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| "Rule Golden" | |
|---|---|
| Short story by Damon Knight | |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction |
| Publication | |
| Published in | Science Fiction Adventures |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) (magazine) |
| Publication date | May 1954 |
| Pages | 78 |
Rule Golden is a science fiction novella by American writer Damon Knight. In the near future, a journalist named Dahl discovers that the United States government has taken captive an alien who has the ability to change people so that they suffer the same pain or damage that they inflict on others. Dahl helps the alien to escape, and the story records how the psychological changes induced by the alien cause massive upheavals in human society.
The novella first appeared in the May 1954 issue of Science Fiction Adventures magazine. Since then it has been reprinted numerous times, for instance, in the collection Six Great Short Science Fiction Novels (ed. Groff Conklin) and the collection Study War No More (ed. Joe Haldeman).
Knight expanded his idea of a psychological "mutual assured destruction" mechanism in his Sea Venture Trilogy.
Synopsis
editMidwestern journalist Robert James Dahl discovers that the United States army is keeping an alien in a secure facility. The location of the alien's spacecraft is unknown. The alien, called Aza-Kra, has the ability to read minds; to put people to sleep for specified periods of time; and, most importantly, to modify people so that they will experience any pain that they inflict on others. Dahl is allowed to visit the alien but is forced to remain in the army base. But Aza-Kra soon convinces Dahl to help him escape.
It is revealed that Aza-Kra is the first ambassador sent to Earth from a Galactic Federation of civilizations. Earth will be invited to join, but only after the humans' propensity to violence has been removed.
The first-person narrative relates how Dahl and the alien travel to Europe, the Middle East and Asia, always with the authorities in close pursuit. The alien's goal is to infect as much of the Earth's population as quickly as possible; otherwise, infected humans won't be able to defend themselves from uninfected humans.
As the infection spreads, chaos ensues. National boundaries cease to matter; governments fall apart; law enforcement is rendered impotent; industries that depend on the exploitation of animals, like meatpacking, go out of business. Dahl questions the alien about the negative consequences; the alien acknowledges that human society will need to radically change, but argues that "You will have more time now ... Killing wastes much time."
Soon famine develops. Aza-Kra becomes progressively weaker due to his diet of Earth food. A fleet of spacecraft arrives to distribute food and to revive Aza-Kra. As he is boarding a ship for the return home, Dahl asks him a final question:
"The galaxy's a big place. What happens if you miss just one bloodthirsty race that's ready to boil out across the stars—or if nobody has the guts to go and do to them what you did to us?"
"Now you begin to understand," he said. "That is the question the people of Mars asked us about you . . . twenty thousand years ago."
Commentary
editIn discussing the motivation for the novella, Knight wrote:[1]
When Joe Haldeman reprinted "Rule Golden" in an anthology, he remarked that I had solved the problem of war by changing human nature. I think he missed the point. If by "human nature" we mean saps' tendency to violence, "Rule Golden" solves the problem not by changing human nature but by controlling it.
Every society already controls "human nature" by various means; they don't work perfectly, but they work, and that's why most adults can walk down the street without wondering if they are going to be assaulted by every larger contemporary male they see.
References
edit- ^ Knight, Damon (1991), Rule Golden & Double Meaning, New York: Tom Doherty Associates, pp. 11–12, ISBN 9780812512946