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This reminds of Cordwainer Smith's [1] most famous story, Scanners Live in Vain [2]. In the story, a scientist named Adam Stone has found a way to conquer The G

This reminds of Cordwainer Smith's [1] most famous story, Scanners Live in Vain [2]. In the story, a scientist named Adam Stone has found a way to conquer The Great Pain of Space that affects humans who travel into space. To do so he builds a ship whose walls are teeming with life that shields the human inside it: "I have loaded ships with life." "Life?" "Life. I don't know what the Great Pain is, but I did find that in the experiments, when I sent out masses of animals or plants, the life in the center of the mass lived longest. I built ships -small ones, of course- and sent them out with rabbits, with monkeys-" "Those are Beasts?" "Yes. With small Beasts. And the Beasts came back unhurt. They came back because the walls of the ships were filled with life. I tried many kinds, and finally found a sort of life which lives in the waters. Oysters. Oysterbeds. The outermost oysters died in the great pain. The inner ones lived. The passengers were unhurt." "But they were Beasts?" "Not only Beasts. Myself." "You!" "I came through Space alone. Through what you call the Up-and-Out, alone. Awake and sleeping. I am unhurt. If you do not believe me, ask your brother Scanners. Come and see my ship in the morning. I will be glad to see you then, along with your brother Scanners. I am going to demonstrate before the Chiefs of the Instrumentality." https://archive.org/stream/ScannersLiveInVain/SmithCordwainer-ScannersLiveInVain.txt https://archive.org/stream/ScannersLiveInVain/SmithCordwaine... _____________ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordwainer_Smith https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordwainer_Smith [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanners_Live_in_Vain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanners_Live_in_Vain

foobiekr 5y ago
Literally the first thing that came to mind. Smith also had a super interesting background.
- YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
  Yes indeed. I can't find this information online but I remember an anecdote according to which Cordwainer Smith had explained the entire timeline of the Instrumentality of Mankind in terms of current goings-on on the international stage. Of (some of) which he had a certain privileged vantage point, of course. I mainly read his works translated in my native Greek at a time when he was not that well-known among English-speaking SF readers anymore. I consider that lucky, for me, and sad, for everyone else. I think of him as one of the greats, one of the authors of SF whose imagination was not bound by cliché and trope, perhaps thanks to his having a day job, unlike most SF authors. I suspect he never really reached his full potential either, again because that was not his day job. His life experience certainly shaped his writing in any case.

foobiekr 5y ago

Literally the first thing that came to mind. Smith also had a super interesting background.

YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
Yes indeed. I can't find this information online but I remember an anecdote according to which Cordwainer Smith had explained the entire timeline of the Instrumentality of Mankind in terms of current goings-on on the international stage. Of (some of) which he had a certain privileged vantage point, of course. I mainly read his works translated in my native Greek at a time when he was not that well-known among English-speaking SF readers anymore. I consider that lucky, for me, and sad, for everyone else. I think of him as one of the greats, one of the authors of SF whose imagination was not bound by cliché and trope, perhaps thanks to his having a day job, unlike most SF authors. I suspect he never really reached his full potential either, again because that was not his day job. His life experience certainly shaped his writing in any case.