October 28, 2025 • 27 mins
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:13):
My mind. Welcome to a half hour of mind Web
(00:58):
short stories from the world speculative fiction. This is Michael
(01:28):
Hanse The mind Web story this time comes from Robert
Silverberg's collection Moonfern's and Star Songs, published by Ballantine. This
is after the myths went home for a while. In
(02:02):
those years we were calling great ones out of the
past to find out what they were like. This was
in the Middle Twelves twelve four hundred to twelve four fifty. Say,
we called up Caesar and Antony, and also Cleopatron. We
got Freud and Marx and Lenin into the same room
and let them talk. We summoned Winston church Hill, who
was a disappointment. He lisped and drank too much, and Napoleon,
(02:26):
who was magnificent. We rated ten millennia of history for
our sport. But after a half century of this we
grew bored with our game. We were easily bored in
the Middle Twelves. So we started to call up the
myth people, the gods and the heroes that seemed more romantic,
(02:46):
And this was one of Earth's romanticist eras we lived in.
It was my turn then to serve as curator of
the Hall of Man, and that was where they built
a machine. So I watched it going up from the start.
Lee Or, the builder, was in charge. He had made
the machines that called the real people up, so this
was only slightly different. No real challenge to his talents.
(03:08):
He had to feed in another kind of data, full
of archetypes and psychic currents, but the essential process of
reconstruction would be the same. He never had any doubt
of success. Leor's new machine had crystal rods and silver sides.
A giant emerald was embedded in its twelve angled lid tinseil.
Streamers of radiant platinum dangled from the ebony struts on
(03:32):
which it rose mirror decoration. Leor confided to me, I
could have made a simple black box, but brutalism is
out of fashion. The machine sprawled all over the Pavidion
of Hope on the north face of the Hall of Man.
It hid the lovely flicker mosaic flooring, but at least
(03:54):
it cast lovely reflections into the mirrored surfaces of the
exhibit cases. Somewhere about twelve five seventy, Leor said he
was ready to put his machine into operation. We arranged
the best possible weather. We tuned the winds, deflecting the
westerlies a bit and pushing all clouds far to the south.
(04:15):
We sent up new moons to dance at night in
wondrous patterns, now and again, coming together to spell out
Lyre's name. And people came from all over Earth, thousands
of them, camping in whisper tents on the great plain
that begins at the Hall of Man's doorstep. There was
real excitement, then a tension that crackled beautifully through the
clear blue air. Leor made his last adjustments. The committee
(04:41):
of literary Advisers conferred with him over the order of events,
and there was some friendly bickering, which chose daytime for
the first demonstration and tinted the sky like purple for
better effect. Most of us put on our youngest bodies,
though there were some who said they wanted to look
mature in the presence of those fable figures. Out of
times dawn whenever you wish me to begin, Leo said.
(05:08):
There were speeches. First, Chairman Pang gave his usual lighthearted address.
The Procurator of Pluto, who was visiting us, congratulated Leor
and the fertility of his inventions nissed him. Then, in
his third or fourth successive term, his metabolizer General encouraged
everyone present to climb to a higher level. And then
the master of ceremonies pointed to me. No, I said, no,
(05:32):
shaking my head. I'm a very poor speaker. They replied
that it was my duty, his curator of the Hall
of Man, to explain what was about to unfold. Reluctantly,
I came forward. You will see the dreams of old
mankind made real today, I said, groping for words. The
(05:54):
hopes of the past will walk among you, and so
I think, will the nightmare. We're offering you a view
of the imaginary figures by means of whom the ancients
attempted to give structure to the universe. These gods, these
heroes summed up patterns of cause and effect and served
(06:15):
as organizing forces around which cultures could crystallize. It's all
very strange to us, and it will be wonderfully interesting.
