash and mutual yearning and mutual incompatibility

of diverse personalities; so rare had the cruder kind of disaster

become, and on the other hand so much more subtle and sensitive were the

contacts between persons. Widespread physical tragedy, the suffering and

annihilation of whole populations, such as we experience in war and

plague, were quite unknown, save in those rare cases when a whole race

was destroyed by astronomical accident, whether through loss of

atmosphere or the bursting of its planet or the plunging of its solar

system into some tract of gas or dust.

 

In this happy phase, then, which might last for a few centuries or for

many thousands of years, the whole energy of the world would be devoted

to perfecting the world-community and raising the caliber of the race by

cultural and by eugenical means.

 

Of the eugenical enterprise of these worlds I shall report little,

because much of it would be unintelligible without a minute knowledge of

the biological and biochemical nature of each of these non-human

world-populations. It is enough to say that the first task of the

eugenists was to prevent the perpetuation of inheritable disease and

malformation of body and mind. In days before the great psychological

change even this modest work had often led to serious abuses.

Governments would attempt to breed out all those characters, such as

independence of mind, which were distasteful to governments. Ignorant

enthusiasts would advocate ruthless and misguided interference in the

choice of mates. But in the more enlightened age these dangers were

recognized and avoided. Even so, the eugenical venture did often lead to

disaster. One splendid race of intelligent avians we saw reduced to the

subhuman level by an attempt to extirpate susceptibility to a virulent

mental disease. The liability to this disease happened to be genetically

linked in an indirect manner with the possibility of normal brain

development in the fifth generation. Of positive eugenical enterprises I

need only mention improvements of sensory range and acuity (chiefly in

sight and touch), the invention of new senses, improvements in memory,

in general intelligence, in temporal discrimination. These races came to

distinguish ever more minute periods of duration, and at the same time

to extend their temporal grasp so as to apprehend ever longer periods as

“now.”

 

Many of the worlds at first devoted much energy to this kind of

eugenical work, but later decided that, though it might afford them some

new richness of experience, it must be postponed for the sake of more

important matters. For instance, with the increasing complexity of life

it soon appeared very necessary to retard the maturing of the individual

mind, so as to enable it to assimilate its early experience’ more

thoroughly. “Before life begins,” it was said, “there should be a

lifetime of childhood.” At the same time efforts were made to prolong

maturity to three or four times its normal extent, and to reduce

senility. In every world that had gained full eugenical power there

arose sooner or later a sharp public discussion as to the most suitable

length of individual life. All were agreed that life must be prolonged;

but, while one party wished to multiply it only three or four times,

another insisted that nothing less than a hundred times the normal

life-span could afford the race that continuity and depth of experience

which all saw to be desirable. Another party even advocated

deathlessness, and a permanent race of never-aging immortals. It was

argued that the obvious danger of mental rigidity, and the cessation of

all advancement, might be avoided by contriving that the permanent

physiological state of the deathless population should be one of very

early maturity.

 

Different worlds found different solutions for this problem. Some races

assigned to the individual a period no longer than three hundred of our

years. Others allowed him fifty thousand. One race of Echinoderms

decided on potential immortality, but endowed themselves with an

ingenious psychological mechanism by which, if the ancient began to lose

touch with changing conditions, he could not fail to recognize the fact,

and would thereupon crave and practice I euthanasia, gladly yielding his

place to a successor of more modern type.

 

