Product Description

Marius Thorndyke, the legandary contact linguist, willingly came out of retirement to meet with the Pe-Ellians when they asked for him. And he willingly returned to Pe-Ellia at their request. He was a veteran of contacts with alien species, but they had always been technologically inferior to Earth. The Pe-Ellians were different. Humanoid but twice the height of humans and sexless, they clearly came from a very advanced civilization: a civilization that understood the power of thought.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #883285 in Books
• Published on: 2001-04-19
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

About the Author
Phillip Mann was born in 1942 and studied English and Drama at Manchester University and later in California. He worked in the New China News Agency in Beijing for two years but has lived in New Zealand since 1969, working as a theatre critic, drama teacher and university Reader in Drama. As well as writing novels, he has written a number of plays and stories for Radio New Zealand.

Customer Reviews

I concur heartily
It's been 10 years or more I've been searching for this book. I can't agree more with virtuagodpt, he/she has nailed it! This book stands out in my mind as the most incandescent attempt at portraying a truly alien race. A bona-fide rare gem in the vast science-fiction landscape. Brings meaning to the expression "mind-blowing", stunning imagery.

A Gift to mankind!!
I just can't believe how "underground" and unnotice this novel is!! It is one of the most imaginative and beautifully written books i've ever read and one my favourites now... If you like SF i urge you to read this book!! A true masterpiece... a calm and beautiful read!! Sometimes Mann's imagination is so intense you feel like Pe-Ellia really exists somewhere in the universe and that this man is not writing a novel but telling a story of a specis that he has actually seen!! Most times i feel that the sentence in the cover of a book overreactes to make books sell, sometimes it is the true but i never felt that it understimates how powerfull the novel is... The Sunday Times had the previlege by only saying that this novel is "Marvellous... told with relish, wit and considerable originality"... thre is much more to this outstanding novel. A alien society not like any other, the ideas, the imagination do vivid... A must to any SF lover and specially people that tend to like a great world buiding!! I rank this one up there next to Dune (yes, it is that great)!!

Seventies Sci-fi written in 1982 ???
I bought this book based on the two enthusiatsic reviews posted before this one and found it very disappointing. I must admit I only read half of it.

Unlike the previous reviewers, I found no vivid evocation of a truly alien species in this book. The novel is in the form of fragments of a diary by the leader of a team of two human investigators who establish contact with the Pe-Ellians. Up to the point where I gave up reading, most of its entries concern unsatisfactory communication attempts and analyses of the social assumptions behind mundane exchanges of pleasantries or formal greetings. The "strangeness" of the Pe-ellians derives mainly from how much we fail to understand them, rather than from what we know of them. In that sense, the book does not at all try to evoke an alien species. Rather, it conveys the frustration of the diary's author at solving what is for him a professional challenge (he has a successful track record of establishing contact with other alien races).

The diary entries are also rich in reflections by the author on his own approach, which gives it a professional feel at the cost of not leading the reader anywhere. It reminded me of the portfolio and dissertation I was asked to write as part of teacher training, texts I would not recommend to anyone wanting to enjoy a good read.

It seems to me that the author of the novel was primarily interested in describing his human character through his diary and that the Pe-ellians were a minor concern, a device to make it interesting. Based on my skim-reading of the second half, I don't believe it gets any different towards the end.