Thank you. Lere was given the signal to begin. I
must explain one thing, he said. Some of the beings
(06:38):
you are about to see were purely imaginary, concocted by
tribal poets, even as my friend has just told you. Others, though,
were based on actual human beings who once walked the
earth as ordinary mortals, and who were transfigured given more
than human qualities raised to the pantheon. Until they actually appear,
(07:00):
we won't know which figures belong to which category. But
I can tell you how to detect their origin. Once
you see them, those who were human beings before they
became myths will have a slight aura, a shadow of
darkness in the air about them. This is the lingering
trace of their essential humanity, which no myth maker can erase.
(07:21):
So I learned in my preliminary experiments, and I am
now ready. Le Ore disappeared into the bowels of his machine,
a single pure note, high and clean, ring in the air. Suddenly,
(07:41):
on the stage, looking out to the plane, there emerged
a naked man, blinking, peering around. Lere's voice from within
the machine said, this is Adam, the first of all men,
And so the gods and the heroes came back to
(08:04):
us on that brilliant afternoon in the middle twelve, while
all the world watched enjoy and fascination, Adam walked across
the stage and spoke to Chairman Pang, who solemnly saluted
him and explained what was taking place. Adam's hand was
outspread over his loins. Why am I naked? Adam asked,
(08:27):
It is wrong to be naked? I pointed out to
him that he had been naked when he first came
into the world, and that we were merely showing respect
for authenticity by summoning him back that way. But I
have eaten the apple. Why do you bring me back
conscious of shame and give me nothing to conceal my shame?
Is this proper? Is this consistent? If you want a
(08:49):
naked Adam, bring forth an Adam who has not yet
eaten the apple. But your's voice broke in, and this
is Eve, the mother of us all. Eve stepped forth,
naked also, though her long silken hair hid the curve
of her breasts. Unashamed, she smiled and held a hand
(09:11):
out to Adam, who rushed to her, crying, cover yourself,
cover yourself. Surveying the thousands of onlookers, Eve said coolly, why.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Should I, Adam? These people are naked too, And this
must be Eden again.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
This is not Eden. This is the world of our
children's children's children's.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Children, unlike this world relax.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
We or announced the arrival of Pan, the goat footed.
Now Adam and Eve were both surrounded by the dark
aura of essential humanity. I was surprised at this, since
I doubted that there had ever been a first man
and the first woman on whom legends could be based.
Yet I assumed that this must be some symbolic represent
(10:00):
of the concept of man's evolution. But Pan, the half
human monster, also wore the aura. Had there been such
a being in the real world. I did not understand
it then, But later I came to see that if
there had never been a goat footed man, there nevertheless
had been men who behaved as Pan behaved, and out
(10:22):
of them that lusty god had been created. As for
the Pan who came out of Lere's machine, he did
not remain long on the stage. He plunged forward into
the audience, laughing and waving his arms and kicking his
cloven hoofs in the air. Great Pan Lives, he cried,
Great Pan Lives. He seized in his arms the slender
(10:46):
form of Milian, the year wife of Devoude the archivists,
and carried her away toward a grove of feathered trees
on the horizon, and Miliane's year husband said, he does
me honor. Leor continued to toil in his machine. He
brought forth Hexir and Achilles, Orpheus, Purseus, Loki and Absalom.
(11:13):
He brought Medea, Cassandra, Odysseus. He brought forth both the Minotaur,
Aeneas Salome. He brought forth Shiva in Gilgamesh, Veracocha and Pandora,
Priapus and Astarte, Diana, Diomedes, Dionysus, Deucalion. The afternoon waned,
(11:40):
and the sparkling moon sailed into the sky, and still
Lyor labored. He gave us Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, Helen and
Menelaeus Isis and Osiris. He gave us Dambala and gaidy
Nebo and Papa Legbo. He gave us Bayal, He gave
(12:06):
us Samson. He gave us Krishna. He woke Ketzelkattal, Adonis, Holger, Dance, Khali,
batah Thor Jason Nimrod set. The darkness deepened, and the
creatures of myth jostled and tumbled on the stage and
(12:27):
overflowed onto the plane. Then mingled with one another, old enemies,
exchanging gossip, old friends, clasping hands, members of the same pantheon,
embracing or looking warily upon their rivals. They mixed with us,
to the heroes, selecting women, the monsters, trying to see
(12:47):
less monstrous, the gods shopping for worshippers. Perhaps we had enough,
but Leor would not stop. This was his time of glory.
