Earthchild by Doris Piserchia

Dobson Science Fiction, 1979, 201 p.

On a far future Earth from which nearly all humans have fled to Mars and which is dominated by a vast blue creature called Indigo which has been consuming everything, a fourteen-year-old girl named Reee lives alone. Years before, her mother had been snatched away by a Martian space ship. For all the years since Reee has been protected by Emeroo, a shapeshifting green entity who communicates with Reee telepathically. Periodically human like forms whom Reee calls blue boys try to fool her into leaving the safety of her surroundings. Ree also has a flying (what? lizard? dragon?) to help her move about the world. In fah she has two, Belios to begin with, then later Bellis.)

Fairly often Martians fly to Earth in their spaceships to snatch any humans that are left or else to try to exterminate Indigo with fire, (which of course doesn’t work.)

On one of these expeditions a Martian – ie one of the humans who now live on Mars – is left stranded and becomes a companion for Reee. He is disturbed by her nakedness but she has never worn clothes and finds them irritating to her skin when she eventually does wear any. Later still she is taken away to Mars and is bemused by everything she finds there, before returning to Earth again.

Oh, and there are intervals of time in which Ree is suspended for five hundred years.

If all the above didn’t make much sense or seem to sum to anything that pretty much describes the book.

There were times when I detected echoes of A Voyage to Arcturus or Solaris – but only faint echoes – however overall Earthchild is an odd piece without really any of the compensations which fiction usually provides. Full of ideas certainly, but fiction needs more than just ideas to be fulfilling.

Pedant’s corner:- “but what it experienced excruciating pain” (‘but that it experienced excruciating pain’ makes more sense,) “had a way of capitalising on each and every new phenomena” (each and every new phenomenon.) “Nothing crept upon me” (crept up on me,) “Belios’ head” (Belios’s,) “beside which to gro and ripen” (grow.) “‘They don’t look as if they’ve been in a crash?’” (isn’t a question so should not have a question mark,) “loathe to move her position” (loth; or loath.) “I let my long black hair lay across him” (lie across him,) maw (x 2; a maw is not a mouth.) “‘Those with is are closer to water’” (Those with it are…) “It I hadn’t been so angry” (If I hadn’t been,) “compressed molecules of air, water and food Theoretically” (compressed molecules? And there should be a full stop after food,) later “Compressed mols of air …” (air can be compressed but its constituent molecules cannot,) “but water was clear, not blue” (clear does not mean colourless, and in any case water is actually faintly blue.) “All that showed of the trees were huge trunks” (All that showed … was …) miniscule (x 2, minuscule,) botthered (bothered.) “The intended to prove” (They intended,) “too busy to comprehend other than” (to comprehend anything other than,) Bellis’ (Bellis’s,) two lines are in a swapped position, sling shots (elsewhere slingshot is rendered as one word,) “was supposed to have appeared and showed me” (supposed to have appeared and shown me.)

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