Living planet, Dying cultures.

kw: book reviews, science fiction, intertstellar intrigue, shape-shifters

In 1830 the Congress of the United States passed the "Indian Removal Act." It took a couple more rounds of lawsuits and a supreme court decision, then a forced treaty, but in 1838, the Cherokee were driven from their land along the "Trail of Tears" to "Indian Territory", which later became Oklahoma after a further land grab, the 1889 Land Rush. Thereafter the Cherokee were confined to reservations, where most of them languish today. Some "assimilated" to white culture; those not willing to give up their culture had to remain "on the Rez". As time passes, the culture is vanishing anyway...

What if Oklahoma had had its own opinion on the matter? Or if another place would take the Cherokee, but somehow nobody else could get in? A place so much like their original land in Appalachian North Carolina, they could live there, restoring the best of their culture, living as they want to live?

This will give you a flavor of the politics underlying the Petaybee series by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough. They wrote a trilogy on the discovery and settling of the sentient planet Petaybee: Powers That Be, Power Lines, and Power Play. This planet turns out to have a distinct opinion about the kind of people it will allow to immigrate and settle, and it can enforce it. Now, in Changelings, the authors begin another trilogy, about the next generation of Petaybean settlers.

The human planets are pretty much under the control of Intergal Company, which runs their part of the galaxy much like the 19th Century USA was run by the administrations of Jackson, Van Buren, Cleveland and Harrison, who oversaw the "Indian Removal" and "Land Rush" stages of national expansion. The various peoples displaced by Intergal, from planet to planet to asteroid to orbital habitat or wherever, are denoted "Inconvenient Peoples" or IPs.

The changelings in question are Sean Shongili and his twin offspring, who are selkies, shape-shifters, that change into seals when immersed, and back to human form when dried off. (Remember Daryl Hannah drying her tail so it'll turn into legs in Splash! ?) Their special abilities are one key to the resolution of the various crises the authors have devised.

McCaffrey and Scarborough bring a warmth to SF writing. I find here, as in most fiction, good folks that are overly good and bad ones that are overly bad. Ya gotta have a hero to cheer and a villain to hiss, and ya gotta know the difference, I guess. They don't overdo it as much as most, however, and they avoid the over-sexualization that is rampant in most modern fiction. The book is one of those, when I finished, I could say, "I'm glad I read that!"