The story
It is the year 2029, and Harl is leaving on a long space journey. When he comes back, he will be eight years older, but people on Earth will be a hundred years older. Ellen refuses to go with him. She says that when he gets back, the world will be completely different because humans will be telepaths.
She has been working on Project X: a secret project to produce telepathic human beings. There are now generators in space which will turn everyone into telepaths at the same time: the Project X scientists believe it has to be done like this to avoid problems between telepaths and non-telepaths. Harl and Ellen part.
Much later in 2129, the spaceship Astronaut returns to Earth. As the space travellers approach, they are surprised not to see any sign of life. They land on a deserted airfield.
The nearby city of Detroit is deserted too. They search the rest of the planet in a smaller spacecraft and find no-one. In Rome they see lions herding wild pigs: if carnivorous animals are telepathic too, they would only be able to catch food by co-operating. The spaceship crew still do not understand why there are no people until a very old man arrives. He was born in the year the Astronaut left, and has stayed alive long enough to tell them what happened. Most telepaths died or committed suicide during adolescence because reading the innermost thoughts of other humans was too unbearable. The old man wants the travellers to start human life again: he knows there are two women on the spacecraft. Harl tells him they are too old to bear children.
Background to the story
John Christopher wrote this story in 1954, seven years before the first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, was launched into space. But people have always dreamt of flight and of space travel as the story of Icarus demonstrates, and even the idea of travelling through time, another idea presented in the book, had been anticipated by H. G. Wells in The Time Machine published in 1895.
t
telepathy. Although this idea too has a long history, it
does not cease to grow in popularity as a subject for books, television plays and films, particularly for young people. A similarly graphic contemporary treatment of the same theme is in T. H. White’s The Master (1957). Telepathy is the direct transmission of messages, emotions or other subjective states from one person to another without the use of any sensory channel of communication. Although it can help to make a good story and although many people make strong claims to have had some kind of telepathic experience, it is important to remember that most of the extensive research carried out by parapsychologists in this field, has so far failed to prove conclusively that telepathic communication can take place consistently and predictably between human beings.
Christopher imagines that a world of telepaths would be a terrifying and loveless one. He also imagines how it might come about. The generators in space might not in themselves be very convincing but the picture he paints of a small group of people (the scientists working on Project X) taking a unilateral and secret decision, after a minimum of thought or research, which results in the destruction of the human race, may also have resonance for a generation exposed to rumours about the possibility of AIDS – generated and BSE-generated epidemics.
The story
It is the year 2029, and Harl is leaving on a long space journey. When he comes back, he will be eight years older, but people on Earth will be a hundred years older. Ellen refuses to go with him. She says that when he gets back, the world will be completely different because humans will be telepaths.
She has been working on Project X: a secret project to produce telepathic human beings. There are now generators in space which will turn everyone into telepaths at the same time: the Project X scientists believe it has to be done like this to avoid problems between telepaths and non-telepaths. Harl and Ellen part.
Much later in 2129, the spaceship Astronaut returns to Earth. As the space travellers approach, they are surprised not to see any sign of life. They land on a deserted airfield.
The nearby city of Detroit is deserted too. They search the rest of the planet in a smaller spacecraft and find no-one. In Rome they see lions herding wild pigs: if carnivorous animals are telepathic too, they would only be able to catch food by co-operating. The spaceship crew still do not understand why there are no people until a very old man arrives. He was born in the year the Astronaut left, and has stayed alive long enough to tell them what happened. Most telepaths died or committed suicide during adolescence because reading the innermost thoughts of other humans was too unbearable. The old man wants the travellers to start human life again: he knows there are two women on the spacecraft. Harl tells him they are too old to bear children.
Background to the story
John Christopher wrote this story in 1954, seven years before the first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, was launched into space. But people have always dreamt of flight and of space travel as the story of Icarus demonstrates, and even the idea of travelling through time, another idea presented in the book, had been anticipated by H. G. Wells in The Time Machine published in 1895.
t
telepathy. Although this idea too has a long history, it
does not cease to grow in popularity as a subject for books, television plays and films, particularly for young people. A similarly graphic contemporary treatment of the same theme is in T. H. White’s The Master (1957). Telepathy is the direct transmission of messages, emotions or other subjective states from one person to another without the use of any sensory channel of communication. Although it can help to make a good story and although many people make strong claims to have had some kind of telepathic experience, it is important to remember that most of the extensive research carried out by parapsychologists in this field, has so far failed to prove conclusively that telepathic communication can take place consistently and predictably between human beings.
Christopher imagines that a world of telepaths would be a terrifying and loveless one. He also imagines how it might come about. The generators in space might not in themselves be very convincing but the picture he paints of a small group of people (the scientists working on Project X) taking a unilateral and secret decision, after a minimum of thought or research, which results in the destruction of the human race, may also have resonance for a generation exposed to rumours about the possibility of AIDS – generated and BSE-generated epidemics.
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