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

gloriously healthy body and an insane mind it

might do terrible harm to its neighbors.

 

Such tragedy did not become possible till after interplanetary and

interstellar travel had been well established. Long ago, in an early

phase of the galaxy, the number of planetary systems had been very

small, and only half a dozen worlds had attained Utopia. These were

scattered up and down the galaxy at immense distances from one another.

Each lived its life in almost complete isolation, relieved only by

precarious telepathic intercourse with its peers. In a somewhat later

but still early period, when these eldest children of the galaxy had

perfected their society and their biological nature, and were on the

threshold of super-individuality, they turned their attention to

interplanetary travel. First one and then another achieved rocket-flight

in space, and succeeded in breeding specialized populations for the

colonization of neighboring planets. In a still later epoch, the middle

period of galactic history, there were many more planetary systems than

in the earlier ages, and an increasing number of intelligent worlds were

successfully emerging from the great psychological crisis which so many

worlds never surmount. Meanwhile some of the elder “generation” of

awakened worlds were already facing the immensely difficult problems of

travel on the interstellar and not merely the interplanetary scale. This

new power inevitably changed the whole character of galactic history.

Hitherto, in spite of tentative telepathic exploration on the part of

the most awakened worlds, the life of the galaxy had been in the main

the life of a number of isolated worlds which took no effect upon one

another. With the advent of interstellar travel the many distinct themes

of the world-biographies gradually became merged in an all-embracing

drama.

 

Travel within a planetary system was at first carried out by

rocket-vessels propelled by normal fuels. In all the early ventures one

great difficulty had been the danger of collision with meteors. Even the

most efficient vessel, most skillfully navigated and traveling in

regions that were relatively free from these invisible and lethal

missiles, might at any moment crash and fuse. The trouble was not

overcome till means had been found to unlock the treasure of subatomic

energy. It was then possible to protect the ship by means of a far-flung

envelope of power which either diverted or exploded the meteors at a

distance. A rather similar method was with great difficulty devised to

protect the space ships and their crews from the constant and murderous

hail of cosmic radiation.

 

Interstellar, as opposed to interplanetary, travel was quite impossible

until the advent of subatomic power. Fortunately this source of power

was seldom gained until late in a world’s development, when mentality

was mature enough to wield this most dangerous of all physical

instruments without inevitable disaster. Disasters, however, did occur.

Several worlds were accidentally blown to pieces. In others civilization

was temporarily destroyed. Sooner or later, however, most of the minded

worlds tamed this formidable djin, and set it to work upon a titanic

scale, not only in industry, but in such great enterprises as the

alteration of planetary orbits for the improvement of climate. This

dangerous and delicate process was effected by firing a gigantic

subatomic rocket-apparatus at such times and places that the recoil

would gradually accumulate to divert the planet’s course in the desired

direction.

 

Actual interstellar voyaging was first effected by detaching a planet

from its natural orbit by a series of well-timed and well-placed rocket

impulsions, and thus projecting it into outer space at a speed far

greater than the normal planetary and stellar speeds. Something more

than this was necessary, since life on a sunless planet would have been

impossible. For short interstellar voyages the difficulty was sometimes

overcome by the generation of subatomic energy from the planet’s own

substance; but for longer voyages, lasting for many thousands of years,

the only method was to form a small artificial sun, and project it into

space as a blazing satellite of the living world. For this purpose an

uninhabited planet would be brought into proximity with the home planet

to form a binary system. A mechanism would then be contrived for the

controlled disintegration of the atoms of the lifeless planet, to

provide a constant source of light and heat. The two bodies, revolving

round one another, would be launched among the stars.

 

This delicate operation may well seem impossible. Had I space to

describe the age-long experiments and world-wrecking accidents which

preceded its achievement, perhaps the reader’s incredulity would vanish.

But I must dismiss in a few sentences whole protracted epics of

scientific adventure and personal courage. Suffice it that, before the

process was perfected, many a populous world was either cast adrift to

freeze in space, or was roasted by its own artificial sun.

 

The stars are so remote from one another that we measure their distances

in light years. Had the voyaging worlds traveled only at speeds

comparable with those of the stars themselves, even the shortest of

interstellar voyages would have lasted for many millions of years. But

since interstellar space offers almost no resistance to a traveling

body, and therefore momentum is not lost, it was possible for the

voyaging world, by prolonging the original rocket-impulsion for many

years, to increase its speed far beyond that of the fastest star.

Indeed, though even the early voyages by heavy natural planets were by

our standards spectacular, I shall have to tell at a later stage of

voyages by small artificial planets traveling at almost half the speed

of light. Owing to certain “relativity effects” it was impossible to

accelerate beyond this point. But even such a rate of travel made

voyages to the nearer stars well worth undertaking if any other

planetary system happened to lie within this range. It must be

remembered that a fully awakened world had no need to think in terms of

such short periods as a human lifetime. Though its individuals might

die, the minded world was in a very important sense immortal.

