Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon (bts book recommendations .txt) 📕

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