Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore were not the only SF writers of the early 40’s who were eager to reinterpret higher knowledge in terms compatible with the chaos vision. The story that immediately followed “The Proud Robot” in the October 1943 issue of Astounding — Fredric Brown’s “Paradox Lost” — was an even more bizarre exploration of chaos and higher reality.
I briefly mentioned “Paradox Lost” a couple of years ago, when I was first discussing the chaos vision. Its central figure is a mad scientist — driven mad, he says, by dwelling on time travel paradoxes — who has invented an imaginary time machine in which he travels to the past to hunt dinosaurs with slingshots. But in addition to the general wackiness of the story, there is a serious philosophical underpinning.
“Matter is a concept of consciousness,” the madman patiently explains to the viewpoint character, Shorty McCabe, whom he has lured out of a boring college lecture and hauled along with him to the Jurassic. “Now there is a normal concept of matter, which you share, and a whole flock of abnormal ones. The abnormal ones sort of get together.”
“I don’t quite understand,” Shorty replies. “You mean that you have a secret society of . . . uh . . . lunatics, who . . . uh . . . live in a different world, as it were?”
“Not as it were,” the little man answers, “but as it weren’t. And it isn’t a secret society, or anything organized that way. It just is. We project into two universes, in a manner of speaking. One is normal; our bodies are born there, and of course, they stay there. … But we have another existence, in our minds. That’s where I am, and that’s where you are at the moment, in my mind. I’m not really here, either.”
