Pilgrimage: The Book of the People

2/5

Henderson is an alright writer, but Pilgrimage feels like drinking warm milk, mostly because I can't imagine anyone doing so and not falling immediately asleep.

Following the diaspora of a crashed alien ship on Earth, this is a fix-up of previously published short stories, with an interstitial narrative where the stories are told to a struggling Outsider, a human that learns about the aliens as we do. The People, as the aliens are called, are essentially identical to humans externally but posses a number of powers that distinguish and potentially endanger them if revealed around humans, including but not limited to: levitation, telekinesis, and telepathy. The stories themselves mostly revolve around children with these extraordinary show more powers that have differing levels of knowledge about their past; genetic memory is assumed to be true, as some of these children have memories of their home world even though they crashed on Earth three generations ago. Isolated groups of the People slowly reconnect and gather their strength with the hopes of returning to 'the Home' and reconnecting with the 'Presence'.

Obviously there's some very thinly veiled Christian allegory here. The People are often ostracized for their differences and yearn for a promised land where there will be no persecution. It's mentioned several times that the humans of Earth could posses the same powers of the People, if only they knew about and followed the 'Presence' more closely. These allegories are drawn rather hamfistedly, so strong and on the nose as to be overwhelming. I wish that Henderson had used a more subtle approach here, but as it stands this was a negative for the book because of the execution of it

I commend Henderson though for her focus on children and teaching, a world in which she was well versed. The children and women she writes are strong in character, capable, and emotionally/mentally intelligent. To write these characters in the 1950's was kind of ahead of it's time, much like Henderson never using a male pseudonym. Henderson seems like an interesting character, and in a somewhat limited way that bleeds into the work, though I wish it did more so.

Maybe these stories would've been more tolerable if you read them as they were initially published, as one-offs in a magazine once every few months. Stacked together like this though they melt into a morass of some of the most sleepy and gentle writing that I've read. Warm, slow, emotional, repetitive, and sickeningly sweet. In a way it could be viewed as a progenitor to the wave of mundane SF works that are currently very in vogue. Unfortunately the stories are so similar in structure and conclusion to one another that they are tedious and predictable from the start. It's not bad per se, but extraordinarily anodyne. I wish I could like it more, and maybe I could've if I was at a different stage in my life. show less

This is a SF novel that breaks your heart. Stranded on Earth, due to the crash of their interstellar spacecraft, a race of aliens attempts to survive on an alien world and among an alien people who can't begin to understand who, or what, they are. It is a book that tells very well what it means to be far from home with no possible way of rescue.

The first in Henderson's books about 'The People', aliens who crashlanded a spaceship on earth and had to fit in although they have psychic abilities such as telepathy etc. It is really a set of short stories given a connective frame - a depressed young woman, Lea, is saved from committing suicide by Karen, one of the People, and taken to their main settlement where every night community members share memories in preparation for some (unspecified till the last such sharing) event. Interesting in parts, but a bit repetitive in the sense that a lot of the tales centre around teachers in small isolated towns - wasn't suprised when I googled the author, to find that she was an elementary school teacher.

***** Re-read *****
My impression on show more the re-read is much the same. The best story is the one where a human woman called Dita (a teacher of course) is staying in a boarding house and gradually kindles a romance with a man who turns out to be one of the People who lost his parents when young and doesn't know how to find the settlement where most of them live. Dita herself is a misfit because she is a rare human who was born with psychic powers, although these differ from those of the People. That story was quite nicely prickly and natural in the development of the relationship and in the interaction with the curmudgeonly landlady of the boarding house.

The last story is confusing because it deals with People coming to Earth from another planet where they settled, to take away anyone who wants to go back with them - the framing structure is lost at that point because it seems the viewpoint character is departing on a spaceship at the end as if that has already happened rather than being impending. So the story of Lea is lost at that point. I think on balance the 'OK' 2 star rating stands. show less

The People are aliens who fled their home planet and crash landed in various spots on Earth. They're living amongst humans, trying to blend in and also to find each other, all while feeling like outsiders and missing their home. The book is set out as a series of short stories about various members of The People, and it's very Escape to Witch Mountain both in story and in style. Except that I kind of love Escape to Witch Mountain, but I really couldn't get into this one at all. Partly I think it's the dated scifi style, partly it's that I always have trouble with the short-story collection format, and partly because the writing just didn't click for me.

I read this as a teen, long ago from the library, and for years hunted to get my own copy. I remember being so enthralled with the idea that there might be aliens -right here!- living among us as regular people, albeit a bit different. I wanted to be a bit different myself.

The first SF book I ever bought (on holiday in Menorca, 1969). I found it completely entrancing, as did my mum (who says that she doesn't even like SF). "Plaiting your twishers" made it into the family vocabulary, although for us it eventually came to mean someone getting a bit over-anxious.

Alien children with magic/psionic powers are refugees on modern Earth. A large collection of short stories which were also collected in a couple of smaller volume. It gets extremely saccharine and cloying after a while, but is memorable nonetheless.