Classic Short Story review: "Chaos co-ordinated" by John MacDougal
In which a galaxy-spanning supercivilisation becomes, so-to-speak, snarked ...
"Chaos, Co-ordinated" by John MacDougal is a 1946 short story and an absolute gem.
We would not tease people by posting a review of this story if it were impossible to get hold of: it can be obtained, but it isn't easy. This was only the second book in ten years your reviewers failed to find on Amazon: we got it from the Abebooks.com website.
The story was originally published in the October 1946 issue of "Astounding" science fiction, edited by John W Campbell Junior and this, although it is not easy to find, can be obtained. At the time of posting there is a copy of that magazine available at
Incidentally, we found this edition of "Astounding" not by searching for "Chaos, co-ordinated," nor by searching for Astounding magazine itself, but by searching for the headline story featured on the front cover, which was "The Chronicler" by A.E. van Vogt. At some point we will post a review of that story on this blog.
"Chaos co-ordinated" is set in an unspecified future period when humanity has discovered interstellar travel and almost immediately run into a highly advanced multi-race supercivilisation which controls much of the galaxy, which is referred to in the story Celestia or "The Celestials" and is run by an administrative body known as the "Co-ordination."
This civilisation is a million years old, very advanced, and very highly centralised - every Celestial captain and ship is used to doing exactly what "Co-ordination" tells them.
This being a mid 20th century SF story, this contact soon becomes hostile - the Celestials demand that humans "submit" to Co-ordination and when earth refuses, war follows. At the time of the story the war has been raging for fifteen years and five million humans have died. Co-ordination can be fooled once by a given trick, but it analyses what happens, tells every celestial ship about the trick and how to defeat it, and the trick never works again.
The heroes of the story have a master plan to feed the supercomputer AI which runs Co-ordination what we would today call a tailored computer virus to disrupt it. (This is not the language used in the story but author John MacDougal explains it quite clearly and those are the terms we would use today for what he is obviously describing.)
Unfortunately things go wrong, and the earthman who reaches the input-device for Co-ordination has to make a snap decision about what to feed into the computer without the planned virus available.
He takes a mad or brilliant gamble on what might disrupt an AI, he recites a few verses from a very old and very psychedelic poem.
To say any more about the plot and the outcome would be a spoiler but the story is highly entertaining.
If you ever have an opportunity to read "Chao, co-ordimated" we very much recommend it.
Mitth'raw'nuruodo
Comments