Olaf Stapledon - Starmaker

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You may read Stapledon's work for his mysticism; for the social sym-bolism and commentary on man im-plicit in his studies of

other beings; for the bubbling ingenuity of his ideas; for the depth of his tragic sense; for the splendor of his epic sweep. But from

whatever motive, read him."

—H. H. Homes, N. Y. Herald Tribune

The Star Maker

Olaf Stapledon

A BERKLEY MEDALLION BOOK

PREFACE

AT a moment when Europe is in danger of a catastrophe worse than that of 1914 a book like this may be condemned

as a distraction from the desperately urgent defence of civ-ilization against modern barbarism.

Year by year, month by month, the plight of our frag-mentary and precarious civilization becomes more serious.

Fascism abroad grows more bold and ruthless in its foreign ventures, more tyrannical toward its own citizens, more

bar-barian in its contempt for the life of the mind. Even in our own country we have reason to fear a tendency toward

mili-tarization and the curtailment of civil liberty. Moreover, while the decades pass, no resolute step is taken to

alleviate the injustice of our social order. Our outworn economic system dooms millions to frustration.

In these conditions it is difficult for writers to pursue their calling at once with courage and with balanced judgment.

Some merely shrug their shoulders and withdraw from the central struggle of our age. These, with their minds closed

against the world's most vital issues, inevitably produce works which not only have no depth of significance for their

contemporaries but also are subtly insincere. For these writers must consciously or unconsciously contrive to

persuade them-selves either that the crisis in human affairs does not exist, or that it is less important than their own

work, or that it is anyhow not their business. But the crisis does exist, is of supreme importance, and concerns us all.

Can anyone who is at all intelligent and informed hold the contrary without self-deception?

Yet I have a lively sympathy with some of those "intellec-tuals" who declare that they have no useful contribution

to make to the struggle, and therefore had better not dabble in it. I am, in fact, one of them. In our defense I should say

that, though we are inactive or ineffective as direct support-ers of the cause, we do not ignore it. Indeed, it constantly,

obsessively, holds our attention. But we are convinced by pro-longed trial and error that the most useful service open

to us is indirect. For some writers the case is different. Gallantly plunging into the struggle, they use their powers to

spread

v (Note: numeration of pages has been maintained according to the original copy of the book in BERKLEY MEDALLION edition;

page numbers indicate the bottom part of the page)

urgent propaganda, or they even take up arms in the cause. If they have suitable ability, and if the particular struggle

in which they serve is in fact a part of the great enterprise of defending (or creating) civilization, they may, of course,

do valuable work. In addition they may gain great wealth of ex-perience and human sympathy, thereby immensely

increasing their literary power. But the very urgency of their service may tend to blind them to the importance of

maintaining and extending, even in this age of crisis, what may be called metaphorically the "self-critical

self-consciousness of the hu-man species," or the attempt to see man's life as a whole in relation to the rest of things.

This involves the will to regard all human affairs and ideals and theories with as little human prejudice as possible.

Those who are in the thick of the struggle inevitably tend to become, though in a great and just cause, partisan. They

nobly forgo something of that detachment, that power of cold assessment, which is, after all, among the most valuable

human capacities. In their case this is perhaps as it should be; for a desperate struggle demands less of detachment

than of devotion. But some who have the cause at heart must serve by striving to maintain, along with human loyalty,

a more dispassionate spirit. And perhaps the attempt to see our turbulent world against a back-ground of stars may,

after all, increase, not lessen the sig-nificance of the present human crisis. It may also strengthen our charity toward

one another.

In this belief I have tried to construct an imaginative sketch of the dread but vital whole of things. I know well that it

is a ludicrously inadequate and in some ways a childish sketch, even when regarded from the angle of contemporary

human experience. In a calmer and a wiser age it might well seem crazy. Yet in spite of its crudity, and in spite of its

re-moteness, it is perhaps not wholly irrelevant.

At the risk of raising thunder both on the Left and on the Right, I have occasionally used certain ideas and words

derived from religion, and I have tried to interpret them in relation to modem needs. The valuable, though much

dam-aged words "spiritual" and "worship," which have become almost as obscene to the Left as the good old sexual

words are to the Right, are here intended to suggest an experience which the Right is apt to pervert and the Left to

misconceive. This experience, I should say, involves detachment from all private, all social, all racial ends; not in the

sense that it leads a man to reject them, but that it makes him prize them in a new way. The "spiritual life" seems to be

essence the attempt to discover and adopt the attitude which is in fact appropriate to our experience as a whole, just as

admiration is felt to be in fact appropriate toward a well-grown human being. This enterprise can lead to an increased

lucidity and finer temper of consciousness, and therefore can have a great and beneficial effect on behavior. Indeed, if

this supremely humanizing experience does not produce, along with a kind of piety toward fate, the resolute will to

serve our waking humanity, it is a mere sham and a snare.

Before closing this preface I must express my gratitude to Professor L. C. Martin, Mr. L. H. Myers, and Mr. E. V.

Rieu, for much helpful and sympathetic criticism, in conse-quence of which I rewrote many chapters. Even now I

hesitate to associate their names with such an extravagant work. Judged by the standards of the Novel, it is remarkably

bad. In fact, it is no novel at all.

Certain ideas about artificial planets were suggested by Mr. J. D. Bernal's fascinating little book The World, the

Flesh, and the Devil. I hope he will not strongly disapprove of my treatment of them.

My wife I must thank both for work on the proofs and for being herself.

At the end of the book I have included a note on Mag-nitude, which may be helpful to readers unfamiliar with

astronomy. The very sketchy time scales may amuse some.

