The World That Couldn't Be, Clifford Donald Simak

This is the second piece, though this time a solo, of Clifford Donald Simak's (1904-1988) that I have read. I am growing impressed with his stories. "The World That Couldn't Be" (© 1958) is available freely on Gutenberg.org.

This is an action-science fiction tale, well told and an easy read. It is worth reading.

Here is the motif of the colonizer on another planet. Like many other science-fiction tales I have read, the protagonist, Gavin Duncan, is trying to grow a valuable plant called vua, which is also a medicine. A kind of animal called the Cytha has eaten it, and it's his intention to hunt it down so it doesn't eat the crop again.

The native population begs him not to hunt the animal, but he ignores their advice. They are an inferior people whom he has basically enslaved to make him rich. The natives also have a unique attribute: they are sexless. There are neither males nor females. They do not have sex to procreate.

While with Andre Norton, I got a sense of how the non-white characters are inherently inferior, with Simak that sense is that the protagonist may think this, but Simak does not. Thus, "the good and faithful hound" (ch. 3) seems the character's thoughts, and not the author's. Eventually the native tracker that he enlists to hunt the Cytha kills himself by slashing his own throat, probably in an effort to strand him at the mercy of the Cytha he tracks.

The Cytha that Gavin sets out to hunt is not like most creatures, or even monsters in fiction. It's not until the finale that Gavin understands that the creature known as Cytha is not really a single organism, but rather an assembly of lesser organisms: young Native children, predators, etc. Thus, when he shoots it in the neck, it is not dead as a whole, but rather just some parts. The composition of the creature comes out when he has gotten his ankle stuck in a tree after a storm has blown through, while Cytha has fallen into a pit. Gavin helps the Cytha out of the pit, and the Cytha helps save him from predators and rescues him from the tree which trapped him. The Cytha is described as it tries to escape its own trap--a pit dug into the ground,

It was coming all apart... the Cytha broke down into a thousand lumps of motion that scurried in the pit and tried to scramble up its side, only to fall back in tiny showers of sand... There were tiny screamers (a predator reminding me of hyena) and some donovans (an elephant sized bear/tiger) and sawmill birds and a bevy of wild-devils and something else as well. (chapter 5)

Later it is indicated that the native population that he had enlisted to help with the work on the farm are also born of this creature. Thus, the tracker killing himself rather than helping to kill the Cytha would be like a human refusing to kill a baby (albeit a baby of superhuman abilities).

After helping the Cytha out of the pit, Cytha brings Gavin back to his home. They agree to not infringe on each other: Cytha not to eat of the vua, and Gavin not to hunt Cytha. Does this Cytha speak for all the other Cytha I wonder. If this is a small one, what would the hunter do when going after a big one? This question is neither asked nor answered.

The great thing about stories like this is that they are still relevant today.