SciFi Short Story/Novella where Advanced Aliens are Choosing a Galactic Overseer

Question

My memory on this is a little fuzzy since I thought the story was in one of the Golden Age of anthologies that I have but I can't find it there.

I can provide a few more details than in the title.

There are a few different episodes or situations. We are not quite sure what is going on at first but we come to understand that the different characters are actually the same person in multiple simulations or incarnations being tested or assessed by some Galactic Overlord I believe as a replacement or a successor.

IIRC the first episode begins with the character as a prisoner: we see how he responds to being tortured. In one episode, the same character is a musician about to be in a competition. The denouement occurs with the person being told that he was successful: he has been chosen/is successful and will be the new Galactic protector or overseer.

I would just like to find a title and author for that so I can track down the story again. I think it was written in the 1950s or earlier.

Answer 1

I believe this is Jack Vance’s Brain of the Galaxy, aka The New Prime, from Worlds Beyond, 1951. Scans are available for free on the web but I am not 100% certain about copyright so I am not posting links here.

The story is a series of disconnected tales. The first one, a man finds himself naked at a cocktail party and must evade the morality police. Once he has, the scene shifts and now he is a member of a tribe whose village was destroyed, and he gathers his people to enact vengeance. In another is a soldier tortured for information.

In the end, the man awakens and we find out that these were a series of tests to decide who would be the new Prime (kind of a galactic overlord). The protagonist was the former Prime and the time had come for a new one to be chosen. He had helped design the tests to reflect the leadership qualities that he thought were necessary for the job- courage, willpower, cleverness, etc.

However the head of his cabinet equivalent explains that there is a philosophy that the character of the leader psychically reverberates into the rest of the universe. There had been greater violence since he had been Prime. He had designed the tests, and had excelled at them- but by nature of designing the tests, they were ones he would have excelled in.

Instead, the cabinet had chosen one of the other applicants who had taken the test. When appearing naked at the cocktail party, he had tried to convince the other guests to embrace a naturalist lifestyle. When he found his village destroyed, he tried to broker peace. In each scenario he failed. But that kindness and generosity of spirit was what the cabinet wanted to emanate throughout the universe rather than the sharp witted hardness from the now former Prime.

In the end, the new Prime is taken out and hailed, dribbling, mentally broken from the torture experience.