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Summary
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Report on the Threatened City, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Perception and Belief
Indifference
Paranoia and Conspiracy
Altruism vs. Capitalism
Summary
Analysis
Priority Flash One. Unforeseen conditions mean that all plans and forecasts must be cancelled. Priority. Energy supplies are low, and it is likely that other local transmissions might interrupt the report.
This opening passage establishes the framework for the report, which will analyze the mission and explain why the plans must change. It also foreshadows—and explains— the news reports and advertisements that will later interrupt and give context to the report.
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Summary of Background to Mission. Some envoys report that they observed a city on a different planet using “Astroviewers” and unmanned spacecrafts. In doing so, they realized that a major disaster loomed over the city. Given the city’s evident lack of preparation, the envoys and their fellows assumed a knowledge gap was to blame. This surprised them because of the general advancement of the creatures’ technology, but they couldn’t come up with any plausible explanations for the source of the knowledge gap.
The aliens’ observations—that this other species is technologically advanced yet fail to prepare for natural disaster—hints that they’re talking about humans on Earth. The envoys’ extraterrestrial point of view provides distance from the human subjects in the story. This allows the story to analyze humanity from an anthropological perspective, which makes familiar behavior seem strange and therefore noticeable. The aliens’ assumption that the citizens of the threatened city must not know about the impending disaster betrays their own biased beliefs—they are unable to understand the situation because the humans’ behavior is so different from their own. Their bias clouds their ability to fully understand the situation.
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Summary of Objective this Mission. The extraterrestrials worked to build a ship capable of landing a team on the planet to warn the people, assist in evacuating and resettling them, and “cushion the shock” of the impending earthquake. The envoys were also tasked with taking some “specimens” back to their planet for scientific training that would help them predict future earthquakes. The extraterrestrials worked hard and postponed other plans to build the necessary spacecraft for this mission. The trip was successful: the envoys landed on “the western shore of the land mass” and have been on the other planet for one week.
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The Nature of the Problem. The envoys delayed making any transmissions until this point because they have been conserving fuel. In addition, it took quite some time for them to understand the problems that they encountered in warning the people of the threatened city. The creatures are, in fact, able to forecast the earthquake, but they don’t seem concerned about it. The envoys believe that the creatures belong to a species that “lacks the will to live,” and they have been trying to understand why this is the case. They will report the circumstances of their mission to try to explain this indifference.
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An Impossible Fact. First, however, the envoys must relate a fact that seems unbelievable. The city experienced a very large earthquake “65 years ago, their time.” The extraterrestrials weren’t aware of this because they couldn’t imagine that the city’s citizens knew this history but didn’t take preventive measures. In a similar situation, the envoys would have tried to avoid a repeat disaster. Therefore, the extraterrestrials did not look back into time when planning the mission, taking it “absolutely for granted” that the disaster was to be unprecedented. Having made this admission, the envoys begin to recount their mission.
The Landing. The envoys landed their craft by moonlight in an arid, sparsely populated area. Their predecessors had landed here, first at long intervals, but with increasing frequency recently. A group of young creatures were at the site, participating in a “mating ritual that involved fire, food and strong sound.” Several of the youth saw the craft. As they dispersed, the envoys read their minds and discovered that while these viewers believed that the craft was alien in origin, they were indifferent to this knowledge. Next, a group of older specimens appeared, all of whom were farmers who lived nearby. These creatures were also aware of the envoys’ spacecraft, though it became invisible to them once the sun rose. The elders felt pride because they believed the craft to be a weapon that originated from their own planet.
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War-Making Patterns. The envoys explain the older specimens’ belief that the spacecraft was a weapon. War and violence are so characteristic of this species that it is in the process of destroying itself. Each geographical grouping of this species is under the control of its “war-making functions.” This is true whether the inhabitants are actively preparing for war or believe themselves to be peaceful.