O. S.

March 1937

vii

CONTENTS

preface v

I. The earth 11

1. The Starting Point 11

2. Earth Among the Stars 14

II. Interstellar travel 18

III. The other earth 27

1. On the Other Earth 27

2. A Busy World 31

3. Prospects of the Race 44

IV. I travel again 54

V. Worlds innumerable 62

1. The Diversity of Worlds 62

2. Strange Mankinds 68

3. Nautiloids 76

VI. Intimations of the star maker 82

VII. More worlds 87

1. A Symbiotic Race 87

2. Composite Beings 97

3. Plant Men and Others 104

VIII. Concerning the explorers 113

IX. The community of worlds 117

1. Busy Utopias 117

2. Intermundane Strife 125

3. A Crisis in Galactic History 136

4. Triumph in a Sub-Galaxy 138

5. The Tragedy of the Perverts 143

6. A Galactic Utopia 147

X. A vision of the galaxy 151

XI. Stars AND vermin 159

1. The Many Galaxies 159

2. Disaster in Our Galaxy 161

3. Stars 166

4. Galactic Symbiosis 174

XII. A stunted cosmical spirit 178

xiii. The beginning AND THE end 181

1. Back to the Nebulae 181

2. The Supreme Moment Nears 185

3. The Supreme Moment and After 190

xiv. The myth of creation 196

xv. The maker and HIS works 200

1. Immature Creating 200

2. Mature Creating 209

3. The Ultimate Cosmos and the

Eternal Spirit 214

xvi. Epilogue: back òî earth 218

CHAPTER I

THE EARTH

1. THE STARTING POINT

ONE night when I had tasted bitterness I went out on to the hill. Dark heather checked my feet. Below marched the

subur-ban lamps. Windows, their curtains drawn, were shut eyes, in-wardly watching the lives of dreams. Beyond the

sea's level darkness a lighthouse pulsed. Overhead, obscurity. I distinguished our own house, our islet in the

tumultuous and bitter currents of the world. There, for a decade and a half, we two, so different in quality, had grown

in and in to one another, for mutual support and nourishment, in intricate symbiosis. There daily we planned our

several undertakings, and recounted the day's oddities and vexations. There letters piled up to be answered, socks to

be darned. There the chil-dren were born, those sudden new lives. There, under that roof, our own two lives,

recalcitrant sometimes to one another, were all the while thankfully one, one larger, more conscious life than either

alone.

All this, surely, was good. Yet there was bitterness. And bitterness not only invaded us from the world; it welled up

also within our own magic circle. For horror at our futility, at our own unreality, and not only at the world's delirium,

had driven me out on to the hill.

We were always hurrying from one little urgent task to another, but the upshot was insubstantial. Had we, perhaps,

misconceived our whole existence? Were we, as it were, living from false premises? And in particular, this partnership

of ours, this seemingly so well-based fulcrum for activity in the world, was it after all nothing but a little eddy of

complacent and ingrown domesticity, ineffectively whirling on the surface of the great flux, having in itself no depth of

being, and no significance? Had we perhaps after all deceived ourselves? Behind those rapt windows did we, like so

many others, in- deed live only a dream? In a sick world even the hale are sick. And we two, spinning our little life

mostly by rote, sel-

dom with clear cognizance, seldom with firm intent, were products of a sick world.

Yet this life of ours was not all sheer and barren fantasy. Was it not spun from the actual fibres of reality, which we

gathered in with all the comings and goings through our door, all our traffic with the suburb and the city and with

remoter cities, and with the ends of the earth? And were we not spinning together an authentic expression of our own

nature? Did not our life issue daily as more or less firm threads of active living, and mesh itself into the growing _, ^

web, the intricate, ever-proliferating pattern of mankind?

I considered "us" with quiet interest and a kind of amused awe. How could I describe our relationship even to

myself without either disparaging it or insulting it with the tawdry decoration of sentimentality? For this our delicate

balance of dependence and independence, this coolly critical, shrewdly ridiculing, but loving mutual contact, was

surely a microcosm of true community, was after all in its simple style an actual and living example of that high goal

which the world seeks. * *

The whole world? The whole universe? Overhead, obscurity unveiled a star. One tremulous arrow of light, projected

how many thousands of years ago, now stung my nerves with vision, and my heart with fear. For in such a universe as

this what significance could there be in our fortuitous, our frail, our evanescent community?

But now irrationally I was seized with a strange worship, not, surely of the star, that mere furnace which mere

distance falsely sanctified, but of something other, which the dire con-trast of the star and us signified to the heart. Yet

what, what could thus be signified? Intellect, peering beyond the star, dis-covered no Star Maker, but only darkness;

no Love, no Power even, but only Nothing. And yet the heart praised.

Impatiently I shook off this folly, and reverted from the inscrutable to the familiar and the concrete. Thrusting aside

worship, and fear also and bitterness, I determined to examine more coldly this remarkable "us," this surprisingly

impressive datum, which to ourselves remained basic to the universe, though in relation to the stars it appeared so

slight a thing.

Considered even without reference to our belittling cosmical background, we were after all insignificant, perhaps

ridiculous. We were such a commonplace occurrence, so trite, so re-spectable. We were just a married couple, making

shift to live together without undue strain. Marriage in our time was sus-

pect. And ours, with its trivial romantic origin, was doubly suspect.

We had first met when she was a child. Our eyes encoun-tered. She looked at me for a moment with quiet attention;

even, I had romantically imagined, with obscure, deep-lying recognition. I, at any rate, recognized in that look (so I

per-suaded myself in my fever of adolescence) my destiny. Yes! How predestinate had seemed our union! Yet now, in

retro-spect, how accidental! True, of course, that as a long-married couple we fitted rather neatly, like two close trees

whose trunks have grown upwards together as a single shaft, mutual-ly distorting, but mutually supporting. Coldly I

now assessed her as merely a useful, but often infuriating adjunct to my personal life. We were on the whole sensible

companions. We left one another a certain freedom, and so we were able to endure our proximity.

