James Blish 49 min read

Honath the Pursemaker and his fellow doubters are cast down from the treetop world of their people for denying the Book of Laws, flung to the forbidden, monster-haunted ground below.

James Blish's 1954 story is a superb, ingenious colonization and social-SF tale. Sharp, imaginative, superbly told. Read it for a classic of the 'lost colony' idea, tree-dwelling descendants of Earth colonists, their science degraded to scripture, and a heretic's fall that becomes a journey toward truth, in one of Blish's finest short works.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

49 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

Paul Orban