Shikasta by Doris Lessing

First published: 1979

Type of work: Science fiction

Time of work: From about 35,000 b.c.e. to about 2000 c.e., but mainly the twentieth century

Locale: Shikasta (Earth) and surrounding planes or zones

Principal Characters:

• Johor, incarnated on Earth as
• George Sherban, an agent of the star system Canopus
• Benjamin Sherban, George’s fraternal twin
• Rachel Sherban, George’s younger sister
• Taufiq, an agent of Canopus, incarnated on Earth as
• John Brent-Oxford, a famous British lawyer

The Novel

The complete title of Doris Lessing’s first “space novel” is Canopus in Argos: Archives: Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta: Personal Psychological, Historical Documents Related to Visit by Johor (George Sherban), Emissary (Grade 9) 87th of the Period of the Last Days. This title accurately describes the novel as a collection of documents compiled as a general picture of Shikasta for first-year students of Canopean colonial rule. The reader is placed in the position of godlike beings who possess a cosmic perspective on Earth (Shikasta), who see the planet as one of thousands in a complex universe, its history as a day in the cosmic year.

To the Canopeans, the universe is living in every part and is composed of forms of substance of which mankind has discovered only a few. The Canopeans have achieved an understanding that the living stars are even higher forms of being. The stars seek to produce a universal harmony of activity of which the consciousness of beings such as the Canopeans and Shikastans ought to form a part. Having discovered how to act harmoniously with “the Purpose,” Canopeans help self-conscious beings on many planets to rise to this level of consciousness. Their goal is the evolution of spiritual consciousness.

Some hints of the direction of this consciousness are revealed in the zones or alternate dimensions of being, which mysteriously coincide with or surround the planet. In Zone Six, “souls” of people who have died on Earth wait to be reincarnated. If they have failed during their most recent life on Shikasta to conform their lives with the Purpose, thereby changing the substance of their beings, they must return to try again or wait forever in Zone Six. By implication, those who do succeed may traverse Zone Six to enter “higher” zones until, eventually, they succeed in reaching the dimension of the Canopeans beyond Shikasta’s zones.

Shikasta is the account of Canopus’ work on Earth during a difficult period. Canopus became interested in the planet, then called Rohanda, when humanity appeared, for the planet was unique in the richness of its life forms and in the speed with which they developed. Canopus planned to bring Rohanda into its empire by speeding human evolution. This project included establishing a “lock” between Rohanda and Canopus which would allow the continuous transfer of a sustaining energy form: SOWF, or “substance of we feeling.” A cosmic disaster and the opportunism of a rival empire, however, subverts this plan. A mistake of the stars interrupts the lock for about fifty thousand years, converting Rohanda to Shikasta, the broken one. Shammat, the leading planet of an empire that rebels against the Purpose, having found a way to feed on discord, fastens vampirically upon the almost helpless human race.

While the novel gives attention to the processes of establishing and breaking the lock and of the decay of human consciousness which results from the reduction of SOWF and the depredations of Shammat, most of the novel deals with the twentieth century, “the period of the last days.” Lessing places this history in the context of a cosmic history, forecasts its end in atomic catastrophe, and its new beginning in the reestablishment of the lock.

Made up of reports from Johor, Taufiq, and other Canopean agents, passages from an official history of Shikasta, journals, letters and memos of Shikastans, and even of some communications between Shammat and its agents, Shikasta shows how Johor saves a remnant from the holocaust. Incarnated as George Sherban, he marshals other agents and the specially chosen souls incarnated in his family to gather and preserve those most capable of serving the Purpose and to relocate them before the bombs fall. After the catastrophe, this remnant begins to regain the ancient harmony with the Purpose.

