Star Maker, Olaf Stapledon [top rated books of all time .TXT] 📗
- Author: Olaf Stapledon
- Performer: -
Book online «Star Maker, Olaf Stapledon [top rated books of all time .TXT] 📗». Author Olaf Stapledon
reach some neighboring planetary system. The invaders were often in a
desperate plight. Generally they had used up most of the material of
their little artificial sun. Economy had forced them to reduce their
ration of heat and light so far that when at last they discovered a
suitable planetary system their native world was almost wholly arctic.
On arrival, they would first take up their position in a suitable orbit
and, perhaps spend some centuries in recuperating. Then they would
explore the neighboring worlds, seek out the most hospitable, and begin
to adapt themselves or their descendants to life upon it. If, as was
often the case, any of the planets was already inhabited by intelligent
beings, the invaders would inevitably come sooner or later into conflict
with them, either in a crude manner over the right to exploit a planet’s
resources, or more probably over the invaders’ obsession for propagating
their own culture. For by now the civilizing mission, which was the
ostensible motive of all their heroic adventures, would have become a
rigid obsession. They would be quite incapable of conceiving that the
native civilization, though less developed than their own, might be more
suited to the natives. Nor could they realize that their own culture,
formerly the expression of a gloriously awakened world, might have sunk,
in spite of their mechanical powers and crazy religious fervor, below
the simpler culture of the natives in all the essentials of mental life.
Many a desperate defense did we see, carried out by some world of the
lowly rank of Homo sapiens against a race of mad supermen, armed not
only with the invincible power of subatomic energy but with
overwhelmingly superior intelligence, knowledge, and devotion, and
moreover with the immense advantage that all its individuals
participated in the unified mind of the race. Though we had come to
cherish above all things the advancement of mentality, and were
therefore prejudiced in favor of the awakened though perverted invaders,
our sympathies soon became divided, and then passed almost wholly to the
natives, however barbaric their culture. For in spite of their
stupidity, their ignorance, and superstition, their endless internecine
conflicts, their spiritual obtuseness and grossness, we recognized in
them a power which the others had forfeited, a naive but balanced
wisdom, an animal shrewdness, a spiritual promise. The invaders, on the
other hand, however brilliant, were indeed perverts. Little by little we
came to regard the conflict as one in which an untamed but promising
urchin had been set upon by an armed religious maniac.
When the invaders had exploited every world in the new-found planetary
system, they would again feel the lust of proselytization. Persuading
themselves that it was their duty to advance their religious empire
throughout the galaxy, they would detach a couple of planets and
dispatch them into space with a crew of pioneers. Or they would break up
the whole planetary system, and scatter it abroad with missionary zeal.
Occasionally their travel brought them into contact with another race of
mad superiors. Then would follow a war in which one side or the other,
or possibly both, would be exterminated.
Sometimes the adventurers came upon worlds of their own rank which had
not succumbed to the mania of religious empire. Then the natives, though
they would at first meet the invaders with courtesy and reason, would
gradually realize that they were confronted with lunatics. They
themselves would hastily convert their civilization for warfare. The
issue would depend on superiority of weapons and military cunning; but
if the contest was long and grim, the natives, even if victorious, might
be so damaged mentally by an age of warfare that they would never
recover their sanity.
Worlds that suffered from the mania of religious imperialism would seek
interstellar travel long before economic necessity forced it upon them.
The saner world-spirits, on the other hand, often discovered sooner or
later a point beyond which increased material development and increased
population were unnecessary for the exercise of their finer capacities.
These were content to remain within their native planetary systems, in a
state of economic and social stability. They were thus able to give most
of their practical intelligence to telepathic exploration of the
universe. Telepathic intercourse between worlds was now becoming much
more precise and reliable. The galaxy had emerged from the primitive
stage when any world could remain solitary, and live out its career in
splendid isolation. In fact, just as, in the experience of Homo sapiens,
the Earth is now “shrinking” to the dimensions of a country, so, in this
critical period of the life of our galaxy, the whole galaxy was
“shrinking” to the dimensions of a world. Those world spirits that had
been most successful in telepathic exploration had by now constructed a
fairly accurate “mental map” of the whole galaxy, though there still
remained a number of eccentric worlds with which no lasting contact
could yet be made. There was also one very advanced system of worlds,
which had mysteriously “faded out” of telepathic intercourse altogether.
Of this I shall tell more in the sequel.
The telepathic ability of the mad worlds and systems was by now greatly
reduced. Though they were often under telepathic observation by the more
mature world spirits, and were even influenced to some extent, they
themselves were so self-complacent that they cared not to explore mental
life of the galaxy. Physical travel and sacred imperial power were for
them good enough means of intercourse with the surrounding universe.
In time there grew up several great rival empires of the mad worlds,
each claiming to be charged with some sort of divine mission for the
unifying and awakening of the whole galaxy. Between the ideologies of
these empires there was little to choose, yet each was opposed to the
others with religious fervor. Germinating in regions far apart, these
empires easily mastered any sub-utopian worlds that lay within reach.
