Editor(s): Carol Mason, Martin Harry Greenberg, and Patricia Warrick
Publisher: St Martins Press (USA)
Publication Date: 1974
Anthropology Through Science Fiction 1974
(Written As By Bertram Chandler)
Short Story
Shipwreck has frequently been a source of fascination, whether that shipwreck deposited the Swiss Family Robinson on a tropical island on earth or some other human beings on a total and strange alien world. In "The Cage", the shipwrecked passengers and crew of the interstellar line Lode Star are marooned on a damp and sodden world. It is not a hostile world; its climate and resources are sufficient to keep human beings alive without much effort at all, but it is a downright uncomfortable world. The constant drizzle is compounded by high temperatures that turn the landscape into on unending steam bath. Wet, warm and succulent with vegetation, this world is no place for primates from earth.