A Cat

"The Deserter."

"A cat lying on a window ledge watched us, idly curious." (p. 88)

This is a good contrast between feline and human consciousness. The cat watches the men but cannot understand what they are doing and does not even know that there are activities that it cannot understand. I once saw a dog in a church and reflected how religious practice was beyond it.

I have twice (scroll down) referred to a comparison that Olaf Stapledon made between a member of our species and a cat.

The full quotation from Stapledon is as follows:

"If one of the First Men could enter the world of the Last Men, he would find many things familiar and much that would seem strangely distorted and perverse. But nearly everything that is distinctive of the last human species would escape him. Unless he were to be told that behind all the obvious and impossible features of civilization, behind all the social organization and personal intercourse of a great community, lay a whole other world of spiritual culture, round about him, yet beyond his ken, he would no more supect its existence than a cat in London suspects the existence of finance and literature."
-Olaf Stapledon, Last And First Men IN Stapledon, Last And First Men/Last Men In London (London, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1972), pp. 5-327 AT XV, p. 284.

Finance and literature are very different from each other yet, physically, both are marks on paper. All that the cat can do is to see and smell the paper. What might be undetectable and incomprehensible to us in a future civilization or even in a currently existing extraterrestrial civilization? Poul Anderson is on it -

Four million years after 50,000 AD, the time projector brings Martin Saunders (in "Flight to Forever") to a city where he sees and senses:

titanic, looming, wavering, blurring, ever-changing structures;

throbbing, pulsing forces;

flashing, roaring, booming energies;

hissing, stinging air;

unreal-seeming light;

a thought that addresses him as a creature out of time and tells him to leave because otherwise the forces of the city will destroy him.

Unlike the cat or the dog, Saunders at least understands that there is much here that he does not understand.

Beyond Our Ken

Will aliens be superior, inferior or equal to human beings in intelligence and understanding? Poul Anderson, of course, covers every option. See here. The options include the argument, somewhere in The Day Of Their Return, that there is no evolutionary reason for intelligence to increase beyond the level of any of the (many) rational species in the known space of the Technic History.

But could there be beings whose intelligence is as far beyond ours as ours is beyond that of a dog? Suppose a superior being were to tell us, "I can see the relationship between your cerebral and your mental processes but you cannot, any more than a Flatlander can see solids"? The Neptunian narrator of Olaf Stapledon's two Last Men volumes states that if one of the First Men, us, were to visit the world of the Last Men, then he would be as unaware of most of what was happening around him as a cat in London is of finance. One difference is that a cat cannot even understand that there are limits to its understanding whereas we can.

SM Stirling has a man conversing with Gods Who have to tell him that he cannot understand some of what They have to say. There are obvious limits to how this idea can be used in fiction. We have to be able to understand (most of) any narrative that is presented for our perusal.

History, Paradoxes And Beyond

I wrote here that a text of Tacitus from another timeline shows up - somehow. Here, here and here, I suggested how this might have happened. Anderson combines speculation about temporal paradoxes with information about real history. See also here.

In SM Stirling's Emberverse, coyotes, a wolf, a lobo pack and buzzards feast on corpses after a battle. As with members of those same species in our timeline, all that they know is hunger and food. That they are in one of many timelines is entirely beyond their comprehension. Olaf Stapledon's Neptunian narrator remarked that one of the First Men transported to the world of the Last Men would be as unconscious of most of the happenings around him as a cat in London is of finance. Ordinary sense organs cannot detect radio, television or the Internet.

So what might be happening around us now without our knowledge? Of Stirling's characters, Edain recounts his dream conversation with Father Wolf whereas Mathilda receives absolution and communion from Father Ignatius. The deities are our imaginings of superior beings interacting with us - but what is really out there?

The Reasons Why Not

The Boat Of A Million Years, XI.

Richelieu points out to Hanno first that publicity about immortals would destabilize an already unstable period even further and secondly that most existing rulers would cage or kill immortals especially if anyone suggested that the latter might make good philosopher kings! Sf readers remember what happened when the Howard Families came out about their longevity in Methuselah's Children. Different novels, different authors, different periods, different timelines - but one sf discussion about speculative and extrapolative ideas like longevity and immortality. Hanno would like more time to argue his case but Richelieu, aged, unwell and extremely preoccupied, does not have more time. (Sickness, old age and death are three of the four sights in Buddhism.) Richelieu does well to let Hanno leave unmolested instead of caging or killing him there and then.

The natural punctuation of their discussion continues:

"The wind and the river rustled." (p. 236)

"The clock ticked, the wind blew, the river flowed." (p. 239)

When Hanno has left, Richelieu sits and thinks while sunlight lengthens. The kitten has its own life unaware of these issues.

(One of Olaf Stapledon's Last Men says that a First Man transported to Neptune would be as unaware of most of what was happening around him as a cat in London is of finance.)

Hanno's attempts to join with Aliyat and to gain patronage from Richelieu have failed. He has time to persevere.