Such was our relationship. Stated thus it did not seem very significant for the understanding of the universe. Yet in

my heart I knew that it was so. Even the cold stars, even the whole cosmos with all its inane immensities could not

con-vince me that this our prized atom of community, imperfect as it was, short-lived as it must be, was not significant.

But could this indescribable union of ours really have any significance at all beyond itself? Did it, for instance,

prove that the essential nature of all human beings was to love, rather than to hate and fear? Was it evidence that all

men and women the world over, though circumstance might prevent them, were at heart capable of supporting a

world-wide, love-knit community? And further, did it, being itself a product of the cosmos, prove that love was in some

way basic to the cosmos itself? And did it afford, through its own felt in-trinsic excellence, some guarantee that we

two, its frail sup-porters, must in some sense have eternal life? Did it, in fact, prove that love was God, and God

awaiting us in bis heaven?

No! Our homely, friendly, exasperating, laughter-making, undecorated though most prized community of spirit

proved none of these things. It was no certain guarantee of anything but its own imperfect rightness. It was nothing

but a very minute, very bright epitome of one out of the many poten-tialities of existence. I remembered the swarms of

the unsee-ing stars. I remembered the tumult of hate and fear and bit-terness which is man's world. I remembered, too,

our own not infrequent discordancy. And I reminded myself that we

should very soon vanish like the flurry that a breeze has made on still water.

Once more there came to me a perception of the strange contrast of the stars and us. The incalculable potency of

the cosmos mysteriously enhanced the Tightness of our brief spark of community, and of mankind's brief, uncertain

venture. And these in turn quickened the cosmos.

I sat down on the heather. Overhead obscurity was now in full retreat. In its rear the freed population of the sky

sprang out of hiding, star by star.

On every side the shadowy hills or the guessed, featureless sea extended beyond sight. But the hawk-flight of

imagination followed them as they curved downward below the horizon. I perceived that I was on a little round grain of

rock and metal, filmed with water and with air, whirling in sunlight and darkness. And on the skin of that little grain all

the swarms of men, generation by generation, had lived in labor and blindness, with intermittent joy and intermittent

lucidity of spirit. And all their history, with its folk-wanderings, its empires, its philosophies, its proud sciences, its

social revolu-tions, its increasing hunger for community, was but a flicker in one day of the lives of stars.

If one could know whether among that glittering host there were here and there other spirit-inhabited grains of rock

and metal, whether man's blundering search for wisdom and for love was a sole and insignificant tremor, or part of a

universal movement!

1. EARTH AMONG THE STARS

Overhead obscurity was gone. From horizon to horizon the sky was an unbroken spread of stars. Two planets

stared, un-winking. The more obtrusive of the constellations asserted their individuality. Orion's four-square shoulders

and feet, his belt and sword, the Plough, the zigzag of Cassiopeia, the intimate Pleiades, all were duly patterned on the

dark. The Milky Way, a vague hoop of light, spanned the sky.

Imagination completed what mere sight could not achieve. Looking down, I seemed to see through a transparent

planet, through heather and solid rock, through the buried grave-yards of vanished species, down through the molten

flow of basalt, and on into the Earth's core of iron; then on again, still seemingly downwards, through the southern

strata to

the southern ocean and lands, past the roots of gum trees and the feet of the inverted antipodeans, through their

blue, sun-pierced awning of day, and out into the eternal night, where sun and stars are together. For there, dizzyingly

far below me, like fishes in the depth of a lake, lay the nether constellations. The two domes of the sky were fused into

one hollow sphere, star-peopled, black, even beside the blinding sun. The young moon was a curve of incandescent

wire. The com-pleted hoop of the Milky Way encircled the universe.

In a strange vertigo, I looked for reassurance at the little glowing windows of our home. There they still were; and

the whole suburb, and the hills. But stars shone through all. It was as though all terrestrial things were made of glass,

or of some more limpid, more ethereal vitreosity. Faintly the church clock chimed for midnight. Dimly, receding, it tolled

the first stroke.

Imagination was now stimulated to a new, strange mode of perception. Looking from star to star, I saw the heaven

no longer as a jeweled ceiling and floor, but as depth beyond flashing depth of suns. And though for the most part

the great and familiar lights of the sky stood forth as our near neighbors, some brilliant stars were seen to be in fact

remote and mighty, while some dim lamps were visible only because they were so near. On every side the middle

distance was crowded with swarms and streams of stars. But even these now seemed near; for the Milky Way had

receded into an incomparably greater distance. And through gaps in its nearer parts appeared vista beyond vista of

luminous mists, and deep perspectives of stellar populations.

The universe in which fate had set me was no spangled chamber, but a perceived vortex of star-streams. No! It was

more. Peering between the stars into the outer darkness, I saw also, as mere flecks and points of light, other such

vor-tices, such galaxies, sparsely scattered in the void, depth be-yond depth, so far afield that even the eye of

imagination

could find no limits to the cosmical, the all-embracing galaxy of galaxies. The universe now appeared to me as a

void wherein floated rare flakes of snow, each flake a universe.

Gazing at the faintest and remotest of all the swarm of universes, I seemed, by hypertelescopic imagination, to see it

as a population of suns; and near one of those suns was a planet, and on that planet's dark side a hill, and on that hill

myself. For our astronomers assure us that in this boundless finitude which we call the cosmos the straight lines of

light lead not to infinity but to their source. Then I remembered

that, had my vision depended on physical light, and not on the light of imagination, the rays coming thus to me

"round" the cosmos would have revealed, not myself, but events that had ceased long before the Earth, or perhaps

even the Sun, was formed.