Out of the ma came Roland and Oliver, rust Hum
and Saurob canaan Abel, Damon and Pytheas, Orestes and Pildes,
(13:08):
Jonathan and David. Out of the machine came Saint George,
Saint Vidas, Saint Nicholas, Saint Christopher, Saint Valentine, Saint Jude.
Out of the machine came the Furies, the Harpies, the Pleiades,
the Fates, the Norns. Leora was a romantic, and he
(13:30):
knew no moderation. All who came forth were the aura
of humanity, but wonders, Paul, the earth folk of the
Middle Twelves were easily distracted and easily bored. The cornucopia
of miracles was far from exhausted. But on the fringes
of the audience, I saw people taking to the sky
(13:51):
and heading for home. We who were close to Leore,
had to remain, of course, though we were surfeited by
these fantasies and baft by their abundance. An old, white
bearded man wrapped in a heavy era left the machine.
He carried a slender metal tube. This is Galileo, said Leor.
(14:14):
Who is he? The procurator of Puto asked me for Leor,
growing weary, had ceased to describe as conjured ghosts. I
had to request the information from an output in the
hall of Man. A latter day god of science, I
told the procurator, a latter day god of science who
(14:36):
was credited with discovering the stars, believed to have been
an historical personage before his theification, which occurred after his
martyrdom by religious conservatives. Now that the mood was on him,
Lyor summoned more of these gods of science, Newton and Einstein,
and Apocrates and Copernicus and Oppenheimer and Freud. We had
(14:59):
met some of them before, in the days when we
were bringing real people out of lost time. But now
they had new guises, for they had passed through the
myth maker's hands. They bore emblems of their special function
symbols of knowledge and power. And they went among us,
offering to heal, to teach, to explain. They were nothing
(15:19):
like the real Newton, at Einstein and Freud we had seen.
They stood three times the height of men, and lightnings
played around their brows. Then came a tall, bearded man
with a bloodied head. Abraham Lincoln, said Leore, the ancient
god of emancipation, I told the procurator. After some research,
(15:42):
then came a handsome young man with a dazzling smile,
and also a bloodied head. Leor, said John Kennedy, the
ancient god of youth and springtime, I told the procurator,
a symbol of the change of seasons, of the defeat
of summer by winter. It was Osyrius, said the procurator,
(16:04):
Why are there too? There were many more? I told him,
balder tomos mithra Adis. Why did they need so many?
He asked, you are, said now, I'll stop. The gods
(16:26):
and heroes were among us. A season of revelry began.
Medea went off with Jason, Agamemnon was reconciled with Clytemnestra,
and Theseus and the minotaur took up lodgings together. Others
preferred the company of men. I spoke awhile with John Kennedy,
(16:47):
the last of the myths to come from the machine.
Like Adam the first, he was troubled at being here.
He insisted that he was no myth. He said, I lived,
I was real, I entered primaries, made speeches. I told
him you became a myth, you lived and died, and
you were dying, you were transfigured. He chuckled and asked
(17:11):
into Osiris, into Balder, and I told him, it seems appropriate.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
To you.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Maybe. He told me they stopped believing in balder a
thousand years before I was born. To me, you and
a Cyrus and Balder are contemporaries to me and all
the people here. You are of the ancient world. You
are thousands of years removed from us. And he said,
and on the last myth you let out of the
(17:40):
machine you are. He asked, why did men stop making
myths after the twentieth century. I told him he'd have
to ask le Or. But I think he was right.
His time was the end of the age of myth.
(18:01):
After his time, we could no longer believe such things
as myths. We did not need myths. When we passed
out of the era of troubles, we entered a kind
of paradise where every one of us lived a myth
of his own. And then why should we have to
raise some men to great heights among us? Kennedy looked
(18:23):
at me strangely and asked, do you really believe that
that you live in paradise, that men have become gods?
