Monday 5 November 2018

Two Elder Races

For Poul Anderson's "the Others," see:

The Others
"11th" in The Avatar VII: the jumps 5-11

They control cosmic forces and can appear as gods.

Julian May's Lylmik:

benignly guide the Galactic Milieu and galactic coadunate mental evolution;

are mentally invested in diaphanous material substances scarcely distinguishable from atmospheric molecules;

can either appear as illusory astral bodies or don specially prepared material bodies like garments.

The Lylmik overlord, Atoning Unifex, appears as a tall, powerful, gray-eyed, white-haired, white-bearded, elderly man.

We can feel OK with guys like that guiding the galaxy, can't we? Unifex, whose authority is absolute, knows that bad things must happen but that good things will result and how he knows turns out to be another familiar sf idea.

Anderson and May romp in the same swamp.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

What you said about Atoning Unifex reminded me a bit of what Dame Julian of Norwich said in REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE that, despite our follies and disasters, all things will turn out well. We can at least hope she was right!

Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,
Julian of Norwich and Julian may convey the same message.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Correct. It's another way of saying God can make good spring even from evil. And we see that idea in Tolkien's Middle Earth mythos as well.

Sean