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Rational Action Impossible. The species can hold in their minds two contradictory ideas at once. This fact is key to the “nature of the block” that prevented the envoys from completing their mission, and it makes rational action hard for the species. The envoys are aware that the planet’s inhabitants are being deceived by their various groupings’ war departments.
Subservient Populations. For instance, this species’ recent, publicly broadcasted moon landings were not actually the first. Rather, earlier landings were made secretly to show military and technological prowess among the dominant groups. Likewise, inhabitants’ widespread reports of UFOs are frequently stifled by the authorities, who conceal whether the objects in question are terrestrial or extraterrestrial in origin. This official misinformation is so widely accepted that most of the inhabitants believe that sightings are a sign of delusion or mental illness until they see one themselves.
This supports another one of the envoys’ observations: the younger members of the species see more clearly and better understand the nature of the planet. Yet the younger members are also “more passive and hopeless” than the elders, who control society. The envoys hypothesize a correlation between the amount of purposeful energy members of the species have and the narrowness of their ideas. Both the youths and the elders that the envoys encountered upon landing had seen and reported alien spacecraft to the authorities in the past. But the youth had met with resistance and were no longer willing to interact with the authorities. The elders’ response was to be on the alert for further sightings but to keep their observations quiet.
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First Attempt at a Warning. After landing on the planet, the envoys attempted their first warning. The elders seemed unafraid and didn’t understand that the bright sunlight had just made the spacecraft invisible. The envoys decided to intercept the elders’ thoughts and communicate with them telepathically. But there was an obstacle that the envoys couldn’t understand and that made the process time-consuming; they believed they might run out of power while trying to communicate with the elders.
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Incapacity for Fear. To avoid unnecessarily alarming the creatures, the envoys fed the news of the impending earthquake directly into their creatures’ minds very slowly, over the course of 24 hours. The farmers failed to react, and the envoys assumed that fear prevented their understanding. They repeated the message, but there was still “no change in [the farmers’] mental structure.” Hypothesizing that this group was somehow deficient for their purposes, the envoys decided to find others to warn. Hindsight indicates that the farmers already knew about the threat, but at the time, the envoys attributed their failure to the specimens’ age and corresponding lack of openness to new ideas.
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Second Attempt at a Warning. It took three days after the landing for any youth come close enough for the envoys to make their second attempt. Just as the light of day faded, four youths arrived, and the envoys used the same method—but less time—to convey their warning. Again, they had to repeat the message because they didn’t think the four youths could absorb it. But the youths neither rejected it nor were paralyzed with fear. Instead, they repeated variations on the phrases “it’s going to be real bad,” “[half] the city might be killed,” and “[they] say we only have five years.” Eventually, one took up a musical instrument and set these sentiments to music, singing about how they “eat and drink and love,” to deal with their mortality. Following the song, the youth returned to their activities.
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Phase I Abandoned. The envoys decided to stop using telepathy to transmit the warning and begin Phase II, which involved directly entering some of the creatures’ minds and causing them to say the warning. At this point, the envoys still didn’t understand that people didn’t react to the warnings because they already expected the impending earthquake.
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Phase II Attempted. The envoys travel into the city with the four youths. The trip began at dawn and continued until full light. The envoys were shocked by the foolhardy way the youth handled the vehicle, their laughter at near collisions, their “recklessness, [and] their indifference to death or pain.” Surprised by this lack of survival instinct, the envoys considered that they were unlucky enough to encounter many creatures whose indifference made them “defective.”
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When the four youths stopped at a fueling station, the envoys noticed three dazed, shaggy-haired youth sitting on a bench. The envoys realized that these youth were under the influence of a drug that heightened their sensitivity; for this reason, they perceived the envoys’ presence, unlike the youth in the car. The intoxicated youth associated the envoys with the light of the “sun’s appearance over the roof.” Because the drug had relaxed the youths, the envoys hoped that they would be open to possession, and they entered the trio’s minds (at considerable risk to themselves, due to the nature of the drug).
