The Sirian Experiments

Book 3 in the Canopus in Argos series

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This book is a totally different way of presenting the ideas put forward in the previous book, The Marriage of Zones 3, 4 and 5.

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The Marriage is told in the third person and The Sirian Experiments is told in the first person, but they both elucidate the mechanics of the evolution of a single person and the effects of that on the greater whole.

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Again I was ready to conclude that the Canopean north was in some way better endowed, but Ambien I reminded me that the Giants actively instructed the natives on their visits, whereas we had pursued a policy of non-interference.

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We decided to divide out stock of natives into two, and establish a colony of them at a distance from us, so that there could be no contact. This new colony would be energetically supervised and taught by us in the practical arts. Ambien I undertook this task: it was one he was particularly well fitted for.

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He built himself a shelter in the new village, and settled down with them as an instructor. This attempt was a failure. He was not able to teach them anything they could retain.

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That is, he taught them a variety of crafts, which they seemed to understand – but in a short time everything was forgotten.

This story reads as a summary or a report, and was written by one of The Five, the five-member ruling body of the Sirian Empire about what happens on a planet when the Sirian Empire agrees to take the southern hemisphere and Canopus agrees to take the northern.

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The timeline of the story covers something like 200,000 R-years, and unfolds on at least three planets.

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As with all of Doris Lessing’s novels, the setting or tone she sets is solid and the images she conjures stay in the mind for decades.

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I’ve been considering what it is about the writing of Ms. Lessing that I find so compelling. I’m no literary critic, so I don’t know what the writing community thinks of her, but she seems to me to be a "writer’s writer".

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I remember a trip I made with some of my staff from end to end of Southern Continent II during this period, using a small fleet of our liaison craft. Flying north to south and up the coasts, and crossing the continent back and forth, it was over magnificent wooded terrain with vast peaceful rivers. But everywhere this sylvan paradise, populated by herds of peaceful animals, showed the settlements of the successful experiment.

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We landed day after day, week after week, among these representatives of species from our numerous colonies, all so different, yet of course all basically of the same level of evolution – for it is only when a species had got to its hind legs and started to use its hands that it can make the real advances we look for and foster.        

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Her writing is precise, essential, very nuanced. She finds a way to put into language subtle concepts and ideas, and she really knows how to create psychological tension. Her sentences can sometimes become unwieldy but she more than makes up for with her command of a ginormous vocabulary.

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This is a psychological ride that, if one reads it as non-fiction, could explain how things went down on Earth. Highly recommended.