Unearthly Neighbors

by Chad Oliver

Genres: Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Hard Science Fiction

Synopsis

A team of explorers, led by anthropologist Monte Stewart, encounter aliens in the Sirius system, but disastrously underestimate the differences between the two races

Release date: September 5, 1984

Publisher: Random House Value Publishing

Print pages: 192

Sample

Unearthly Neighbors (1960) was Chad Oliver’s fourth novel and his fifth book of fiction (counting 1955’s distinguished story collection, Another Kind). With it he closed a decade of impressive growth as a writer, by carrying forward his favorite theme of contact between intelligent species to a level of complexity and drama rarely seen in works of science fiction. “Chad Oliver continues to put his anthropology degree to good use,” wrote Frederik Pohl. “Other science fiction writers have invented more ‘alien’ aliens than these for us to make contact with. Few, though, have been as able as Oliver to convince us that this is the way first contact is going to be.”

As humankind reaches out across the light years to confront another humanity, we see how both forms of intelligence are compelled to face their own inner natures before they can even begin to understand each other. Being alien, in Oliver’s sensitive analysis, is not just a matter of physiological differences, but also a dimension of culture and history overlaid on the biology.

Sirius Nine is a vividly imagined world; its alternate humanity is complex and deeply felt. The anthropological puzzle presented by the planet’s humanoid civilization is fascinatingly detailed, as are the lives of the investigators from our own future Earth. It’s a wise novel, probing our deepest feelings as it strives to answer the question: what is a human being? Seeking the answer, Oliver’ story faces us squarely with one of the central points of all literature—that mostly we do not know well enough what we are under the overlay of civilization. There is nothing naively escapist about Oliver’s fiction. He jolts feelings and provokes thought.

But even though he was not a writer of simple-minded adventures, Oliver’s work is adventurous, exciting, suspenseful, and even harrowing; no seeker of absorbing narrative will be disappointed. His portraits of our culture-bound humanity at odds with itself gain intensity when alien humanities come on the scene. Oliver had no illusions about the worst in us even as he presented what might become better. His all-too-human protagonists struggle with their own inner failings as well as with external problems. Oliver knew that we have not yet replaced given nature with a wholly successful creation of our own; in fact we may fail at this project of remaking ourselves and our environments and die off in waste and warring.

An outdoorsman and lover of nature, Oliver was also a romantic poet singing the subtleties of ecological-cultural adaptations. In this aspect his work has been compared to that of Clifford D. Simak, and to later writers Michael Bishop, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Eleanor Arnason. Anthropologist Oliver shows us humanity trying to transcend the natural system in which it evolved. Can this creature continue to adapt to its own changes or is it an exile incapable of either accepting itself for what it is or changing itself into something better?

Humankind, for Oliver, was an ongoing project of vast proportions, run by an intermittently enlightened artisan, humanity itself. Either we will learn enough to help ourselves mature as a culture—we do this better individually at every point—or we will remain on a historical treadmill, if we don’t destroy ourselves. Combine this critical approach with an anthropologist’s varied insights and a writer’s careful attention to his own individual experience and you have an author who stands directly in the best tradition of a searching, probing science fiction—one in which, in the words of Anthony Boucher, “the science is as accurately absorbing as the fiction is richly human” and deserves the science fiction term because it delivers on its full, genuine meaning.

Unearthly Neighbors was first published as a paperback original in 1960. The distinguished-looking Ballantine edition was well received, even though H. W. Hall’s Science Fiction Book Review Index lists only notices by P. S. Miller, Leslie Flood, S. E. Cotts, and Frederik Pohl. It was not a great year for science fiction publishing. There was no British edition and only one translation. For this new edition, the author made substantial revisions in the early chapters and various corrections throughout the text, thus making the Crown 1985 publication the first definitive hardcover edition. Unfortunately, the Crown editions of these three alien novels, despite good bindings, typography, and cover art, showed a marked reluctance on the part of production personnel to make galley corrections. More than a hundred were inexplicably ignored in all three novels, but these have now been made.