Many other triumphs of eugenical experiment we observed up and down the

worlds. The general level of individual intelligence was, of course,

raised far beyond the range of Homo sapiens. But also that

super-intelligence which can be attained only by a psychically unified

community was greatly developed on the highest practicable plane, that

of the conscious individuality of a whole world. This, of course, was

impossible till the social cohesion of individuals within the

world-community had become as close-knit as the integration of the

elements of a nervous system. It demanded also a very great advance of

telepathy. Further, it was not possible till the great majority of

individuals had reached a breadth of knowledge unknown on earth. The

last and most difficult power to be attained by these worlds in the

course of their Utopian phase was psychical freedom of time and space,

the limited power to observe directly, and even contribute to, events

remote from the spatio-temporal location of the observer. Throughout our

exploration we had been greatly perplexed by the fact that we, most of

whom were beings of a very humble order, should have been able to

achieve this freedom, which, as we now discovered, these highly

developed worlds found so difficult, to master. The explanation was now

given us. No such venture as ours could have been undertaken by our

unaided selves. Throughout our exploration we had unwittingly been under

the influence of a system of worlds which had attained this freedom only

after aeons of research. Not one step could we have taken without the

constant support of those brilliant Ichthyoid and Archnoid Symbiotics

who played a leading part in the history of our galaxy. They it was who

controlled our whole adventure, so that we might report our experiences

in our primitive native worlds.

 

The freedom of space and time, the power of cosmical exploration and of

influence by means of telepathic contact, was at once the most potent

and the most dangerous asset of the fully awakened Utopian worlds.

Through the unwise exercise of it many a glorious and single-minded race

came to disaster. Sometimes the adventuring world-mind failed to

maintain its sanity in face of the welter of misery and despair that now

flooded in upon it telepathically from all the regions of the galaxy.

Sometimes the sheer difficulty of comprehending the subtleties that were

revealed to it flung it into a mental breakdown from which there was no

recovery. Sometimes it became so enthralled by its telepathic adventures

that it lost touch with its own life upon its native planet, so that the

world-community, deprived of its guiding communal mind, fell into

disorder and decay, and the exploring mind itself died.

 

2. IN MUNDANE STRIFE

 

Of the busy Utopias which I have been describing, a few were already

established even before the birth of the Other Earth, a larger number

flourished before our own planet was formed, but many of the most

important of these worlds are temporally located in an age far future to

us, an age long after the destruction of the final human race.

Casualties among these awakened worlds are of course much less common

than among more lowly and less competent worlds. Consequently, though

fatal accidents occurred in every epoch, the number of awakened worlds

in our galaxy steadily increased as time advanced. The actual births of

planets, due to the chance encounters of mature but not aged stars,

reached (or will reach) a maximum fairly late in the history of our

galaxy, and then declined. But since the fluctuating progress of a world

from bare animality to spiritual maturity takes, on the average, several

thousands of millions of years, the maximum population of Utopian and

fully awakened worlds occurred very late, when physically the galaxy was

already somewhat past its prime. Further, though even in early epochs

the few awakened worlds did sometimes succeed in making contact with one

another, either by interstellar travel or by telepathy, it was not till

a fairly late stage of galactic history that intermundane relations came

to occupy the main attention of the wakened worlds.

 

Throughout the progress of a waking world there was one grave, subtle,

and easily overlooked danger. Interest might be “fixated” upon some

current plane of endeavor, so that no further advance could occur. It

may seem strange that beings whose psychological knowledge so far

surpassed the attainment of man should have been trapped in this manner.

Apparently at every stage of mental development, save the highest of

all, the mind’s growing point is tender and easily misdirected. However

this may be, it is a fact that a few rather highly developed worlds,

even with communal mentality, were disastrously perverted in a strange

manner, which I find very difficult to understand. I can only suggest

that in them, seemingly, the hunger for true community and true mental

lucidity itself became obsessive and perverse, so that the behavior of

these exalted perverts might deteriorate into something very like

tribalism and religious fanaticism. The disease would soon lead to the

stifling of all elements which seemed recalcitrant to the generally

accepted culture of the world-society. When such worlds mastered

interstellar travel, they might conceive a fanatical desire to impose

their own culture throughout the galaxy. Sometimes their zeal became so

violent that they were actually driven to wage ruthless religious wars

on all who resisted them.

 

Obsessions derived from one stage or another of the progress toward

Utopia and lucid consciousness, even if they did not bring violent

disaster, might at any stage side-track the waking world into futility.

Superhuman intelligence, courage, and constancy on the part of the

devoted individuals might be consecrated to misguided and unworthy world

purposes. Thus it was that, in extreme cases, even a world that remained

socially Utopian and mentally a super-individual, might pass beyond the

bounds of sanity. With a