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

appeared, apparently as a

biological mutation. In a couple of generations this sour, astringent,

and undisguis-able flavor dominated in all the most disreputable

working-class quarters. To the fastidious palates of the well-to-do it

was overwhelmingly nauseating and terrifying. In fact it became for them

an unconscious symbol, tapping all the secret guilt and fear and hate

which the oppressors felt for the oppressed.

 

In this world, as in our own, nearly all the chief means of production,

nearly all the land, mines, factories, railways, ships, were controlled

for private profit by a small minority of the population. These

privileged individuals were able to force the masses to work for them on

pain of starvation. The tragic farce inherent in such a system was

already approaching. The owners directed the energy of the workers

increasingly toward the production of more means of production rather

than to the fulfilment of the needs of individual life. For machinery

might bring profit to the owners; bread would not. With the increasing

competition of machine with machine, profits declined, and therefore

wages, and therefore effective demand for goods. Marketless products

were destroyed, though bellies were unfed and backs unclad.

Unemployment, disorder, and stem repression increased as the economic

system disintegrated. A familiar story!

 

As conditions deteriorated, and the movements of charity and

state-charity became less and less able to cope with the increasing mass

of unemployment and destitution, the new pariah-race became more and

more psychologically useful to the hate-needs of the scared, but still

powerful, prosperous. The theory was spread that these wretched beings

were the result of secret systematic race-pollution by riff-raff

immigrants, and that they deserved no consideration whatever. They were

therefore allowed only the basest forms of employment and the harshest

conditions of work. When unemployment had become a serious social

problem, practically the whole pariah stock was workless and destitute.

It was of course easily believed that unemployment, far from being due

to the decline of capitalism, was due to the worthless-ness of the

pariahs.

 

At the time of my visit the working class had become tainted through and

through by the pariah stock, and there was a vigorous movement afoot

amongst the wealthy and the official classes to institute slavery for

pariahs and half-pariahs, so that these might be openly treated as the

cattle which in fact they were. In view of the danger of continued

race-pollution, some politicians urged wholesale slaughter of the

pariahs, or, at the least, universal sterilization. Others pointed out

that, as a supply of cheap labor was necessary to society, it would be

wiser merely to keep their numbers down by working them to an early

death in occupations which those of “pure race” would never accept.

This, at any rate, should be done in times of prosperity; but in times

of decline, the excess population could be allowed to starve, or might

be used up in the physiological laboratories.

 

The persons who first dared to suggest this policy were scourged by the

whips of generous popular indignation. But their policy was in fact

adopted; not explicitly but by tacit consent, and in the absence of any

more constructive plan.

 

The first time that I was taken through the poorest quarter of the city

I was surprised to see that, though there were large areas of slum

property far more squalid than anything in England, there were also many

great clean blocks of tenements worthy of Vienna. These were surrounded

by gardens, which were crowded with wretched tents and shanties. The

grass was worn away, the bushes damaged, the flowers trampled.

Everywhere men, women, and children, all filthy and ragged, were idling.

 

I learned that these noble buildings had been erected before the

world-economic-crisis (familiar phrase!) by a millionaire who had made

his money in trading an opium-like drug. He presented the buildings to

the City Council, and was gathered to heaven by way of the peerage. The

more deserving and less unsavory poor were duly housed; but care was

taken to fix the rent high enough to exclude the pariah-race. Then came

the crisis. One by one the tenants failed to pay their rent, and were

ejected. Within a year the buildings were almost empty.

 

There followed a very curious sequence of events, and one which, as I

was to discover, was characteristic of this strange world. Respectable

public opinion, though vindictive toward the unemployed, was

passionately tender toward the sick. In falling ill, a man acquired a

special sanctity, and exercised a claim over all healthy persons. Thus

no sooner did any of the wretched campers succumb to a serious disease

than he was carried off to be cared for by all the resources of medical

science. The desperate paupers soon discovered how things stood, and did

all in their power to fall sick. So successful were they, that the

hospitals were soon filled. The empty tenements were therefore hastily

fitted out to receive the increasing flood of patients.

 

Observing these and other farcical events, I was reminded of my own

race. But though the Other Men were in many ways so like us, I suspected

increasingly that some factor still hidden from me doomed them to a

frustration which my own nobler species need never fear. Psychological

mechanisms which in our case are tempered with common sense or moral

sense stood out in this world in flagrant excess. Yet it was not true

that Other Man was less intelligent or less moral than man of my own

species. In abstract thought and practical invention he was at least our

equal. Many of his most recent advances in physics and astronomy had

passed beyond our present attainment. I noticed, however, that

psychology was even more chaotic than with us, and that social thought

was strangely perverted.

