Galaxies Like Grains of Sand by Brian Aldiss

Author:Brian Aldiss
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Science Fiction
Published: 2012-02-13T05:00:00+00:00

THE MUTANT MILLENNIA

To see the universe, and see it whole . . . Nothing in it was man's, yet at that time it could only appear that he had inherited it. For Earth itself—or Yinnisfar, as it was henceforth called—nothing but buoyant optimism suited the day. Terrestrials, having been granted federation, now possessed Galingua, which looked like the ultimate key to everything.

They sped out into a Galaxy peculiarly vulnerable to new forces. As has been observed, galactic civilization had reached a point of stasis; though its resources were inexhaustible, its initiative was not. The patterns of the Self-perpetuating War wove unceasing artistries of circumstance capable of carrying whole societies along in a mirage of meaningful existence. The Yinnisfarians did not burst, therefore, into a dynamic system but into a glorified Land of Nod.

The results might have been predicted. Over the next six hundred generations, Yinnisfarians amassed more and more power to themselves. By peaceful means, or by means little better than piracy, they worked their way into the highest galactic positions, succeeding less through their own intrinsic superiority than through the indifference of their rivals. This was a halcyon age, the age of the fulfillment of Yinnisfar.

As the years passed, and Yinnisfar conquered by commerce, its attitudes insensibly underwent a modification. Then came the blow that forced man to alter his attitude toward himself. His metaphysical view of being had of course been continually subject to change; but now the terrible moment arrived when he was revealed to himself in an entirely new light, as an alien, in a hostile environment.

It is useful that this next fragment reminds us incidentally that if the universe appeared to rest in human hands, humanity was never alone or unregarded. There were always things that could see though they had no faces and understand though they had no brains.

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