—George ZebrowskiDelmar, NY 2007

High above the tossing trees that were the roof of the world, the fierce white sun burned in a wind-swept sky.

Alone in the cool, mottled shade of the forest floor, the naked man sat with his back resting against his tree and listening to the sigh of the woods around him. He was an old man now, old with the weight of too many years, and his thoughts were troubled.

He lifted his long right arm and held it before him. There was strength in Volmay yet; the muscles in his arm were firm and supple. He could still climb high if he chose, still dive for the strong branches far below, still feel the intoxicating rush of the air in his face …

He let the arm drop.

It was not only Volmay’s body that was old; the body mattered little. No. it was Volmay’s thoughts that worried him. There was a bitter irony about it, really. A man worked and studied all his life so that one day he would be at peace with himself, all duties done, all questions answered, all dreams explained. And then …

He shook his head.

It was true that he was alone, but all of the People were much alone. It was true that his children were gone, but they were good children and he could see them if he wished. It was true that his mate no longer called out to him when the blood pulsed with the fevers of the spring, but that was as it should be. It was true that he had only a few years of life remaining to him, but life no longer seemed as precious to Volmay as it had in the lost, sunlit years.

He looked up at a fugitive patch of blue sky that showed through the red leaves of the trees. He had walked life’s long pathway as it was meant to be walked, and he knew what there was to know. He had not been surprised—except once—and he had not been afraid.

And yet, strangely, he was not content.

Perhaps, he thought, it was only the weight of the years that whispered to him; it was said that the old ones had one eye in the Dream. Or perhaps it had been that one surprise, that one glimpse of the thing that glinted silver in the sky …

But there was something within him that was unsatisfied and unfulfilled. He felt that his life had somehow tricked him, cheated him. There was something within him that was like an ache in his heart.

How could that be?

Volmay closed his dark eyes, seeking the dream-state. The dream wisdom would come, of course, and that was good. But he already knew what he would dream; he was not a child …

Volmay stirred restlessly.

The great white Sun drifted down the arc of afternoon. The wind died away and the trees grew still.

The naked man dreamed. And—perhaps—he waited.

“Free will?”

Monte Stewart chuckled and tugged at his untidy beard. “What the devil do you mean by that?”

The student who had imprudently expressed a desire to major in anthropology had a tough time in choking off his flood of impassioned rhetoric, but he managed it. “Free will?” he echoed. He waved his hand aimlessly. “Well—uh—like, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” Monte Stewart leaned back precariously in his ancient swivel chair and stabbed a finger at the eager young man. “But do you know?”

The student, whose name was Holloway, was obviously unaccustomed to having his glib generalities questioned. He fumbled around for a moment and then essayed a reply. “I mean that the—um—bottom line is that we have the ability to choose, to shape our own Destiny.” (Holloway was the type that always capitalized words like Fate and Destiny and Purpose.)

Monte Stewart snorted. He picked up a dry human skull from his desk and flapped the spring-articulated mandible up and down. “Words, my friend, just words.” He cocked a moderately bushy eyebrow. “I will pass over a cheap shot at the derivation of the name Holloway. What type blood do you have, Mr. Holloway?”

“Blood, sir? Why—type O, I think.”

“Let’s be positive, Holloway.” Monte Stewart was enjoying himself. “When did you make the choice? Prior to your conception or later?”

Holloway looked shocked. “I didn’t mean—”

“I see that your hair is brown. Did you dye it or merely select the proper genotype?”

“That’s not fair, Dr. Stewart. I didn’t mean—”

“What didn’t you mean?”