Spend some time in our world, I said, and see
for yourself. He went out into the world. But what
his conclusions were I never knew, or I did not
(18:43):
speak to him again. Often I encountered roving gods and heroes,
though they were everywhere. They quarreled and looted and ran
amok some of them, but we were not very upset
by that, since it was how we expected archetypes out
of the dawn to act, and some were gentle. I
had a brief love affair with Persephone. I listened and
(19:04):
chanted to the singing of Orpheus. Krishna danced for me.
The Nysus revived the lost art of making liquors and
taught us to drink and be drunk. Loki made magics
of flame for us. Kaliaeson crooned incomprehensible wondrous ballads to us.
(19:25):
Achilles hurled his javelin for us. It was a season
of wonder, but the wonder ebbed. The myth folk began
to bore us. There were too many of them, and
they were too loud, too active, to demanding. They wanted
us to love them, listen to them, bow to them,
write poems about them. They asked questions, some of them anyway,
(19:50):
that pried into the inner workings of our world and
embarrassed us, where we scarcely knew the answers. They grew
vicious and schemed against each other, sometimes causing perils for us.
Leor had provided us with a splendid diversion, but we
all agreed it was time for the myths to go home.
(20:11):
We had had them with us for fifty years, and
that was quite enough. We rounded them up and started
to put them back into the machine. The heroes were
the easiest to catch, for all their strength. We hired
Loki to trick them into returning to the Hall of Man.
Mighty tasks await you there, he told them, and they
(20:33):
hurried thence to show their valor. Loki led them into
the machine and scurried out, and Lere sent them away, Heracles, Achilles, Hector, Perseus, Coocullen,
and the rest of that energetic breed. After that, many
of the demonic ones came and said they were as
bored with us as we were with them, and went
(20:55):
back into the machine of their free will. Thus departed Kali,
like Set and many others. Some we had to trap
and take by force. But this has disguised himself as
brill the secretary of the Chairman. Pank would have fooled
us forever if the real Brial, returning from a holiday,
and Jupiter had not exposed the hoax. And then Odyssus struggled,
(21:20):
Loki gave us problems, Oedipus launched blazing curses when we
came for him. Daedalus clung touchingly to Leor and begged,
let me stay, brother, let me stay, and had to
be thrust within the machine. Year after year, the task
of finding and capturing them continued, and one day we
(21:41):
knew we had them all. The last to go was Cassandra,
who had been living alone in the distant island, clad
in rags.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Why did you send for us? And having sent, why
do you ship us away?
Speaker 1 (21:58):
The game is over, I said to her, We will
turn now to other sports.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
You should have kept us. People who have no myths
of their own would do well to borrow those of others,
and not just a sport. Who will comfort your souls
in the dark times ahead, Who will guide your spirits
when the suffering begins. Who will explain the woe that
(22:27):
will befall you? Woe, oh, woe.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
The woes of Earth. Lion, Earth's passed. We need no myths.
And Cassandra smiled and stepped into the machine and was gone.
And then the age of fire and turmoil opened. For
when the myths went home, the invaders came bursting from
(22:58):
the sky, and our towers toppled, and our moons fell,
and the cold eyed strangers went among us, doing as
they wished with us. And those of us who survived
cried out to the old gods, the vanished forces. Loki, come, Achilles,
(23:19):
defend us, Shiva, release us, Heracles, thor Gawain. But the
gods are silent, and the heroes did not come. The
machine that glittered in the Hall of Man is broken,
(23:39):
the ore its maker is gone from this world. Jackals
run through our gardens and our masters stride in our streets,
and we are made slaves, And we are alone beneath
the frightful sky, and we are alone. You've heard After
(26:07):
the Myths Went Home, a story by Robert Silverberg from
his book Moonferns and Star Songs, published by Ballantine. This
is Michael Hanson. Technical operation for this program by Steve Gordon.
