The Sirian Experiments Read Free

islands, one of them at least enormous. But sometimes there has been only an almost islandless ocean.
    Projecting southwards from the central landmass, of which its northern areas form a part is another southern continent, now called Southern Continent I. (The Isolated SouthernContinent is Southern Continent II.) Southern Continent I has sometimes been considered by geographers as part of the main landmass, since its northern parts have been so influenced by the easy migrations and movements to and from every part of the main landmass. But the southern parts have on the whole had such a different history that they are more usually classed as a different and separate continent. We, Sirius, were allotted in the share-out of Rohanda the two southern continents, including the northern areas of S.C. I, and any islands large and small lying in the oceans that we felt inclined to make use of.
    More has to be said about the Conference itself.
    It was considered a success. Remarkably so. Even though it was only one of very many conferences and discussions about the situations of a large number of Colonized Planets whose problems, in one way or another, we shared, everybody taking part felt that it marked a new level in co-operation. And the further it receded into the past, the more we were all able to see it had been extraordinary, and this not only because of the unexpectedly fortuitous new epoch on Rohanda. Committees, conferences, discussions, followed one after another through the millennia: it was to that particular one, on Colony 10, we were always referring back, as if there had been some particular and unrepeatable spring of life and vigour there we had not been able to approach again.
    I am now going to say, with equal emphasis and confidence, that the Conference was a failure.
    What Sirius understood of the resolutions, the agreements,
the verbal formulations
, was not the same as the understandings of Canopus. This was not evident then. It did not even begin to be evident for a very long time. It is not seen now, except by a small number of us Sirians.
    By now it will have become clear, I think, that this report of mine is an attempt at a re-interpretation of history, from a certain point of view.
    An unpopular point of view, even now: until recently, impossible.
    Until recently, I have been among those who would have made it impossible: this I must say now, and clearly: I am not claiming that I am one who has been preserving an individual (and seditious!) view of history in secrecy, because of an oppressive conformity in the official way of looking at things. Far from it. If there is, if there has been, a minority of individuals who have in fact maintained a view different from the official one, then these will have considered me as a bastion of orthodoxy. This is not an apology I am making. We all see truths when we can see them. When we do, it is always a temptation to consider those who have not yet seen them as quite intrinsically and obdurately stupid.
    In throwing in my lot with this minority – if it exists – I am doing so in the expectation of strong criticism – but not, I hope, of worse.
    I shall deal at once with what I consider to be the root of the problem: that long-ago war between Canopus and Sirius.
    It ended in a Truce … the anniversary of which occasion we still celebrate. The beastliness and horror have been formalized in tales of heroic exploits that we teach our young. The fact is that Canopus won this war, and, at the moment when they might reasonably have been expected to humiliate us and to exact tribute and retribution, they summoned our – thoroughly defeated – leaders, returned to us our Colonized Planets, which they were in a position to retain for themselves, informed us that we must stay behind our own boundaries, offered us co-operation and friendship, and announced that this agreement would be described as a Truce, so that we would not suffer ignominy in the eyes