But now, once more shunning these immensities, I looked again for the curtained windows of our home, which,

though star-pierced, was still more real to me than all the galaxies. But our home had vanished, with the whole suburb,

and the hills too, and the sea. The very ground on which I had been sitting was gone. Instead there lay far below me

an insub-stantial gloom. And I myself was seemingly disembodied, for I could neither see nor touch my own flesh.

And when I willed to move my limbs, nothing happened. I had no limbs. The familiar inner perceptions of my body,

and the headache which had oppressed me since morning, had given way to a vague lightness and exhilaration.

When I realized fully the change that had come over me, I wondered if I had died, and was entering some wholly

un-expected new existence. Such a banal possibility at first exasperated me. Then with sudden dismay I understood

that if indeed I had died I should not return to my prized, con-crete atom of community. The violence of my distress

shocked me. But soon I comforted myself with the thought that after all I was probably not dead, but in some sort of

trance, from which I might wake at any minute. I resolved, therefore, not to be unduly alarmed by this mysterious

change. With scientific interest I would observe all that happened to me.

I noticed that the obscurity which had taken the place of the ground was shrinking and condensing. The nether

stars were no longer visible through it. Soon the earth below me was like a huge circular table-top, a broad disc of

dark-ness surrounded by stars. I was apparently soaring away from my native planet at incredible speed. The sun,

formerly visible to imagination in the nether heaven, was once more physically eclipsed by the Earth. Though by now I

must have been hundreds of miles above the ground, I was not troubled by the absence of oxygen and atmospheric

pressure. I experienced only an increasing exhilaration and a delightful effervescence of thought. The extraordinary

brilliance of the stars excited me. For, whether through the absence of obscuring air, or through my own increased

sensitivity, or both, the sky had taken on an unfamiliar aspect. Every star had seemingly flared

up into higher magnitude. The heavens blazed. The major

stars were like the headlights of a distant car. The Milky Way, no longer watered down with darkness, was an

encircling, granular river of light.

Presently, along the Planet's eastern limb, now far below me, there appeared a faint line of luminosity; which, as I

continued to soar, warmed here and there to orange and red. Evidently I was traveling not only upwards but

eastwards, and swinging round into the day. Soon the sun leapt into view, devouring the huge crescent of dawn with

its brilliance. But as I sped on, sun and planet were seen to drift apart, while the thread of dawn thickened into a misty

breadth of sunlight. This increased, like a visibly waxing moon, till half the planet was illuminated. Between the areas of

night and day, a belt of shade, warm-tinted, broad as a sub-continent, now marked the area of dawn. As I continued to

rise and travel eastwards, I saw the lands swing westward along with the day, till I was over the Pacific and high noon.

The Earth appeared now as a great bright orb hundreds of times larger than the full moon. In its center a dazzling

patch of light was the sun's image reflected in the ocean. The planet's circumference was an indefinite breadth of

luminous haze, fading into the surrounding blackness of space. Much of the northern hemisphere, tilted somewhat

toward me, was an expanse of snow and cloud-tops. I could trace parts of the outlines of Japan and China, their vague

browns and greens indenting the vague blues and grays of the ocean. Toward the equator, where the air was clearer,

the ocean was dark. A little whirl of brilliant cloud was perhaps the upper surface of a hurricane. The Philippines and

New Guinea were pre-cisely mapped. Australia faded into the hazy southern limb.

The spectacle before me- was strangely moving. Personal anxiety was blotted out by wonder and admiration; for the

sheer beauty of our planet surprised me. It was a huge pearl, set in spangled ebony. It was nacrous, it was an opal. No,

it was far more lovely than any jewel. Its patterned coloring was more subtle, more ethereal. It displayed the delicacy

and brilliance, the intricacy and harmony of a live thing. Strange that in my remoteness I seemed to feel, as never

before, the vital presence of Earth as of a creature alive but tranced and obscurely yearning to wake.

I reflected that not one of the visible features of this celestial and living gem revealed the presence of man.

Dis-played before me, though invisible, were some of the most congested centers of human population. There below

me lay

huge industrial regions, blackening the air with smoke. Yet all this thronging life and humanly momentous enterprise

had made no mark whatever on the features of the planet. From this high look-out the Earth would have appeared no

different before the dawn of man. No visiting angel, or ex-plorer from another planet, could have guessed that this

bland orb teemed with vermin, with world-mastering, self-torturing, incipiently angelic beasts.

CHAPTER Ï

INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL

WHILE I was thus contemplating my native planet, I contin-ued to soar through space. The Earth was visibly

shrinking into the distance, and as I raced eastwards, it seemed to be rotating beneath me. All its features swung

westwards, till presently sunset and the Mid-Atlantic appeared upon its eastern limb, and then the night. Within a few

minutes, as it seemed to me, the planet had become an immense half-moon. Soon it was a misty, dwindling crescent,

beside the sharp and minute crescent of its satellite.

With amazement I realized that I must be traveling at a fantastic, a quite impossible rate. So rapid was my progress

that I seemed to be passing through a constant hail of meteors. They were invisible till they were almost abreast of me;

for they shone only by reflected sunlight, appearing for an instant only, as streaks of light, like lamps seen from an

express train. Many of them I met in head-on collision, but they made no impression on me. One huge irregular bulk of

rock, the size of a house, thoroughly terrified me. The illu-minated mass swelled before my gaze, displayed for a

fraction of a second a rough and lumpy surface, and then engulfed me. Or rather, I infer that it must have engulfed me;

but so swift was my passage that I had no sooner seen it in the mid-dle distance than I found myself already leaving it

behind.

Very soon the Earth was a mere star. I say soon, but my sense of the passage of time was now very confused.

Minutes and hours, and perhaps even days, even weeks, were now indistinguishable.

