Turning Point

A while back, I said that I remembered reading a Poul Anderson short story in which interstellar explorers from Earth meet a more intelligent race on an island on another planet. By random reading among collections, I have found this story. It is "Turning Point" in Conflict (New York, 1983).

The explorers are engaged in "...a standard preliminary survey of that region..." (p. 267), which could easily be mistaken for the Grand Survey early in Anderson's Technic Civilization History. This preliminary survey includes a representative of the "...Traders..." (ibid.) - like the merchants of the Polesotechnic League slightly later in that History.

The Galactics in the one-off story, "Backwardness," are significantly less intelligent than Terrestrial human beings whereas the Jorillians in "Turning Point" are considerably, immeasurably, more intelligent, an entire population of adults and children able, for example, to learn how to speak flawless English in a few days - also possessing heliocentric astronomy without, as yet, any technology, which they have not needed in their clement environment.

Galactics and Jorillians are to IQ what Lilliputians and Brobdingnangians are to size. Both stories make the point that intelligence is not necessary for survival but that other factors can force it upwards, on Earth and, even more, on Joril.

The explorers in "Turning Point" have a dilemma: if human beings do not isolate or exterminate the Jorillians, then the latter will easily outstrip humanity. The Jorillians are even referred to as "...the Elders..." (p. 279), superior beings that are merely speculated about in several other works by Anderson.

This story could easily have ended with the Earthmen taking the extermination option. Things like that do happen in other Anderson stories. Many Anderson short stories are puzzles and there is usually a moment when one character realizes the solution but does not immediately divulge it because it is soon to be demonstrated in practice.

That moment comes in this story when the man called Haraszthy "...stiffened...," sat still and said, "'Why not?'" (p. 282)

So the solution is - read the story, of course!