Decision at Doona

ANNE MCCAFFREY

Stats for my copy: Mass market paperback, Del Rey, 1978.

First line: The planet receded to a small, blue-green sphere, the lesser of its two satellites beginning to pass across the retreating face of its primary, a pearly tear in the northeast hemisphere.

(For Goodreads synopsis, scroll down.)

My thoughts: One of the author's early books, pre-Pern, set in the future, though the exact year isn't specified. Earth has become so overpopulated that people live in extremely tight conditions, with small apartments and narrow corridors where walking fast or swinging your arms while you walk are outlawed due to the congestion of people. Ken is excited to be part of a group of men sent to Doona to set up a colony, where he gets to breathe fresh air and walk in forests for the first time. He and the other settlers have been on Doona for about a year, and their wives and children are on the way to join them, when they discover a village inhabited by a race of cats. Intelligent cats, who walk on their hind legs and who seem to have appeared overnight, except for the fact that they live in a fully functional community with homes and buildings and livestock. So now the Terran colony will have to be abandoned, because their laws state that they cannot cohabit a planet with another sentient race.

While the three main governing bodies of Terra battle it out as to who has authority and control over the situation, the Terrans become friends with the Hrrubans, and begin to discover it is possible to co-exist peaceably with another species.

Regarding the date, there are references to past incidents in Terran history, starting with "the Egyptian treatment of the wandering Semitic tribes...the German massacre of the Jews", and then (keeping in mind the book was first published in 1969) "...the Chinese attempt in 1974, the Black Riots of 1980. One goes on indefinitely until the Amalgamation of 2010 which was probably bloodier than any previous pogrom." I would have liked to learn more background about those incidents and what Ms. McCaffrey imagined would or could happen to our planet in the future!

Another thing that puzzled me was the use of the word "unprintable", such as in this exchange:

"I'm going back to the bed I never should have left this unprintable morning."

"And Toddy?" she quavered, following him to the door.

"Todd is the only one on this whole unprintable planet willing and able to take care of himself."

Are the characters actually saying "unprintable" as a cuss word, or was that the equivalent of replacing the cuss words with symbols as in "Todd is the only one on this whole &$%&@# planet..."

Anyway, I really enjoyed this book, which is still timely today regarding race relations, except unlike our world now where we have constant systemic racism, this future Terra have all become one race and avoid interacting with other sentient races, not through fear or racism, but to prevent any negative affect on or to those other races.

Goodreads synopsis: After the first human contact with the Siwannese, that entire race committed mass suicide. So the Terran government made a law--no further contact would be allowed with sentient creatures anywhere in the galaxy. Therefore Doona could be colonized only if an official survey established that the planet was both habitable and uninhabited.

But Spacedep had made a mistake—Doona was inhabited. Now the colonists' choice was limited. Leave Doona and return to the teeming hell of an overpopulated Terra. Or kill the catlike Hrrubans. Or learn, for the first time in history, how to coexist with an alien race.