Let's take a look back at another old science fiction story about telepathy. In the case of "Overlords of Maxus" readers should be warned that they must slog through 10 chapters and 40 pages before Vance bothers to make it clear that this is a story about telepathy.
"Overlords of Maxus" reminds me of "The Domains of Koryphon" because they both simply shift an old topic from Earth history (slavery or colonialism) to a new setting on an exoplanet. Also, these 2 stories both involve a renegade who causes the sudden collapse of an established social system.
Here in May, to celebrate the story writing skills of Jack Vance, I'm reading all of his stories that were published 70 years ago in the year 1951. "Overlords of Maxus" was first published in the February 1951 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories. While searching out Vance's stories in old magazines, I'm also pausing to explore the origins of Dianetics.
Magical Mutations. In "Overlords of Maxus", all the human telepaths who appear in the story originated from one particular man, Sagel Domino, who suddenly realized that by properly making use of his telepathic powers he could live forever. I've previously lamented the fact that many science fiction stories make no honest attempt to account for telepathic abilities when they suddenly appear in story characters. The easy path to including telepaths in your science fiction story is to boldly proclaim: MUTANT! and pretend that explains everything that readers need to know.
Dianetics. While exploring the contents of the old science fiction magazines where Vance published stories in 1951 it is impossible to avoid the issue of Dianetics. Science fiction story teller A. E. van Vogt got caught up in the Dianetics craze that swept through the fledgling Sic Fi community of the early 1950s. After steadily published stories in science fiction magazines from 1940 to 1950, van Vogt became intimately involved with Dianetics and stopped creating and publishing new stories. 😞
Telepathy. In van Vogt's story Slan (1940), van Vogt's telepathic mutants had telepathic abilities that seemed to arise from magic rather than imaginary science. Hypnotism was used by van Vogt in the plot of Slan and he never hesitated to include fantasy-psychology ideas in his stories.
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advertisement from a science fiction magazine
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Fantasyland. Why try to explain how telepathy works in terms of fictional science when you can simply pull out some magical hypnotism crystals and use them to take control of someone's mind?
Into Darkness. Jump ahead ten years to the Dianetics era and we find that in the
January 1950 issue of
Startling Stories was the story "The Shadow Men" by A. E. van Vogt (later published in book form as
The Universe Maker). In "The Shadow Men", van Vogt has seemingly
jumped the shark; the whole story is built upon one of the pop-psychology notions that Ron Hubbard would soon incorporate into the foundations of Dianetics.
I have no idea when Ron Hubbard and van Vogt first met (I've seen the year 1945 mentioned), but apparently by 1950 they were both happy to milk the Dianetic
$ craze for all it was worth. 💰
In van Vogt's "The Shadow Men" there is not only teleportation and time travel and other advanced technology from the future, but also a plot constructed around the pop-psycology idea that memories can be passed from parents to children. Many science fiction story tellers have had fun making use of this plot element. Frank Herbert's "The GM Effect" (1965) explored the implications of discovery of a chemical that could allow people to recover their "genetic memories". Jack Vance included the strange notion of genetic memory as a plot element in his 1975 story Marune.
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jumping the shark in 1950
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Near the end of "The Shadow Men", when the main character Cargill travels through time and unleashes potent energies of temporal paradox, he is flung a billion years into the future. When all seems lost, what can he do? As shown in the snippet to the right on this page, he simply decides to fight. Through sheer will-power he leaps back into the past and sets everything right in the quivering timeline of Earth. By this point in the story, Cargill has been transformed into a Shadow Man and he has
amazing super-powers™.
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Cargill's great revelation
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How does Cargill attain his miraculous powers? At the start of the story he is a drunken soldier, going off to war. Taken into the future by a time traveler, he undergoes futuristic psychological therapy that turns him into a Shadow, a being with astounding abilities such as being able to travel through time just by wishing for it to happen.
