NOT using the
panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in Dublin,
Ireland in August 2019 (to which I be unable to go (until I retire from education)),
I would jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF
DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. But not today. This explanation
is reserved for when I dash “off topic”, sometimes reviewing movies, sometimes
reviewing books, and other times taking up the spirit of a blog an old friend of
mine used to keep called THE RANTING ROOM…
Contrary to what
some people believe – that we were cast out of Paradise for no reason – a pair
of representative Humans were presented with a choice: “Then the Lord God took
the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. The
Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘From any tree of the garden you may eat
freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat,
for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.’” – Genesis 2: 15-17
He passed the possible choice on the Eve, who then was confronted by Satan; then the couple chose...I’ve started
calling this the Eden Choice because it seems that this idea has floated up in
several stories I’ve read. I don’t have any from contemporary magazines or
novels, rather these are classic and awarded works.
The most obvious
novel that included Humans or aliens making a choice to either follow a path to
destruction or to “paradise” is Frank Herbert’s novel, DUNE (Chilton Books,
1965). In it, a single Human, Paul Atreides/Paul-Muad’dib/Muad’dib must choose
between a galaxy-wide jihad which will destroy Humanity or a future in which he
alone is ruler and relative peace reigns.
Two decades before
that, CS Lewis wrote PERELANDRA (The Bodley Head, 1943) in which a twisted
Human from Earth goes to Venus (aka Perelandra) to tempt the representative Human
there. When the Perelandran equivalent of Adam and Eve refuse to spend the night on the
Fixed Land (their Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil), they step into
uninterrupted communion with God: “‘The world is born today,’ said Malacandra.
Today, for the first time, two creatures of the low worlds, two images of Maleldil
that breathe and breed like the beasts, step up that step at which your parents
fell…” (Chapter 16, PERELANDRA)
In the Ted
Reynolds story, “Can These Bones Live” (ANALOG, March 1979), the Toomeer were a
race of kind, benevolent aliens slaughtered by the rest of the “union” while
protecting a race of aliens called the Roanei, who were gifted with the ability
to resurrect any race that had caused its extinction. They have always been
stingy with the gift. When a single Human, resurrected for the purpose of
asking for the return of Humanity (in vain), she asks for the resurrection of
the Toomeer! Startled, the Roanei agree to it. At that point, the Toomeer, who
have been watching “FAR BEYOND YOUR VIEW”, call the Roanei home – and ask for
the resurrection of Humanity instead.
In the Marc Stiegler
story, “Petals of Rose” (ANALOG, November 9, 1981) the very-short-lived Rosans
are commissioned by Humans to build translight communication. It’s not revealed
until the end of the story that Humanity would have lost a bitter and
contentious war if the translight communicator was not built. It’s also not
revealed that while Rosans live a matter of days from a Human perspective, Lazarans
live 25 millennia compared to Human’s hundred and fifty.
All of these stories
are about an Eden Choice; and what happens as a result is (except for us and
our eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil) good.
CS Lewis had a
peculiar thought that every intelligence that is created or evolved will face an
Eden Choice: “We know what our race does to strangers. Man destroys or enslaves
every species he can…It is interesting to wonder how things would go if they
met an unfallen race. At first, to be sure, they’d have a grand time jeering
at, duping, and exploiting its innocence; but I doubt if our half-animal
cunning would long be a match for godlike wisdom, selfless valor, and perfect
unanimity.” (from “Religion and Rocketry” collected in THE WORLD’S LAST NIGHT AND
OTHER ESSAYS (Harcourt Brace, 1960))
In my current work
in progress, “Christmas Tree: A Lenten Story”, I look at this on a larger scale
and without calling the worlds fallen or unfallen, I introduce a map made of
routes to travel intergalactic distances in short periods of time and how its
marked. Hopefully, the story surrounding it is intriguing enough to keep a
reader’s attention. But I plan on exploring this world quite a bit more in the
future. I’ll let you know how it goes. For those of you who HAVE read stories
of mine, it’s the same universe that contains my Unity of Sentients. None of
the stories set there have been published yet, but I’ll let you know if they are!
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