The People (Zenna Henderson)

"The People", a fictional creation of science-fiction writer Zenna Henderson, are a group of humanoid extraterrestrials who fled their planet's destruction, with many of them marooned on Earth in the American southwest since the late 1800s. They differ from humans mostly in their pacifism and paranormal abilities. They appear in a number of stories which are usually referred to as "the People stories of Zenna Henderson" [ [http://www.nesfa.org/press/Books/Henderson.htm "Ingathering: the Complete People Stories of Zenna Henderson", NESFA, 0-915368-58-7] ] [ [http://www.adherents.com/lit/bk_Zenna.html The Zenna Henderson Homepage] ] .

History

The People, as portrayed by author Zenna Henderson, lived a happy pastoral life in harmony with the seasons. They have little apparent technology, and do not much need it. Their history includes an unpleasant period called the 'Days of Difference", presumably including nuclear war, ending with "The Peace." Their faith is their reality; all are telepathic and telekinetic, within limits, and can generate a personal shield which can defend them from the elements even as they fly. Yet they live much as did the people of Earth, residing in houses, sleeping in beds. In essence, they are human beings. They make and use tools, but have no machines, having renounced those following the Peace. In several stories, Henderson makes clear that the People do not know how to accomplish even the simplest household or farming tasks by hand, without telekinesis.

Their planet, the Home, shows evidence of being on a clear path to destruction. The elders delve deep into their collective and ancestral memories and regain the skills of their ancestors, who had been extremely advanced in technology before the spiritual awakening which is associated with their paranormal abilities. The People race to build starships and to select destinations which they recall from ancestral memory as being sufficiently Homelike.

As the planet convulses in its final spasms, the ships depart, but not all to the same destinations. One boy, gifted as a prophet, resets the guidance system of one of the ships even as it leaves the Home. He has sent this ship of the People to our homeworld, Earth.

The guidance is not perfect. The ships burn up on re-entry, but a large number of the People bail out and reach the surface in small personal craft or "life slips", scattered mostly across the American southwest. Some survive unscathed and others survive with terrible wounds. Some are able to find others of their kind, while others go to their graves alone among humans, or even intermarried with them.

A fairly large community forms somewhere in a remote canyonlands region, apparently in Arizona. Elsewhere, a number of People were rounded up and burned alive by religious devotees who mistook them for witches; a colony formed by survivors seeks not only to conceal but to wipe out their powers, punishing children severely for any paranormal activity, in general replicating the lifestyle of the ironclad fundamentalists who murdered their ancestors.

Eventually, People from a colony world discover the People on Earth, and enable them to leave this planet and go to the New Home.

Abilities

The People have differing levels and types of paranormal powers, and often hold special roles in their society based on their individual abilities. All have at least some level of telepathy and telekinesis, beginning at about age five. As maturity comes to the body, so do abilities come to the mind. Some of the most elderly People are the most powerful.

Some individuals have a special "Gift", enhanced power in a particular specialty, usually discovered at or around puberty (although some take as long as their mid-twenties to find their Gift). Some Gifts take training to master, such as Sorter or Motiver; others such as Seeing (precognition) may come fully developed at inception.

The People have significant control over their own metabolism, and even have the ability to alter themselves to adapt over time to new environments, which could also alter their appearance. Thus, the People who lived on Earth are not exactly the same as the People who lived on Home.

Depending on the Gifts of the individual, some can control local weather, influence the growth of plants, or assist in the healing of sickness or injury. Other "persuasions and designs" include influencing the temperature of objects (freezing water into ice, for instance), or causing metal objects to glow. Interestingly, the last talent was learned from a person of Earth human origin. Some Earth human people are seen to be evolving in a path parallel to that of the People of the Home.

All of the full-blooded People have a personal shield which they use to maintain body heat in inclement weather, to deflect precipitation, and in some cases to store air to maintain easy breathing while flying at high altitudes.

The telekinetic abilities of the People are not explained in detail but the stories depict a certain level of power deriving from within, with access to far greater power without. Individuals can lift themselves and others into flight, evidently by one mechanism or technique, but evidently another form of lifting is used for inanimate objects.

Some of the talents of the People which affect physical material involve "platting". In Henderson's stories, sometimes one of the People will reach out and grab a handful of sunlight, and "platt". Some sort of energy collection and conversion and redirection is involved, and there is some implication of inverse square law effects which seem to involve mass, distance, and luminance, presumably harnessing the interactions of light and gravity. The closer the mass, the greater the power that can be released, and the skills and ability to safely control this comes with age and experience.