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This phase of the mission was particularly dangerous for the envoys because they were not initially able to “differentiate between the effects of the drugs and the effects of their senses.” They report that the drug depresses functions like walking and talking while increasing the sensations of “sound, scent, sight, [and] touch.” The envoys’ mode of perception is very different to this species’. Even without the drug, they would be prone to losing their balance and being overwhelmed by the beauty and color that this species perceives in the world.
Necessity to Condense Report, Power Failing. While the envoys would like to elaborate on their experience of the drugged youths’ minds, they are aware that their transmission is in danger of being broken up, so they return to recounting of their mission. They caused the young creatures to shout and sing about the coming disaster while they awaited transportation into the city center. Once there, they continued to make the youths shout out their message. The envoys yet again expected a “response to which we could respond […] with advice or offers of help.” Instead, the few people who noticed them at all refused this connection with a “glance or a short indifferent stare.”
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Capture by the Authorities. Suddenly, the envoys heard a loud sound. They initially thought this was finally a reaction to their message or a warning to the citizens. But instead, it was an official-looking vehicle that took the youth to jail for being a public nuisance. Rather than questioning the youths about their warning, the jail’s doctor rendered them unconscious with a drug. He mentioned the earthquake that struck the city 65 years ago, which was shocking news to the envoys. The doctor, like other authorities, thought that the youth suffered from “paranoia,” which the envoys understood to mean “a condition when people show fear of forthcoming danger and try to warn others about it.”
As the envoys describe their shock at this turn of events, their transmission is interrupted by a “news flash” that describes the heartwarming story of Janice Wanamaker, a two-year-old child with a congenital heart condition in desperate need of lifesaving operation. Janice is saved by five “ordinary people, not rich folks,” who have each “given up a month’s pay” to send her to a special medical center. When the envoys’ report resumes, they note the details of the previous earthquake, which tore up hundreds of miles of earth, killed hundreds of people, and was followed by fires.
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Humour as a Mechanism. The envoys relate two notable features of the doctor’s reaction: his use of humor, which they identify as “a device for the release of tension or to ward off or relieve fear,” and euphemistically referring to the earthquake as “the fire” rather than its proper name. The envoys note that humor and euphemism indicate fear and helplessness, which they find odd since the creatures could simply leave the city. Their report is interrupted by another snippet of local transmission, this one advertising a new suburb to the west of the city that will contribute to its growth.
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The Jettisoning of Phases I, II and III. The envoys now viewed both Phases I and II as failures and also decided that Phase III, which was to be a combination of the two, should be abandoned altogether. At this point, they had learned that they should “assume the shapes of older animals” because “the authorities disliked the young,” although they were still unsure as to whether the creatures as a group were “capable of listening to the older ones.”
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Inability to Assess Truth. The envoys interrupt their report to remark that this species is incapable of judging the truth of a statement on its own merits. Rather, they accept new ideas only from sources they already trust. Therefore, the envoys suggest, future missions should prioritize the creation of credible and respected characters to impart the facts. For example, had the youth claimed to see aliens, the authorities would have rejected the report out of mistrust of the reporters. If, however, other authorities “observed […] with instruments […] three rapidly vibrating light structures”—the same aliens—they would be more readily believed. In addition to the messenger, great care must be used to select familiar, believable words for the message.
Adaptation to their Norm for their Dominant Animals. The envoys “incarnated” as two adult males, taking care to arrange in a way that would inspire trust, including conservative clothing and hairstyles. While mature women and the youth were allowed more flexibility in terms of color and style of dress, adult males had to conform. The envoys focused on carrying their bodies in a sober way and making facial expressions that conveyed their peaceful intent.
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In disguise, the envoys walked around the city, where they were surprised by the lack of attention paid to them. They were “fair copies” of the creatures, but close observation would have betrayed their alien nature. Nevertheless, no one seemed to notice. Everyone they talked to knew about the impending earthquake, but “they did not really believe it.” During these conversations, the envoys learned about an institute that existed to “study the past upheaval and make plans for the forthcoming one.” The envoys’ broadcast is interrupted by a news bulletin about the tragic collapse of the stands at a baseball stadium. Sixty people were killed. The accident evidently occurred because safety procedures were minimized to maximize the stadium owners’ profits.
