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The Early Asimov/Gold Notes |
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The Early Asimov/Gold Notes |
"Blind Alley"
EA2,p176
"Only once in Galactic History was an intelligent
race of non-Humans discovered..." (from "Essays on History"
by Ligurn Vier)
Bureau for the Outer Provinces
Loodun Antyok, Chief Public Administrator, A-8
Administrative Position as Civilian Supervisor of Cepheus 18
Act of Council 2515, of the year 971 GE
Imperial Directive 243/975 GE
"non-Human subjects of the Emperor"
C. Morily, Chief of BuOuProv, 12/977 GE
EA2,p177
Loodun Antyok
Tomor Zamma
Trantor
Antyok the Bureau's rep on Cepheus 18, the Civilian Supervisor
"Bureau policy consists in treating the non-Humans as decently as possible"
His Imperial Majesty a humanitarian and a disciple of the philosophy of Aurelion
Zammo a physiologist
cigar
EA2,p178 Aurelion wants humanity, the good of the masses
"this spineless cult of Aurelion"
the non-Humans' chemical therapy "extremely thorough." Can heal a broken bone in 15 minutes with a pill
the non-Humans communicate by telepathy
Civil Administration
EA2,p179 non-Humans allowed their own leader and internal autonomy. pampered and given what Aurelion's philosophy would call "rights"
social psychologists
Sociopsychological training is required of all administrators above the grade of A-4
Zammo has friends at the Imperial Court
EA2,p180 non-Human infants have not been born in the 2 yrs Cepheus 18 has been established
Zammo has written 20 reports
Antyok has been working for the Bureau for 27 yrs
Outer Province Project 2563
letters on 302/975 GE and 140/977 GE
EA2,p181 L. Antyok, Supervisor, 174/977
C.Morily, Chief, 186/977
Gustiv Bannerd, news reporter
SciGroup
EA2,p182 Imperial directive
Bannerd has been writing about the non-Humans for 2 yrs now
Aurelion's works
Emperor tends toward Aurelion ; "better than the hounding of the last reign"
social engineering
EA2,p183 "...men of Aurelion. Men of the Philosophy."
"The Scientists are powerful...And we of the Philosophy as well."
capsule message
"Yours in Aurelion."
EA2,p184 G. Bannerd news reports on 201/977 GE and 203/977 GE
Antyok's report on 209/977
EA2,p185 SciGroup 10 Experimental Station
Cepheus 18: burning sand; dry, oxygen-rich air; hot, white sunlight
"...brick-red non-Humans, wrinkled of skin and wiry of build..."
temp 120 (Fahrenheit?) in the shade, and they complain of the cold
When a squirt of water appeared in the fountain, the aliens "hopped eagerly forward in a queer, springy half-run...The centers of their faces were suddenly disfigured by the projection of a long and flexible fleshy tube" to drink with.
"It continued for long minutes. The bodies swelled and the wrinkles disappeared... the drinking tube flickering in and out, before receding finally into a pink, wrinkled mass above a wide, lipless mouth."
They can go a week without water if they have to. They are watered every day. The non-Humans store it under their skin. They eat in the evenings. "Vegetarians, you know."
EA2,p186 non-Humans used to live on "a lump of silica and granite, where fungi were force-grown in caves and water had to be steamed out of gypsum rock. In ten years they would have been dead to the last beast..."
EA2,p187 basal metabolism tests
EA2,p188 leader of Cepheids "carefuly wrapped in a temperature already adjusted to the point where his human companions steamed in their open shirts."
Cepheid's "speech seemed always indirect, as if he approached his thoughts sidelong..."
EA2,p189 "The Cepheid's face was motionless except for the soft, trembling motion of the wrinkled area that was his deflated drinking tube."
"The smooth flat planes of his loose-skinned, hairless skull wrinkled in an alien response to an uncertain emotion."
EA2,pp189-90 The Cepheid: "We were dying on our native world; but we were fighting. Our science, developed through a history older than yours, was losing; but it had not yet lost. Perhaps it was because our science was fundamentally biological, rather than physical as yours is. Your people discovered new sources of energy and reached the stars. Our people discovered new truths of psychology and psychiatry and built up a working society free of disease and crime."
EA2, p190 For centuries past, they had been groping toward the elements of atomic power
no other planets in their system to serve as stepping stones, 20 lyr to nearest star
Only 5000 Cepheids left in the last days, and their first ship was ready. It was experimental...had all the principles of propulsion and navigation correctly worked out
"Cepheid's small black eyes"
"There is no longer any reason to fight. There is no longer anything to attain. All the universe is the property of your race."
