James Blish
The Seedling Stars (1957)
Reviewed: 1996-04-29

In this book Blish expands some previously published stories which draw from the same idea and puts them into a common frame. Humans have evolved to live on Earth, and so, although the galaxy is full of planets, there are few where we can settle comfortably, terraforming being impractical. Humanity can still spread to the stars, though, if it adapts itself to the different conditions found on those many worlds. Blish calls this concept pantropy.

"Seeding Program": Sweeney is an Adapted Man, decanted and raised by Earth Port Authority for the single purpose of retrieving the renegade colonists on Ganymede and especially their charismatic leader. However, the truth he learns on the Jovian moon is very different from what he was taught in preparation for his assignment. Life on Ganymede has more to offer than the people from Earth who sent him can possibly comprehend, and with mankind's future in the galaxy at stake Sweeney has to reconsider his loyalties.

"The Thing in the Attic": Together with four others, Honath the Purse-Maker is convicted of heresy for not literally believing in the old faith as written in the Book of Law. The sentence is banishment from the human-inhabited treetops of the world. The criminals are exiled to the deadly surface of the planet, a place haunted by frightful creatures, where nobody has ever returned from. Unbeknownst to Honath and his friends, their struggle to survive, forcing them to rely on their human ingenuity in the face of a strange and hostile environment, is an important step for the future of their race.

"Surface Tension": A seeding ship crashes on a world mostly covered by water. The gene banks are lost, the crew will only have about a month to live. They decide to seed the planet from their own genetic stock, adapting their descendants to the only environment that will sustain life without overwhelming competition: small, shallow pools of still water. Microscopic humans living in puddles. The beginning of human history on Hydrot is marked by the collaboration with friendly single-celled creatures, leading to a successful war campaign against the dreaded "eaters", predatory rotifers. Generations later, humans build a vessel to explore the universe beyond the sky, outside the limits of their world, following the legends of the Creators.

With its microscopic humans, intelligent and semi-telepathic protozoans, semi-intelligent diatoms, rotifers, etc., "Surface Tension" is utter nonsense from a scientific point of view, but it is also a highly fascinating and memorable story, describing a beautifully strange and intriguing world, so different from our own but still populated by people we can relate to. An all time classic.

"Watershed": In an outlying, rarely frequented part of the galaxy a seeding ship returns to a desolate planet called Earth. Racial squabbles between crew and passengers are put in perspective when the history of this far off world is revealed, and our perception of what constitutes humanity is shifted.

I probably read this book (back then a translation) for the first time when I was a preteen. It immediately captured my imagination and ever held it since, especially the wondrous world of "Surface Tension". The Seedling Stars is one of my personal classics, a book that proved unforgettable.

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