While I was still trying to collect myself, I found that I was already beyond the orbit of Mars, and rushing across

the

thoroughfare of the asteroids. Some of these tiny planets were now so near that they appeared as great stars

streaming across the constellations. One or two revealed gibbous, then crescent forms before they faded behind me.

Already Jupiter, far ahead of me, grew increasingly bright and shifted its position among the fixed stars. The great

globe now appeared as a disc, which soon was larger than the shrinking sun. Its four major satellites were little pearls

floating beside it. The planet's surface now appeared like streaky bacon, by reason of its cloud-zones. Clouds fogged

its whole circumference. Now I drew abreast of it and passed it. Owing to the immense depth of its atmosphere, night

and day merged into one another without assignable boundary. I noted here and there on its eastern and unilluminated

hemi-sphere vague areas of ruddy light, which were perhaps the glow cast upwards through dense clouds by volcanic

up-heavals.

In a few minutes, or perhaps years, Jupiter had become once more a star, and then was lost in the splendor of the

diminished but still blazing sun. No other of the outer planets lay near my course, but I soon realized that I must be far

beyond the limits of even Pluto's orbit. The sun was now merely the brightest of the stars, fading behind me.

At last I had time for distress. Nothing now was visible but the starry sky. The Plough, Cassiopeia, Orion, the

Pleiades, mocked me with their familiarity and their remoteness. The sun was now but one among the other bright

stars. Nothing changed. Was I doomed to hang thus for ever out in space, a bodiless view-point? Had I died? Was

this my punishment for a singularly ineffectual life? Was this the penalty of an inveterate will to remain detached from

human affairs and passions and prejudices?

In imagination I struggled back to my suburban hilltop. I saw our home. The door opened. A figure came out into

the garden, lit by the hall light. She stood for a moment looking up and down the road, then went back into the house.

But all this was imagination only. In actuality, there was nothing but the stars.

After a while I noticed that the sun and all the stars in his neighborhood were ruddy. Those at the opposite pole of

the heaven were of an icy blue. The explanation of this strange phenomenon flashed upon me. I was still traveling, and

trav-eling so fast that light itself was not wholly indifferent to my passage. The overtaking undulations took long to

catch me.

They therefore affected me as slower pulsations than they normally were, and I saw them therefore as red. Those

that met me on my headlong flight were congested and shortened, and were seen as blue.

Very soon the heavens presented an extraordinary appear-ance, for all the stars directly behind me were now deep

red, while those directly ahead were violet. Rubies lay behind me, amethysts ahead of me. Surrounding the ruby

constellations there spread an area of topaz stars, and round the amethyst constellations an area of sapphires. Beside

my course, on every side, the colors faded into the normal white of the sky's familiar diamonds. Since I was traveling

almost in the plane of the galaxy, the hoop of the Milky Way, white on either hand, was violet ahead of me, red behind.

Presently the stars immediately before and behind grew dim, then vanished, leaving two starless holes in the heaven,

each hole surrounded by a zone of colored stars. Evidently I was still gathering speed. Light from the forward and the

hinder stars now reached me in forms beyond the range of my human vision.

As my speed increased, the two starless patches, before and behind, each with its colored fringe, continued to

encroach upon the intervening zone of normal stars which lay abreast of me on every side. Amongst these I now

detected move-ment. Through the effect of my own passage the nearer stars appeared to drift across the background

of the stars at great-er distance. This drifting accelerated, till, for an instant, the whole visible sky was streaked with

flying stars. Then every-thing vanished. Presumably my speed was so great in relation to the stars that light from none

of them could take normal effect on me.

Though I was now perhaps traveling faster than light itself, I seemed to be floating at the bottom of a deep and

stagnant well. The featureless darkness, the complete lack of all sen-sation, terrified me, if I may call "terror" the

repugnance and foreboding which I now experienced without any of the bodily accompaniments of terror, without any

sensation of trembling, sweating, gasping or palpitation. Forlornly, and with self-pity, I longed for home, longed to see

once more the face that I knew best. With the mind's eye I could see her now, sitting by the fire sewing, a little furrow

of anxiety between her brows. Was my body, I wondered, lying dead on the heather? Would they find it there in the

morning? How would she confront this great change in her life? Certainly with a brave face; but she would suffer.

But even while I was desperately rebelling against the dis-solution of our treasured atom of community, I was aware

that something within me, the essential spirit within me, willed very emphatically not to retreat but to press on with this

amazing voyage. Not that my longing for the familiar human world could for'.a moment be counterbalanced by the mere

craving for adventure. I was of too home-keeping a kind to seek serious danger and discomfort for their own sake. But

timidity was overcome by a sense of the oppor-tunity that fate was giving me, not only to explore the depths of the

physical universe, but to discover what part life and mind were actually playing among the stars. A keen hunger now

took possession of me, a hunger not for adventure but for insight into the significance of man, or of any manlike

beings in the cosmos. This homely treasure of ours, this frank and spring-making daisy beside the arid track of modem

life, impelled me to accept gladly my strange adventure; for might I not discover that the whole universe was no mere

place of dust and ashes with here and there a stunted life, but actually beyond the parched terrestrial waste land, a

world of flowers?

Was man indeed, as he sometimes desired to be, the grow-ing point of the cosmical spirit, in its temporal aspect at

least? Or was he one of many million growing points? Or was mankind of no more importance in the universal view

than rats in a cathedral? And again, was man's true function power, or wisdom, or love, or worship, or all of all these?

Or was the idea of function, of purpose, meaningless in relation to the cosmos? These grave questions I would

answer. Also I must learn to see a little more clearly and confront a little more rightly (so I put it to myself) that which,

when we glimpse it at all, compels our worship.

