O planeta Athshe era um verdadeiro paraíso, coberto por densas e colossais florestas. Seus habitantes, humanoides com pouco mais de um metro de altura e corpos cobertos por pelos verdes e sedosos, viviam em paz.
Então outros vieram. Muito mais altos e de pele lisa, eles caíram do céu e começaram a desbravar o território ao seu redor, enxergando os nativos como meros animais selvagens. Eles vieram de um mundo em ruínas e superpovoado, faminto por matérias-primas, madeira e grãos: a Terra.
Sem precedentes culturais para tirania, escravidão ou guerra, os nativos encontram-se à mercê de seus novos e brutais colonizadores.
Quando o desespero atinge níveis inimagináveis, uma revolução é inevitável. Cada golpe contra os invasores será um golpe contra sua própria humanidade. Mas os conquistadores alienígenas os ensinaram a odiar.... e não há como voltar atrás.
I wish i owned the version with this cover! recommended this to a friend, thought i would reread to see if I liked it as much as i used to. I do. I definitely a message story and anti-colonialism is in the forefront. It's short and reads like a parable.
I wish i owned the version with this cover! recommended this to a friend, thought i would reread to see if I liked it as much as i used to. I do. I definitely a message story and anti-colonialism is in the forefront. It's short and reads like a parable.
The novella makes an odd counterpoint to Little Fuzzy: In this case the humans recognized the natives' sapience right away -- barely -- but decide to enslave them and clear-cut their world anyway.
It bounces between several viewpoints: one of the natives who has escaped from slavery, a sympathetic human scientist...and the villain, a gung-ho military type who thinks he's the best of humanity, but shows himself to be among the worst.
It's a tragedy, a train wreck, a slow-moving avalanche, and yet every time there's a chance to pause and maybe resolve the situation, Davidson chooses to escalate things instead.
While it's directly a response to America's actions in the Vietnam War, the themes of colonial exploitation, dehumanization, psyops, asymmetrical warfare and environmental degradation are still very topical.
It's not nuanced. It won't make you think about new ideas like The Left Hand of …
The novella makes an odd counterpoint to Little Fuzzy: In this case the humans recognized the natives' sapience right away -- barely -- but decide to enslave them and clear-cut their world anyway.
It bounces between several viewpoints: one of the natives who has escaped from slavery, a sympathetic human scientist...and the villain, a gung-ho military type who thinks he's the best of humanity, but shows himself to be among the worst.
It's a tragedy, a train wreck, a slow-moving avalanche, and yet every time there's a chance to pause and maybe resolve the situation, Davidson chooses to escalate things instead.
While it's directly a response to America's actions in the Vietnam War, the themes of colonial exploitation, dehumanization, psyops, asymmetrical warfare and environmental degradation are still very topical.
It's not nuanced. It won't make you think about new ideas like The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, or The Lathe of Heaven. (The Athsheans' dream state is interesting, but not explored deeply and not the point of the story.) But it will make you angrier at the people who are still doing the exploiting.
Cross-posted from my website, where I go into a bit more detail on the Terrans' dehumanization of the Athsheans, and current events.
it's a fairly short and straightforward story about resistance to colonization, but embedded in it is a kind of complicated discussion about the legitimacy of violence. It seems like it was in part a commentary on the Vietnam War (which is even alluded to at one point).
Don Davidson is one of the more thoroughly unpleasant viewpoint characters I've read; fortunately he is meant to be villainous, & at any rate it's only from his point of view for about a third of the book. His motivation, worldview & actions are disturbing but accurate for a certain sort of man.
it's a fairly short and straightforward story about resistance to colonization, but embedded in it is a kind of complicated discussion about the legitimacy of violence. It seems like it was in part a commentary on the Vietnam War (which is even alluded to at one point).
Don Davidson is one of the more thoroughly unpleasant viewpoint characters I've read; fortunately he is meant to be villainous, & at any rate it's only from his point of view for about a third of the book. His motivation, worldview & actions are disturbing but accurate for a certain sort of man.