The Institute. The envoys entered the Institute for Prognosis and Prevention of Earth Disturbance as observers. It is a place where 50 “highly skilled technicians’ work equipment that is just as advanced as the technology on the envoys’ planet. The institute exists because it’s common knowledge that another earthquake will happen soon, yet the technicians responsible to forecast it live in the dangerous city willingly and cheerfully. The envoys consider that these people might be extremely brave but ultimately conclude that they, like the youth in the car earlier, “are in some way set not to believe what they say” about the impending danger.
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The next interruption of the report concerns a tragic fire in a housing complex. A brave and selfless hero passing by on the street entered the building three times, saving two small children, an elderly woman, and a baby before evidently perishing in the blaze.
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A Basic Mechanism. The envoys use their experience at the Institute to explain how the creatures avoid action by way of discussion and debate—“one of their mechanisms for maintaining themselves in impotence and indecision.” Thus, the technicians at the Institute issue warnings one after the other, all of which come true. Yet when the envoys tried to talk about preventive actions to take, the technicians treated them like suspicious troublemakers. These technicians weren’t afraid to discuss “the timing, the nature, the power” of earthquakes, but they were hostile to discussions about “transfer of population or rebuilding the city elsewhere.” The envoys suspect that many methods that the creatures believe bring change or save lives instead delay meaningful action.
Another news bulletin cuts in. Someone is protesting a plan to raze three skyscrapers in order to erect higher buildings in the city, when the money for this project could be used to build affordable housing for the many people that need it. The envoys then continue to report on the importance of discussion in this society, but a second bulletin boasts of the city’s conventions and tourism, which prove how attractive “the city, its situation, its climate, its amenities” are, before noting that “it is essential to step up the building of new hotels, motels and restaurants” to draw in and accommodate more visitors.
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Indifference to Loss of Life. The envoys report that the citizens of the city have never considered relocating for their own safety. They feel that this indicates an attitude that life is not valued, at least on a societal or global level. However, this indifferent attitude coexists with “infinite care and devotion to individuals or small groups.” The report is interrupted with another a story about Joan Underscribe, a wife who spent five years working around the clock to afford a large public memorial to “the best husband a woman ever had,” William Underscribe. The envoys’ analysis of the creatures’ preference for talk over action is further interrupted by a bulletin for an entertainment extravaganza featuring performers from around the world and rich and famous guests.
The envoys determine that the creatures’ main “anxiety-calming mechanism” is something called a “conference,” which involves meeting together to discuss a theme or themes. When this is done socially, it is called a “party.” Those who aren’t at the conference are later told of the opinions shared there. At this point, the envoys are interrupted by a bulletin describing the success of the city’s “conservation year” and calling for a “conference” to extend the awareness and interest it created in the citizens.
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Their Education. The envoys conclude that opinions are the primary subject of the creatures’ education—particularly knowing how to differentiate one’s own opinion from those of others. When two of the creatures first meet, they try to discern each other’s opinions and “will tolerate each other” according to how well their opinions agree or disagree. Ideas that many people accept become familiar and are also called “received ideas.” These are rarely met with much opposition, and the mark of an educated person is to have absorbed many of them. Those who have absorbed ideas that are not “to the current standard” are distrusted—particularly if they are women or youth.
The envoys became well-known at the institute as Herbert Bond (age 35) and John Hunter (age 40). They did not directly ask the technicians why they weren’t trying to avoid calamity. They had learned to engage in a roundabout exchange of ideas, saying, for instance, “Let us discuss the factors militating against the taking [a certain] step.” This approach was initially successful, but it faltered when words such as “profit motive […] capitalism, socialism, democracy” entered the conversation. These words provoked such an emotional response that the envoys feared violence, which results when the “range of opinions” on what should be done is “too wide to be accommodated.” Notably, the disagreement is on the steps to be taken, not on the fact of impending earthquake.
