We were
assured by space writers and science fiction authors that the
vastness of interstellar space could only be crossed by mammothspace vehicles –
“generation ships”, in the parlance of some spinners of space yarns – crewed by
generations of space travelers hoping to reach their destination centuries hence.
The concept was ripe for speculation. What if the children of the children of
the first crew became a series of stratified societies aboard their vehicle,
and hadforgotten the purpose of their mission? (Harlan Ellison’s Phoenix
in Ashes, the novelized version of The Starlost), or the fate of the mission
was entrusted to a single pilot while passengers endured dreamlike sleep until
their destination was within reach (James White’s The Dream Millennium). This
science fiction did not allow for super-passing gear of hyperdrive like space
opera: crossing the blackness of space was a dangerous, laborious process whose
ultimate payoff was never in sight.
“These
children,” wrote Arthur C. Clarke in his landmark Report on Planet Three and
Other Speculations, “knowing no parents, or indeed anyone of a different age,
would grow up in the strange artificial world of their speeding ship, reaching
maturity in time to explore the planets ahead of them – perhaps to be the
ambassadors of humanity among alien races, or perhaps to find, too
late, that there were no home for them there. If their mission succeded, it
would be their duty, or that of their descendants, if the first generation
could not complete the task, to see that the knowledge they had gained was
someday carried back to Earth. Would any society be morally justified in
planning so onerous and uncertain a future for its unborn – indeed unconceived
– children?”
Speculative aliens may
face a similar situation. Around this same time, Clarke also wrote about
“worldlets” filled with extraterrestrials who might venture through our solar
system, and perhaps this line of thought led him to write Rendezvous with Rama
(1973), a work desperately calling for elevation to the silver screen for four
decades. The British scientist’s Childhood’s End also introduced us to the
concept of giant alien saucers hovering over our planet’s major
cities as the mysterious Overlords changed the direction of human civilization.
Size matters,
and many of us - this writer included - sat in wonderment at a movie theater as
Darth Vader’s star destroyer dominated the entire screen in its pursuit of
Princess Leia’s Tantive IV in the crucial opening minutes of Star Wars: A New
Hope (just plain Star Wars in 1977). An even bigger surprise awaited viewers as
Han Solo’s Corellian freighter was absorbed into the moon-sized Death Star.
Here was a Clarkian “worldlet” capable not only of traveling from one planet to
another, but also destroying it.
Using
science-fiction as our springboard, we move on to the subject of gigantic
vehicles – seemingly real – that are often reported in UFO chronicles. The
presence of such behemoths has fuelled speculation about alien efforts
at colonizing our own star system, although – referring back to pulp as a
touchstone – such massive craft could be needed to pierce the barrier that
separates one dimension from another, as suggested in Fritz Leiber’s The
Wanderer.
A Forgotten Case:
The Janos People
The story of
The Janos People occupied the narrow middle ground between the UMMO hoax and
contactee experiences of the 1950s and 1960s. In 1978, a family traveling down
a lonely road somewhere in England found their routine journey
intercepted by an unidentified flying object. During the course of this CE-3
experience, the humans were taken aboard the alleged craft. In the
abduction-riddled '90s, they would have been subjected to series of gruesome
experiments; but things were different in the '70s, even in matters involving
extraterrestrial captors, who limited themselves to showing their unwilling
guests a movie.
The projection
- for want of a better term - told the story of the destruction of the planet
Janos as one of its satellites - Saton - crumbled to bits and rained
mountain-sized fragments on the planet below, destroying atomic power plants
and enveloping the world in fallout.
The Janosians
set themselves to work on a gargantuan spaceship constructed in the stricken
planet's orbit (somewhere free from the meteoroids left over from the
destruction of Saton, one supposes) and this too was displayed to the captives.
This unimaginably large, ring-shaped worldlet held ten million people, and
waited at the edges of our solar system for permission to embark on a
colonization mission: whether on Earth proper or perhaps terraforming another
planet like Mars or Venus.
The story
appeared in a book - aptly called The Janos People - by Frank Johnson in 1980.
The description of the Janosian homeworld is straight out of the UMMO playbook
and – if real – suggests some dark psychological operation, whether by the
military or another shadowy organization. Taken at face value, the humanoid
Janosians are politely awaiting permission to settle in our system, and may
still be waiting out there (could all those blurry photographs of “rogue
planets” and comets circulating on the Internet really be snapshots of the
Janosian worldlet? Throw that into the pot of speculation for good
measure).
