The Back of Our Heads

In Short

Stephen Barr’s science fiction narrative explores the intersections of a timeless, collective intelligence and the messy, individual lives of humans across the ages. The story follows a female emissary who repeatedly incarnates into different historical eras—from prehistoric settlements and Roman-occupied Britain to Edwardian suffragette circles and a modern university laboratory—only to find herself fundamentally altered by the human experience. Through these cycles, the boundary between the unified cosmic entity and the antagonistic egos of mankind begins to dissolve, culminating in a profound confrontation between collective absorption and individual consciousness.

The Story

The narrative opens with a frame dialogue between an immortal, collective intelligence known as the "Unity" and its designated emissary, who takes on a female form and distinct individuality when visiting humanity. The emissary reflects on her historical missteps and incarnations, beginning with a primitive era where she found herself transformed into a cat among superstitious villagers, and later encountering early humans experimenting with fire and agriculture. She notes the stubborn persistence of human traditions, such as a prehistoric hunter who stubbornly mimics animal traits based on sympathetic magic, and her eventual execution by a secret druidic sect using a stone sickle.

Shifting forward in time, the emissary experiences Roman Britain, where she appears as a headman's sharp-tongued granddaughter who aids Pictish rebels against Roman soldiers led by a weary captain. Centuries later, she surfaces as a rebellious schoolgirl named Sarah Stone in Edwardian England, fiercely defending her mother—a militant suffragette—against a rigid headmistress, Miss Wakefield, before ultimately being expelled.

In the modern framing, the emissary exists as Katherine, the blind wife of Dr. Russell Farley, a young college president. Katherine spends her time around a theoretical physicist named Phil Kaufman, who is working on a revolutionary framework involving hyper-time and cosmological analogies between atomic structures and star systems. As Phil and Farley clash over academic freedom, professional jealousy, and government oversight from the Atomic Energy Commission, the lines between Katherine’s mortal identity and her cosmic origin blur. The Unity decides to enact total absorption, merging the collective subconscious with the antagonistic egos of all men. As the AEC closes in on Phil's research and tensions boil over between the two men, Katherine finds herself caught between the impending dissolution of the Unity and her genuine emotional ties to her mortal husband, realizing that human consciousness has finally detected and begun to examine the cosmic observer in return.

How It Unfolds

• The cosmic report — The immortal entity questions its emissary about her erratic field trips through time, criticizing her tendency to take on individual female forms and accumulate human eccentricities.
• Prehistoric domesticity — An early incarnation observes stubborn hunters discovering the uses of fire and arguing with a practical woman who practices rudimentary selective breeding with plant roots.
• The Roman outpost — The emissary manifests as a sharp-tongued granddaughter in Roman Britain who helps local tribes ambush an occupying Roman detachment led by a sleepy, wine-drinking captain.
• The Edwardian schoolroom — Manifesting as a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl named Sarah, she matches wits with a severe headmistress while defending her suffragette mother and refusing to back down from false accusations of cheating.
• The modern laboratory — Operating as Katherine, a blind woman married to a university president, she engages in deep discussions about hyper-time and physics with a researcher named Phil Kaufman.
• The impending convergence — The hive-mind pushes for total unification and absorption of mankind just as government investigators arrive at the university, forcing a collision between cosmic strategy and human emotion.

The People

• The Emissary / Katherine — Acts as the eye and voice of the cosmic Unity, taking on mortal female forms to understand human nature. She desires genuine comprehension of live things, faces criticism from her superiors for her growing subjectivity, and ultimately becomes deeply protective of her human identity.
• Dr. Russell Farley — The ambitious young college president and Katherine's husband. He maintains a polished, reasonable exterior that masks deep insecurities, territorial jealousy toward Phil, and a pragmatic willingness to capitulate to institutional authority.
• Phil Kaufman — A passionate, sharp-tongued theoretical physicist working on advanced concepts of hyper-time and cosmic structure. He values intellectual freedom above all else and falls into fierce rivalry and personal conflict with Farley over Katherine.
• Miss Wakefield — The rigid, status-conscious headmistress of St. Agatha's school who despises militant suffragettes and attempts to force a public confession from Sarah, only to find her authority met with unyielding defiance.

In Its Own Voice

• Describing her frequent and perilous brushes with historical intolerance, the emissary notes her fate among early peoples: "Burned again? Yes. Seems to be a habit of yours. What happens? How does it feel?"
• Analyzing the limitations of human governance from her historical vantage point, a sharp-tongued young woman observes: "It seems to me that warfare is the result of somebody trying to take somebody else's land and subject him to a law that is alien to him."
• Explaining the peculiar nature of her sensory perception to a curious scientist, Katherine remarks: "As though I was blind? Correct. And it's incredible the way you get around. You never bump into anything, and you look people right in the eye when they talk to you."

What It's Really About

The narrative investigates the paradox of observation and change, drawing parallels between quantum uncertainty principles and anthropological study. It questions whether an external observer can ever examine a system without altering it, or be altered in turn by the subject. Beneath the interplay of hive-mind control and human history lies an inquiry into individuality versus collective harmony. The book argues that true integration cannot be imposed by an overarching authority without destroying the unique, antagonistic egos that make human consciousness vibrant. Ultimately, it asks whether love, error, and individual suffering are flaws to be corrected by cosmic unification or the very essence of living existence.

Why Read It Today

Readers who appreciate intellectually playful science fiction that bridges ancient history, philosophy, and mid-century theoretical physics will find much to admire here. Stephen Barr writes with a witty, dry precision that treats cosmic concepts and domestic friction with equal narrative weight. Reading the text feels like stepping into an intellectual parlor game where a disembodied hive-mind argues with a remarkably stubborn female avatar about the nature of human stubbornness.

While the story carries the mid-century stylistic cadence of its original 1958 publication, its thematic preoccupation with the observer effect and institutional control feels remarkably contemporary. The narrative requires patience as it shifts fluidly across millennia, moving from cave dwellings to modern lecture halls without traditional exposition. What stays with the reader long after the final page is the striking image of an immortal, all-seeing intelligence being permanently unmade not by cosmic weapons, but by the messy, irreducible warmth of human affection and error.