The Magician
Spider World 05
by Colin Wilson
About Spider World
Welcome to twenty-fifth century Earth, a land lorded over by giant spiders and beetles, whose ever-expanding consciousness has supplanted our own ever-diminishing one. Humans are forced into a hard life of servitude in the great spider cities. A fortunate few forced to hide out in the wastelands subsist in caves, fearful of the spiders’ constant death patrols.
From among this now-inferior race rises a young man named Niall, whose powers of mind rival those of the spiders. Niall leads an assault on the very heart of the spiders’ city and strength, and discovers the mysterious source of their power: an alien energy whose pulse is worshipped by the nonhuman life-forms of Earth.
Colin Wilson’s epic visionary fiction has been hailed by reviewers, who say it is “wonderfully well imagined” and “skillfully executed” and even predict that it “will become a bestseller in the tradition of The Lord of the Rings.” Like all classic fantasy, Spider World is both a grand escape and a cautionary, yet hopeful, tale for our times.
The Magician
Niall, now ruler of the spider city, is horrified by a brutal murder that threatens the delicate relationship between the spiders and humans who share the city. Niall uses his psychic ability to track down the killers, but is thwarted in his effort to solve the crime as each conspirator mysteriously dies.
The most obvious clues lead to a being Niall has only seen in a dream: The Magician.
In his quest to find the Magician, Niall makes shocking discoveries about both his own people and the rapidly evolving spiders, whose desire for peace forced them to conquer and forge an empire with the labor of human slaves.
COLIN WILSON is the author of more than eighty books, including his original classic The Outsider, which has been continuously in print for nearly five decades. His work ranges from existential philosophy, psychology, and criminology to fiction, plays, and the examination of the paranormal.
His Spider World novels, which originally delighted a science fiction audience, are even more brilliant today in light of the growing interest in metaphysics, consciousness, extraterrestrials, the future of humankind, and the environment. Wilson lives in Cornwall, England.
To Rowan
Contents:
Introduction
Part One: The Assassins
Part Two: The Living Dead
Introduction
In the waterless desert of North Khaybad, a small family of humans lives in an underground cave. At this time, the earth is dominated by giant telepathic spiders who breed human beings for food. They scour the skies in spider balloons, seeking to bring under their control the few human beings who remain at large. These include Niall, a youth who daydreams of one day finding a way to destroy the spiders and restore men to freedom.
A hundred miles to the west is the country known as the Great Delta, perhaps the most dangerous place in the world. And it is on a trip to the Delta, in search of healing drugs, that Niall’s uncle and cousin are killed by one of the man-eating plants.
Ingeld, the dead man’s widow, longs to return to her family home in the underground city of Dira, near the great inland lake, and Niall and his father, Ulf, agree to escort her there. It is in Dira that Niall loses his heart to the beautiful Princess Merlew, daughter of King Kazak, and is tempted to remain in the underground city. But when he overhears Merlew describing him as “that skinny boy,” he is disillusioned, and decides to return home with his father.
It is during the journey home, driven to take refuge from a sandstorm in a ruined city, that Niall kills a giant spider, and unintentionally seals the fate of Dira, which is overrun by the spiders soon after. And while Niall is away from home, his own father is killed and his family taken captive by spiders.
Niall sets out to follow them, but is himself soon taken prisoner.
On a sea journey to the spider city, Niall is instrumental in saving the life of one of the spiders, which has been washed overboard in a storm. The result is that on his arrival in the spider city, he and his family are treated with a certain consideration, and are assigned to live in the palace of King Kazak, who has become an ally and accomplice of the spiders. It is there that Niall learns that the spiders are engaged in a breeding experiment to reduce human intelligence and to prevent men from ever again becoming a challenge to the spiders.
It is when Niall discovers that Kazak is betraying his own people that he runs away, and takes refuge in the mysterious white tower that dominates the center of the spider city. This proves to be a time capsule, built by earlier men to inform their descendants of how they fled from the Earth to avoid a strike by the radioactive comet Opik.
Inside the white tower, in a sleep-learning machine, Niall is taught about the history of mankind before the Opik catastrophe. He also learns that the center of the living force that created giant insects lies in the Delta; the spiders worship this force as the goddess Nuada.
When he leaves the white tower, Niall takes refuge in the slave quarter, most of whose inhabitants have been turned into imbeciles by selective breeding.
Appointed overseer to a squad of slaves, Niall finds his way to the nearby city of the bombardier beetles, and renews his acquaintance with the explosives expert Bill Doggins. The beetles adore explosions, and Doggins has been appointed to satisfy their immense appetite for this form of entertainment.
Niall has arrived on “Boomday,” when Doggins is Master of Ceremonies at an immense firework display. But an accident results in a tremendous blast that destroys the whole remaining stock of explosives. Doggins decides that he has no alternative but to lead an expedition to the spider city, seeking a legendary stockpile of explosives in the abandoned barracks known as the Fortress.
They are successful beyond their most optimistic dreams, discovering crates full of “reapers,” an atomic blaster which is one of the most awesome weapons ever invented. Surprised by the spiders, they shoot their way out of trouble, steal spider balloons, and return to the city of the bombardier beetles, which is already being besieged by spiders. Again, the reapers save the day. But when Niall is ordered by the Master of the bombardier beetles to destroy the reapers, he decides to disobey, and to travel instead to the Delta, in a bid to destroy the force that has created the giant insects.
Niall quickly discovers that the Delta deserves its reputation as the most dangerous place on Earth. One by one, their party is reduced, until Niall and Doggins are the only ones to reach the foot of the great hill that they have identified as the center of the force. But it is Niall who finally scales the hill alone — to learn that the “goddess Nuada” is actually a giant plant, which has been carried to Earth from another galaxy in the tail of the comet Opik.
On his return to the city of the beetles, Niall is placed under arrest, and handed over to the spiders. In a horrific encounter with the Spider Lord, he comes close to being destroyed, both physically and mentally. But at this point, the goddess herself intervenes, filling the room with her strange blue light. Now convinced that Niall is the chosen of the goddess, the Spider Lord accedes to his demand that human beings should be set free. And Niall, to his own bewilderment, suddenly finds himself appointed ruler of the spider city.
Part One
The Assasins
Shortly before dawn he was awakened by a cold so intense that it reminded him of the desert night. He lay there, the bedclothes pulled around his face, and his breath formed moisture on the blanket as he exhaled. He had chosen this room because it faced east, and he liked to be awakened by the sun. Today there was no sunlight; the dawn came like gray mist until the room was filled with a cold, even light. No birds sang.
Something about the strange silence disturbed him. He crossed to the window, treading on the soft woolen rugs, and found himself looking out on a white landscape. White rooftops seemed to blend into the pearl-gray sky, and the great square was carpeted in the same featureless whiteness. It had even found its way into the corners of the window frames, and a few fine flakes had frozen onto the outside of the glass.
Niall had heard about snow and read about it, but this was the first time he had ever seen it. Nothing had prepared him for this cold, beautiful whiteness that seemed to blanket the universe. He was suddenly filled with a magical excitement which, although he was unaware of it, had filled thousands of generations of children at the first sight of the winter snow.