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Forty Thousand In Gehenna
Copyright 1983 by
C. J. Cherryh
I first read this in 1990 and most recently on the 20th November 2011
Forty thousand colonists were dropped onto an unsuitable planet to forge a new colony. They await a resupply ship that never comes for this colony was never meant to succeed. It was always intended to fail, and in failing to put pressure on a political enemy.
Among those forty thousand were a few hundred real colonists living in relative comfort. The rest were cloned slaves, bred for service.
In the end, though, it is the clones who survive, and their descendants after them, down through the generations. They survive only in the company of the indigenous aliens - the Calibans - and are profoundly changed by them.
We follow the story of Jin and his progeny and a pretty painful story it is.
It's an impressive, memorable novel but not quite to my taste.
Loaded on the 12th March 2012.
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