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Barbaric Method of Town Planning Unique in Our System, but See Histories of Planets 2 and 4. From discussions at the Institute, the envoys concluded that the creatures plan their cities not based on citizens’ needs, but by balancing many conflicting, self-interested desires. For example, many buildings are built directly on the city’s fault line because people will pay more to live there. Lest those with commercial interests in these buildings be accused of disregarding others’ lives, the envoys note that the planners and builders are themselves among the people who willingly live in the danger zone.
The next interruption is a bulletin celebrating the emergency unit at a local hospital, where doctors and nurses work heroically to save the lives of car accident and street fight victims. The treatments available in the emergency unit mean that people who would have died as recently as five years ago can now be saved. Unfortunately, those living near hospitals not so equipped are usually less lucky, as it takes more time to reach lifesaving treatments.
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The Institute Found Not Useful. Having concluded that they could make no more progress at the institute, the envoys returned to the city center to contact the young. Because of the mistrust between the youth and the elders, the envoys had to reincarnate as a young man and woman. They found that the young people liked to “discuss and talk and sing endlessly.” The purpose of their conversations is to create “sensations of satisfaction and agreement with each other.” The envoys wasted a fourth of their remaining fuel on a futile attempt to convince the young to exit the city and find a new place to live.
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Failure with the Young. Unfortunately, the envoys waited until after the daylight had faded, the worst possible moment, for this attempt. Several youths turned the occasion into a “conference” in which they addressed the crowd through sad songs. The envoys tried to discuss how to prevent congregation in the most vulnerable areas (ironically, the gathering of the youth was happening in just such a place), how to prevent mass deaths and injuries, and how to treat injuries.
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Despair of the Young. However, the state of “disabling despair” in which the young exist totally prevents a belief “in their own effectiveness.” The envoys’ attempts to spur the youth to action resulted in the same redundant, hopeless conversation they heard from the first group of youths and more sad songs.
Mass Suicides. There was also a mass suicide event where hundreds of youths swam out to sea or jumped from the nearby cliffs. The envoys’ narration of this event is interrupted by another local broadcast detailing a plan to build a large bird sanctuary in the city that has been made possible by a large donation of money. The sanctuary will provide a place where “species threatened with extinction due to man’s cruelty and unconcern” can live and be bred to avoid extinction.
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The envoys decided to make their final warning by combining a piece of common knowledge with one of the creatures’ anxiety-soothing mechanisms. They rejected the idea of a conference and staged presentation of songs. They considered a third mechanism, where new or upsetting ideas are acted out as a drama that the creatures view personally in small groups or broadcast widely on a device called a television. Things that aren’t currently acceptable, when acted in this way, can become familiar through consistent exposure. These dramas can also be used to depict boring life experiences in a more stimulating way in order to make life seem more tolerable. In both ways, dramas soothe the creatures and prevent them from rebelling.
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The envoys reassumed the identities of Herbert Bond and John Hunter. Noting that Great Britain enjoyed a prestigious reputation because of its military power, the envoys provided British credentials for their characters. They convinced a television station to broadcast a debate between themselves and two local professors.
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Laughter, Functions of, See Above. The theme’s debate was “[don’t] judge by words but by actions.” The envoys’ statements provoked laugher. Their report details two types of laughter among these creatures: antagonistic laughter (“laughing at”) and laughter of agreement (“laughing with”). While the latter seems less threatening, it is more dangerous because it “arouses feelings of anxiety in those watching,” especially when the ideas challenge accepted norms. The audience laughed in a loud and prolonged manner as the envoys developed their argument: that the species is indifferent to suffering and death, that they fear the wrong things, and that they cannot see the contradiction between the facts they know and the actions they make.
