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featured book review: june 2002 "This Star Shall Abide" from the "Children of the Star" trilogy by Sylvia Engdahl for Ages 13-18 (from Meisha Merlin Publishing, reissued 2000) Nothing is more precious than a book that reaches you with a powerful, resonant message at a receptive time. "This Star Shall Abide," the first in a trilogy of science fiction classics by Sylvia Engdahl, was such a book for me. I read "This Star" and its sequel, "Beyond the Tomorrow Mountains," as a teenager in the mid-1970s. I recently recalled this early influence and was thrilled to find them now reissued -- along with a third novel, "The Doors of the Universe" -- as the trilogy "Children of the Star." A rereading of "This Star Shall Abide" confirmed for me that it is more than just a rose-colored relic of my kidhood: this is an intelligently-written novel that supports and encourages precisely those values that were developing in me at the time -- integrity, intellectual courage, and the unblinking pursuit of real knowledge in lieu of comforting fantasies. Noren, the protagonist, lives on an agrarian planet ruled by a mysterious priestly class, the Scholars, and reliant on the technical abilities of another enigmatic social stratum, the Technicians. Scholars and Technicians live in the City, an impressive collection of otherworldly structures sealed off from the Villagers outside the gates. The Scholars and Technicians provide everything the Villagers need to get by, but Knowledge itself -- knowledge of how things are done, of why things are as they are -- is largely withheld from the Villagers. In place of that literal knowledge is something known as the Book of the Prophecy which explains all, in the parlance of mythic allegory: "...The land was barren, and brought forth neither food nor pure water, nor was there any metal; and no one lived upon it until the Founding. And on the day of the Founding humankind came out of the sky from the Mother Star, which is our source. But the land alone could not give us life. So the Scholars came to bless it, that it might be quickened: they built the City; and they called down from the sky Power and Machines; and they made the High Law lest we forget our origin, grow neglectful of our bounden duties, and thereby perish. Knowledge shall be kept safe within the City; it shall be held in trust until the Mother Star itself becomes visible to us. For though the Star is now beyond our seeing, it will not always be so... "There shall come a time of great exultation, when the doors of the universe shall be thrown open and everyone shall rejoice. And at that time, when the Mother Star appears in the sky, the ancient knowledge shall be free to all people..." As a teenager, I saw obvious parallels between this world and our own: a Prophecy that is not to be questioned; a priestly class that claims special privileges and knowledge; claims of historicity and predictions of the future; mythic justifications for social inequities. I was struggling at the time toward my own conclusions about the world, building a nascent personal value system that put intellectual integrity and the search for literal truth above all else -- and noticing, with growing frustration, that the world around me seemed willing to scuttle this value at the drop of a hat for expediency's sake. And into my adolescent mind strode Noren, who begins to wonder about the veracity of his world's system as a teenager -- in little ways at first. One such early passage reminded me of Mark Twain's fabulous essay on the fly in "Thoughts of God"; Noren says, "Work-beasts were exasperating creatures, so slow and stupid that it was odd the Scholars were credited with having created them; one would think people would expect guardians of all wisdom to have done a better job of it." You might notice an interesting twist in that passage: given the evidence of his eyes, Noren is questioning less the actual concept of the Scholars' omniscience than the people's willingness to swallow it. This resonated in me like a tuning fork at the time, for it was precisely the world's apparent willingness to swallow the patent absurdities of religion that had me so confused and frustrated as a questioning kid. Hearing another voice articulating this was a gorgeous and welcome thing, loaded with the shock of recognition. As his doubt grows, Noren struggles more with the idea of hurting those around him with his disbelief in the Prophecy than he does with the disbelief itself -- another profound resonance for me at fourteen, and, I venture, for most people in the early years of doubt. There are repeated references to the fact that the Technicians -- with whom villagers do have occasional, formalized contact -- are never unkind, always smiling, and that they bring great benefits to the people. Yet this is not enough for Noren -- and now it is Voltaire's Good Brahmin that comes to mind as Noren says, to his devout fiancee Talyra: "I respect truth too much to believe anything merely because some book or some person tells me I should. I want to really KNOW! Maybe you'd rather accept stories that make you feel comfortable about the way things are, but I care more for truth than for comfort." Oh that I could glance back and see myself twenty-five years ago as I first read that line! Unless I was a very different person, I must have wanted to burst into tears as I heard such a sentiment from someone -- even a fictional someone -- outside my own head. (CAUTION: MILD SPOILERS IN THE NEXT FEW PARAGRAPHS. If you insist on entering a story as a complete virgin (as opposed to a partial one?), skip to the last three paragraphs. But rest assured that only the barest hint of the ending is given here -- just enough to illustrate the book's essential value as a novel for freethinkers. Oh go ahead, just read on.) It should be obvious by now that Noren's personal integrity is going to drive him to a public declaration of his heretical views, for which there are said to be dire punishments, but I will hint at one outcome that meant everything to me at the time: he is ultimately rewarded for his doubts. I'd love to give away a lot more than that, but the simple fact that he is ultimately vindicated for his courageous questioning and insistence on intellectual integrity despite great personal risk made the book a startling triumph of my dearest values, one that seared itself indelibly into my mind. And that is the primary reason this book should be placed in the hands of all young people in whom you wish to nurture a healthy intellectual integrity and skepticism. One problem, I'll admit, is that no such reward is necessarily forthcoming in this world. But all the more reason to feel its vicarious vindication in this story. One particularly beautiful element includes an integrity check for all non-theists. Noren discovers he was actually WRONG about many of his suppositions but still RIGHT to have doubted. Once they are proved, he readily embraces the newly-understood truths. Atheism is often dismissed by theists as the unwillingness to believe in God because God-belief is just somehow distasteful. But an atheist with intellectual integrity should readily embrace belief in God if ever the evidence indicated it was something more than a human-created and human-sustained mythos. Noren's relentless skepticism is not just tolerated -- in fact, it ends up being essential to the revelation of the truth, just as real skepticism is the best way to separate wheat from chaff in the real world. Those in the story who do not doubt, who accept what they are told without question, are privy only to a much less complex, far muddier picture of the truth, one that is ultimately unsatisfying to those with an intellectual hunger. As I've read the responses of others to this outstanding and rare book, I was fascinated to see that many see an unambiguous vindication of religious faith in the story, just as I see an unambiguous critique of religious faith. Interested in the author's intent, I contacted Sylvia Engdahl and was delighted by an immediate reply and a brief, thoughtful correspondence. Ms. Engdahl is thrilled that people of various points of view see their own philosophies reinforced by the novel. On further reflection, this multiplicity of interpretations began to make perfect sense to me. There are, after all, certain high human values that find articulation in any number of religious or philosophical systems. This book speaks not to the systems themselves but to those underlying common values. And since individuals tend to see their philosophies and their values as inextricably or even causally linked, any advocate of the values must appear to them to be an advocate of their own philosophy as well. Ms. Engdahl expresses her own religious view as follows: "To me, all religious symbols are metaphors that cannot be taken as literal fact, but nevertheless express concepts that we have no better way of expressing ... metaphor often conveys truth, and is in fact the only way of conveying truth beyond our rational understanding." It should be noted (if not already clear) that this is a book about ideas, not an action-adventure. Those who need body-counts and high-speed chases should look elsewhere. But if you happen to know a teenager (or an adult!) who would enjoy putting heads together with a gifted author who grapples with the most important human values in a complex and satisfying way, put this book in his or her hands. Who knows: twenty-five years from now, that person might still be thanking you for it. For more information on the author and her works, visit www.sylviaengdahl.com |
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