 

In radio and television, for instance, the Other Men were technically

far ahead of us, but the use to which they put their astounding

inventions was disastrous. In civilized countries everyone but the

pariahs carried a pocket receiving set. As the Other Men had no music,

this may seem odd; but since they lacked newspapers, radio was the only

means by which the man in the street could learn the lottery and

sporting results which were his staple mental diet. The place of music,

moreover, was taken by taste-and smell-themes, which were translated

into patterns of ethereal undulation, transmitted by all the great

national stations, and restored to their original form in the pocket

receivers and taste-batteries of the population. These instruments

afforded intricate stimuli to the taste organs and scent organs of the

hand. Such was the power of this kind of entertainment that both men and

women were nearly always seen with one hand in a pocket. A special wave

length had been allotted to the soothing of infants.

 

A sexual receiving set had been put upon the market, and programs were

broadcast for it in many countries; but not in all. This extraordinary

invention was a combination of radio—touch, taste, odor, and sound. It

worked not through the sense organs, but direct stimulation of the

appropriate brain-centers. The recipient wore a specially constructed

skullcap, which transmitted to him from a remote studio the embraces of

some delectable and responsive woman, as they were then actually being

experienced by a male “love-broadcaster” or as electromagnetically

recorded on a steel tape on some earlier occasion. Controversies had

arisen about the morality of sexual broadcasting. Some countries

permitted programs for males but not for females, wishing to preserve

the innocence of the purer sex. Elsewhere the clerics had succeeded in

crushing the whole project on the score that radio-sex, even for men

alone, would be a diabolical substitute for a certain much desired and

jealously guarded religious experience, called the immaculate union, of

which I shall tell in the sequel. Well did the priests know that their

power depended largely on their ability to induce this luscious ecstasy

in their flock by means of ritual and other psychological techniques.

 

Militarists also were strongly opposed to the new invention; for in the

cheap and efficient production of illusory sexual embraces they saw a

danger even more serious than contraception. The supply of cannon-fodder

would decline.

 

Since in all the more respectable countries broadcasting had been put

under the control of retired soldiers or good churchmen, the new device

was at first adopted only in the more commercial and the more

disreputable states. From their broadcasting stations the embraces of

popular “radio love-stars” and even of impecunious aristocrats were

broadcast along with advertisements of patent medicines, taste-proof

gloves, lottery results, savors, and degustatants.

 

The principle of radio-brain-stimulation was soon developed much

further. Programs of all the most luscious or piquant experiences were

broadcast in all countries, and could be picked up by simple receivers

that were within the means of all save the pariahs. Thus even the

laborer and the factory hand could have the pleasures of a banquet

without expense and subsequent repletion, the delights of proficient

dancing without the trouble of learning the art, the thrills of

motor-racing without danger. In an ice-bound northern home he could bask

on tropical beaches, and in the tropics indulge in winter sports.

Governments soon discovered that the new invention gave them a cheap and

effective kind of power over their subjects. Slum-conditions could be

tolerated if there was an unfailing supply of illusory luxury. Reforms

distasteful to the authorities could be shelved if they could be

represented as inimical to the national radio-system. Strikes and riots

could often be broken by the mere threat to close down the broadcasting

studios, or alternatively by flooding the ether at a critical moment

with some saccharine novelty.

 

The fact that the political Left Wing opposed the further development of

radio amusements made Governments and the propertied classes the more

ready to accept it. The Communists, for the dialectic of history on this

curiously earthlike planet had produced a party deserving that name,

strongly condemned the scheme. In their view it was pure Capitalist

dope, calculated to prevent the otherwise inevitable dictatorship of the

proletariat.

 

The increasing opposition of the Communists made it possible to buy off

the opposition of their natural enemies, the priests and soldiers. It

was arranged that religious services should in future occupy a larger

proportion of broadcasting time, and that a tithe of all licensing fees

should be allocated to the churches. The offer to broadcast the

immaculate union, however, was rejected by the clerics. As an additional

concession it was agreed that all married members of the staffs of

Broadcasting Authorities must, on pain of dismissal, prove that they had

never spent a night away from their wives (or husbands). It was also

agreed to weed out all those B.A. employees who were suspected of

sympathy with such disreputable ideals as pacifism and freedom of

expression. The soldiers were further appeased by a state-subsidy for

maternity, a tax on bachelors, and regular broadcasting of military

propaganda.

 

During my last years on the Other Earth a system was invented by which a

man could retire to bed for life and spend all his time receiving radio

programs. His nourishment and all his bodily functions were attended to

by doctors and nurses attached to the Broadcasting Authority. In place

of exercise he received periodic massage. Participation in the scheme

was at first an expensive luxury, but its inventors hoped to make it at

no distant date available to all. It was even expected that in time

medical and menial attendants would cease to be necessary. A vast system

of automatic food-production, and distribution of liquid pabulum by

means of pipes leading to the mouths of the recumbent subjects, would be

complemented by an intricate sewage system. Electric massage could be

applied at will by pressing a button. Medical supervision would be

displaced by an automatic endocrine-compensation system. This would

enable the condition of