At the center of the novel is a detailed portrait of the degeneracy of the century of destruction. Here Lessing interprets modern history as the victimization of most of the world’s peoples by American and European colonialism. She shows the northern white race developing a materialistic religion, a blend of capitalism and Christianity, that justified the exploitation of human and other resources without regard for spiritual consequences: “People were taught to live for their own advancement and the acquisition of goods,” not to think of wholeness and harmony. Every institution was made to serve the purposes of this materialism. Civilization’s goal became consumption for its own sake, its ultimate expression the consumption of warfare. Politics became the art of justifying what is known to be wrong; science, the art of producing destructive technology; religion, the art of imposing ideology. Lessing offers this as an interpretation of the twentieth century and extrapolates its future in atomic self-consumption, the logical end of its choices.

The Characters

Even though the reader’s perspective on this “history” is cosmic and is shared by the main characters in their more ethereal forms, Lessing creates interest in her characters in their human forms. By accepting incarnation, one gives up cosmic knowledge. Even the Canopeans Johor and Taufiq lose memory of their true identities. Taufiq is spoken of as captured by the enemy when he makes the wrong choices in his human life as Brent-Oxford and begins to live for self rather than for the Purpose. This inner conflict is even more difficult for the human souls Johor selects to join his family for the last days. This forgetting means that each character must strive against the discord of Shammat to realize his or her true potential and to act consistently with it. The struggle leads often to moving events such as when Taufiq is reclaimed by Johor out of a painful and confused web of self-assertion.

Characterization is unconventional in that the perspective on the main characters is cosmic. Because the characters appear in the book mainly as observers and because of the cosmic perspective of the reader, few characters are deeply engaging. The selections from Rachel Sherban’s journal cause the reader to care for several characters much as she does, but behind this caring is a constant awareness of the Purpose, which leads the reader to uncharacteristic judgments. For example, while Rachel disapproves of George’s wife, Suzanna, the reader gradually comes to see her as the right choice in relation to the goal of preserving a selected remnant.

Another unconventional feature of characterization is the catalog of character portraits. A fairly long section of the book consists of “sociological” reports on unnamed individuals. This catalog includes people whom Brent-Oxford was supposed to help and use as means of arousing the conscience of Europe. These portraits illustrate the forms of the “degenerative disease” at its most virulent and demonstrate the Canopean methods of helping individuals while serving the Purpose.

Many characters are introduced but are not followed in detail to their fates. Among the more interesting of these are Lynda Coldridge—who originally appeared in The Four-Gated City (1969)—and Chen Liu, a Chinese secret service agent in the period of Chinese dictatorship of Eurasia. Lynda is under treatment for insanity, but she and her doctor become convinced that she is responding to visions of a higher reality. Her “madness” is a healthy spiritual response to the true madness of a world culture that is immune to truth. Chen Liu is a sensitive and potentially good man who finds himself caught up in the insanity of trying to rule by propaganda and degenerate politics.

Critical Context

Shikasta appeared to mixed reviews, but later criticism has tended to be positive, in part because the subsequent novels in the “Canopus in Argos” series (five novels, 1979-1983) have helped to clarify her purpose in Shikasta, the first of the series. Betsy Draine emphasizes that Lessing was drawing on two contrary genres: science fiction, with its secular point of view, and sacred prophecy, with its religious point of view. This experiment with generic conventions freed Lessing to pursue in new ways issues and ideas implicit in her earlier, more realistic fiction. Nancy T. Bazin has shown how “Canopus in Argos” grew out of Lessing’s developing interest in Sufi mysticism as reflected in novels from the “Children of Violence” series (five novels, 1952-1969) through The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974). Thus, Shikasta has come to be recognized as an important turning point in the work of one of Britain’s major novelists.

Bibliography

Bazin, Nancy T. “The Evolution of Doris Lessing’s Art from a Mystical Moment to Space Fiction,” in The Transcendent Adventure: Studies in Science Fiction/Fantasy, 1985. Edited by Robert Reilly.

Draine, Betsy. Substance Under Pressure: Artistic Coherence and Evolving Form in the Novels of Doris Lessing, 1983.

Sage, Lorna. Doris Lessing, 1983.

White, Thomas I. “Opposing Necessity and Truth: The Argument Against Politics in Doris Lessing’s Utopian Vision,” in Women and Utopia: Critical Interpretations, 1983. Edited by Marleen Barr and Nicholas D. Smith.