I now seemed to my self-important self to be no isolated individual, craving aggrandizement, but rather an emissary

of mankind, no, an organ of exploration, a feeler, 'projected by the living human world to make contact with its fellows

in space. At all cost I must go forward, even if my trivial earthly life must come to an untimely end, and my wife and

children be left without me. I must go forward; and somehow, some day, even if after centuries of interstellar travel, I

must return.

When I look back on that phase of exaltation, now that I have indeed returned to earth after the most bewildering

adventures, I am dismayed at the contrast between the spirit-ual treasure which I aspired to hand over to my fellow

men and the paucity of my actual tribute. This failure was per-

haps due to the fact that, though I did indeed accept the challenge of the adventure, I accepted it only with secret

reservations. Fear and the longing for comfort, I now recog-nize, dimmed the brightness of my will. My resolution, so

! boldly formed, proved after all frail. My unsteady courage often gave place to yearnings for my native planet. Over

and i over again in the course of my travels I had a sense that, | owing to my timid and pedestrian nature, I missed

the most significant aspects of events. ;

Of all that I experienced on my travels, only a fraction 1 ò was clearly intelligible to me even at the time; and then,

as I shall tell, my native powers were aided by beings of super-human development. Now that I am once more on my

native planet, and this aid is no longer available, I cannot recapture even so much of the deeper insight as I formerly

attained. And so my record, which tells of the most far-reaching of all human explorations, turns out to be after all no

more reliable than the rigmarole of any mind unhinged by the impact of . experience beyond its comprehension.

To return to my story. How long I spent in debate with myself I do not know, but soon after I had made my

decision, the absolute darkness was pierced once more by the stars. I was apparently at rest, for stars were visible in

every direc-tion, and their color was normal.

But a mysterious change had come over me. I soon dis-covered that, by merely willing to approach a star, I could

set myself in motion toward it, and at such a speed that I must have traveled much faster than normal light. This, as I

knew very well, was physically impossible. Scientists had assured me that motion faster than the speed of light was

meaning- less. I inferred that my motion must therefore be in some manner a mental, not a physical phenomenon, that

I was enabled to take up successive viewpoints without physical means of locomotion. It seemed to me evident, too,

that the light with which the stars were now revealed to me was not normal, physical light; for I noticed that my new

and expe-ditious means of travel took no effect upon the visible colors of the stars. However fast I moved, they

retained their dia-mond hues, though all were somewhat brighter and more tinted than in normal vision.

No sooner had I made sure of my new power of locomo-tion than I began feverishly to use it. I told myself that I

was embarking on a voyage of astronomical and metaphysi-, cal research; but already my craving for the Earth was

dis-

torting my purpose. It turned my attention unduly toward the search for planets, and especially for planets of the

ter-restrial type.

At random I directed my course toward one of the bright-er of the near stars. So rapid was my advance that certain

lesser and still nearer luminaries streamed past me like meteors. I swung close to the great sun, insensitive to its heat.

On its mottled surface, in spite of the pervading brilliance, I could see, with my miraculous vision, a group of huge dark

sun-spots, each one a pit into which a dozen Earths could have been dropped. Round the star's limb the excres-cences

of the chromosphere looked like fiery trees and plumes and prehistoric monsters, atiptoe or awing, all on a globe too

small for them. Beyond these the pale corona spread its films into the darkness. As I rounded the star in hyperbolic

flight I searched anxiously for planets, but found none. I searched again, meticulously, tacking and veering near and

far. In the wider orbits a small object like the earth might easily be overlooked. I found nothing but meteors and a few

insub-stantial comets. This was the more disappointing because the star seemed to be of much the same type as the

familiar sun. Secretly I had hoped to discover not merely planets but ac-tually the Earth.

Once more I struck out into the ocean of space, heading for another near star. Once more I was disappointed. I

ap-proached yet another lonely furnace. This too was unattended by the minute grains that harbor life.

I now hurried from star to star, a lost dog looking for its master. I rushed hither and thither, intent on finding a sun

with planets, and among those planets my home. Star after star I searched, but far more I passed impatiently,

recogniz-ing at once that they were too large and tenuous and young to be Earth's luminary. Some were vague ruddy

giants broad-er than the orbit of Jupiter; some, smaller and more definite, had the brilliance of a thousand suns, and

their color was blue. I had been told that our Sun was of average type, but I now discovered many more of the great

youngsters than of the shrunken, yellowish middle-aged. Seemingly I must have strayed into a region of late stellar

condensation.

I noticed, but only to avoid them, great clouds of dust, huge as constellations, eclipsing the star-streams; and tracts

of palely glowing gas, shining sometimes by their own light, sometimes by the reflected light of stars. Often these

nacrous cloud-continents had secreted within them a number of vague pearls of light, the embryos of future stars.

I glanced heedlessly at many star-couples, trios, and quar-tets, in which more or less equal partners waltz in close

union. Once, and once only, I came on one of those rare couples in which one partner is no bigger than a mere Earth,

but mas-sive as a whole great star, and very brilliant. Up and down this region of the galaxy I found here and there a

dying star, somberly smoldering; and here and there the encrusted and extinguished dead. These I could not see till I

was almost upon them, and then only dimly, by the reflected light of the whole heaven. I never approached nearer to

them than I could help, for they were of no interest to me in my crazy yearning for the Earth. Moreover, they struck a

chill into my mind, prophesying the universal death. I was comforted, however, to find that as yet there were so few of

them.

I found no planets. I knew well that the birth of planets was due to the close approach of two or more stars, and that

such accidents must be very uncommon. I reminded myself that stars with planets must be as rare in the galaxy as

gems among the grains of sand on the sea-shore. What chance had I of coming upon one? I began to lose heart. The

appalling desert of darkness and barren fire, the huge emptiness so sparsely pricked with scintillations, the colossal

futility of the whole universe, hideously oppressed me. And now, an added distress, my power of locomotion began to

fail. Only with a great effort could I move at all among the stars, and then but slowly, and ever more slowly. Soon I

should find myself pinned fast in space like a fly in a collection; but lonely, eternally alone. Yes, surely this was my

special Hell.