Mind Webbs is a production of WHA Radio in Madison,
(26:28):
a service of the University of Wisconsin Extensions
My mind. Welcome to a half hour of mind Web
(00:58):
short stories from the world speculative fiction. This is Michael
(01:28):
Hanse The mind Web story this time comes from Robert
Silverberg's collection Moonfern's and Star Songs, published by Ballantine. This
is after the myths went home for a while. In
(02:02):
those years we were calling great ones out of the
past to find out what they were like. This was
in the Middle Twelves twelve four hundred to twelve four fifty. Say,
we called up Caesar and Antony, and also Cleopatron. We
got Freud and Marx and Lenin into the same room
and let them talk. We summoned Winston church Hill, who
was a disappointment. He lisped and drank too much, and Napoleon,
(02:26):
who was magnificent. We rated ten millennia of history for
our sport. But after a half century of this we
grew bored with our game. We were easily bored in
the Middle Twelves. So we started to call up the
myth people, the gods and the heroes that seemed more romantic,
(02:46):
And this was one of Earth's romanticist eras we lived in.
It was my turn then to serve as curator of
the Hall of Man, and that was where they built
a machine. So I watched it going up from the start.
Lee Or, the builder, was in charge. He had made
the machines that called the real people up, so this
was only slightly different. No real challenge to his talents.
(03:08):
He had to feed in another kind of data, full
of archetypes and psychic currents, but the essential process of
reconstruction would be the same. He never had any doubt
of success. Leor's new machine had crystal rods and silver sides.
A giant emerald was embedded in its twelve angled lid tinseil.
Streamers of radiant platinum dangled from the ebony struts on
(03:32):
which it rose mirror decoration. Leor confided to me, I
could have made a simple black box, but brutalism is
out of fashion. The machine sprawled all over the Pavidion
of Hope on the north face of the Hall of Man.
It hid the lovely flicker mosaic flooring, but at least
(03:54):
it cast lovely reflections into the mirrored surfaces of the
exhibit cases. Somewhere about twelve five seventy, Leor said he
was ready to put his machine into operation. We arranged
the best possible weather. We tuned the winds, deflecting the
westerlies a bit and pushing all clouds far to the south.
(04:15):
We sent up new moons to dance at night in
wondrous patterns, now and again, coming together to spell out
Lyre's name. And people came from all over Earth, thousands
of them, camping in whisper tents on the great plain
that begins at the Hall of Man's doorstep. There was
real excitement, then a tension that crackled beautifully through the
clear blue air. Leor made his last adjustments. The committee
(04:41):
of literary Advisers conferred with him over the order of events,
and there was some friendly bickering, which chose daytime for
the first demonstration and tinted the sky like purple for
better effect. Most of us put on our youngest bodies,
though there were some who said they wanted to look
mature in the presence of those fable figures. Out of
times dawn whenever you wish me to begin, Leo said.
(05:08):
There were speeches. First, Chairman Pang gave his usual lighthearted address.
The Procurator of Pluto, who was visiting us, congratulated Leor
and the fertility of his inventions nissed him. Then, in
his third or fourth successive term, his metabolizer General encouraged
everyone present to climb to a higher level. And then
the master of ceremonies pointed to me. No, I said, no,
(05:32):
shaking my head. I'm a very poor speaker. They replied
that it was my duty, his curator of the Hall
of Man, to explain what was about to unfold. Reluctantly,
I came forward. You will see the dreams of old
mankind made real today, I said, groping for words. The
(05:54):
hopes of the past will walk among you, and so
I think, will the nightmare. We're offering you a view
of the imaginary figures by means of whom the ancients
attempted to give structure to the universe. These gods, these
heroes summed up patterns of cause and effect and served
(06:15):
as organizing forces around which cultures could crystallize. It's all
very strange to us, and it will be wonderfully interesting.
