Mood and Action in a Tale of the Far Future - Seeds of the Dusk

The narrative "Seeds of the Dusk" by Raymond Omega Gallun, published in 1938, is a gemstone of classic SF. Its 31 pages give us an penetration into the lives and fates of three species: an foreign invading works intelligence; the posterity of crows; and the posterity of Man. Into this short narrative are packed great events and an unforgettable, haunting temper which is well encapsulated in the title.

The tone of voice of the author's narrative is relaxed, not exactly "chatty" but informally reflective, with a sprinkling of "perhaps"s and vacillations and even self-questionings in the verbal descriptions and accounts given, which paradoxically beef up our ingenious belief, our sense that we are being shown something real.

...It seemed entirely a plaything of chance. And, of course, up to a point it was... ...And now, perhaps, the thing was beginning to experience the first glimmerings of a consciousness, like a human kid rising out of the blurred, unremembering fog of birth...

A sentient vegetable? Without intelligence it is likely that the ascendants of this unidentified encroacher from across the nothingness would long ago have got lost their conflict for survival.

What senses were given to this unusual mind, by agency of which it could be aware of its environment? Undoubtedly it possessed mental faculties of sense that could observe things in a manner that was as far beyond ordinary human construct as vision is to those people who have got been born blind.

You see the sort of style I mean: hesitant, split into probing inquiries and explanatory answers. Gallun do no effort to conceal the fact that he is a storyteller of our clip telling us a narrative of many billions of old age ahead. In a way, therefore, he is distancing himself from the narrative he is telling; but by doing so, he go forths himself free to make bridging comments, to give expressed clarifications, adapted to our demands as readers, which he would not be able to do if he took on the existent voice of the hereafter point of view himself.

The narrative hots up as the invading spore from Red Planet takes root and turns and propagates, using its intelligence and defensive powerfulnesses to set up for the clang it cognizes is coming with Earth's dominant race, the Itorloo:

Men. Or rather the cold, cruel, cute small beingnesses who were the children of men.

Of the three supporter species in this story, the reader will most likely sympathise most with the birds. Kaw, the intelligent descendent of crows, alarmed at the invading plants, make up one's minds that the Satan 1 cognizes is preferable to the Satan 1 cognizes not, and wings to warn his herediitary foes, the Itorloo. But the deteriorate Children of Work Force believe they can travel it alone, that the manner to overcome the invading works is to sterilise World of all except human life....

The works win, and they and many other life things are saved. Man, who have go the enemy of all, succumbs. The reader actually experiences a sort of alleviation that Man, or his Itorloo descendants, is gone, and the human race can dwell in its dusky peace.

It's quite a idea - or it will be, when we discontinue to take our SF heritage for given - that this narrative was written manner back in 1938. In fact it's not the lone SF narrative that presciently echoes some of our modern-day environmental concerns. Primarily, though, Seeds of the Twilight is singular as an ageless, timeless classic of haunting mood.