“If they were
desperate,” suggests the ever-quotable Arthur C. Clarke in his essay When The Aliens Come,
“if, for example, they were the last survivors of an ancient race whose mobile
worldlet had almost exhausted its supplies after aeons of voyaging, they might
be tempted to make a fresh home in the solar system. The barren Moon and the
drifting slag heaps of the asteroid belt would provide all the raw materials
they needed, and the Sun, all the energy.” This seems like a more acceptable
solution than the one proposed by author Frank Johnson, who proposed vacating
New Zealand to turn it over to the Janosians.
Desperation
must not be a factor for the ten million alien souls aboard the Janosian
ring-ship.
The Worlds of
Oahspe
Now we venture
into an even more uncomfortable no-mans-land: border regions where spiritualism
has points of contact with drug-induced visions, such as those produced by the
consumption of ayahuasca and other substances. The Oahspe Bible, a work of
automatic writing produced by John Ballou Newbrough in the late 19th century,
occupies a respected place among new age and general esoteric writings. John A.
Keel noted in his works that some of the terminology employed in contacteeism
hails from this mysterious volume, but that most contactees had never heard of
Dr. Newbrough’s nine hundred page long received work. It is not our intention
here to delve into the theology of Oahspe or the reality of the spirits that
dictated the huge document, but rather to only touch on a particular aspect –
the fact that the world “star ship” makes its first appearance in written
English (according to http://www.sacred-texts.com/oah/oah/).
“13. Onward moved
the float, the fire-ship, with its ten million joyous souls, now nearing the
borders of Horub, the boundary of Fragapatti's honored regions, known for
hundreds of thousands of years, and for his work on many worlds. Here, reaching
C'vork'um, the roadway of the solar phalanx, near the post of dan, where were
quartered five hundred million ethereans, on a voyage of exploration of more
than four millions of years, rich stored with the glories of Great Jehovih's
universe. Their koa'loo, their ship, was almost like a world, so vast, and
stored with all appurtenances. They talked of going home! Their pilots had
coursed the firmament since long before the earth was made, and knew more than
a million of roadways in the etherean worlds, and where best to travel to
witness the grandest contrasting scenes.” (Book of Fragapatti, Son of Jehovih,
Oahspe, 1912)
“Some of the
giant starships are described in Oahspe as being from ethereal worlds,”
observed Brinsley LePoer Trench – Lord Clancarty – in an article for SAGA UFO
Report in 1976, “and others as from corporeal worlds such as our own. So almost
100 years ago Oahspe supported both the extra-dimensional theory and the
extraterrestrial hypothesis. Indeed, Oahspe gives a history of both the
etherean heavens and the corporeal worlds.” He concludes by saying: ‘In short,
there may be a vast, galactic civilization in deep space, living not so much on
physical planets but on giant spaceships the size of planets, as described in
Oahspe.
The koa’loo
certainly fits the bill for a Clarkian worldlet, - with room to spare – but it
is a predecessor to other colossal conveyances described in the contactee
tradition, such as the Ashtar Command’s flagship, the Shan Chea, depicted in
contactee illustrations at a multi-leveled, football-shaped craft with a dozen
separate decks ranging from a motor pool for flying saucers to the dome-shaped
command deck from which Ashtarian officers survey the universe. Level Ten of
this brobdingnagian craft contains "lodgings for visiting dignitaries from
all dimensions" while Level Three contains a "zoo with animals of
many worlds." Level Eight contains housing for the evacuees from the
impending destruction of planet Earth.
"Rest
assured that the Mansions of Space are ready and awaiting their guests," states
the text accompanying the sketch of the giant spacecraft. "There will be
no crowding of persons or things in these incredibly spacious, self-contained
and extraordinarily organized floating aetheric ships. Seven of these
pearly-white Space Cities are ready, and their sizes range from 10 miles in
diameter (16 km) to the greatest of all, the one containing the headquarters of
Lord Jesus Sananda, Lord Ashtar and the Ashtar Command, which is over one
hundred miles in diameter." An unwise tongue may be moved to quip that
Tarkin's Death Star was two hundred miles across, but did not contain such
august characters.
The most
attractive feature of this contactee vessel is the Grand Rotunda (on Level 11)
where human visitors shall be summoned from their staterooms for a meeting with
the space brothers. “Its impressive circular walls contain giant displays
through which guests may enjoy the cosmic landscape, their own world, and
events from the past and those yet to come.”
No comments:
Post a Comment