At the core of the futuristic "psychology therapy" depicted in "The Shadow Men" is the idea that to be "cured" of his human weaknesses, Cargill must die. By dying, his mind is "cleared" of all its guilt and other sources of confusion, allowing him to function as a super-powerful Shadow. Of course, since this is the amazing future, death need only be temporary. In the more mundane world of Dianetic$, the cure would involve paying someone like Ron Hubbard for mental therapy $essions.
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To make a Shadow Man, you first need to kill him.
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In the same issue where "The Shadow Men" was published, there was a story by Hubbard ("The Last Admiral") written under the conditions described here. "The Last Admiral" is fairly standard post-WWII military science fiction. I'll classify "The Last Admiral" as a story of the Uranium Age of science fiction since Hubbard made this a tale about a future war being fought with nuclear weapons.
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internal art for
"The Last Admiral"
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When did Hubbard first publish a story that mentioned dianetics? The earliest mention of dianetics by Hubbard that I've found in a published story is from the end of 1950, about a year after he began telling
Astounding editor
Campbell about the wonders of dianetics.
In the October 1950 issue of Fantastic Adventures was "The Masters of Sleep" which starts out like a typical fantasy story but then goes off on an adventure in Dianetics Land starting in Chapter 2. I have to wonder why "The Masters of Sleep" ended up being published in Fantastic Adventures. I suspect that Hubbard tried to use editor Raymond A. Palmer as a launching platform for Dianetics. Palmer may have accepted "The Masters of Sleep" for publication before Palmer was replaced by Howard Browne. Palmer was well known for his fantasy-based money making scams, including his promotion of the "Shaver Mystery". Hubbard may have viewed Palmer as the perfect con-artist editor to first publish a story about dianetics.
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in the land of dianeticists
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Masters. We learn that mild mannered
Clark Kent Jan
Palmer leads a double life. By day he runs a shipping company in Seattle, but at night he lives as Tiger, an adventurer in the Land of Sleep. The accounts of Tiger's adventures make up every other chapter of "The Masters of Sleep". Those chapters read very much like an Arabian folk tale.... or some such fantasy adventure of the past. As Hubbard informed his readers: "
The soul wanders far in sleep".
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powers of the Two World Diamond
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Jan Palmer lives in a future fantasy version of Seattle where his pampered wife (Alice) routinely goes to see her dianeticist. Central to the "plot" of "The Masters of Sleep" is a giant diamond with magical powers. The "Two World Diamond" allows a "soul" to escape from the Earthly flesh.
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Jan must deal with a bumbling psychiatrist
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The even-numbered chapters in "The Masters of Sleep" take place in Seattle. These chapters featuring the adventures of Jan and Alice turn into an account of the horrors of frontal lobotomies, communism and socialized medicine, with occasional commentary to the effect that all of the best psychiatrists have now adopted the methods of dianetics.
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| the Two World Diamond allows transmigration |
In the odd-numbered chapters, the "Two World Diamond" allows the
Jinn to achieve immortality by transmigration of their souls into a younger body. Hubbard seems to have been writing fantasy and not science fiction, but he does say that the "Two World Diamond" was crafted for use by humans. In "Overlords of Maxus", Jack Vance makes use of telepathy to accomplish a similar type of transmigrational immortality, but Vance was seemingly trying to write science fiction.
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Hubbard's magic crystal
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Back to Jack. Apparently
Sagel Domino was a mutant, the first telepathic human. Sadly, we don't hear much about
Sagel Domino in "Overlords of Maxus". The first telepathic human who Vance introduces to readers is named Mardien, a woman who has been captured and is about to become a slave on the planet Maxus. At the start of "Overlords of Maxus", Vance fails to mention that Mardien has telepathic powers, so the first ten pages of the story feel like they are a tale about slavery in an ancient Roman Empire.
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Editor's commentary on "Overlords of Maxus".
