Second Nature

Rhomary Land #1

by Cherry Wilder

1st Unwin 1986 trade edition paperback, fine In stock shipped from our UK warehouse

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy

Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

Reviews

[Cathie · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing novel. Will be forever processing, because it was written by my mother, who would have turned 90 the day before yesterday.

[Mely]

Wilder appears fond of shipwrecks: her other science fiction series, the Torin trilogy, also features Earthlings cast away on an alien world. In the Rhomary books, the ship Rho Maryland crashed on an unnamed planet a few generations ago; the survivors still remember Earth, and still search the sky for signs of other ships, wrecked or rescuing. In Second Nature, a desert hermit and astronomer identifies six meteorites as potential spaceship debris, and the Dator of Rhomary, who has the hereditary responsibility of searching out information related to the Earth past, sets out to find the wreckage and any possible survivors.

This is a bright, dense little book. Wilder shows the busy industry of Rhomary's one city, its poor slums, its outlying ranches, its religious cults, and the lost Vail, a mysterious huge whale-like alien race who used to inhabit the oceans of Rhomary, and who spoke to humans for generations and have fallen silent, or dead--plus another mythical race of aliens. The author's bios say she was born in New Zealand, raised in Australia, and lived much of her adult life in West Germany, which may account for the interesting ways in which Wilder departs from the standard American myths of colonization frequently replayed in science fiction. Rhomary's settlers aren't conquistadors: they are aliens subsisting uncomfortably and stubbornly in their new home, in love and longing with their past and with the aliens of the world.

What is most effective about this book is the sense of lost people reaching to succor each other; my favorite scene is when the new castaways and the old finally meet: the new astonished and overjoyed to find they're not the only humans left alone on this world, the old brought to tears when the new recite the names of the lost ships, proving they are still remembered and grieved, out there among the stars.

[Jan Priddy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel certain that I read the first pages, the "Prologue," long ago. They were enough for me to order a copy, which I forgot I possessed until I'd ordered another and reread those pages. Incredible!

Wilder does what few writers have attempted: She has created a situation on a planet of castaways and indigenous populations, survivors and homesteaders. I cannot begin to express how delighted I am to find an original view. Most science fiction, the stuff I generally avoid, is adventure/war in space. Too often the tension between good and evil political factions. The moral issues are black and white. Heredity and entitlement play a roll that I resent. (Aren't we past princesses and orphans with mysterious parentage? Shouldn't we be?)

This novel is something quite different. The world building is exceptional, the complexities of philosophy and politics and faith are believable and intriguing. It is at times too much to comprehend in one go. It is a book I wish I had a book group to discuss it with.

Perhaps I rounded up from 4.5, but I have only quibbles about the writing here. This is an astonishing novel.

[Jenny Jaybles · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was slow getting into this book but at some point in the middle it became very magical and then also foreboding thinking about human beings evolving or devolving and changing in strange alien landscapes. There is a realism to how she writes her characters that struck me as interesting. At first glance a character might seem like a one dimensional trope but then they do get more interesting even in a tiny novel like this where it seems like there was not enough time to spend developing the characters. The end has a great payoff for something you will be waiting around the whole novel to happen. There were a couple things that confused me and I keep trying to figure out what the author was trying to do but without saying any spoilers it doesn't make me hate the book. I enjoy being confused by art or films or books and having to try to piece it together so there's some parts that have a real vague quality that people might hate I think.

[Nathan Shumate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Worldbuilding is not what I look at first in my specfic, but this setting makes for an extremely interesting mainspring: The survivors of a human crash landing on an uncharted world create their own society over the next couple of hundred years, all the while wishing they had more than just the legends of old Earth to work from. Their planet also has at least one intelligent -- but very alien -- lifeform, a huge pseudo-cetacean race called the Vail which finds it hard and exhausting to communicate with such little creatures with short lifespans and such an interest in time-keeping and record-keeping. And then there are are reports of a meteor strike, which just might be another human craft...

[Sherrill Watson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written in 1982.

'When I went on retreat in the sea of Ulster I found a legendary creature, a minmer or nipper. It was long as my middle foot nail and had black skin.' The Vail.

Years ago a spaceship crashed on this planet. There were some survivors, who struggled along as best they could, and some people had dreams and premonitions, another ship landing, and the Vail being some of them.

Unfortunately, I found the senseless wranglihg over who was to go where, when, storms, ships, and the many peoples (nippers) a waste of time. The only person who seems to have any thought processes at all is Dator Maxim, tho everyone but everyone seems to agree that he should lead them.

Another spaceship lands with a couple survivors, another Vail appears, and Dator, the cool head, prevails.