Life in a Thousand Worlds | Page 2

life is enjoyed.
CHAPTER XIII.
A World of High Medical Knowledge.
On Dorelyn four billions of inhabitants all enjoy perfect health. The government controls the whole field of medical science just as we do the post office department. No patent medicine on Dorelyn. Many new ideas picked up in medicine and surgery.
CHAPTER XIV.
A World of Low Life.
On Scum exist the lowest conditions of life found in any stellar world. "Notched Rod" language explained. Lizard like human forms. No Scumite knows who is his father or mother. A big Scumite battle witnessed. Illustration.
CHAPTER XV.
A World of Highest Invention.
A fertilizer invented making possible the raising of six crops in one of our years. A Tube Line for passenger and freight traffic. Wonderful storage batteries. A telephone that not only carries sound, but transmits the gestures and faces of the speakers. Thought photography.
CHAPTER XVI.
A Singular Planet.
On Zik decisive battles between nations are not fought by armies on land or navies on the sea, but by flying war ships called Flying Devils sailing in the air. A battle witnessed. Illustration. A practical way of settling the strife between capital and labor. The art of maintaining youthful vigor in old ago.
CHAPTER XVII.
The Diamond World.
On the brightest planets of the universe diamonds are as plenty as soil is on our Earth, but soil is as scarce and valuable as diamonds are in our world. The heart-rending oppression of the "Soil Trust" in the Diamond World portrayed. Illustration. The insatiable greed of "Trusts" follows the poor people into their sepulchers.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Triumphant Feat of Orion.
Description of a tunnel through the center of Holen, a globe 500 miles in diameter. Illustration of passenger car used. Its operation explained.
CHAPTER XIX.
The Mute World.
Muteites have no audible language. They converse by pure thought transmission, and no one can conceal evil thoughts. When a Muteite criminal is brought before a Court of Justice the doors of his soul are unlocked so that all past thought-images, photographed on the sensitive living plates of his mind, are thrown open to view. No hypocrisy, no conventional lying.
CHAPTER XX.
Brief.
The world of Brief sustains the shortest lived human beings of our universe. What we in our world crowd into seventy or eighty years of life the Briefites crowd into the narrow compass of about four years of our time. Journalism, footwear, raiment, transportation, public highways, business, religious life, etc., portrayed under such mad-rush environments.
CHAPTER XXI.
The Life on Wings.
The inhabitants of Swift are charmingly beautiful, and many of them can be seen gracefully moving on wings through the air. A charming conversation with Plume, the most beautiful woman in the universe. Illustration.
CHAPTER XXII.
Heaven.
Its greatness, permanency, inhabitants, degrees, seven typos of intelligences, unity, employments, transportation, sexual affinities, structural aspects, etc., uniquely portrayed.

PREFACE.
Any person having a reasonable education will admit that there are many planetary worlds besides the one on which we live. But whether or not they are inhabited is an open question with most people. We had been in doubt on this point for many years, but now we are settled in our conviction that human life exists in many different worlds of space. We can give no proof of this except that we have just returned from the greatest journey we ever took. We went from world to world over long distances of space as easily as one could go from place to place on the surface of our earth. This was a journey of the soul, for surely flesh and bone could not have traveled such amazing distances. At times we were lost to this world, being entirely absorbed in the glimpses of other worlds that were flashing upon our view in happy succession.
It can been seen without saying that this book contains no more than a fragment of the things we saw and heard--the fragment that is most easily understood by human creatures born under the rules and regulations of this little dark world of ours.
There are, in certain other worlds, such wide extremes of bodily formation and mental capacities, that a picture of them in word or art would only be unbearable and in some instances decidedly revolting, just because we are trained here to one set of standards and chained to one surface of world conditions. It will be different in the after-death life to those who are wise enough to be pure and good in this world.
To make the book as practical as possible we have given a picture of some worlds where human life is inferior to ours, and of others where it is vastly superior,--saying nothing of the millennial life which we found in far off space.
Comparisons are made throughout the book between the life, habits, and customs of other worlds and our own. In picturing the low life of certain worlds we are led to see what a highly favored and greatly civilized