Planet of Whispers

Messengers Chronicles #1

by James Patrick Kelly, Victoria Poyser (Cover Artist)

The cat-like aliens of the planet Chan attempt to trade the secret to long life to the Messengers in exchange for much-needed wheat

Genres: Science Fiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

James Patrick Kelly (please, call him Jim) has had an eclectic writing career. He has written novels, short stories, essays, reviews, poetry, plays and planetarium shows. His short novel Burn won the Science Fiction Writers of America's Nebula Award in 2007. He has won the World Science Fiction Society’s Hugo Award twice: in 1996, for his novelette “Think Like A Dinosaur” and in 2000, for his novelette, “Ten to the Sixteenth to One.” His fiction has been translated into eighteen languages. He produces two podcasts: James Patrick Kelly's StoryPod on Audible and the Free Reads Podcast (Yes, it’s free). His most recent publishing venture is the ezine James Patrick Kelly’s Strangeways. His website is www.jimkelly.net.

Reviews

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kelly, James Patrick. Planet of Whispers. Messengers Chronicles No. 1. Tor, 1985.
James Patrick Kelly has done something unusually difficult. He has made a career as a short story writer and an anthology editor. Reading Planet of Whispers, I can see why he doesn’t often work in the usually more lucrative long form. What we have here is a short story idea padded out to 240 pages. That is too bad, because there is an interesting idea at the heart of it. We have a planet with a devolved hominid species that resembles either cats or bears, depending on which reader you ask. Suffice it they are furry. They have a post-literate, pre-industrial agricultural society. A cultural crisis ensues when they are visited by a star-faring species with technological and biological secrets to trade for wheat. Contact with the aliens produces a mental awakening that inspires artistic creativity and voices in the head that sometimes make them schizoid. Unfortunately, the plot stumbles along and doesn’t quite know what to do with itself. Meh.

[Periklis · Rating 1 out of 5]

From the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction: "[...] Set on the planet Aseneshesh, explores in voluminous detail the native race of near-Immortal bearlike beings whose mental workings are derived from the attractive hypotheses developed by Julian Jaynes (1920-1997) in The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976). In Jaynes's book, and in Kelly's novel, pre-conscious sentients – i.e. preliterate humans, including the Homer responsible for the Iliad – "hear" right-brain "whispers" which they understand to be the voices of the gods, and in this fashion hallucinate normative diktats which shape their culture. No humans appear in the novel."

I've found J.P.Kelly's short fiction compelling but struggled to finish this book, despite of my interest in Jaynes'(compelling) theory.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

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