Travels in Nihilon

Prologue

More than twenty-five years have gone by since a guidebook to Nihilon was published. A committee of editors has therefore decided to collect information for a new and more up-to-date volume. This is a difficult undertaking because Nihilon is, by and large, that undiscovered country from which few travellers can be expected to return. Nevertheless your Chief Editor hopes to complete the writing of this handbook when his five more active collaborators — soon to be introduced — have come back from Nihilon itself.

The reason for publishing a handbook to Nihilon is that tourists seeking strange meetings and unexpected thrills, travellers with unusual desires, and people wanting merely to live in that country, need the experience of others on which to plan their hopes and expectations. Although it is true that out of many who have gone to Nihilon, few have returned with enough lucidity to give information or tell of their adventures, it must be said that guidebooks are not written for those who come back, but to prime those with the impetus to go, and to help those ardent spirits who have the good fortune to arrive.

In any case, the little-known country of Nihilon can claim certain achievements worth showing to the world. Its nihilism, they say, is second to none. Its nihilistic principles are applied to modern life in such a way that, as one lands at Nihilon City Airport, being only permitted to approach at dusk, a string of immense and lit-up letters nearly two kilometres long spells out the coruscating message:

NIHILISM WORKS!

Such a country ought to be explored and, if possible, described.

At the same time we also believe that whatever dangers are to be met with in Nihilon will be effectively dispelled if sufficiently written about. Indeed it is our fond hope that a thorough guidebook to a country whose life and economy is based on nihilistic principles could certainly be not a little responsible for undermining the very foundations of the country itself, and bringing about a new and more lawful era in its history. Man, by nature, is not nihilistic, and in order to make him behave and live in such a fashion, one can assume that certain ‘principles of nihilism’ have been formulated by the one man who runs the country, and whom we hope to meet in the course of this narrative. Though Nihilon, through him, has devised the perfect system of regimented chaos as the best way of safeguarding the eternal spirits of its citizens, this is no proof that a better method could not safeguard them even more.

Since most of the capitalistic freedom-loving nations are going in the same direction, we feel it our duty to show the truth of what Nihilon claims to have achieved by way of constructive nihilism. We will also fill in the pot-holes of its recent history, and instruct in geography, as well as voice a few opinions on the arts and other matters — about which recent travel and encyclopaedic works are all too vague.

Certain documents have already arrived from my five collaborators in the field, and I will incorporate other material in this book as it comes to hand. It will be necessary to adjust the prose here and there, since the styles of the reports too often betray touches of panic and hysteria, a tone that may not commend itself to the general reader.

Some might say that the original reports, being more in tune with events related, should have been left as they were written, and that the style I have adopted may be less vivid. To which I reply that since the documents came into my hands and not those of my forewarned critics, then I am the one who will have the final word on it. A guidebook to such a country as Nihilon puts me into an unbending frame of mind, which I feel is necessary if I am to maintain strict control over such disordered nihilistic material.

I spoke to all five members of this perilous expedition before they set out, and from everyone received permission to arrange their notes as I thought fit. Whether this compliance was because they were visiting Nihilon, and not another more civilized country, I have as yet no way of knowing, though I decided that this may well be the truth on reading the preliminary despatches.

If it is eventually plain that Nihilon will not after all submit itself to having a guidebook written about it, then this work will have to be presented in the form of a novel. I hope novelists will forgive me for this, because it seems that after sifting through the basic material to hand, I may well find it necessary to move into their territory.

But this Guide to Nihilon comes from underground, and may have been tainted by the nihilistic quality of the material in question. However that may be, let us begin the story of five people who travelled to Nihilon. They were foolhardy, but who is not?