Crown of Creation

Excuse me, Mr. Jefferson Airplane's Publisher's Lawyer, they don't own the rights to these lyrics, since all but a line or two were written by John Wyndham and used with his permission. And quoting them is fair use!

In his novel The Chrysalids (Re-Birth in the U.S.), the U.S. survivors of a nuclear holocaust ("the Tribulation") are fundamentalist Christians. They persecute mutants -- "Deviations" -- without realizing that there are, among them, a new species of telepathic humans.

Late the in the novel, the narrator David is furious at his father and asks aloud, "Am I supposed to forgive him, or try to kill him?" He gets an unexpected telepathic reply from a member of the established telepathic settlement (I've emphasized the exact portions Kantner used, and noted the slight alterations).

She tells him:

"Let him be. Your work [-> "My life:] is to survive. Neither his kind, nor his kind of thinking will survive long. They [-> "You"] are the crown of creation, they are ambition fulfilled, they have nowhere more to go [-> "and you've got no place to go"]. But life is change, that is how it differs from the rocks, change is its very nature."

"The living form defies evolution at its peril, if it does not adapt, it will be broken. The Old People brought down Tribulation, and were broken into fragments by it. Your father and his kind are a part of those fragments. They are determined still that there is a final form to defend. *Soon they will [-> "you'll] attain the stability they [-> "you"] strive for, in the only form it is [-> "way that it's] granted -- a place among the fossils. [added to fill out the melody line: " .... of our time.]

In their next conversation she explains how species must always fight against their extinction. "In loyalty to their kind, they cannot tolerate our rise [-> "minds"]. In loyalty to our kind, we cannot tolerate their obstruction.

I cannot find a source for "I've seen their ways too often for my liking," but I'm only skimming through a novel I last read many years ago, and it does sound like Wyndham. The last line, "And be alive for you" seems to be original.

One interesting thing about the adaptation is that he changed "they" to "you" in the first quote, in order to speak directly to the Establishment, but left the pronouns in the second quote unaltered. He also changes "rise" to "minds" in order to get a rhyme, the only one in the lyric until the end, and since it is literally the minds of the new species that the Old People could not tolerate (were they to learn of them), that's a cool shout-out to the book. But it may be the reason he left the pronouns unaltered (which is somewhat confusing at first): the claim that the Establishment "cannot tolerate our minds" would seem a little over the top.

Kantner was a huge science fiction fan, and Re-Birth was the very first item in the huge (and superb) two volume A Treasury of Great Science Fiction that you got when you joined the Science Fiction Book Club. He likely read it there. His first solo album (also credited to Jefferson Starship), Blows Against the Empire, was a sci-fi concept album, and he wrote some sci-fi songs for the Airplane as well ("War Movie" is an underrated one). It's not surprising that he found what seemed to be a perfect metaphor for the battle between the counter-culture and the Establishment in a science fiction novel, and turned it into one of his very best songs.

Based on the science fiction novel Re-Birth by John Wyndham, also called The Chrysalyds. Kantner wrote it as a reflection of the times being 1968 where the counter-culture was more in direct confrontation with mainstream culture. Human evolution has reached an apex and must change in order to survive.