While any child can platt with sunlight, elders are said to be the only ones who may safely platt with the light of both sun and moon together. Even young adults take risks platting with moonlight alone. Younger children are admonished not to "platt twishers" though older children seem to be able to do it with some assurance. "Twishers" are never directly described, though in one story, one of the younger People uses the "inanimate lift" on a living human and can't fully release him from the inanimate lift. She says, "...he isn't fastened to the Earth with all the fastenings. I loosed some when I stopped his fall. The shaft helped hold him. But now I-I've got to fasten them all back again. I didn't learn that part very well at home. Everyone can do it for himself. I got so scared when he fell that I forgot all I knew. But I couldn't have done it with him still in the shaft anyway. He would have fallen... I need a source of light-"... ("Angels Unawares").

The power of the elders is such that acting as a group, they can move mountains, and did so to extract the ores to make the starships back on Home.

All of the People have some degree of telepathy. "Subvocal" telepathy communicates with people nearby. A "call" communicates from a farther distance. Some people can transmit images or concepts. All the People send and receive conscious messages and read each other's minds with permission. Some are Gifted as "Sorters," able to go into another person unasked, and at the deepest levels. These are true telepaths, not just reading minds but controlling and reshaping them. Their primary function is as psychological or psychiatric healers. They also retrieve information in emergencies, rearrange memories, and perform selective mental erasure. A related Gift is "Sensitive", responding to and identifying the physical and mental pain of others. They are invaluable to medicine. Healers, found only on the New Home, use techniques such as "no-bi" and "transgraph", which are not explained, and are able to regenerate lost limbs and organs.

Other Gifts include very long distance telepathic communications, telekinetic heavy lifting (and the related "Motiver" Gift which powers spaceships) and limited but locally-spectacular weather control. Some have special talents in music, or in aspects of technology such as technical design or diagrammatic depiction.

Faith

The People have experience of and a relationship with the Presence and the Power, from which flow their life and gifts. They also have an experience of that Power when their lives are ending, and they experience a "Call back to the Presence" as presaging joy and reunion. All of everything is a part of the Name; each person, place, or thing is a syllable of that Name. Each person shares a part of the Presence within them and the Power is there for them if "there's need". It might be said that the life of one of the People is a pronunciation of their syllable of the Name by Presence, the Presence having set a part of itself into the world as the individual. But there is no separation of the ego from the Presence and the Power, nor is there much separation of each individual from the next individual, because of the powerful telepathic gifts inherent in all individuals of the People. There is also perhaps little separation of the individual or community from the environment, if the mind can control matter and matter may be felt by mind.

Respect for everything is at the core of the beliefs and ways of the People, as they are all a part of the Name and only in this life, separate from the Name and the Presence, for a limited time. To abuse another or anything is unthinkable, because as each is a part of the Name and expected to return to the Presence, to abuse another is to abuse and debase a part of one's self. Yet, the People will defend themselves, but mostly through escape; in the stories, none will take another's life.

It is possible to think that some of the philosophy of these fictional People is very similar in some ways to Buddhism. The elements of pacifism and avoidance of either experiencing or causing suffering are quite similar. Yet due to their experience with Earth religions being limited to Christianity due to their being marooned almost exclusively in the US Southwest, they compare their own faith and experience with that which is found in Scripture, and find much commonality. In "Tell Me A Story", a young woman exclaims that the Bible even has "Our Brother" in it (presumably Jesus Christ), and begins to recite Psalm 139. "Though I take the wings of the morning..." Further, in "Michal Without", one of the People notes that it seems to them that the beliefs of the humans (actually, of the Christians so far encountered) seem to be not too strange, as the Christian Trinity strikes the People as similar enough to their own concepts of Name, Presence, and Power. Though not directly supported by canon, it may also be noted that the concept of all extant things being "syllables in the Name" is not unlike concepts in Animism or Pantheism such as immanence of the divine.

Temperament

The People are not without a sense of whimsy or orneriness, but in general they are pacifists. They practice tough love and do not hold with self-pity or pride; they might be thought to be rather existentialist.

Children are strictly and sternly disciplined ("an undisciplined child is an abomination") and this may be seen as reasonable, given the capabilities of even children of the People. Instantaneous, unquestioning obedience is expected under many circumstances, particularly if it is believed that "there's need" or on any matter which may concern keeping the existence and differences of the People a secret. Yet as children enter their teen years, a certain and increasing degree of latitude was customary on the origin planet Home, and most of the stories of the People on Earth involve the struggle of young people learning to be their own good masters.

References