EA2,p191 "We are in a blind alley...Life can no longer interest us.We have no offspring-- voluntarily. It is our way of removing ourselves from your way."
flouro-globe, "3-ft-high bulk floated with incongruous grace and lightness in the air..."
"...there is no place for you nearer than the Magellanic Clouds if you wished independence."
enveloping robe...electrically-heated pad at the collar
EA2,p192 Cepheid "mind reading": "It is not that we cannot recieve the proper sensations, it is that your people do not transmit them, and we have no way of explaining to you how to go about it...There are times, of course, of great concentration or emotional tension on the part of the other-worldling when some of us who are more expert in this sense, more sharp-eyed, so to speak, detect vaguely something. It is uncertain; yet I myself have at times wondered--"
flouro-globe "a Galactic fad of 3 yrs ago"
"...adjust the windows to non-transmission...soft click of a contact...windows became curved regions of darkness..."
"...flouro-globe suddenly the focus of a rosy effulgence that seemed to leap outward in streamers...placed it upon the table and spun it with a hand that dripped red. As it spun, the colors changed with a slowly increasing rapidity, blended and fell apart into more extreme contrasts...surface is of a material that exhibits variable flourescence. It is almost weightless, extremely fragile, but gyroscopically balanced so that it rarely falls..."
EA2,p194 High Judge of the non-Humans
5000 flouro-globes allocated for shipment to Cepheus 18, by the Department of Trade
EA2,p195 captain of the merchant fleet...brilliant white uniform
"I've had more than 300 ships under me before this."
couldn't carry more than 20 flouro-globes to a ship
"...thousands of planets to worry about in this Empire of ours and billions of people"
400 million men today in the Imperial Administrative Service
EA2,p196 "...labors of 400 million humans."
"...ships are gone. These non-Humans have taken them by force."
"...isn't a govt ship available in this entire half of the Sector. By the time we organize a pursuit they'll be out of the Galaxy and halfway to the Magellanic Clouds."
EA2,p197 "...laws of the Empire go by written, filmed, or transcribed material..."
"You knew it would require hundreds of craft."
EA2,p198 "...R. Horpritt, Chief, AdServ, 15/978 GE..."
"Mother Earth"
EA2,p260 Gustav Stein a physiologist
"...companion was an historian..."
"Stein's apt was, for Earth, quite luxurious. It lacked the empty privacy of the Outer Worlds, of course, since from its window there stretched outward a phenomenon that belonged only to the home planet--a city. A large city, full of people, rubbing shoulders, mingling sweat--"
"Nor was Stein's apt fitted w/ its own power and its own utility supply. It lacked even the most elementary quota of positronic robots. In short, it lacked the dignity of self-sufficiency, and like all things on Earth, it was merely part of a community, a pendant unit of a cluster, a portion of a mob."
Stein "an Earthman by birth..."
EA2,pp260-61 Outer Worlds, "where there were no cities but only gardens; where the lawns were streaks of emerald, where all human beings wre kings, and where all good Earthmen earnestly and vainly hoped to go some day."
EA2,p261 Edward Field
2 elderly bachelors
sherry
Field : "...a lecturer, scholar, and man of modest means...from his still uncompleted history of Terrestrian Empire."
3 times when an Empire...falls..."
(1) "...a century and a half of hindsight. It came when the Sirian sector colony, Aurora, 1st obtained permission of the Central Government at Earth to introduce positronic robots into their community life."
EA2,p262 (2) "...first establishment of an immigration quota against Earth by the Outer Worlds...Earth found itself unable to preven the action...that was 50 yrs ago."
(3) probably the war...
"Pacific Project"
"The Outer Worlds--some 50 of them, originally colonies, later dominions, later nations..."
EA2,p263 individuality "...grows out of a world not originally congenial to mankind, yet populated by the cream of the difficult, the different, the daring, the deviant."
Aurora "...3 pc from Earth..."
"...It was the 1st planet settled outside the Solar System, and represented the dawn of interstellar travel. Hence its name."
