Published in 1972, this was a collection of 3 novellas by three separate writers, each based around the premise of how the world would react if, for one day, the Sun stood still in the sky for an entire day in response to a global request for God to send humanity a sign.
Anderson and Silverberg's stories, "A Chapter of Revelation" and "Thomas the Proclaimer", respectively, both alternate between and macro and micro view. Anderson intersperses news reports of official government responses or current events among conversations between individual people. Silverberg takes a similar approach, but he uses things more like press releases or testimonies from eyewitnesses.
In either case, the person who prompts the outpouring of prayer that seemingly produces the response is an unassuming person. In Silverberg's case, Thomas truly seems to have had a vision that told him to fix his life and devote it to others. In Anderson's, the prophet is a non-churchgoer that owns an auto body shop and doesn't really know why he got the idea to suggest everybody ask for some sort of sign.
They both end the same way, so maybe that part's irrelevant.
Dickson's story, "Things Which Are Caesar's", doesn't worry about who suggested the idea, or even really suggest that it was brought about in response to prayer. Only that somehow, word got around the Sun's going to stop, and people are waiting to see what happens. He focuses his story entirely on a small group of people who've chosen a campground to see the event, and stays there. In particular, his main character is a man named Ranald, who was apparently alive the last time this happened, and is convinced nothing will change. People will be momentarily awed. They may briefly feel some greater connection. But then it'll turn to the usual proclamations that only a certain group of people have the correct interpretation, everyone will start arguing about which group that is, and things will go on much as they always have.
It's a bit of a paradox, in that Ranald doesn't believe people can change - not individuals, not people as a whole - so what is the point of living? But at the same time, he can't bring himself to give up on living until he can understand why they're there.
Anderson and Silverberg seem to agree in the sense that whatever brief community there is after the event soon falters in the face of factionalism, as everyone rushes to plant their flag as to what it means. It's proof Communism is the problem! No, it's proof that it's time to throw off the white supremacist yoke! No, it was actually a sign sent by Satan! No, it's a sign we need to believe without all the ceremony and idols, you know, rational belief! And on and on.
In those cases, the wider scope allows the reader to see that society more or less collapses as people leave jobs that seem meaningless, although one of the stories ends with a character expressing hope something better will rise from the ashes. I would suspect it's going to be a theocracy, which would not fit my definition of "better". Dickson doesn't offer any hint of that. Maybe some people can change, but there's no sense of what's going on in the world, other than people are going to disagree about the meaning.
The heaven and hell of free will, basically. Get to decide for yourself what it all means, but nobody's required to agree with you, nor are they required to be polite about it.
'"And what's happened now doesn't prove a God either. It only mocks all reason. A discontinuity. An impossibility. Either the laws of nature are subject to meaningless suspensions - are, maybe, mere statistical fluctuations in howling chaos - or else a Being is able to abrogate them at whim - and in either case, we'll never understand."'
No comments:
Post a Comment