Ah, gentle reader. I bought this book in the swirling mists of pre-history where by “pre-history,” I mean before I started tracking book purchases on the blog–probably not long before, as the real book sale frenzies would have not begun before the 21st century–well, not much–although it might come from my Ebay days where I bought books like this for a buck or less each and listed them for a couple of bucks a throw on Ebay. I did come up with boxes of books then, and when I gave up on them, I put them in my sainted mother’s yard sale, and she once set up the night before, and several hundred dollars’ worth of books, or at least books I paid several hundred dollars for, were ruined.
But not this book. It remained in my to-read stacks, most recently (and maybe for 16 years) in the hall between the offices. I must have pulled it out and put it back many times, as I remembered that mid-70s cover with the, what, sasquatchish creature on the cover? The back of the book looked interesting, but not compelling, but eventually the time came to read it, and that time was last week.
So: On a cold planet which has a narrow habitable band between a sun-blasted side and a side where the sun never shines–and where the narrow band has a year of sun and a year of darkness–a species called the Onhla are dying out from a disease which sickens but does not kill the last, Hult. He’s on his way to human settlements with invaluable furs from the starside of the planet where only the Onhla can travel. They’re stolen when he’s sick, though, but they create a sensation as traders from a galactic corporation want more. Hult agrees if the traders will help him to another planet where some Onhla were taken centuries ago so he can find a mate. They do, but the senior trade delegate dies on the return trip, and the more militant and haughty junior member of the group “renegotiates” the deal by demanding additional furs, but Hult renegotiates by killing the two troopers and breaking the back of the now-senior trade manager. Who comes back to the planet generations later (space travel, you know) seeking revenge on the Onhla race and helps the grandson of the previous tyrant to track down a renegade band who can remember the old ways to Starside. The expedition goes bad for everyone.
So, I’m pretty sure I’ve said it before, but some of the midlist (Midlist! The copy I have is a book club edition, which meant people were buying stuff like this in enough quantities to print book club editions, although perhaps this was the bulk of the print run at the time.), the midlist (he repeated so you could remember where we were in the sentence) the midlist science fiction was far more speculative than what you would get later. I guess in 1977, you could find the James Blish Star Trek books, and Star Wars was about to hit big, meaning science fiction would suddenly be awash in space opera. But with these little midlist books, you never knew where they would go. This one skips generations, but with the main character evolving into almost a god amongst the creatures on the planet including the humans whose settlement grows over time (but will probably decline, as the epilogue is the trading company abandoning its contact with the planet).
So perhaps I should not have dodged this book for decades. It made me want to try out more of the era, but maybe not that boxed set whose first volume I picked out the night before last but will likely put back the next time I pass by the chair. I will continue to dodge that boxed set for another decade or maybe forever.