Thus they spread from one planetary system to another, till at last
empire made contact with empire.
Then followed wars such as had never before occurred in our galaxy.
Fleets of worlds, natural and artificial, maneuvered among the stars to
outwit one another, and destroyed one another with long-range jets of
subatomic energy. As the tides of battle swept hither and thither
through space, whole planetary systems were annihilated. Many a
world-spirit found a sudden end. Many a lowly race that had no part in
the strife was slaughtered in the celestial warfare that raged around
it. Yet so vast is the galaxy that these intermundane wars, terrible as
they were, could at first be regarded as rare accidents, mere
unfortunate episodes in the triumphant march of civilization. But the
disease spread. More and more of the sane worlds, when they were
attacked by the mad empires, reorganized themselves for military
defense. They were right in believing that the situation was one with
which non-violence alone could not cope; for the enemy, unlike any
possible group of human beings, was too thoroughly purged of “humanity”
to be susceptible to sympathy. But they were wrong in hoping that arms
could save them. Even though, in the ensuing war, the defenders might
gain victory in the end, the struggle was generally so long and
devastating that the victors themselves were irreparably damaged in
spirit.
In a later and perhaps the most terrible phase of our galaxy’s life I
was forcibly reminded of the state of bewilderment and anxiety that I
had left behind me on the Earth. Little by little the whole galaxy, some
ninety thousand light-years across, containing more than thirty thousand
million stars, and (by this date) over a hundred thousand planetary
systems, and actually thousands of intelligent races, was paralyzed by
the fear of war, and periodically tortured by its outbreak.
In one respect, however, the state of the galaxy was much more desperate
than the state of our little world to-day. None of our nations is an
awakened super-individual. Even those peoples which are suffering from
the mania of herd glory are composed of individuals who in their private
life are sane. A change of fortune might perhaps drive such a people
into a less crazy mood. Or skilful propaganda for the idea of human
unity might turn the scale. But in this grim age of the galaxy the mad
worlds were mad almost down to the very roots of their being. Each was a
super-individual whose whole physical and mental constitution, including
the unit bodies and minds of its private members, was by now organized
through and through for a mad purpose. There seemed to be no more
possibility of appealing to the stunted creatures to rebel against the
sacred and crazy purpose of their race than of persuading the individual
brain-cells of a maniac to make a stand for gentleness. To be alive in
those days in one of the worlds that were sane and awakened, though not
of the very highest, most percipient order, was to feel (or will be to
feel) that the plight of the galaxy was desperate. These average sane
worlds had organized themselves into a League to resist aggression; but
since they were far less developed in military organization than the mad
worlds, and much less inclined to subject their individual members to
military despotism, they were at a great disadvantage.
Moreover, the enemy was now united; for one empire had secured complete
mastery over the others, and had inspired all the mad worlds with an
identical passion of religious imperialism. Though the “United Empires”
of the mad worlds included only a minority of the worlds of the galaxy,
the sane worlds had no hope of a speedy victory; for they were
disunited, and unskilled in warfare. Meanwhile war was undermining the
mental life of the League’s own members. The urgencies and horrors were
beginning to blot out from their minds all the more delicate, more
developed capacities. They were becoming less and less capable of those
activities of personal intercourse and cultural adventure which they
still forlornly recognized as the true way of life. The great majority
of the worlds of the League, finding themselves caught up in a trap from
which, seemingly, there was no escape, came despairingly to feel that
the spirit which they had thought divine, the spirit which seeks true
community and true awakening, was after all not destined to triumph, and
therefore not the essential spirit of the cosmos. Blind chance, it was
rumored, ruled all things; or perhaps a diabolic intelligence. Some
began to conceive that the Star Maker had created merely for the lust of
destroying. Undermined by this terrible surmise, they themselves sank
far toward madness. With horror they imagined that the enemy was indeed,
as he claimed, the instrument of divine wrath, punishing them for their
own impious will to turn the whole galaxy, the whole cosmos, into a
paradise of generous and fully awakened beings. Under the influence of
this growing sense of ultimate satanic power and the even more
devastating doubt of the rightness of their own ideals, the League
members despaired. Some surrendered to the enemy. Others succumbed to
internal discord, losing their mental unity. The war of the worlds
seemed likely to end in the victory of the insane. And so, indeed, it
would have done, but for the interference of that remote and brilliant
system of worlds which, as was mentioned above, had for a long while
withdrawn itself from telepathic intercourse with the rest of our
galaxy. This was the system of worlds which had been founded in the
spring-time of the galaxy by the symbiotic Ichthyoids and Arachnoids.
3. A CRISIS IN GALACTIC HISTORY
Throughout this period of imperial expansion a few world-systems of a
very high order, though less awakened than the Symbiotics of the
sub-galaxy, had watched events telepathically from afar. They saw the
frontiers of empire advancing steadily
Comments (0)