Shikasta tends towards extremes in all things. For instance, it has seen phases of enormousness: gigantic life-forms and in a wide variety. It has seen phases of the minuscule. Sometimes these epochs have overlapped. More than once the inhabitants of Shikasta have included creatures so large that one of them could consume the food and living space of hundreds of their co-inhabitants in a single meal. This example is on the scale of the visible (one might even say the dramatic), for the economy of the planet is such that every life-form preys on another, is supported by another, and in its turn is preyed upon, down to the most minute, the subatomic level. This is not always evident to the creatures themselves, who tend to become obsessed with what they consume, and to forget what in turn consumes them.

Over and over again, a shock or a strain in the peculiarly precarious balance of this planet has called forth an accident, and Shikasta has been virtually denuded of life. Again and again it has been jostling-full with genera, and diseased because of it.

This planet is above all one of contrasts and contradictions, because of its in-built stresses. Tension is its essential nature. This is its strength. This is its weakness.

Envoys are requested to remember at all times that they cannot find on Shikasta what they will have become familiar with in other parts of our dominion and which therefore they will have become disposed to expect: very long periods of stasis, epochs of almost unchanging harmonious balance.

Envoys are requested to equip themselves by thorough preparation. It is left to them to make mental adjustments suggested by what they will find in Section 5 of the Planetary Demonstration Building.

For instance. They may care to stand in front of the Model of Shikasta, Scale 3 - scaled, that is, to roughly present sizes. (Dominant species half of Canopean size.) This sphere, which you will see as they see it on their mapping and cartographic devices, has the diameter of their average predominant-species size.