Explore "The Skylark of Valeron" by E.E. Smith on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Far out in the depths of the intergalactic void there sped along upon its strange course the newly materialized planet of the intellectuals. Desolate and barren it was, and apparently destitute of life; but life was there -- eternal, disembodied life, unaffected by any possible extreme of heat or cold, requiring for its continuance neither water nor air, nor, for that matter, any material substance whatsoever. And from somewhere in the vacuum above that planet's forbidding surface there emanated a thought -- a thought coldly clear, abysmally hopeless.
"I have but one remaining aim in this life. While I have failed again, as I have failed innumerable times in the past, I shall keep on trying until I succeed in assembling in sufficient strength the exact forces necessary to disrupt this sixth-order pattern which is I."