Thank you. Lere was given the signal to begin. I
must explain one thing, he said. Some of the beings
(06:38):
you are about to see were purely imaginary, concocted by
tribal poets, even as my friend has just told you. Others, though,
were based on actual human beings who once walked the
earth as ordinary mortals, and who were transfigured given more
than human qualities raised to the pantheon. Until they actually appear,
(07:00):
we won't know which figures belong to which category. But
I can tell you how to detect their origin. Once
you see them, those who were human beings before they
became myths will have a slight aura, a shadow of
darkness in the air about them. This is the lingering
trace of their essential humanity, which no myth maker can erase.
(07:21):
So I learned in my preliminary experiments, and I am
now ready. Le Ore disappeared into the bowels of his machine,
a single pure note, high and clean, ring in the air. Suddenly,
(07:41):
on the stage, looking out to the plane, there emerged
a naked man, blinking, peering around. Lere's voice from within
the machine said, this is Adam, the first of all men,
And so the gods and the heroes came back to
(08:04):
us on that brilliant afternoon in the middle twelve, while
all the world watched enjoy and fascination, Adam walked across
the stage and spoke to Chairman Pang, who solemnly saluted
him and explained what was taking place. Adam's hand was
outspread over his loins. Why am I naked? Adam asked,
(08:27):
It is wrong to be naked? I pointed out to
him that he had been naked when he first came
into the world, and that we were merely showing respect
for authenticity by summoning him back that way. But I
have eaten the apple. Why do you bring me back
conscious of shame and give me nothing to conceal my shame?
Is this proper? Is this consistent? If you want a
(08:49):
naked Adam, bring forth an Adam who has not yet
eaten the apple. But your's voice broke in, and this
is Eve, the mother of us all. Eve stepped forth,
naked also, though her long silken hair hid the curve
of her breasts. Unashamed, she smiled and held a hand
(09:11):
out to Adam, who rushed to her, crying, cover yourself,
cover yourself. Surveying the thousands of onlookers, Eve said coolly, why.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Should I, Adam? These people are naked too, And this
must be Eden again.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
This is not Eden. This is the world of our
children's children's children's.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Children, unlike this world relax.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
We or announced the arrival of Pan, the goat footed.
Now Adam and Eve were both surrounded by the dark
aura of essential humanity. I was surprised at this, since
I doubted that there had ever been a first man
and the first woman on whom legends could be based.
Yet I assumed that this must be some symbolic represent
(10:00):
of the concept of man's evolution. But Pan, the half
human monster, also wore the aura. Had there been such
a being in the real world. I did not understand
it then, But later I came to see that if
there had never been a goat footed man, there nevertheless
had been men who behaved as Pan behaved, and out
(10:22):
of them that lusty god had been created. As for
the Pan who came out of Lere's machine, he did
not remain long on the stage. He plunged forward into
the audience, laughing and waving his arms and kicking his
cloven hoofs in the air. Great Pan Lives, he cried,
Great Pan Lives. He seized in his arms the slender
(10:46):
form of Milian, the year wife of Devoude the archivists,
and carried her away toward a grove of feathered trees
on the horizon, and Miliane's year husband said, he does
me honor. Leor continued to toil in his machine. He
brought forth Hexir and Achilles, Orpheus, Purseus, Loki and Absalom.
(11:13):
He brought Medea, Cassandra, Odysseus. He brought forth both the Minotaur,
Aeneas Salome. He brought forth Shiva in Gilgamesh, Veracocha and Pandora,
Priapus and Astarte, Diana, Diomedes, Dionysus, Deucalion. The afternoon waned,
(11:40):
and the sparkling moon sailed into the sky, and still
Lyor labored. He gave us Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, Helen and
Menelaeus Isis and Osiris. He gave us Dambala and gaidy
Nebo and Papa Legbo. He gave us Bayal, He gave
(12:06):
us Samson. He gave us Krishna. He woke Ketzelkattal, Adonis, Holger, Dance, Khali,
batah Thor Jason Nimrod set. The darkness deepened, and the
creatures of myth jostled and tumbled on the stage and
(12:27):
overflowed onto the plane. Then mingled with one another, old enemies,
exchanging gossip, old friends, clasping hands, members of the same pantheon,
embracing or looking warily upon their rivals. They mixed with us,
to the heroes, selecting women, the monsters, trying to see
(12:47):
less monstrous, the gods shopping for worshippers. Perhaps we had enough,
but Leor would not stop. This was his time of glory.