Aurora "...had air and water to start with, perhaps, but on Earthly standards it was rocky and infertile. The plant life that did exist, sustained by a yellow-green pigment completely unrelated to chlorophyll and not as efficient, gave the comparatively fertile regions a decidedly bilious and unpleasant appearance to unaccustomed eyes. No animal life higher than unicellular, and the equivalent of bacteria as well, were present. Nothing dangerous, naturally, since the 2 biological systems, of Earth and Aurora, were chemically unrelated."
"Aurora became, quite gradually, a patchwork. Grains and fruit trees came first; shrubs, flowers, and grass afterwards. Herds of livestock followed. And, as if it were necessary to prevent too close a copy of the mother planet, positronic robots also came to build the mansions, carve the landscapes, lay the power units."
"...luxury of a new world and unlimited mineral resources...splendid excess of atomic power laid out on new foundations with merely thousands, or, at most, millions, not billions, to service...vast flowering of physical science, in worlds where there was room for it."
Franklin Maynard lived with his wife, 3 children, and 27 robots, on an estate more than 40 mi away from his nearest neighbor. "...by community-wave, he could share the living room of any of 75 million on Aurora--with each singly; with all simultaneously."
"Maynard knew every inch of his valley."
"...angular, sharp leaves of native furze clung sullenly..."
EA2,p264 Maynard a deputy in the Gathering, and a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee
"...could transact all business but the most extremely essential, by community-wave, without ever sacrificing the precious privacy he had to have in a way no Earthman could understand."
Charles Hijkman "...sat with him in his living room on an island in an artificial lake stocked w/ 50 varieties of fish, which happened to be 2500 miles distant, in space."
"Even the robots were quite accustomed to the paradox, and when Hijkman raised a hand for a cigarette, Maynard's robot made no move to satisfy the desire, though a half-minute passed before Hijkman's own robot could do so."
"The 2 men spoke like Outer Worlders,...stiffly and in syllables too clipped to be friendly, and yet certainly not hostile. Merely undefinably lacking in the cream--however sour and thin at times--of human sociability which is so forced upon the inhabitants of Earth's ant heaps."
Maynard's best milkers (cows) feed on Terrestrial imports during calving time, an expensive procedure if done more generally. "Yields quite extraordinary milk..."
Both Maynard and Hijkman "...tall, though not unusually so for Aurora, where the average height of the adult male is 6 ft 1.5 in (1.867 m). Both blond and hard-muscled, w/ sharp and pronounced features. Though neither was younger than 40, middle-age as yet sat lightly upon them."
EA2,p265 Committee now largely engaged with Moreanu and his Conservatives. "We would like to deal w/ them firmly, we of the Independents,that is." (Maynard)
Hijkman : Aurora's most important physicist, plus a member of the Independent Party ; dues-paying, but not very active
tight-beam
Manhattan Project
EA2,p266 6 billion people on Earth, only some millions of Outer Worlders
"Earth does not have an industrial background. It does not have a technical know-how. It has very limited resources. It lacks even a single outstanding physical scientist.
"Some Terrestrial biologists are quite competent...In agricultural science, of course, to give an obvious example. And in bacteriology."
EA2,p267 Ernest Keilin
"...a feeling for all the past centuries."
building "...once housed the Parliament of Man, and from it words went out that clanged throughout the stars."
a tall building -> "It no longer even housed the Parliament of Earth. That had now been switched to a newer, neoclassical building, one that imperfectly aped the architectural stylisms of the ancient pre-Atomic age...still called the Stellar House, but it only housed the functionaries of a shriveled bureaucracy now."
12th floor, lift
"...radiant sign said smoothly and quietly: Bureau of Information."
EA2,p268 L.Z. Cellioni--Secretary of Information
Mr. Keilin flew in from New York
"...we have no censorship..."
telecasts on the video
"I adhere to all the common-law rulings on taboos."
EA2,p269 "...audience of half a billion..."
"Six billions, and a declining food supply!"
video-man couldn't emigrate to Outer Worlds because has hay-fever
Outer Worlds' "...arbitrary genetic and racist policies."
cancer-prone not allowed
EA2,pp269-70 Outer Worlds racist because interested in uniformity and homogeneity
EA2,p270 Earth can introduce positronic robots and hydroponic farming, "...and--most of all--birth control must be instituted. An intelligent birth control...based on principles intended to eliminate the psychotic trends, congenital infirmities..."
"...lack the industrial techniques and the resources to introduce a robot-hydroponic technology in anything less than 5 centuries"
"...traditions of Earth, as well as current ethical beliefs, forbid robot labor and false foods. Most of all, they forbid the slaughter of unborn children."