I pulled myself together. I reminded myself that even if this was to be my fate, it was no great matter. The Earth

could very well do without me. And even if there was no other living world anywhere in the cosmos, still, the Earth

itself had life, and might wake to far fuller life. And even though I had lost my native planet, still, that beloved world

was real. Besides, my whole adventure was a miracle, and by continued miracle might I not stumble on some other

Earth? I remembered that I had undertaken a high pilgrimage, and that I was man's emissary to the stars.

With returning courage my power of locomotion returned. Evidently it depended on a vigorous and self-detached

men-tality. My recent mood of self-pity and earthward-yearning had hampered it.

Resolving to explore a new region of the galaxy, where perhaps there would be more of the older stars and a greater

hope of planets, I headed in the direction of a remote and populous cluster. From the faintness of the individual

mem-bers of this vaguely speckled ball of light I guessed that it must be very far afield.

On and on I traveled in the darkness. As I never turned aside to search, my course through the ocean of space

never

took me near enough to any star to reveal it as a disc. The lights of heaven streamed remotely past me like the

lights of distant ships. After a voyage during which I lost all measure of time I found myself in a great desert, empty

of stars, a gap between two star-streams, a cleft in the galaxy. The Milky Way surrounded me, and in all directions lay

the nor- mal dust of distant stars; but there were no considerable

lights, save the thistle-down of the remote cluster which was my goal.

This unfamiliar sky disturbed me with a sense of my in-creasing dissociation from my home. It was almost a comfort

to note, beyond the furthest stars of our galaxy, the minute smudges that were alien galaxies, incomparably more

distant than the deepest recesses of the Milky Way; and to be re-minded that, in spite of all my headlong and

miraculous traveling, I was still within my native galaxy, within the same little cell of the cosmos where she, my life's

friend, still lived. I was surprised, by the way, that so many of the alien galaxies appeared to the naked eye, and that

the largest was a pale, cloudy mark bigger than the moon in the terrestrial

sky. By contrast with the remote galaxies, on whose appearance all my voyaging failed to make impression, the

star-cluster ahead of me was now visibly expanding. Soon after I had crossed the great emptiness between the

star-streams, my cluster confronted me as a huge cloud of brilliants. Presently I was passing through a more populous

area, and then the cluster itself opened out ahead of me, covering the whole forward sky with its congested lights. As

a ship approaching port encounters other craft, so I came upon and passed star after star. When I had penetrated into

the heart of the cluster, I was in a region far more populous than any that I had explored. On every side the sky blazed

with suns, many of which appeared far brighter than Venus in the Earth's sky. I felt the exhilaration of a traveler who,

after an ocean cross-ing, enters harbors by night and finds himself surrounded by the lights of a metropolis. In this

congested region, I told myself, many close approaches must have occurred, many planetary systems must have been

formed.

Once more I looked for middle-aged stars of the sun's type. All that I had passed hitherto were young giants, great

as the whole solar system. After further searching I found a few likely stars, but none had planets. I found also many

double and triple stars, describing their incalculable orbits; and great continents of gas, in which new stars were

condensing.

At last, at last I found a planetary system. With almost insupportable hope I circled among these worlds; but all

were greater than Jupiter, and all were molten. Again I hurried from star to star. I must have visited thousands, but all

in vain. Sick and lonely I fled out of the cluster. It dwindled behind me into a ball of down, sparkling with dew-drops. In

front of me a great tract of darkness blotted out a section of the Milky Way and the neighboring area of stars, save for

a few near lights which lay between me and the obscuring opacity. The billowy edges of this huge cloud of gas or dust

were revealed by the glancing rays of bright stars beyond it. The sight moved me with self-pity; on so many nights at

home had I seen the edges of dark clouds silvered just so by moonlight. But the cloud which now opposed me could

have swallowed not merely whole worlds, not merely count-less planetary systems, but whole constellations.

Once more my courage failed me. Miserably I tried to shut out the immensities by closing my eyes. But I had neither

eyes nor eyelids. I was a disembodied, wandering view-point. I tried to conjure up the little interior of my home, with

the curtains drawn and the fire dancing. I tried to persuade myself that all this horror of darkness and dis tance and

barren incandescence was a dream, that I was dozing by the fire, that at any moment I might wake, that she would

reach over from her sewing and touch me and smile. But the stars still held me prisoner.

Again, though with failing strength, I set about my search. And after I had wandered from star to star for a period

that might have been days or years or aeons, luck or some guard-ian spirit directed me to a certain sun-like star; and

looking outwards from this center, I caught sight of a little point of light, moving, with my movement, against the

patterned sky. As I leapt toward it, I saw another, and another. Here was indeed a planetary system much like my own.

So obsessed was I with human standards that I sought out at once the most earth-like of these worlds. And amazinsly

earth-like it ap-peared, as its disc swelled before me, or below me. Its atmos-phere was evidently less dense than ours,

for the outlines of unfamiliar continents and oceans were very plainly visible.

As on the earth, the dark sea brilliantly reflected the sun's image. White cloud-tracts lay here and there over the

seas and the lands, which, as on my own planet, were mottled green and brown. But even from this height I saw that

the greens were more vivid and far more blue than terrestrial vegetation. I noted, also, that on this planet there was less

ocean than land, and that the centers of the great continents were chiefly occupied by dazzling creamy-white deserts.

