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Oomphel in the Sky

Author H. Beam Piper
Language English
Series No. 11 in the Terro-Human Future History series
Published 1960
Notes

Since Logic derives from postulates, it never has, and never will, change a postulate. And a religious belief is a system of postulates ... so how can a man fight a native superstition with logic? Or anything else...?

Approx. 18,618 words.

Excerpt

uch possessions. That they had destroyed them grieved him. But the Last Hot Time was at hand; the whole world would be destroyed by fire, and then the Gone Ones would return.

So there were uprisings on the plantations. Paul Sanders had been lucky; his Kwanns had just picked up and left. But he had always gotten along well with the natives, and his plantation house was literally a castle and he had plenty of armament. There had been other planters who had made the double mistake of incurring the enmity of their native labor and of living in unfortified houses. A lot of them weren't around, any more, and their plantations were gutted ruins.

And there were plantations on which the natives had destroyed the klooba plants and smashed the crystal which lived symbiotically upon them. They thought the Terrans were using the living crystals to make magic. Not too far off, at that; the properties of Kwannon biocrystals had opened a major breakthrough in subnucleonic physics and initiated half a dozen tech

ReviewsAdd a review for this title.

2007.07.18
R Stephan

Interesting short SF, exploring the possibility of manipulating religious belief system. It works out in the end, of which I'm sceptical in general. However, simple scientific demonstrations are certainly one way to achieve the goal.