Out of the ma came Roland and Oliver, rust Hum
and Saurob canaan Abel, Damon and Pytheas, Orestes and Pildes,
(13:08):
Jonathan and David. Out of the machine came Saint George,
Saint Vidas, Saint Nicholas, Saint Christopher, Saint Valentine, Saint Jude.
Out of the machine came the Furies, the Harpies, the Pleiades,
the Fates, the Norns. Leora was a romantic, and he
(13:30):
knew no moderation. All who came forth were the aura
of humanity, but wonders, Paul, the earth folk of the
Middle Twelves were easily distracted and easily bored. The cornucopia
of miracles was far from exhausted. But on the fringes
of the audience, I saw people taking to the sky
(13:51):
and heading for home. We who were close to Leore,
had to remain, of course, though we were surfeited by
these fantasies and baft by their abundance. An old, white
bearded man wrapped in a heavy era left the machine.
He carried a slender metal tube. This is Galileo, said Leor.
(14:14):
Who is he? The procurator of Puto asked me for Leor,
growing weary, had ceased to describe as conjured ghosts. I
had to request the information from an output in the
hall of Man. A latter day god of science, I
told the procurator, a latter day god of science who
(14:36):
was credited with discovering the stars, believed to have been
an historical personage before his theification, which occurred after his
martyrdom by religious conservatives. Now that the mood was on him,
Lyor summoned more of these gods of science, Newton and Einstein,
and Apocrates and Copernicus and Oppenheimer and Freud. We had
(14:59):
met some of them before, in the days when we
were bringing real people out of lost time. But now
they had new guises, for they had passed through the
myth maker's hands. They bore emblems of their special function
symbols of knowledge and power. And they went among us,
offering to heal, to teach, to explain. They were nothing
(15:19):
like the real Newton, at Einstein and Freud we had seen.
They stood three times the height of men, and lightnings
played around their brows. Then came a tall, bearded man
with a bloodied head. Abraham Lincoln, said Leore, the ancient
god of emancipation, I told the procurator. After some research,
(15:42):
then came a handsome young man with a dazzling smile,
and also a bloodied head. Leor, said John Kennedy, the
ancient god of youth and springtime, I told the procurator,
a symbol of the change of seasons, of the defeat
of summer by winter. It was Osyrius, said the procurator,
(16:04):
Why are there too? There were many more? I told him,
balder tomos mithra Adis. Why did they need so many?
He asked, you are, said now, I'll stop. The gods
(16:26):
and heroes were among us. A season of revelry began.
Medea went off with Jason, Agamemnon was reconciled with Clytemnestra,
and Theseus and the minotaur took up lodgings together. Others
preferred the company of men. I spoke awhile with John Kennedy,
(16:47):
the last of the myths to come from the machine.
Like Adam the first, he was troubled at being here.
He insisted that he was no myth. He said, I lived,
I was real, I entered primaries, made speeches. I told
him you became a myth, you lived and died, and
you were dying, you were transfigured. He chuckled and asked
(17:11):
into Osiris, into Balder, and I told him, it seems appropriate.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
To you.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Maybe. He told me they stopped believing in balder a
thousand years before I was born. To me, you and
a Cyrus and Balder are contemporaries to me and all
the people here. You are of the ancient world. You
are thousands of years removed from us. And he said,
and on the last myth you let out of the
(17:40):
machine you are. He asked, why did men stop making
myths after the twentieth century. I told him he'd have
to ask le Or. But I think he was right.
His time was the end of the age of myth.
(18:01):
After his time, we could no longer believe such things
as myths. We did not need myths. When we passed
out of the era of troubles, we entered a kind
of paradise where every one of us lived a myth
of his own. And then why should we have to
raise some men to great heights among us? Kennedy looked
(18:23):
at me strangely and asked, do you really believe that
that you live in paradise, that men have become gods?
