marotta%lezah.DEC@decwrl.ARPA (08/05/85)
From: marotta%lezah.DEC@decwrl.ARPA (MARY MAROTTA) I just finished this book, and wanted to share my reactions with you. I recommend reading it. A review of Forty Thousand in Gehenna, by C.J.Cherryh Gehenna is an earthlike planet with few indigenous lifeforms, the most noteworthy of which is a race of large lizard-like creatures called calibans, who construct elaborate systems of tunnels and mounds above and below the planet's surface. The first human colonists on Gehenna number nearly 40 thousand, including scientists, staff, and over 30 thousand cloned workers. The novel describes these first colonists and their descendants on this rather inhospitable planet, after the expected supply ships with reinforcements fail to arrive. While the Alliance of planets undergoes beaurocratic changes, the colony is left to mutate and adapt to existence on Gehenna without the modern conveniences of technology and the "benefit" of guidance from the Alliance. The book covers 300 years of human development on Gehenna, and the effects of off-world penetration on the maturing new society. Cherryh succeeds in describing these years by taking an in-depth look at one or two characters every few generations -- the result is a fast-paced novel full of sensitive characters closely bound by the plot. The lizards on Gehenna display abilities that come to light only as they and humans begin to interact in the effort to survive. They and the humans grow to accept and depend on one another, and to influence each other's development. The novel reevaluates our definition of an "intelligent species" and even questions our ability, as human beings, to objectively determine the "intelligence" of another race or species. Here's a short exerpt from an early chapter in the story: "Calibans had never made domes, her father said, until they saw the domes of main Camp; but they made them now, and larger and grander, raised great bald hills on this side and that of the Styx. Beyond them were the solid hills, the natural hills; and then the fields all checkered green and brown; and the rusting knot of giant machines -- and the tow, and the big, shining tower that caught the sun and fed power to the little cluster of domes before the graveyard and the sea..." Read and enjoy -- I did!