***
I'm not sure what Olaf Stapledon's current stature is in the SF
community, but back in the day Brian Aldiss and other authorities
ranked him with the greatest pioneers of the genre, second only to
H. G. Wells himself. Personally, I could never get through
Stapledon's forbidding astronomical/evolutionary sagas. I'd
occasionally dip into my copy of Star Maker, read one of its breathtaking descriptions of cosmic phenomena,
thinking, "Yes! This must be exactly what it feels like to hurtle
through space faster than light while observing the birth and then
the heat-death of numerous galaxies!" - and then quickly get bored,
because that's all the book seemed to have: breathtaking
descriptions.
Though Stapledon is on record with the sentiment "A living man is
worth more than a lifeless galaxy," his epics remain soulless,
nearly devoid of human interest. Like Stanislaw Lem, Stapledon,
awe-inspiring as he was, left me cold. Sure, the guy offers you
philosophical depth and trail-blazing vision, but would you really
want to have a beer with Olaf? American pundits would dismiss him
as "unelectable.”
Fortunately, there's at least one surefire way to humanize yourself
for the masses: sharing your love of animals. If Stapledon were
alive today, he would be delighting us on Instagram by taping
strips of bacon to his cat and uploading videos of his Dachshund
barking in time to "Jingle Bells." Tragically, in 1944, there was
no Instagram, not even any My Space. If you wanted to amuse a wide
audience with adorable animal hijinks, your best option was to
churn out a novel. Stapledon's is called Sirius.
And you know what? It works. For the first time, Stapledon engaged
me at the primal level of storytelling, and got me emotionally
involved in the destiny of his protagonist, a hyper-intelligent
Alsatian "with a dash of Great Dane or Mastiff." Stapledon tells
the story (unexpectedly structured like a leisurely old Bildungsroman) with impressive touches of humor and, yes, humanity.
(The canine terminology is a bit confusing. An Alsatian is what I
(and most people?) call a German Shepherd, though throughout the
book Stapledon often refers to Sirius as a "sheep dog", which is
what I (and most people?) call an Old English Sheepdog. German
Shepherds have short hair while sheep dogs sport long, gloriously
flowing locks, which is why my parents used to yell at me, "Get a
haircut, you look like a goddam sheep dog!” BTW, according to
Wikipedia, only two English Sheepdogs have ever won Westminster.
This is an outrage.)
Sirius may lack the icy majesty of Star Maker's evocation of the Doppler effect, but it is - to use a word I
never dreamt I’d use about Stapledon - cute. Not Baby Yoda cute,
perhaps, but Werner Herzog cute. Although I should warn you right
away that the ending is anything but cute, and you may find it as
upsetting as Old Yeller or Bambi. I found it gut-wrenching without being manipulative, but I
realize some people have zero tolerance for any hint of animal
suffering.
Stapledon doesn't waste time getting the story into gear. After a
preliminary chapter introducing the narrator (a very dull dog
indeed) to the amazing Alsatian, we learn about the mad scientist
Thomas Trelone, who's earning a reputation in Welsh sheep-farm
circles for his experiments in animal husbandry. Except I lied,
he's not a mad scientist at all, he's another dull dog whom
Stapledon hardly bothers to characterize throughout the whole
novel, besides now and then referring to him as "unimaginative."
Trelone's crowning achievement is Sirius, a dog so smart he's
figured out how to communicate in English with growls and
consonant-like barks.
Wisely, Stapledon doesn't attempt to transcribe Sirius's pidgin
dog-English, instead always reporting his dialogue as it is
remembered or interpreted by the humans. (I imagined Sirius's
speech sounding like Scooby Doo's.) Noam Chomsky might nitpick
about the way Sirius manages to acquire a language in defiance of
all modern linguistic theory, but Trelone's hormone-injecting,
selective-breeding method of creating an Uber-dog is sorta, kinda
scientifically plausible, maybe?
Whatever. I'd have been perfectly happy if Trelone had been a
wizard in purple robes who casts a spell on Sirius that gives him
the gift of speech. That would technically make the novel fantasy
rather than SF, but do we care about that distinction? It doesn't
matter how Sirius becomes intelligent. What matters is how an
augmented animal intelligence might cast light on human nature,
because this is the speculative heart of Sirius.
The dog's unique intelligence doesn't define him. Above all, Sirius
is lonely. “Why did you make only one of me?" he asks Trelone.
Loneliness is such a painful, difficult subject that even the
greatest novelists tend to shy away from it, but Stapledon tackles
it head-on. Sirius's dog body alienates him from humans and his
human brain alienates him from dogs. He can feel lust for a bitch
but "when her heat was over she became devastatingly frigid and
unattractive. The fragrance was gone; the moron mentality
remained." Desperate to make some connection, Sirius struggles to
come to terms with our strange species.
This quest leads him from a Welsh farm where he learns to herd
sheep, to Cambridge where he's studied as a lab animal, to churches
where he briefly flirts with religion. But nowhere can he get
relief. Everywhere he's overcome with human cruelty, dishonesty,
and self-deception. Inevitably, Sirius reaches the same conclusion
that all the wisest sages throughout history have reached: human
beings are shit.
"As he drifted along the streets, he felt stifled by the
surrounding herd of the grotesque super-simians who had conquered
the earth, moulded the canine species as they trimmed their hedges,
and produced his unique self. Feelings of violent hatred surged up
in him."
You can probably guess where this leads. Sirius reverts to an
ancestral "wolf-mood" and the simians retaliate. Sirius can be
forgiven for being a bit skeptical about the innate goodness of
human nature. As the war with Hitler begins, the humans start using
their marvelous technologies to create deadly rockets, death camps,
and nuclear weapons.
Sirius's emotional arc is less satisfying than his intellectual
arc. It focuses on Plaxy, Trelone's daughter, who is a baby when
Sirius is a pup. Although she's by far the most well-developed
human in the novel, Plaxy never quite comes to life as an
individual. The early chapters describing their upbringing together
are wonderful. The two squabble with each other like siblings but
also become possessive when the other gets involved with a
different member of their respective species. It's complicated, as
the kids say today.
My favorite moment of the novel is when Sirius, aching from
loneliness, decides to write and mail a letter to Plaxy at her
boarding school. His human brain knows how to do it, but his dog
anatomy can't. How on earth is he supposed to sharpen a pencil,
open an envelope, apply a stamp, etc.? The scene works as a cute
adventure in classic puzzle-solving. I'd argue that it's
quintessential science fiction, too. Stapledon breaks down a
mundane activity through a fictional technology (animal brain
enhancement), and makes the reader appreciate just how miraculous
and complex the activity really is.
The novel could have used more little vignettes like this.
Stapledon was mainly a "Tell, don't show" type of writer, and much
of Sirius consists of reflections on What Is Real and What Is Human, the two
great themes of Philip K. Dick's work. Dick's genius was to
dramatize ancient philosophical questions using trashy pulp tropes,
something Stapledon couldn't conceive of doing. Sirius would have been better if Stapledon had, like Dick, shown more and
told less. All the same, I found the book engrossing from beginning
to end, and I can't really ask for more than that. Sirius is an accessible, provocative fable that deserves to be a strong
contender for a Retro Hugo award.
***
Many thanks to Don for this great review of Sirius.
No comments:
Post a Comment