Moreanu of Aurora
EA2,p271 Ion Moreanu
Foreign Agents Committee of the Gathering
"...Moreanu and his Conservative Party made their great bid to force a vote of no confidence."
"Moreanu was supoenaed in his own home, and placed under house arrest. Although this procedure of house arrest was not, under the circumstances, legal--a fact emphatically pointed out by Moreanu--it was nevertheless successfully accomplished."
the seven inquisitors of the Committee
EA2,p272 "...proceedings constituted a Committee Investigation and not a trial..."
gavel
"...disease-ridden, ignorant, and subhuman remnants of Earth."
"...Committee has evidence that points to your intentions to use Earth man power to engineer a coup that would leave you dictator over Aurora."
EA2,pp272-3 "...20 generations behind us..."
EA2,p273 "The room, fitted for an audience of 75 million by Community Wave, was unattended."
"...constitutional rights of privacy and individuality have been denied."
EA2,p274 "Of the members of the Committee, only Franklin Maynard was not completely satisfied."
Luiz Moreno, Ambassador to Aurora from Earth
Ambassador from Earth
"...Gathering has decided to ask your recall by your government."
EA2,p275 Ambassador called "excellency"
recently, 2 Aurorans were man-handled by a mob in New York
EA2,p276 Moreanu will be convicted and sent to an asteroid
"Committee Chairman Hond insisted on airing his theory that Pacific Project was the name Earth gave to a device for using internal traitors on the Outer Worlds."
EA2,p277 Maynard "...appointed a delegate to the Interplanetary Gathering at Hesperus
Luiz Moreno, ex-Ambassador to Aurora
"...rarest of all appurtenances of Terrestrial Luxury--a roof garden."
"...Gustav Stein, the quite obscure physiologist, who was, nevertheless, one of the prime movers of the Plan, known to rumor as the Pacific Project."
Moreno lived on Aurora for nearly a year
EA2,p278 Outer Worlders "...shuddering away from the touch of an Earthman."
"Ion Moreanu, the only man among them with the capacity to understand the workings of another's mind."
"The Interplanetary Conference opens on Hesperus within the month."
"Of all the Outer Worlds, Hesperus was the smallest, the latest settled, the furthest from Earth. Hence the name. In a physical sense, it was not best suited to a great diplomatic gathering, since its facilities were small. For instance, the available community-wave network could not possibly be stretched to cover all the delegates, secretarial staff, and administrators necessary in a convocation of 50 planets. So meetings in person were arranged in buildings impressed for the purpose."
Hesperus "100 parsecs or more" from Earth
Hesperus colonized not by Earthmen, but by men from the Outer World of Faunus
EA2,p279 breakswitch
"Even robot service was rationed."
"Ernest Keilin, the only accredited video-representative from Earth."
Hesperian govt
Franklin Maynard of Aurora delegate of the largest of the Worlds
Hesperian cocktail
atomic motors
manufactured goods they ship to Earth are exchanged for agricultural products -> delegate from Tethys has mentioned that fact at length
EA2,p280 the rep from Rhea grows rye there.
he "...imported half a dozen Terrestrians 5 yrs back on agricultural laborer visas so they could oversee the robots." they can do wonders w/ the land. using Terrestrian seed helped, but even if you grow Terrestrian grain, its seed won't hold the next yr
Earth uses atom-powered engines, farm machinery, and ground cars
"I wouldn't use Outer World tobacco for anything but killing mosquitoes."
Galactopolitical
Tethys and Rhea largest planets in the Galactic S, as Aurora was the largest in the Galactic N
EA2,p281 Aurora was the oldest of the Outer Worlds, the most advanced, the strongest militarily
video-casts
"...all matters concerning trade between Earth and the Outer Worlds had been placed in the hands of a commission w/ plenary powers."
EA2,p282 On Earth "imported luxuries--and imported necessities, too, for that matter-- vanished or priced themselves upwards out of the reach of all but the very few. So the people marched, and the voices shouted and the banners swung about in the sunlight, and the stones flew at the consulates..."
Moreno ex-Ambassador to Aurora and present Secretary without Portfolio
EA2,p283 "...the red needle that indicated the number of video sets drawing power on that channel hovered well over the 200 million mark. And there was an average of 2.7 listeners per video set."
"...200 million human beings now occupy 95% of the available land in the universe. 6 billions--that is, 97% of all mankind--are squeezed into the other 5%."