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A verbal game of this sort is guided by rules and judged by an audience. Two local professors debated the envoys. While the envoys were serious, their opponents took a “light and humorous” tone to state the opposing view. The envoys switched from their general theme to the specific scenario of the impending earthquake. When they did, the audience stopped laughing and became very hostile. The reaction among the audience watching via television was so pronounced that the messages they sent to the “relay point” of the broadcast broke the “equipment for listening to these messages.”
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The local professors maintained a calm demeanor during the debate, but afterwards, they were nervous and became hostile toward the envoys. They worried that their jobs were in jeopardy for their part in this performance, and they attacked the envoys as foreigners. With a threatening crowd outside, the envoys were escorted by the television producers to a safe place within the building to protect them from the murderous mob that had been watching the debate. The envoys agreed to avoid further disruption.
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As the envoys describe this turn of events, their report is again interrupted. A voice commands listeners to bring their deceased loved ones to “us, who are friends of your family.” In this apparent advertisement, the voice promises that just as someone cares for their parent, sibling, or spouse in life, so too will the dead be cared for by the people the voice represents. The resting place is promised as a secure place in which to honor the memory of the dead.
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Running short of power, the envoys realize that they can do nothing else. They haven’t achieved their mission’s goals, and they haven’t even been able to understand the root cause of their failure. When their guards’ vigilance dropped, they dematerialized and returned to their craft. Their description of their escape is interrupted with a local broadcast detailing the creatures’ reaction to the debate, which viewers found highly offensive. It protests that the locals, not the envoys, must live with the knowledge the earthquake. The envoys’ “bad taste, crudity of tone, ugliness of manner and insensitivity” hurt local viewers’ feelings.
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Departure from the Planet. The six envoys are reassembled at their ship and prepare to depart. They report their findings to base. A society that is doomed to disaster and unwilling to prepare for it will not survive; only those who are sensitive to misfortune will have an advantage. The people who behave according to social norms, as well as society’s leaders, are doomed by their inability to flexibly adapt to the coming catastrophe. On the other hand, the marginalized, insane, and criminal will have a competitive survival advantage. As their transmission breaks off abruptly, the envoys pin their final hopes on individuals and groups who could be secretly taking steps that might protect them from the earthquake.
The West Coast Examiner. A local newspaper runs an article reporting that Sam Baker of Long Ridge saw a UFO take off near his home around sunset the day before. It rose suddenly and disappeared quickly from sight. Baker is not the only citizen to report strange sightings, but the “official explanation” finds that the light of “unusually vivid sunsets” has recently caused “strong reflections and mirages” in the area.
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Military Sector III to HQ (Top Confidential). The military command of Sector III reports that a UFO landed on the 14th and stayed at its landing point for seven days. As with the previous landings on this site, no one was seen leaving the craft during that period. This was the 13th UFO to land in the area, as well as being the largest and the most visible, according to the military’s informant. While an entity called M8 hypothesizes that the craft is of Chinese origin, the report writers contend that it is from the country’s own Naval Department 15 and expresses frustration with the assumed intrusion into their zone of control.
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Air Force 14 to Centre. Air Force 14’s report concurs that the craft was the 13th UFO in the area, and that it was unmanned. The Air Force thinks the craft is Russian. They note two additional landings south of the city recently, which have coincided with people disappearing. The writers think that they can’t declare this a “coincidence” any longer. They hypothesize that the craft are manned by creatures invisible to the naked eye, an idea supported by the fact that scientific equipment can barely bring the craft “within vision.” The writers ask their superiors if they should continue to minimize the disappearances, for which they can find no common denominator other than proximity to the UFOs’ landing sites.
The West Coast Examiner runs another story noting that large groups of people—as many as 50,000 at a time—are leaving the city and traveling to known UFO landing sites.
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Air Force 14 to Centre. Concerning the same circumstances, Air Force 14 reports that despite their Total Policy 19, rumors have escaped. They advise an action that risks setting off a public panic but that they consider necessary: cordoning off the area where Be Ready for the Day cult members are gathering. They suggest announcing that it’s been contaminated by a radioactive leak to provide a plausible cover story.
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