| $@%&! level: Low “Bedroom” level: Low Violence level: Medium-Low (the violence is more attempted than anything, although it would have been very bloody had it succeeded) Back Cover: “After the first human contact with the Siwannese, that entire race committed mass suicide. So the Terran government made a law—no further contact would be allowed with sentient creatures any where in the galaxy. Therefore Doona could be colonized only if an official survey established that the planet was both habitable and uninhabited. But Spacedep had made a mistake—Doona was inhabited. Now the colonists' choice was limited. Leave Doona and return to the teeming hell of an overpopulated Terra. Or kill the catlike Hrrubans. Or learn, for the first time in history, how to coexist with an alien race.” |
To me, this has always been a story about Frontier. You could almost get the exact same story from a group of people leaving the civilized, but crowded and unhealthy, world of London and settling in the American West in the late 1700's. Except there wouldn't be any cat-like aliens co-settling there, and even London never got as crowded and downright oppressive as Earth is shown here. As an avowed and card-carrying introvert, living like that would have driven me mad as a spoon before I ever reached adulthood. But the more relaxed attitude that the Doona colonists—of both species— have toward social rules and conventions does remind me strongly of the American frontier. When you're worried about surviving the winter, you can't care quite so much if you accidentally tread on someone's heel. Yes, Ken Reeve is a proper Western cowboy type, and his son is destined to be even more so, and I admire both of them precisely because they don't—and can't—fit in on Earth. In other circumstances, it could have been a tragedy, but here it's a case of fitting a square peg in a square hole. Those two were meant to go to Doona.
It might seem like the conflict is going to be the Humans versus the Hrrubans. That's sort of the way it's set up, and human against alien is a long-standing science fiction standard. But it isn't, and I love what it is instead. Given what I've said about my introversion and the oppressive and stagnant society back on Earth (and also on the Hrruban homeworld, it turns out), you probably won't be surprised when I say I totally love that the conflict actually turns out to be between the colonists of both species and their respective governments. The people in power don't like the situation, and they don't like the colonists for landing them in the situation, and they don't want to look like fools in front of the populace. So they're being politicians, while the people at ground zero are getting on with life and survival, regardless. Sometimes, you figure out how to do something by doing it, not by talking about it, and the people who want to analyze and discuss everything are just going to end up getting in the way.