The Sirian Experiments. Doris Lessing

The Sirian Experiments - Doris  Lessing


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       DORIS LESSING

      CANOPUS IN ARGOS: ARCHIVES

       THE SIRIAN EXPERIMENTS

      The Report by Ambien II, of the Five

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

       Cover

      Title Page

      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’

       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

       By the same author

       Read On

       The Grass is Singing

       The Golden Notebook

       The Good Terrorist

       Love, Again

       The Fifth Child

       COPYRIGHT

       About the Publisher

      The Sirian Experiments is the third in a series of novels with the overall title ‘Canopus in Argos: Archives’; the first is Shikasta (1979); the second The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five (1980); the fourth The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 (1982); and the fifth The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire (1983).

       PREFACE

      The reception of Shikasta and, to a lesser extent, of The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five suggests that I should say something in the way of clarification … if I have created a cosmology, then it is only for literary purposes! Once upon a time, when I was young, I believed things easily, both religious and political; now I believe less and less. But I wonder about more … I think it is likely that our view of ourselves as a species on this planet now is inaccurate, and will strike those who come after us as inadequate as the world view of, let’s say, the inhabitants of New Guinea seems to us. That our current view of ourselves as a species is wrong. That we know very little about what is going on. That a great deal of what is going on is not told to ordinary citizens, but remains the property of small castes and juntas. I wonder and I speculate about all kinds of ideas that our education deems absurd – as of course do most of the inhabitants of this globe. If I were a physicist there would be no trouble at all! They can talk nonchalantly about black holes swallowing stars, black holes that we might learn to use as mechanisms for achieving time-and-space warps, sliding through them by way of mathematical legerdemain to find ourselves in realms where the laws of our universe do not apply. They nonchalantly suggest parallel universes, universes that lie intermeshed with ours but invisible to us, universes where time runs backwards, or that mirror ours.

      I do not think it is surprising that the most frequently quoted words at this time, seen everywhere, seem to be J. B. S. Haldane’s ‘Now, my suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.’

      The reason, as we all know, why readers yearn to ‘believe’ cosmologies and tidy systems of thought is that we live in dreadful and marvellous times where the certainties of yesterday dissolve as we live. But I don’t want to be judged as adding to a confusion of embattled certainties.

      Why is it that writers, who by definition operate by the use of their imaginations, are given so little credit for it? We ‘make things up’. This is our trade.

      I remember, before I myself


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