The Cosmic Rape – Theodore Sturgeon

Pocket Books, Copyright 1958, Printed 1977, 160 pgs.

ISBN: 0-671-82934-3

Read: April 2011 (at age 33)

Re-read.  I don’t remember when I read it before, but the whole was very familiar.

If you haven’t read it:

This is a stand-alone high-concept science fiction story about alien first contact, but also what it means to be human, and what full sharing among humanity would be like.

From the back cover:

They are all of one mind.  And they are coming for ours.

For centuries, the Earth has been peopled by men and women, individuals, private souls.  For centuries, there have been opinions, differences, creativity and love.

But now, from the limitless reaches of the universe, the Medusa has come, the hive-mind in whom all are one, and to whom no consciousness should be separate.

They have spoken to someone, a skid-row loser drunk on liquor and despair; they have given him power to rid the world of all independence, all privacy, all personality.

He is walking the streets now, gathering brides and bridegrooms to marry Medusa – to consummate… The Cosmic Rape.

My reactions (spoilers, if you care about such things):

Overall:

I’ve been putting off writing this review for a couple of reasons – one is that the whole house (including my computer) has been offline while we got new carpets installed.  Of course, getting the carpets into our newly finished basement spawned a whole slew of other jobs that needed doing.  (ed.: Wow, has this one been sitting on the "to post" pile for a long time.  I've developed a whole new house full of jobs in the meantime.) The other reason is that I’m not really sure what to make of the book. 

This was more of an idea-driven book – What would happen if humans developed a hive-mind?  Would a hive-mind composed of individuals be different than a hive-mind composed of specialized components?  Essentially a first contact story, but really about what’s good about being human, and what would be better if we all knew everything about each other.  I’m still not sure if I liked it or not.

Rating: 3

Characters:

The characters weren’t so much characters as illustrations of the wants and needs of some people, and viewpoints with which to tell the effects of the human hive-mind.  As such, they were mostly unlikeable, or not really in control of anything.  As this wasn’t at all a character-driven story, I think that was ok.  I never doubted that these people were, well, people.  They were certainly special cases, but also certainly human.

Setting: 

Recognizably earth, with not much to date it.  There weren’t cell phones, there were EEG’s, so that narrows it a bit. 

Plot:

Without spoiling things too much, I found the ending a bit human-exceptionalist.  Other than that, it was an interesting twist on an “aliens invade and take over the world” story, where there was really not much of an invasion of aliens, just their self-replicating machines.

Readability:

Easy, fun read.  The vignette-style of story telling kept things moving. 

Other Opinions:

Dark Roasted Blend Apparently, the book was fantastic.

Science Fiction Ruminations  Another positive review.