 

It was accustomed to lay its plans to cover periods of many million

years.

 

In early epochs of the galaxy expeditions from star to star were

difficult, and rarely successful. But at a later stage, when there were

already many thousands of worlds inhabited by intelligent races, and

hundreds that had passed the Utopian stage, a very serious situation

arose. Interstellar travel was by now extremely efficient. Immense

exploration vessels many miles in diameter, were constructed out in

space from artificial materials of extreme rigidity and lightness. These

could be projected by rocket action and with cumulative acceleration

till their speed was almost half the speed of light. Even so, the

journey from end to end of the galaxy could not be completed under two

hundred thousand years. However, there was no reason to undertake so

long a voyage. Few voyages in seach of suitable systems lasted for more

than a tenth of that time. Many were much shorter. Races that had

attained and secured a communal consciousness would not hesitate to send

out a number of such expeditions. Ultimately they might project their

planet itself across the ocean of space to settle in some remote system

recommended by the pioneers.

 

The problem of interstellar travel was so enthralling that it sometimes

became an obsession even to a fairly well-developed Utopian world. This

could only occur if in the constitution of that world there was

something unwholesome, some secret and unfulfilled hunger impelling the

beings. The race might then become travel-mad.

 

Its social organization would be refashioned and directed with Spartan

strictness to the new communal undertaking. All its members, hypnotized

by the common obsession, would gradually forget the life of intense

personal intercourse and of creative mental activity which had hitherto

been their chief concern. The whole venture of the spirit, exploring the

universe and its own nature with critical intelligence and delicate

sensibility, would gradually come to a standstill. The deepest roots of

emotion and will, which in the fully sane awakened world were securely

within the range of introspection, would become increasingly obscured.

Less and less, in such a world, could the unhappy communal mind

understand itself. More and more it pursued its phantom goal. Any

attempt to explore the galaxy telepathically was now abandoned. The

passion of physical exploration assumed the guise of a religion. The

communal mind persuaded itself that it must at all costs spread the

gospel of its own culture throughout the galaxy. Though culture itself

was vanishing, the vague idea of culture was cherished as a

justification of world-policy.

 

Here I must check myself, lest I give a false impression. It is

necessary to distinguish sharply between the mad worlds of comparatively

low mental development and those of almost the highest order. The

humbler kinds might become crudely obsessed by sheer mastery or sheer

travel, with its scope for courage and discipline. More tragic was the

case of those few very much more awakened worlds whose obsession was

seemingly for community itself and mental lucidity itself, and the

propagation of the kind of community and the special mode of lucidity

most admired by themselves. For then travel was but the means to

cultural and religious empire.

 

I have spoken as though I were confident that these formidable worlds

were indeed mad, aberrant from the line of mental and spiritual growth.

But their tragedy lay in the fact that, though to their opponents they

seemed to be either mad or at heart wicked, to themselves they appeared

superbly sane, practical, and virtuous. There were times when we

ourselves, the bewildered explorers, were almost persuaded that this was

the truth. Our intimate contact with them was such as to give us

insight, so to speak, into the inner sanity of their insanity, or the

core of rightness in their wickedness. This insanity or wickedness I

have to describe in terms of simple human craziness and vice; but in

truth it was in a sense superhuman, for it included the perversion of

faculties above the range of human sanity and virtue.

 

When one of these “mad” worlds encountered a sane world, it would

sincerely express the most reasonable and kindly intentions. It desired

only cultural intercourse, and perhaps economic cooperation. Little by

little it would earn the respect of the other for its sympathy, its

splendid social order, and its dynamic purpose. Each world would regard

the other as a noble, though perhaps an alien and partly

incomprehensible, instrument of the spirit. But little by little the

normal world would begin to realize that in the culture of the “mad”

world there were certain subtle and far-reaching intuitions that

appeared utterly false, ruthless, aggressive, and hostile to the spirit,

and were the dominant motives of its foreign relations. The “mad” world,

meanwhile, would regretfully come to the conclusion that the other was

after all gravely lacking in sensibility, that it was obtuse to the very

highest values and most heroic virtues, in fact that its whole life was

subtly corrupt, and must, for its own sake, be changed, or else

destroyed. Thus each world, though with lingering respect and affection,

would sadly condemn the other. But the mad world would not be content to

leave matters thus. It would at length with holy fervor attack, striving

to destroy the other’s pernicious culture, and even exterminate its

population. It is easy for me now, after the event, after the final

spiritual downfall of these mad worlds, to condemn them as perverts, but

in the early stages of their drama we were often desperately at a loss

to decide on which side sanity lay.

 

Several of the mad worlds succumbed to their own fool-hardiness in

navigation. Others, under the strain of age-long research, fell into

social neurosis and civil strife. A few, however, succeeded in attaining

their end, and after voyages lasting for thousands of years were able