From Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, this is the third instalment in the visionary novel cycle ‘Canopus in Argos: Archives’.Ambien II is one of the Five – the highest level of the Sirian Colonial Service and the hidden rulers of the Sirian Empire for thousands of years. She is an accomplished administrator, a mover of populations and controller of events – and lives in the certain knowledge that the Sirian Empire is the most advanced in the galaxy.As she narrates her story, we follow the profound changes in Ambien II as she realizes that the rival Canopean Empire is superior to Sirius in every way, and is the true ruler of the galaxy. She begins to understand, and accept, that she will be used by her Canopean opposites, announcing their wisdom to her own people, whose denial of this revelation is as fierce and determined as her own would once have been.Continuing her work in the science-fiction genre, Doris Lessing uses these worlds to set out her view of mankind and history, of her conviction that to survive we must learn to open our minds to ways of thinking.
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Doris Lessing. The Sirian Experiments
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE
SIRIUS-CANOPUS. BACKGROUND
THE LOMBI EXPERIMENT. SOME OTHERS
THE SITUATION IN THE CANOPEAN AREAS. OTHER SIRIAN EXPERIMENTS
SHAMMAT. THE END OF THE OLD ROHANDA
THE SITUATION IN THE SIRIAN EMPIRE
CANOPUS-SIRIUS. KLORATHY
THE DWARVES. THE HOPPES. THE NAVAHIS
ADALANTALAND
THE ‘EVENTS’
THE LOMBIS. MY THIRD ENCOUNTER WITH KLORATHY
KOSHI
PLANET 3 (1), THE PLANET 9 ANIMALS
GRAKCONKRANPATL
LELANOS
THE LELANNIAN EXPERIMENTS
ROHANDA’S PLANET
THE HORSEMEN
THE FIVE
TAFTA
SHAMMAT
CANOPUS
AMBIEN II of SIRIUS, to KLORATHY, CANOPUS
DIRECTIVE FROM THE FOUR, TO THE SIRIAN MOTHER PLANET AND ALL COLONIZED PLANETS OF THE SIRIAN EMPIRE:
LETTER FROM AMBIEN II TO STAGRUK:
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Read on
The Grass is Singing: Chapter 1. MURDER MYSTERY. By Special Correspondent
The Golden Notebook
THE DARK
The Good Terrorist: Chapter 1
Love, Again: Chapter 1
The Fifth Child: Chapter 1
COPYRIGHT
About the Publisher
Отрывок из книги
DORIS LESSING
CANOPUS IN ARGOS: ARCHIVES
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He travelled extensively over the central landmass, where there were everywhere settlements of colonists and natives, always positioned at short distances from each other. He went on foot, by boat, and sometimes by using suitable animals. Ambien I and myself are of course of the same general species, but his particular sub-species are broadly built, brown of skin, with straight black hair. I, being fair of skin and hair and very slight in build, could not go anywhere near the northern areas without discovery. But he, while being much shorter than the colonists – who were rapidly increasing in height, and were now twice the size of the original Colony 10 species – was rather taller than the natives, and could not hope to be taken for one of them. He at first avoided close contact with them, but seeing that he could not get the information we needed this way, approached them in settlement after settlement, and found no hostility at all – at the most, curiosity. At first he put this down to an innate good nature due to the favourable conditions they lived in, and lack of challenge. But then, though reluctantly, he came to believe they had visitors of other kinds. Not colonists, who were unmistakable because of their size. (They from this time were referred to as Giants by Canopeans, and I shall do the same.) If not colonists, then who? Was it possible the dwarf races of the Isolated Northern Continent had grown large and were making island-hopping journeys across that ocean? We were soon to learn differently: but it was this speculation that made him decide to visit the Northern Continent on his way back to me.
What he found everywhere on the central landmass corroborated the Canopean report. The native stock had improved so far beyond what they had been seven or eight thousand years before, it was not easy to believe them the same species. They were practising agriculture, understood the use of animals, and their dwellings were not only soundly built in well-planned settlements but were even being ornamented with attractive designs in sophisticated colours. They had begun to wear clothes, too, and these were well made and often dyed.
