Summary of "Sirius"

Fifty years ago, the philosopher Olaf Stapledon published a novel, Sirius, which explores some of the depths of loneliness and alienation to which genetic engineering might lead. Stapledon knew nothing of DNA and molecular biology, but he foresaw the possibility of genetic engineering and saw that it would give rise to severe dilemmas. His hero, Sirius, is a dog endowed with a brain of human capacity by doses of nerve-growth hormone given to him in utero. His creator raised him as a member of...

 Collective Mind from Olaf Stapledon

The designers of our species set out to produce a being that might be capable of an order of mentality higher than their own. The only possibility of doing so lay in planning a great increase in brain organisation. But they knew that the brain of an individual human being could not safely be allowed to exceed a certain weight. They therefore sought to produce the new order of mentality in a system of distinct and specialised brains held in "telepathic" unity by means of ethereal radiation. Ma...