Reviews

On the planet Mictlan, a small colony of stranded humans struggles to survive despite a diminishing birthrate and a high incidence of physical abnormalities. The cultural conflict engendered by the discovery of the mummified corpse of Mictlan's now extinct former inhabitants forces the human community to reshape its moral principles to accommodate a bold and troubling solution to their breeding problems. Like Ursula Le Guin's gender-challenging speculative fiction, the latest novel by the author of The Bones of God (Avon, 1986. o.p.) calls into question the issues of cultural and sexual stereotypes. Sexually explicit without being prurient, this haunting and thought-provoking story belongs in most sf collections.