After a digression into sexual politics (The Marriages Between
Zones Three, Four, and Five), Lessing's science-fiction cycle
returns to the broad sociological preoccupations of Shikasta (1979)
- in which we learned of the Canopean Empire's benevolent,
triumphant, yet doomed experiments with primates on Colonised
Planet 5, Shikasta. Now the focus is on the very un-benevolent
experiments carried out by the Canopeans' rival Empire-builders -
the Sirians, who control Shikasta's southern hemisphere. And
Lessing's Sirian narrator is Ambien II, a crisply efficient
bureaucrat/scientist who will gradually come to realize that the
Sirians' obsessive, envious fears of Canopus are unfounded, that
the Canopean guiding-principle of "Necessity" is valid, that the
Canopeans are "altogether finer and higher." But before this
awakening, Ambien II masterminds some dreadful experiments: the
kidnapping of thousands of "Lombis" from Planet 24 for training as
slaves (kept in a social vacuum to prevent upward mobility, this
easygoing race becomes nervous and paranoid); pathetic stabs at
simulating the miraculous Canopean rapid-evolution experiments;
doomed attempts to alleviate the existential malaise of Sirians
("enfeebled by soft living") via Shikastan work camps. And this
experimental era ends only when the entire planet falls under the
disastrous influence of planet Shammat, evil incarnate; Sirius
gives up on Shikasta completely. Canopus never loses interest,
however, and millenia later, altruistic Klorathy of Canopus guides
Ambien II back to Shikasta, now dotted with assorted cross-bred
civilizations: Utopian Adalantaland, which vanishes beneath the sea
when Shikasta suddenly tilts on its axis; the decadent city of
Koshi, where Ambien II engages in a good-vs.-evil duel and begins
doubting all her Sirian principles; the theocratic slave-state of
Grakconkranplatl, where she's taken prisoner; the lovely democracy
of Lelanos, which (like all good things, apparently) is doomed to
fall away into despair. (Ambien II herself temporarily descends
into "Shammat-nature" and leads the spoiling of Lelanos.) And
finally, after joining Klorathy in a scheme to avert total Shammat
devastation on Shikasta's moon, Ambien II starts denouncing her own
Sirian government (a dictatorship in disguise) and winds up "under
planet arrest". . . As narrative, Ambien's report is largely
unsatisfying - episodic, shapeless, choppy. As a crammed forum of
ideas, it's sometimes provocative, more often murky, with
distracting, conflicting signals along the way (e.g., Canopus seems
to be part Marxism, part God, part Britain). Still, the notion of
intellectual awakening - a delicate transformation sometimes
illuminated here with dazzling sharpness - is strong enough to pull
the whole, challenging, disorganized piece together. Demanding and
uningratiating, then, but - like previous Canopus volumes - worth
the effort of readers attuned to the very biggest questions.
(Kirkus Reviews)
The third in Doris Lessing's visionary novel cycle "Canopus in
Argos: Archives". It is a mix of fable, futuristic fantasy and
pseudo-documentary accounts of 20th-century history.
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