I few weeks ago I read the book “Odd John” by Olaf Stapledon. It had been my impression that I had never read this novel before, although I had read other works by this author. However, as I delved into this work, it seemed to me as if faint memories were awoken, and with them, some reservations.
This book deals with a recurrent theme in science fiction, that of a transformed humanity. In this case, mutations are cropping up and selected humans are being born with a novel brain structure, one that increases their intelligence dramatically. The title character, “Odd John”, is one such being, and this book details the story of his life, from his beginning and the anxiety provoked by his odd appearance and behavior to his adulthood, one in which he undertakes to search for others of his kind and to form a separate society.
Their intelligence is a rank above that of ordinary humans, one so much as to brook comparison to the chasm that separates men from cattle. He, the boy, is able to progress far beyond the frontiers that have been established by the brightest of the human race, and this contributes to a feeling not only of condescension (mild, but nonetheless disturbing), but also to a certain recklessness that comes with the idea that he ordinary limits and restraints don’t apply to him. Thus providing justification for an early murder.
If one can see beyond the hero worship of the narrator, an erstwhile friend of the superhuman, one can see indeed a being who is somewhat monstrous. After all, besides his intelligence, he is also able to engage in telepathy, and can control minds by suggestion as well as by the implantation and the erasure of certain thoughts. Who can stop such a being?
Of course he and his kind will awaken fear. And this is recognized early on, because in addition to telepathy, these beings would seem to be able to see into the future, an ability to forecast, perhaps, trends and likely outcomes based on their acute reading of psychological motivation as well as sociological trends. Of course normal human society will reject them, and they will be attacked at some point.
The superman is not an innocent being, after all. With unrestrained power we have to face the possibility or, perhaps closer to the truth, the inevitability of abuses that will be committed. The book seems to obscure this with the admiring perspective of the narrator, but the reader can’t help but feel alarmed, a sensation that I have no doubt was one that was consciously crafted by the author.
After establishing their society in an island which the superhumans brutally take over by expelling and killing the inhabitants, they proceed to conduct their experiments. Part of these involve biological investigations, ones in which they callously and, once again, brutally carry out, this time by extracting eggs and other tissues from inhabitants (women, mostly) from neighboring islands. At this point, the narrator also feels a certain amount of horror, but he is also thrilled by the display of power, and it is a phenomenon to which all of us are, perhaps, susceptible.
The scoundrel and the tyrant have ever been compelling figures. I look, for example, at the doings of a tinpot dictator such as Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who is always engaged in bombastic speeches, denouncing aggresors and enemies, both foreign and domestic, and expropriating property as well as shutting down free speech. They have a certain entertainment values, as if we were to imagine that they take us into a different realm of perception, one in which we can engage our own power fantasies. Like the example of the man who finds a magic ring that grants him invisibility in one of Plato’s works, evolution is at work regardless of the level of supposed intelligence, one in which we give way to brutal acts of self-interest.
These superhumans will be confronted and, after accomplishing a somewhat mysterious mission of cogitation or transcendence, one that seems undecipherable, they die and somehow sink their island. However, I am left with the impression, not of futility or ambition thwarted, but with the idea of a monstrous threat that remains ever present in human society. They may have been super-intelligent, and they may have been unnaturally dextrous physically, but they behaved with naked self-ambition as well, and seemed no more spiritually developed than an obstreperous five-year old.
It is, indeed, a dark fantasy.
Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013
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