“Suppose that one day man landed on some distant planet. Why would he have come, what impulse would have driven him across the darkness and the light-years? Could he explain, and would he even try? If he set out to explore that fearful world, if he trapped some specimens, what would he do if he were attacked by monstrous beings he could not understand?”



In “The Shores of Another Sea” by Chad Oliver



Right after the Bishop’s “No Enemy but Time”, I re-read “The Shores of Another Sea” by Chad Oliver, a first contact story also set in Eastern Africa. Though it devoted a good deal of space to story elements arising from its Kenyan setting, the character setup was pretty minimal, a sympathetic protagonist built on a fairly standard “rugged outdoorsman” chassis. However there was a character arc which was economically worked into the story, its resolution arising from the experience of the alien contact. I didn’t think it was a great book, but it was an interesting contrast to the Bishop. Where Bishop tended to draw his non-SF elements from literary fiction, Oliver turned to another generic tradition, an adventure tale set on a wilderness frontier, a strategy that worked better for me as it seemed less dissonant when grafted onto an SF story. ( )

Anthropological science fiction is relatively rare, especially so when this was first published in 1971. This was Oliver's sixth novel, and the author was an anthropologist as well as a professor at the University of Texas in Austin. According to the introduction in my copy of the book the author spent time in Kenya doing anthropological research, and Kenya is the setting for the story. Frankly I'd call this almost a horror story for the way it plays out - something Stephen King might have written back then. It is set on and around a research station which collects baboons - the dark side here is that although it is not explicitly shown during the story, one realizes and is told that these animals are captured for experimentation, not for behavior research or even zoos. That knowledge actually dampened my enthusiasm for the story, but it is the setup for what we very quickly see is an alien invasion story.

The author is a very good descriptive writer and the setting in Kenya is really brought to life exceedingly well. That was the highlight of this story for me. ( )

This is, as the title implies an old science fiction classic first contact novel. Out in the wilds of Kenya, an American works to collect baboons for scientific study back in the USA.
This book is not only about living in the wilds of Africa, but what would happen if aliens arrive and treat humans the same way the humans treat the baboons. A slightly different take on a fist contact novel and a very short but good one. I do wish the first contact and aliens part was more prevalent, but we're supposed to get the point from how we treat the animals. ( )