Mark Zaugg and Family

"Think"?  Some choose to disagree, but that doesn't really matter.  At any rate, I've recently finished another old... well; I guess "classic" wouldn't be the proper word because although everybody seems to "know about" John W. Campbell Jr., few it would seem have actually bothered to read any of his works.  But now I know at least one person did:  Douglas Adams.

Does anyone recall that scene near the end of the more recent 'Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy' movie - the one where Marvin blasts the invading Vogon forces with the 'Point-Of-View' gun that was designed by Deep Thought, and the Vogons are rendered hilariously immobilised by a telepathic blast of utter existential despair?

Well - if you had thought Mr. Adams a rather clever chap for dreaming up that particularly amusing hallucination, you'd be quite wrong... by about 71 years.  For you see, the Campbell story I read was in fact his last - "The Cloak Of Aesir" - and directly therein, on page 251, is contained this damningly-interesting passage:

 "If ever his mind should start to mend, he will become a suicidal maniac, driven to kill himself in any way he can, at any horrible expense.  He cannot think of that escape now.  That is a struggle, that is in itself a hope - and he has none.  To conceive of death as an escape is to hope, to believe that something better can be.
  That is beyond him now, for hope - struggle - effort to escape - all involve a will that mind has lost.
  He is mad, Ware, because no mind can hold the terrible despair his thoughts now know and remain sane.
  Record his thoughts.  Record them there on that silver ribbon.  Record that hopelessness that knows no resistance, no will to struggle.  Record it, and broadcast that through the Sarn City!"

So said the lighthouse-keeper.

Awesome!  Nothing is truly new under the sun...