Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons - a classic science fiction tale by Cordwainer Smith first published in 1961 and partly based on Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.
Here's
the conflict at the heart of the story: the fabulously rich planet of
Norstrilia has a monopoly on the precious drug that bestows immortality,
a drug called stroon or, as it is sometimes known, the santaclara drug.
In order to protect their wealth, the Old North Australias of
Norstrailia possess a secret super defense system maintained by a woman
named Mother Hitton (more below). Meanwhile, Viola Siderea, once rich
and civilized, has become a robber planet where all inhabitants live a
base, animal-like existence. Viola Siderea has a ruling class of highly
sophisticated thieves, the greatest thief: Benjacomin Bozart.
Benjacomin
Bozart travels to a hot tourist spot, a vacation beach on the planet of
Sunvale where he intends to extract specific information from a
Norstrailian child about the secret Norstrailian superduper defense
system. Bozart's ultimate purpose and mission: crack the Norstrailian
defense and steal their stroom. The tale moves quickly with a number of
twists and surprises, a tale raising a host of questions most
philosophic, including the following -
THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS
Benjacomin
Bozart does kill a boy, Johnny, about age nine, as he forces him to
give away the magic code words relating to Norstrailia's secret defense
system. Of course, from Benjacomin Bozart's point of view, the murder is
justifiable since an entire population back on his home planet of Viola
Siderea will be restored to a life of civilized ease where each
individual can live for many, many years. But would we ourselves find
the end justifies the means if a young brute from Viola Siderea would
have to be murdered as a necessary first step in enabling the
Nortailians to live in their current enviable state? Or, in our world,
if the killing of one child would result in an entire country of
millions of people living in harmony and freedom rather than suppression
and brutality, would we approve of the killing? And what if our own
family and friends are among those currently held in prison and being
tortured by a sadistic dictator? Where and how are we to draw the line
when it is a matter of who and what must be sacrificed?
PROTECT AND DEFEND
Cordwainer Smith wrote Mother Hitton
back during a time of widespread fear of the A-bomb – in the US,
schoolchildren were frequently subjected to duck-and-cover drills and
lessons relating to fallout shelters. As a matter of fact, 1961, the
date of the story's publication, was also the year the federal
government began the Community Fallout Shelter Program. And the idea of
an impenetrable defense system against one's enemy attackers has always
held great appeal. Recall Ronald Reagan's Star Wars program back in the
1980s, a program to seal off the US from nuclear and other attack. So
the question is, how far should we go to protect ourselves? In the US,
the answer appears to be very far: the US accounts for 35% of worldwide
military spending (to put this in perspective, China 12%, Russia 3%,
France 3%. Germany 2%).
ALL IN THE MIND
As we eventually
discover, the ultimate Norstrailian defense, Mother Hitton's Littul
Kittons, turns out to be a devastatingly powerful form of mind control
via injecting madness into the enemy's mind. As fans of Cordwainer Smith
know, his groundbreaking 1948 Psychological Warfare became the
authoritative text on the subject for many years. Anyway, the
psychological weaponry in the tale has an eerie echo of the American
CIA's program back in the 1950s of giving LSD to unknowing subjects (or
victims) in their search for a mind control drug that could be used as a
weapon against enemies.
Isn't that truly the ultimate weapon –
being in complete control of the enemy's mind? Of course, all sorts of
ethical questions pop up but, again, it becomes a matter of how far one
should go in devising and using weapons against one's foes.
TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT
During
the events of the tale, Norstrailia has the all wealth and the stroon
while Viola Siderea has next to nothing and is reduced to what Thomas
Hobbes called "a life that's poor, nasty, brutish, and short". But might
Norstrailia be wise to consider another approach in dealing with those
less fortunate throughout the universe? How about a measure of
compassion? How about sharing? Can we look to our own world for an
example where one civilization has gained by the suffering and loss of
another? I think an answer can be found in Eduardo Galeano's Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent.
Cordwainer
Smith has written one of the most intriguing of SF tales. The questions
implicit continue to be as relevant today as they were sixty years ago.
American author Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger aka Cordwainer Smith, 1913-1966
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