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The beginning of "Overlords of Maxus" is so unlike most science fiction stories that the editor of the magazine felt the need to include the "note" that is shown in the image above. There are a number of similarities between van Vogt's "The Shadow Men" and Vance's "Overlords of Maxus". Both stories portray future civilizations where minority groups of technologically advanced humans (either the titular Shadows or the Overlords) must deal with other less technologically advanced people. Neither van Vogt nor Vance could be bothered to provide a coherent account of how their imagined future times with a technologically superior minority group came to be; readers are just thrown into poorly explained conflicts and expected to go along for the ride.
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introductory blurb for "Overlords of Maxus"
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I find neither the future civilization of the Shadows or that of the Overlords to be a believable future, so both stories are heavily tinged with the feel of pure fantasy. Both van Vogt's "The Shadow Men" and Vance's "Overlords of Maxus" remind me of "
Black Flame" by Stanley G. Weinbaum, originally published in
Startling Stories in
1939 and first published in book form in
1948.
Telepathicus Maximus. Jaime Gardius, from the planet Exar, arrives on the planet Maxus and tries desperately to rescue his family members who were recently captured and are about to become slaves. Jaime fails to save his family, but he purchases Mardien and takes her away from Maxus. Mysteriously, we learn that Mardien was on Maxus for a reason, apparently trying to infiltrate the society of the Overmen.
Yes, this is the far future when humans have the amazing technological ability to travel between the stars, but they still practice slavery.
Eventually, (it is a long slog) we learn that Mardien is part of a group of telepaths who are all related in some way to Sagel Domino. Domino developed a telepathy technique that allowed him to convert non-telepaths into telepaths.
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inside the slave distribution center on Maxus
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That's right: the human brain is so plastic that someone with telepathic abilities can impress their telepathic mind pattern on other people, transforming them into telepaths. Sadly, Vance never explains how his imagined type of telepathy works, but the story suggests that a few telepathic infiltrators of planet Maxus will be able to telepathically transmit all the secrets of the Overlords of Maxus off to other planets.
Just what secrets do the Overlords have? Apparently they manufacture the spaceships that are used to move from planet to planet and provide many other industrial products and technological wonders that the rest of the galaxy is dependent on. Vance mentions a few of the technological secrets of Maxus including cheap energy sources and heaters and coolers that transform heat into neutrinos or neutrinos into heat.
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Hi Tek future
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In Vance's imagined universe of the future space age there is apparently no such thing as
reverse-engineering. Maxus can endlessly sell its Hi Tek™ devices to the population of the Galaxy, but apparently nobody else in the galaxy can ever figure out the secret of the manufacturing processes. The whole thing makes no sense, but we are not expected to ask questions. You don't tug on Superman's cape and readers must not question the economic stranglehold that the Overlords have on the galaxy.
40 million Overlords direct the busy hands of the workers/slaves of Maxus, producing the Hi Tek™ goods that are sold to all the other human-populated worlds. The Overlords are not only the technological masters of the Galaxy, but they are also always ready to pay for cute girls and any new workers that slavers bring to Maxus from the other worlds of the galaxy. And by this point, most readers probably want to know: what is a galactic god? Mardien eventually tells Jaime Gardius that she worships a man named Arman, who happens to be the slaver that captured Jaime's family and sold them into slavery. Jaime has sworn to kill Arman. However, the plot thickens when Jaime figures out that Arman is a renegade from Maxus, born the son of an Overlord and a telepathic slave, an Otro from the planet Fell. Mardien is also an Otro.
And now, it is time for America's favorite game show, Let's Meet a God! On the planet Fell, Jaime finally gets to listen to a speech given by Arman to a gathering of
Otros. Arman calls himself a god and says that he will put an end to the evil of slavery as practiced on Maxus. Jaime is baffled by the speech, since in his experience Arman is the exemplar of an evil slaver.