CHAPTER Ø

THE OTHER EARTH

1. ON THE OTHER EARTH

AS I slowly descended toward the surface of the little planet, I found myself searching for a land which promised to

be like England. But no sooner did I realize what I was doing than I reminded myself that conditions here would be

en-tirely different from terrestrial conditions, and that it was very unlikely that I should find intelligent beings at all. If

such beings existed, they would probably be quite incompre-hensible to me. Perhaps they would be huge spiders or

creep-ing jellies. How could I hope ever to make contact with such monsters?

After circling about at random for some time over the filmy clouds and the forests, over the dappled plains and

prairies and the dazzling stretches of desert, I selected a maritime country in the temperate zone, a brilliantly green

peninsula. When I had descended almost to the ground, I was amazed at the verdure of the country-side. Here

unmis-takably was vegetation, similar to ours in essential character, but quite unfamiliar in detail. The fat, or even

bulbous, leaves reminded me of our desert-flora, but here the stems were lean and wiry. Perhaps the most striking

character of this vegeta-tion was its color, which was a vivid blue-green, like the color of vineyards that have been

treated with copper salts. I was to discover later that the plants of this world had in-deed learnt to protect themselves

by means of copper sul-phate from the microbes and the insect-like pests which formerly devastated this rather dry

planet.

I skimmed over a brilliant prairie scattered with Prussian-27

blue bushes. The sky also attained a depth of blue quite un-known on earth, save at great altitudes. There were a

few low yet cirrus clouds, whose feathery character I took to be due to the tenuousness of the atmosphere. This was

borne out by the fact that, though my descent had taken place in the forenoon of a summer's day, several stars

managed to pierce the almost nocturnal sky. All exposed surfaces were very intensely illuminated. The shadows of the

nearer bushes were nearly black. Some distant objects, rather like buildings, but probably mere rocks, appeared to be

blocked out in ebony and snow. Altogether the landscape was one of unearthly and fantastical beauty.

I glided with wingless flight over the surface of the planet, through glades, across tracts of fractured rock, along the

banks of streams. Presently I came to a wide region covered by neat, parallel rows of fern-like plants, bearing masses of

nuts on the lower surfaces of their leaves. It was almost im-possible to believe that this vegetable regimentation had

not been intelligently planned. Or could it after all be merely a natural phenomenon not known on my own planet?

Such was my surprise that my power of locomotion, always sub-ject to emotional interference, now began to fail me. I

reeled in the air like a drunk man. Pulling myself together, I stag-gered on over the ranked crops toward a rather large

object which lay some distance from me beside a strip of bare ground. Presently, to my amazement, my stupefaction,

this object revealed itself as a plow. It was rather a queer instru-ment, but there was no mistaking the shape of the

blade, which was rusty, and obviously made of iron. There were two iron handles, and chains for attachment to a beast

of burden. It was difficult to believe that I was many light-years distant from England. Looking round, I saw an

unmistakable cart track, and a bit of dirty ragged cloth hanging on a bush. Yet overhead was the unearthly sky, full

noon with stars.

I followed the lane through a little wood of queer bushes, whose large fat drooping leaves had cherry-like fruits

along their edges. Suddenly, round a bend in the lane, I came upon —a man. Or so at first he seemed to my astounded

and star-weary sight. I should not have been so surprised by the strangely human character of this creature had I at

this early stage understood the forces that controlled my adventure. Influences which I shall later describe doomed me

to discover first such worlds as were most akin to my own. Meanwhile the reader may well conceive my amazement at

this strange encounter.

I had always supposed that man was a unique being. An inconceivably complex conjunction of circumstances had

pro-duced him, and it was not to be supposed that such condi-tions would be repeated anywhere in the universe. Yet

here, on the very first globe to be explored, was an obvious peas-ant. Approaching him, I saw that he was not quite so

like terrestrial man as he seemed at a distance; but he was a man for all that. Had God, then, peopled the whole

universe with our kind? Did he perhaps in very truth make us in his image? It was incredible. To ask such questions

proved that I had lost my mental balance.

As I was a mere disembodied view-point, I was able to observe without being observed. I floated about him as he

strode along the lane. He was an erect biped and in general plan definitely human. I had no means of judging his

height, but he must have been approximately of normal terrestrial stature, or at least not smaller than a pigmy and not

taller than a giant. He was of slender build. His legs were almost like a bird's, and enclosed in rough narrow trousers.

Above the waist he was naked, displaying a disproportionately large thorax, shaggy with greenish hair. He had two

short but pow-erful arms, and huge shoulder muscles. His skin was dark and ruddy, and dusted plentifully with bright

green down. All his contours were uncouth, for the details of muscles, sinews and joints were very plainly different

from our own. His neck was curiously long and supple. His head I can best describe by saying that most of the

brain-pan, covered with a green thatch, seemed to have slipped backwards and down-wards over the nape. His two

very human eyes peered from under the eaves of hair. An oddly projecting, almost spout-like mouth made him look as

though he were whistling. Be-tween the eyes, and rather above them, was a pair of great equine nostrils which were

constantly in motion. The bridge of the nose was represented by an elevation in the thatch, reaching from the nostrils

backwards over the top of the head. There were no visible ears. I discovered later that the auditory organs opened into

the nostrils.

Clearly, although evolution on this Earth-like planet must have taken a course on the whole surprisingly like that

which had produced my own kind, there must also have been many divergencies.

The stranger wore not only boots but gloves, seemingly ol tough leather. His boots were extremely short. I was to

dis-cover later that the feet of this race, the "Other Men," as I called them, were rather like the feet of an ostrich or a

camel

The instep consisted of three great toes grown together. In place of the heel there was an additional broad, stumpy

toe. The hands were without palms. Each was a bunch of three gristly fingers and a thumb.

The aim of this book is not to tell of ray own adventures but to give some idea of the worlds which I visited. I shall

therefore not recount in detail how I established myself among the Other Men. Of myself it is enough to say a few

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