"Over a space of 5 decades, they have rebuffed al efforts on the part of Earth to open negotiations."
EA2,p284 "...United Worlds Commission set up by the Outer Worlds recently to control trade w/ Earth represents a danger to peace?"
"...restricting interstellar trade with Earth to the point where, in credit values, the total stands now at less than 10% of what it did 3 months ago."
"95% of our atomic engines are imported. 80% of our thorium, 65% of our cesium, 60% of our molybdenum and tin are imported..."
"...if a large manufacturer recieves a shipment of atomic steel-shapers from Rhea, it does not follow that the benefit redounds only to him."
EA2,p285 Outer World delegates "...of Rhea and Tethys strongly opposed economic action against Earth..."
EA2,p286 Franklin Maynard's "...son, whom he now saw for the first time in naval uniform." Terrestria alfalfa
EA2,p288 "The vote came in the early hours of the morning. Aurora declared war. Most of the worlds of the Aurora bloc joined it by dawn."
"In the history books, the war was later known as the Three Week's War. In the first week, Auroran forces occupied several of the trans-Plutonian asteroids, and at the beginning of the third week, the bulk of Earth's home fleet was all but completely destroyed in a battle within the orbit of Saturn by an Auroran fleet not one-quarter its size, numerically."
"Declarations of war from the Outer Worlds yet neutral followed like the pop-pop of a string of firecrackers."
"On the 21st day of the war, lacking 2 hours, Earth surrendered."
"All that was ever worthwhile on Earth left it centuries ago in the persons of our ancestors." (voice on Auroran video)
EA2,p289 "...let them have their own solar system."
"...an Outer World fleet will patrol the boundaries of their system, Outer World bases will be established on their outermost asteroids, so that we may make sure they do not intrude on our territory."
"...as in the long-dead days before the first ship had penetrated the barrier of light's speed."
"The legislature elected Luiz Moreno--ex-Ambassador to Aurora, ex-Secretary without Portfolio--as President pro-tem..."
EA2,p290 Gravediggers of Earth
Keilin to be president
EA2,p291 "'apemen,' 'sub-men,' 'half-animals of Earth'...not the calm internal assurance of superiority."
"Why do Outer World tourists stay in special hotels, travel in inclosed ground-cars, and have rigid, if unwritten, rules against social intermingling?"
EA2,pp291-2 "...a handful of men who clutch a Galaxy while billions starve for lack of room must feel a subconscious guilt...the only way they can justify themselves is to try to convince themselves that Earthmen...are inferior, that they do not deserve the Galaxy, that a new race of men have been created out there and that we here are only the diseased remnants of an old race..."
EA2,p292 "...Moreanu was removed through our web-weaving, and the way left clear to those who were unbending, who refused to admit guilt, and whose reaction could therefore be predicted and manipulated."
"You did deliberately instigate the war for the purpose of sealing Earth off from the Galaxy? You sent out the men of the Home Fleet to sure death because you wanted defeat?"
EA2,p293 "We merely imprisoned Auroran smugglers, and were obviously within our rights."
"... the second third of the Pacific Project, the recognition of the revenge motive."
Rome
Carthage
EA2,p294 Napoleon
Wilhelm of medieval Germany
Hitler
"It may take a hundred years..." to modernize
"...subtle and ironic third...The Outer Worlders call the men of Earth the subhuman dregs of a great race, but we were the men of Earth...No other planet can substitute for Earth, in Man's present shape."
EA2,p295 "...on Aurora, nearly one half the native bacterial species known on Aurora, nearly one half the native bacterial species known have a protoplasm based on a flourocarbon rather than hydrocarbon chemistry..."
"...for 2 decades...the bacteriologists and physiologists of Earth have studied various forms of Outer World life--the only portion of the Pacific Project that has been truly secret--and the transplanted Terrestrian life is already beginning to show certain changes on the subcellular level. Even among the humans."
EA2,p296 "There will be a century of increasing physical and social turmoil which will prevent any interference on their part with us...outer Galaxy which will either be dying or changed."
"In the second case, we will face perhaps 10, 20, or even all 50 Outer Worlds, each with a slightly different variety of Man. 50 humanoid species, no longer united against us, each increasingly adapted to its own planet, each with a sufficient tendency toward atavism to love Earth, to regard it as the great and original Mother."
"...Mother Earth will finally have given birth not to merely a Terrestrian, but to a Galactic Empire."