The Time Traveller has to deduce how mankind devolved into Eloi and Morlocks. Corinth and Lewis, travelling not in a Time Machine but in the first faster than light interstellar spaceship, find a planet of city-dwellers with no signs of warfare. Either these beings outgrew militarism before they industrialized or they have built a universal state but there is no time to find out.
Corinth and Lewis find other planets where life has developed in ways that we recognize from later works by Anderson:
three intelligent species have evolved on a gas giant;
a planetary civilization has become so inflexibly organized that individual consciousness is atrophying;
a nuclear war is destroying a civilization;
having developed specialized plants to satisfy all their needs, an entire species becomes idle - Eloi again.
Because of the timing of its passage in and out of the inhibitor field, humanity will probably become one of the few most intelligent species in the galaxy and will play a leading role in an unimaginable future.
There are a few more details in Brain Wave to be highlighted before we move on to - where next?
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Unless they have not Fallen, it's my firm belief that all intelligent races are going to be prone to violence. The most even a universal state can do is to channel the competitive drive into non-violent forms or expressions.
But, you have to be careful, the wrong kind of universal state, such a centralized, totalitarian Communist state could end with the regime implementing policies discouraging intelligence. That mention of Lewis/Corinth coming across a planet where intelligence was atrophying reminded me of the ill-fated Zolotoyans in "The High Ones."
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
We have not Fallen. We have risen, are rising and can rise further. We have no idea what other intelligent species are like. We tend to project our qualities onto imagined species. And particular qualities are specific to particular conditions which need not always exist.
I think that a species that is very technologically advanced (able to build Dyson spheres etc) will either (i) never have been violent OR (ii) will have overcome all psychosocial problems that would generate violence. The reason for (ii) is that a species that was that advanced but had not overcome its problems would have destroyed itself by now.
But this is only the best of our (in this case, my) current reasoning abilities. We need some empirical knowledge of other intelligences - and we should expect to be surprised.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Disagree, we have Fallen. And that rise would have been much easier without Original Sin.
And I believe violence is far more likely than not to exist even among the most advanced races, if they had Fallen. The problem would be to control or channel the competitive drive.
I hope we find out what is Out There, and remember the need for caution!
Ad astra Sean
Sean,
Disagree. The Fall is a mere dogma which contradicts our knowledge of human origins. We evolved. We combine an animal inheritance with higher brain functions.
Paul.
The brain somehow generates intelligence. Injuries to the brain reduce intelligence. There is no soul.
Kaor, Paul!
Then we are going to have to agree to disagree.
Ad astra! Sean
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