burgundywine
New Member
- Joined
- Apr 20, 2013
- Messages
- 2
I am trying to track down a short story or novella I read while I was a teenager in the 1980s in Singapore. It has been bugging me for many years and I have searched the Internet to no avail so I shall be very grateful if anyone can point me in the right direction.
The final line of the story is, "First, you must become a heretic" or something of that nature.
The hero of the story is a member of the serf class on a planet. The upper class or priest class rules the serf class, who perform manual labour and are poorly educated.
The serfs are taught that hundreds of years previously, their forefathers came to the planet from another world by spaceship. A third class, savages living in the woods, are descended from the civilised people. Anyone who disbelieves this version of events is branded a heretic and severely punished, ritually shamed in front of his peers, and disappears from society.
The hero starts to question the creation myth. It is more likely that civilised man evolved from the savages, he reasons. He also questions the spaceship myth, as he stumbles on the theory of evolution by natural selection.
He is uncovered and punished, and humiliated in front of his girl friend and family (?).
However behind the scenes he is told by the priests that the creation myth was in fact true. The spacemen, crash landing on the planet, found that it was impossible to sustain an egalitarian society on a tough planet. It was necessary to have an uneducated serf class in order to do the work, and the priest class passed their education from generation to generation.
So how does one become a member of the priest class, then, he asks his gaolers. "Well, first, you must become a heretic."
I think the author of the story was female - perhaps first name Margaret.
I can't remember anything more. It might be a novella or a short story in a collection.
Many thanks for your help!
The final line of the story is, "First, you must become a heretic" or something of that nature.
The hero of the story is a member of the serf class on a planet. The upper class or priest class rules the serf class, who perform manual labour and are poorly educated.
The serfs are taught that hundreds of years previously, their forefathers came to the planet from another world by spaceship. A third class, savages living in the woods, are descended from the civilised people. Anyone who disbelieves this version of events is branded a heretic and severely punished, ritually shamed in front of his peers, and disappears from society.
The hero starts to question the creation myth. It is more likely that civilised man evolved from the savages, he reasons. He also questions the spaceship myth, as he stumbles on the theory of evolution by natural selection.
He is uncovered and punished, and humiliated in front of his girl friend and family (?).
However behind the scenes he is told by the priests that the creation myth was in fact true. The spacemen, crash landing on the planet, found that it was impossible to sustain an egalitarian society on a tough planet. It was necessary to have an uneducated serf class in order to do the work, and the priest class passed their education from generation to generation.
So how does one become a member of the priest class, then, he asks his gaolers. "Well, first, you must become a heretic."
I think the author of the story was female - perhaps first name Margaret.
I can't remember anything more. It might be a novella or a short story in a collection.
Many thanks for your help!