After Arman's speech, Jaime is dazed and feels like he had been hypnotized. I have to assume that Arman has been using some sort of telepathic mind control to recruit the Otros of Fell for his planned take-over of Maxus. Welcome to the world of pop-culture psychology that pervaded science fiction stories in the middle of the 20th century. However, Vance was an amateur in deploying pop-psychology plot elements compare to masters like van Vogt (see below).
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too complex to die (see)
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Hollywood would be proud. When Arman the god-like telepath finally realizes that Jaime is either going to murder Arman or return him to Maxus to be tortured by the Overlords, Arman devises a complex death for Jaime. Jaime is flown off to an island and dropped into a terrible land of killer spiders. Of course, Jaime survives his confrontation with the spiders and escapes from the island... because, you know,
HERO.
Vance included in "Overlords of Maxus" a whole series of classic Hollywood plot devices including the bad-guy who is captured and is seemingly knocked unconscious and lays inert on the floor until the good-guy walks by. Then the bad-guy "wakes up" and trips the good-guy, grabbing the six shooter ray gun.
Vance must have stayed up late many nights dreaming up his variants on these standard plot devices in order to impress magazine editors and prove that he knew how to write $torie$ that would $ell. My favorite Hollywood plot variant comes in
Emphyrio where the hero gets in trouble and is not simply executed, because the
HERO must live on or there would be no story. Instead of being quickly put to death, an elaborate rolling device is deployed to kill
Ghyl, but our "lucky" hero escapes from the overly-complex death machine.
The great secret of the Otros, finally revealed by Mardien to Jaime on page 40 of "Overlords of Maxus", is that the telepathic minds of the Otros can jump from body to body. That is the basis of Otro "immortality". However, more importantly, telepathic contact from an Otro can convert a normal human into another new Otro.
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Ann Reece
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With telepathic ability spreading person-to-person from
Sagel Domino (the first telepathic
Otro), by the time of Mardien and Arman there are now millions of telepathic
Otros, ready to confront the Overlords of Maxus and try to end their evil slave-based economic empire.
Yes, it is the fact that an Otro has immortality which makes them perfect for a slave revolt. An Otro is willing to kill himself and a few nearby Overlords because every Otro, when killed, can simply transfer their consciousness to another Otro.
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Cargill and Ann with the teleportation device.
Interior art for "The Shadow Men".
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The Shadow Knows. In "The Shadow Men", the main character (Cargill) must be psychologically adjusted by the Shadows, but we are told that something far more potent than mere hypnotism is needed. Cargill must be altered at the "
electro-colloidal level of the body" and nothing short of Cargill's death is potent enough therapy to accomplish that. A short time after the necessity of his death is explained to Cargill, a girl from the future (Ann Reece) appears and "rescues" Cargill, offering him an escape from the impending death therapy of the Shadows. Sadly, this is the least effective rescue ever and within a few minutes, Cargill runs off into the forest and quickly becomes a slave.
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the four-dimensional minds of the Shadows
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Before Cargill runs off, Ann only has time to tell him that she is part of "
a group that is opposed to the Shadows." Ann admits to only being a pawn. What little she can tell Cargill about his plight does not make much sense (see the quote shown to the right on this page). Cargill vaguely knows that the people of his future want to make use of him for some unknown purpose. Whenever the plot starts to drag, van Vogt activates his magical teleportation technology (see the dumbbell-shaped device in the image, above, left) and Cargill finds himself sent off on a new adventure.
At this point in the story, there is a long branch in the plot that allows Cargill to live for a few months with the "
Planiacs", folks of future (the year is 2391) Earth who live in solar-powered floating houses that allow them to travel around the undeveloped regions of the planet. The 15,000,000 floater folk enjoy their freedom to come and go as they please, fishing in streams and otherwise getting along without the restrictions of urban society.
Cargill's time with the Planiacs is a rather idyllic interlude except for the fact that Cargill is basically held as a slave and the Planiacs are all rather poorly educated and totally dependent on the Shadows for their Hi Tek™ equipment, including new floaters. With nothing else to do, Cargill sets about trying start a revolution that will prevent the Planiacs from existing as the tools of a mysterious Shadow named Grannis.
