[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

Usher II is one of the gems of the book! I envy your first reading of it.

If you like "artistic" Science Fiction short stories, I can recommend the works of Theodore Sturgeon and Cordwainer Smith (Paul Linebarger).

I read Usher II tonight. I totally understand what you mean now. That was completely unexpected! Thanks for the recommendations on other authors.

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

My feeling was that the point of the book was not alien (to us) life forms, but the behaviour of humans in alien conditions.

I found the tragedy of what happened all too believable, when you consider the havoc we have brought wherever we impose ourselves on a new environment, whether it is the early colonisers of Australia, or the settlers moving into the American West, the Spanish in South America, and so on.

The rockets were the Silver Locusts of the original UK (and elsewhere?) title - see the very short story titled The Locusts - and they brought in them the plague of humans.

I read an older version of the book, with the original dates. I didn't have a problem with this, as for me it was happening in an alternate universe. However my copy doesn't have the story Usher II, so I shall be interested to hear about that one.

After reading the short story all about locusts by Doris Lessing in African Stories recently, I have a new appreciation for the fear and destruction that they can bring! I liked the reference to the rockets as "Silver Locusts."

Regarding Usher II:

Spoiler:

You should find a copy if you can. It is all about book banning and full of literary references. I think you would like it! Basically after the frontiersman and the missionaries come the elitist people who are the culture/thought police to clean-up the place and enforce bureaucracy (which is not democratic). Then the next story addresses the old people coming.