“I didn’t mean free will is everything, not in biology. I meant free will in the choices we make in everyday life. Like, you know …”

Monte Stewart sighed and made a mental note to have Holloway do some nosing around in the history of sociobiology. He fished out a pipe from a cluttered desk drawer and clamped it between his teeth. One of his most cherished illusions was that students should learn how to think; Holloway might as well start now. “I notice, Holloway, that you are wearing a shirt emblazoned with an admirable slogan, slacks neatly trimmed off below the knees, and fashionably scruffy shoes. Why didn’t you put on a G-string and moccasins this morning?”

“You just don’t—”

“Your presence in my class indicates that you are technically a student at the University of Colorado. If you had been born an Australian aborigine, you would instead be learning the mysteries of the churinga. Isn’t that so?”

“Maybe. I’ve heard about the revitalization movement in Australia. But just the same …”

“Ah, you have been paying some attention. We’ll score that one a draw. Have you had supper yet, Holloway?”

“No, sir.”

“Do you think that you are likely to choose fermented mare’s milk mixed with blood for your evening meal?”

“I guess not. But I could, couldn’t I?”

“Where would you get it this side of the Kazaks? Look, have you ever considered the idea that a belief in free will is a primary prop of the culture you happened to grow up in? Has it ever occurred to you that if the concept were not present in your culture you wouldn’t believe in it—and that your present acceptance of it is not a matter of free choice on your part? Have you ever toyed with the notion that any choice you may make is inevitably the product of the brain you inherited and what has happened to that brain during the time you have been living in a culture you did not create?”

Holloway blinked.

Monte Stewart stood up. He was not a tall man, but he was tough and wiry. Holloway got up too. “Mr. Holloway, do you realize that even the spacing between us now is culturally determined—that if we were participants in a different cultural system we would be standing either closer together or farther apart? Come back and see me again next week and we’ll talk some more. You might also reflect on the point that the timing of appointments is another cultural variable.”

Holloway backed toward the door. “Thank you, sir.”

“You’re entirely welcome.”

When the door closed behind Holloway, Monte grinned. Even with his rather formidable beard, the grin was oddly boyish. He had been having a good time. Of course, any moderately sophisticated bonehead could have given him an argument on the old free will problem, but Holloway still had some distance to cover in that regard. Nevertheless, the young man had possibilities. He just needed to unplug the computer now and then, stop coasting, and start thinking. Monte had seen it happen before—that startling transition from befuddled undergraduate to dogmatically certain graduate and, sometimes, on to the searching questions that were the beginnings of wisdom.

Monte enjoyed his teaching and got a kick out of his reputation as an old-fashioned fearsome ogre. Sometimes, he knew, he overplayed the role. He hoped that he had not been too forbidding with Holloway.

He moved over to the console, intending to punch up some data on the conversion factor in potassium argon dating for his class tomorrow. His short black hair was trimly cut, complementing the slight shagginess of his jutting spade beard. His clear gray eyes were bright and alert, and although he looked his age—which was a year shy of forty—he conveyed the impression that it was a pretty good age to be.

“Monte,” he said aloud, “you’re a damn fool.”

He didn’t need the data. Louise knew all there was to know about potassium argon dating; he could get it from her. Besides, his stomach was telling him that it was time to go home.

He locked his smoke-hazed office and rode the tube to the roof of the Anthropology Building. (It was not one of the larger buildings on the campus, having been built in the compact style that had come into favor early in the twenty-first century, but the status of anthropology had improved sufficiently so that it was no longer possible to dump the department into an improvised shack.) The cool Colorado air was bracing and he felt fine as he climbed into his copter and took off.

He did not know, of course, that Holloway would never be his student.

He did not even know much about tough choices—yet.

He lazed along in the traffic of the middle layer, enjoying the glint of snow on the mountains and the clean golden light of the westering sun. It had been a pleasant day, considering that it was a Wednesday.

He eased the copter down toward his rock-and-log home in the foothills of the mountains. He was surprised to see an unfamiliar copter parked on the roof right next to his garage. He landed, climbed out, and took a good look at it. The copter . . .