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the new psychology
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After the interlude with the Planiacs, Cargill finds himself sent back in time for his second lecture on the necessity of his "death therapy". This lecture (info dump) provides Cargill with an historical back-story for the Planiacs. Floater technology became available in the 1980s and within 20 years, 19,000,000 people had taken to the migratory life made possible by floater technology.
During this extended info dump, van Vogt also casually tells us that by the early 2000's psychologists had proven that traumas suffered by a person were passed along to their children. Further, since a distant relative of someone who knew Cargill back in the 20th century was still suffering mental anguish because of something that Cargill did, the proper therapy was to kill Cargill.
Hypnotism. Death is the ultimate therapy in 2391, but when Cargill must be behaviorally programmed, the magical psychology technology of the future allows him to be implanted with memories that he won't recall until he hears some magic code words that will cause him to spring into action.
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| pyramid power in 2391 |
All Cargill knows is that it is up to him to deactivate the shield of the
Death Star the great Pyramid of Shadow City. However, when he reaches Shadow City he is quickly transformed into a Shadow. Lucky for readers, we are finally told by van Vogt how to use the Hi Tek of the future to endow a Shadow with fantastic abilities:
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how to make a Shadow
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Nerve tubes and Time Loops. None of this makes any kind of scientific sense, but we are just along for the fantasy ride and not expected to ask questions; in just a few minutes, Cargill has been transformed into a super-man. Ta-da!
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pyramid power of the 20th century
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Cargill soon finds that he has been elected as the new Grannis. The title "Grannis" originated as the name for the leader of a secret society; those leaders were known as "The Grandest". Over time "Grandest" was morphed into "Grannis". Cargill, now the new Grannis, realizes that he was elected to be the Grannis by people of the future so that he could arrange for everything that had happened to himself. Using his Shadow Man super-powers, he travels into his own past on several missions to make sure that everything happens the way it has already happened. Cargill is put to death and then revived, liberating his mind from past guilt and everyone lives happily ever after.
In "Overlords of Maxus", Gardius gets converted into an Otro and defeats the Overlords, putting an end to slavery. I find it interesting that Vance's story used the mysterious telepathic powers of the Otros to accomplish useful social change (putting an end to slavery on Maxus). Did van Vogt manage to depict such a happy social change in his story?
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Time loops: Cargill sees his future self, Grannis
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What was accomplished in "The Shadow Men"? We are told that when the Planiacs began using their floaters to escape from conventional society in the 1980s it was a horrible blow to human civilization (oh, the horrors of escapism). However, the great psychologists of the future found how to perform psychic surgery on the Planiacs and other lost souls of future eras and at the end of the story we can assume that Grannis (Cargill) and the other Shadows will continue providing their magical death therapy until all the problems of Earth (like the care-free Planiacs) are resolved. It even seems inevitable that Cargill will get the girl, Ann. 💕
I'd be interest to know what Hubbard thought when he read "The Shadow Men". Did he quickly offer van Vogt the opportunity to join his Dianetics scam? Judging from "The Masters of Sleep", Hubbard felt that he was part of a great struggle to reform psychiatry. If only a time traveler from the future could have arrived and made Hubbard's fantasy of transforming psychiatry as easy to accomplish as it was for Cargill to travel into the future and take his destined place as the Grandest. Sadly, Hubbard's money-making Dianetics scam met resistance and collapsed after just a few years.
In "The Shadow Men", van Vogt depicted the Planiacs and their migratory aerial life inside "floaters" as a terrible threat to human civilization. In contrast, Vance's "Golden Girl" included the idea that on the home planet of the alien girl Lurulu, everyone lived blissfully in their sky homes; "palaces floating in the sky".
Next: "Temple of Han" by Jack Vance
See also: Chapter 11 of "Meet the Phari".
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