[I spoil the main points of this story.]
There is a group that goes out to different planet, trying to help make the primitive alien lifeforms more civilized. They give them clothing and teach them ethics which seem generally pulled from common Christian beliefs such as the title hints at.
What was crazy about this was that the aliens in question were like lazy octopusses with like five tentacles. They lived in a world of salt where nothing could grow. The group actually makes clothing for these things, which made me raise my eyebrow. What an odd thing to do with a creature like that! Can you imagine an octopus wearing a sweater?
Well, the problem here is that once they "civilize" these aliens, the aliens come back to Earth in order to return the favor. They find the Earth is covered in green grass and trees, which horrify them. So somehow they replace everything with salt in order to make us happy.
The idea here is that since the group taught them to do under others (and so forth), they were in horror that we lived in a place that would make them miserable. So they ruin our planet to make it nice for us. And that is basically the horror aspect of the story... a horror realized through the application of assumed Christian ethics.
This sounds a little much like the author's previous story "We're Civilized!". I feel like Mark Clifton has a beef with Christians (and any sort of imperialist behaviors in general) and wanted to go a little overboard in how he portrayed them. I can guarantee everybody that no Christian in any way would make a sweater for an alien that looked like an octopus. But if you can believe that they would than this story might make sense to you. But from a sane perspective, the characters in this story were absolutely stark raving mad.
I don't really recommend this story. You could certainly do worse. After all, the characters were well represented and I still got entertainment out of it, but a lot of that entertainment came to me from it being a rather absurd premise. I basically spent most of my time laughing at it.
This blog was written on November 6, 2024.
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The story did show the problem of TRUE diversity, and why it can only destroy a society. People cannot get along if they have nothing in common, even if they try. That "sameness" the "multicultarists" whine about is people actually understanding each other.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good point. I guess there was something to learn even if the story was written from a bad perspective.
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ReplyDeleteThe real horror is that this could make sense to someone. It leaves out the whole part about loving your neighbor as yourself, which means putting oneself in their place. If you did, then it would be clear that what was done would not help.
Yeah, it's not really a good understanding of the situations. Alien culture can't always be compared to your own. This was a silly story.
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