β Scribed by Damon Knight
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Published in the January 1954 issue, this novella was Knight's longest contribution to the magazine. Dealing with a familiar extrapolation--a future population divided between a mutually antagonistic farm society of exiles and a technologically advanced city--the novella incorporates sophisticated biology (living weapons) and complicated politics (the reality of the ideological differences is linked not only to the misapplication of biology but to the fundamental struggle against totalitarianism. NATURAL STATE was, in the nature of science fiction synergy, influential upon the works of A.J. Budrys, Poul Anderson and other writers who dealt with political relations as inextricably linked to biological and economic motives, and like much of Damon Knight's work, it is suffused with a kind of cynicism, even despair, which overshadow or lurk behind the progression and apparent solution. Like much of Knight's canon, it is a cynical and despairing work which uses the...
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