In The Sirian Experiments we are given the Sirian version, narrated by a woman named Ambien II, of experiments carried out on earth (Shikasta/Rohanda). Ambien is one of five leaders of Sirius, and for all intents and purposes immortal—a circumstance, by the way, that ultimately undermines the dramatic potential of the novel, at least in the few instances that Lessing abandons a rather dreary expository style and shows characters in action. To know that a character is immortal is to be aware that, like the star of a Hollywood movie, she can't die before the last frame, or in this case, chapter. The use of this kind of character as a central figure simply closes off too many narrative possibilities, and it restricts Lessing to a solemn, ponderous and finally undramatic mode of narration somewhere between a sermon and a tract on cosmology. (p. 34)

Ambien … realizes...