Forest of the Night

By Marti Steussy

Book Overview

The First-In team had promised New Lebanon's loggers that the planet's tigerlike predators were gone. But it was a tiger that stood over Hashti in the woods, pawing her and uttering an eerie, songlike... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345338154
• ISBN13: 9780345338150
• Release Date: May 1987
• Publisher: Del Rey Books
• Length: 265 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Tiger, tiger, burning bright...

In 'Forest of the Night', Marti Steussy introduces us to a future in which humanity has gone forward into the universe in a tentative way, exploring planets and beginning colonisation for human beings in cooperation, for the most part, with other intelligent species encountered along the way. Protocols have been set up, worked out over long and painful experience, that certain trained teams, called the First-Inners, would be the first to explore new potential planets, to determine if the colonists pose a threat to the indigenous population, particularly those that might possess intelligence. This is reminiscent of the Star Trek Prime Directive, save that there is no non-interference policy here, but rather a search for means of cooperation. In the story at hand, there is a colony already in place, the planet having been cleared by the First-Inner team for the beginning of settlement. However, during the normal course of activities, some of the local 'animals' begin to exhibit means of communication - it seems that they are curious about the newcomers, wondering if they are intelligent and worthy of dialogue and cooperation, too.Steussy creates a colony world not too much different than a nineteenth century colony might be - remote and distant from any centre of population and production, they must rely on their own skills and the natural resources to keep themselves alive. This is a forest planet, so the people working in the settlements naturally do what loggers do - maintain horses, cut down trees, and live off the land with few modern conveniences. This is very different from the more 'traditional', sanitised and plastic colony-bubbles of most science fiction.The main character here is Hashti, a horse trainer who slowly discovers an intelligence among the local 'animals', a type of feathered tiger, who slowly learn to teach and cooperate with her. Just as among the human population there are those who don't want to make friends with the tigers (they would rather hunt them and sell them at a profit), there are some tigers who don't feel particularly neighbourly toward the humans. Can they learn to communicate before a disastrous confrontation takes place?It is quite fitting that Marti Steussy, biochemist, Hebrew scriptures scholar and minister, would put so many rich elements into this story. The science is plausible and precise (the sign of intelligence sought, and found, is a piece of mathematics, ultimately). The transformation of Hashti and her tiger friends is rather like a journey of vocational discernment, and the piecing together of language to understand beyond simple vocabulary and grammar to the full-fledged context and nuance is quite understandable of a biblical scholar. Certainly Steussy's love of horses also figures in prominently!It is a pity that Steussy isn't writing science fiction any longer. However, her two novels (this, and Dreams of Dawn) provide a good field for the imagination, and her novels are definite a

Excellent! Find a copy and read it

In "Forest of the Night", we meet Hashti and a crew of loggers who are trying to establish a base on a distant planet. Unfortunately, their operation seems to be threatened by the native feathered tigers. As Hashti tries to do her job caring for the crew's horses, her boyfriend Gay is convinced that the whole operation is a business ploy that will leave the workers indebted to their financiers for life, and the tigers aren't making matters any easier. Gay and some of the loggers hatch a plan to bail themselves out by hunting the tigers and selling their feathered hides for a profit. But Hashti and a few of the others, including Ross, one of the first to arrive and scout the planet, are convinced the tigers are an intelligent, sentient race and must be dealt with accordingly.Hashti eventually forms a close relationship with Khan, one of the tigers, and several of his comrades, and together they learn a great deal about each other's cultures. The book is a fasci!nating exploration of understanding other forms of intelligence than one's own. I thouroughly enjoyed "Forest of the Night" and would recommend it to anyone. It left me wanting to see what happens to the characters next. Stuessy's second novel, "Dreams of Dawn" (also out of print), takes place in the same universe but doesn't have any of the same characters.