Symzonia: Voyage of DiscoverySeaborn, Adam, Captain
Science
Symzonia: Voyage of Discovery
Seaborn, Adam, Captain
Science fiction; Voyages, Imaginary
Wonderful faculties of the Symzonians.--Translation of my books
into their language.--Proposition of a Wise man to make slaves
of the Author and his people.--The Author's remonstrance.--The
Wise man disgraced.
The extraordinary strength and vigour of the faculties of this people
enabled them to effect, in a short time, what would occupy the most
intelligent of the externals for years. I can convey an idea of them
only, by calling to the recollection of the reader the talent at
computation manifested by Zera Colburn, who, at the age of 10 years,
calculated the sum of any given number of figures in the twinkling
of an eye, as though he arrived at the result by intuition.
The faculties of the Symzonians all seemed to be nearly perfect. They
are obviously as much superior to ours, as Colburn's powers, of
calculation were greater than those of other untaught boys; which, no
doubt, results from their strict conformity to the law of their nature.
With such powers of mind, it need not be matter of surprise that all
my books were very soon translated into their language, and numerous
copies of them printed, and distributed amongst the most learned
and discreet, with instructions to report as to their fitness for
general circulation.
This examination and report brought me into serious difficulty. A
certain Wise man presented a memorial to the Best Man, in council,
in which he attempted to prove, from the books which I had put into
his hands, my large size, dingy complexion, carnivorous appetite,
and my own account of the sensual habits and propensities of my race,
that we were actually the offspring of the wicked who had been expelled
from Symzonia for their vices, and that we ought to be subjected to
the penalty denounced by their laws in such cases.
On inquiry, I found the penalty alluded to in the Wise man's memorial,
was nothing less than the delivering of such persons to the most
severe of the Useful class, to be kept at hard work, poorly fed,
and debarred from intercourse with the pure--in the hope that in
process of time, their gross appetites might be scourged out of them.
All the horrors of a rice swamp, with but a peck of corn a week for
subsistence, sprang up in my affrighted imagination. I immediately set
about an elaborate petition to the Best Man, in which I endeavoured
to refute the arguments advanced by the Wise man, and to show that my
dingy complexion was owing to my seafaring life on the external world,
whereby I was much sunburnt; and that the Wise man had been led into
error by mistaking a work of imagination, for real history.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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