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Fantasite, v. 1, issue 5, September 1941
Page 8
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THE FANTASITE...................................................8 face of Mars. Flame-beings have been described as inhabiting the interior of the sun in a Schachner opus, while EE Smith has given us the description of more frigid beings, knowing water only as a solid, similar to our iron, in the "Spacehounds." If we except Van Lorne's "Marinorro", most of the few examples of intelligent aquatic life are those taken from the Smith epics, in particular "Triplanetary", although the porpoise-men of Dasor are worth a mention. The discussion of Nevia and the Nevians is quite interesting, but woefully incomplete as far as giving us much insight into the origins and social structure of the several Nevian races. The deep-sea fishes, for instance, have always intrigued me, as it is hard to see how they could have been able to take the always-necessary first steps on the road towards civilization, living at such tremendous pressures. Stapledon's race of ship-beings and his symbiotics, mentioned below, also fit in here. The microcosmos and the macrocosmos have both, on occasion, been claimed to be the residences of life, and, curiously enough, while more Martians such as Stapledon's in "Last and First Men" have been often enough described as markedly different from humans, these being avian "units" of radial energy linked up together, nevertheless, the electron and the supra-universe have been "found", usually, to possess strictly human life. Characteristic are Cummings' Golden Atom Tales, Meek's "Awle of Ulm", and Raymond's "Into the Infinitesimal," where humanities are found in the microcosmos, and Wandrei's "Colossus", where humanities are discovered in the macrocosmos. Raymond's hero at least takes his heroine with him, and does not pick her up during his travels, a fault committed by all the others cited. Any student of biology knows that cross-breeding between humanities of diverse origin would be impossible, or at most produce monstrosities; it is against the laws of chance to suppose that any but this particular race should happen to have evolved exactly 48 chromosomes, each with its own particular pattern of genes. One thinks of Burroughs' naive crossing of an oviparous Martian princess with John Carter of earth's viviparous stock as the classic blunder in this field. Stapledon is the only author I am familiar with who has discussed the problem of evolution of symbiotic races; such a concept has many fascinating angles. "Star Maker" owes most of its interest to Stapledon's intriguing pictures of other types of life, and cannot be too strongly recommended to anyone interested in the subject. The "Star Maker" himself is an interesting form of extra-terrestrial life, but on the whole not as convincingly portrayed as the less pretentious forms of life. One might mention here Lawrence Manning's concept of "The Living Galaxy", which appeared to be an amoeba-like organism of colossal size, browsing upon suns and being composed of the same. It was killed by having every tenth sun of its mass artificially exploded. Finally, we have Stapledon's suggestion that the suns of space are themselves living animals--an idea for which some support can certainly be found in the fact that suns are born, grow old, and die; take in energy, and emit it, and seem to be in a continuous state of controlled change. While it has naturally been thought that the temperature and pressures involved make any stable grouping of atoms impossible, this conclusion cannot be said necessarily to follow upon the premise, since it is doubtful whether energy beings such as the stars may be, could be said to require such a thing as a "stable grouping of atoms." All of these forms of life I
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THE FANTASITE...................................................8 face of Mars. Flame-beings have been described as inhabiting the interior of the sun in a Schachner opus, while EE Smith has given us the description of more frigid beings, knowing water only as a solid, similar to our iron, in the "Spacehounds." If we except Van Lorne's "Marinorro", most of the few examples of intelligent aquatic life are those taken from the Smith epics, in particular "Triplanetary", although the porpoise-men of Dasor are worth a mention. The discussion of Nevia and the Nevians is quite interesting, but woefully incomplete as far as giving us much insight into the origins and social structure of the several Nevian races. The deep-sea fishes, for instance, have always intrigued me, as it is hard to see how they could have been able to take the always-necessary first steps on the road towards civilization, living at such tremendous pressures. Stapledon's race of ship-beings and his symbiotics, mentioned below, also fit in here. The microcosmos and the macrocosmos have both, on occasion, been claimed to be the residences of life, and, curiously enough, while more Martians such as Stapledon's in "Last and First Men" have been often enough described as markedly different from humans, these being avian "units" of radial energy linked up together, nevertheless, the electron and the supra-universe have been "found", usually, to possess strictly human life. Characteristic are Cummings' Golden Atom Tales, Meek's "Awle of Ulm", and Raymond's "Into the Infinitesimal," where humanities are found in the microcosmos, and Wandrei's "Colossus", where humanities are discovered in the macrocosmos. Raymond's hero at least takes his heroine with him, and does not pick her up during his travels, a fault committed by all the others cited. Any student of biology knows that cross-breeding between humanities of diverse origin would be impossible, or at most produce monstrosities; it is against the laws of chance to suppose that any but this particular race should happen to have evolved exactly 48 chromosomes, each with its own particular pattern of genes. One thinks of Burroughs' naive crossing of an oviparous Martian princess with John Carter of earth's viviparous stock as the classic blunder in this field. Stapledon is the only author I am familiar with who has discussed the problem of evolution of symbiotic races; such a concept has many fascinating angles. "Star Maker" owes most of its interest to Stapledon's intriguing pictures of other types of life, and cannot be too strongly recommended to anyone interested in the subject. The "Star Maker" himself is an interesting form of extra-terrestrial life, but on the whole not as convincingly portrayed as the less pretentious forms of life. One might mention here Lawrence Manning's concept of "The Living Galaxy", which appeared to be an amoeba-like organism of colossal size, browsing upon suns and being composed of the same. It was killed by having every tenth sun of its mass artificially exploded. Finally, we have Stapledon's suggestion that the suns of space are themselves living animals--an idea for which some support can certainly be found in the fact that suns are born, grow old, and die; take in energy, and emit it, and seem to be in a continuous state of controlled change. While it has naturally been thought that the temperature and pressures involved make any stable grouping of atoms impossible, this conclusion cannot be said necessarily to follow upon the premise, since it is doubtful whether energy beings such as the stars may be, could be said to require such a thing as a "stable grouping of atoms." All of these forms of life I
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