Spend some time in our world, I said, and see
for yourself. He went out into the world. But what
his conclusions were I never knew, or I did not
(18:43):
speak to him again. Often I encountered roving gods and heroes,
though they were everywhere. They quarreled and looted and ran
amok some of them, but we were not very upset
by that, since it was how we expected archetypes out
of the dawn to act, and some were gentle. I
had a brief love affair with Persephone. I listened and
(19:04):
chanted to the singing of Orpheus. Krishna danced for me.
The Nysus revived the lost art of making liquors and
taught us to drink and be drunk. Loki made magics
of flame for us. Kaliaeson crooned incomprehensible wondrous ballads to us.
(19:25):
Achilles hurled his javelin for us. It was a season
of wonder, but the wonder ebbed. The myth folk began
to bore us. There were too many of them, and
they were too loud, too active, to demanding. They wanted
us to love them, listen to them, bow to them,
write poems about them. They asked questions, some of them anyway,
(19:50):
that pried into the inner workings of our world and
embarrassed us, where we scarcely knew the answers. They grew
vicious and schemed against each other, sometimes causing perils for us.
Leor had provided us with a splendid diversion, but we
all agreed it was time for the myths to go home.
(20:11):
We had had them with us for fifty years, and
that was quite enough. We rounded them up and started
to put them back into the machine. The heroes were
the easiest to catch, for all their strength. We hired
Loki to trick them into returning to the Hall of Man.
Mighty tasks await you there, he told them, and they
(20:33):
hurried thence to show their valor. Loki led them into
the machine and scurried out, and Lere sent them away, Heracles, Achilles, Hector, Perseus, Coocullen,
and the rest of that energetic breed. After that, many
of the demonic ones came and said they were as
bored with us as we were with them, and went
(20:55):
back into the machine of their free will. Thus departed Kali,
like Set and many others. Some we had to trap
and take by force. But this has disguised himself as
brill the secretary of the Chairman. Pank would have fooled
us forever if the real Brial, returning from a holiday,
and Jupiter had not exposed the hoax. And then Odyssus struggled,
(21:20):
Loki gave us problems, Oedipus launched blazing curses when we
came for him. Daedalus clung touchingly to Leor and begged,
let me stay, brother, let me stay, and had to
be thrust within the machine. Year after year, the task
of finding and capturing them continued, and one day we
(21:41):
knew we had them all. The last to go was Cassandra,
who had been living alone in the distant island, clad
in rags.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Why did you send for us? And having sent, why
do you ship us away?
Speaker 1 (21:58):
The game is over, I said to her, We will
turn now to other sports.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
You should have kept us. People who have no myths
of their own would do well to borrow those of others,
and not just a sport. Who will comfort your souls
in the dark times ahead, Who will guide your spirits
when the suffering begins. Who will explain the woe that
(22:27):
will befall you? Woe, oh, woe.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
The woes of Earth. Lion, Earth's passed. We need no myths.
And Cassandra smiled and stepped into the machine and was gone.
And then the age of fire and turmoil opened. For
when the myths went home, the invaders came bursting from
(22:58):
the sky, and our towers toppled, and our moons fell,
and the cold eyed strangers went among us, doing as
they wished with us. And those of us who survived
cried out to the old gods, the vanished forces. Loki, come, Achilles,
(23:19):
defend us, Shiva, release us, Heracles, thor Gawain. But the
gods are silent, and the heroes did not come. The
machine that glittered in the Hall of Man is broken,
(23:39):
the ore its maker is gone from this world. Jackals
run through our gardens and our masters stride in our streets,
and we are made slaves, And we are alone beneath
the frightful sky, and we are alone. You've heard After
(26:07):
the Myths Went Home, a story by Robert Silverberg from
his book Moonferns and Star Songs, published by Ballantine. This
is Michael Hanson. Technical operation for this program by Steve Gordon.
Mind Webbs is a production of WHA Radio in Madison,
(26:28):
a service of the University of Wisconsin Extensions
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