Shadows in the Sun is an odd little book. The blurb on the back coupled with the cover art suggests the book is about an anthropologist, Paul Ellery, studying the relatively small Texan town of Jefferson Springs and gradually coming to the shocking realisation that every single one of the town's inhabitants is in fact an alien.

The first couple of chapters support this hypothesis pretty well, since they introduce an anthropologist, Paul Ellery, who is studying the relatively small Texan town of Jefferson Springs and who has gradually come to the shocking realisation that every single one of the town's inhabitants is in fact an alien. It reads like the book has started in media res, and I waited for quite a few of the book's scant pages for the flashbacks to start and to find out what aroused Paul Ellery's suspicions. But the flashbacks never come, the book simply starts quite late in Paul's tale, a few hours before he gets the ultimate proof to confirm his hypothesis.

The rest of the story is essentially built around the notion that the aliens—who are in fact humans, with Chad Oliver trying to sell the unlikely notion that Earth-like planets abound in the Milky Way, and on each one humans have evolved to be the dominant species—are willing to let Paul become a member of their society, and him having to choose between a suddenly worthless existence on Earth or an overwhelming and inevitably never satisfactory life as a citizen of the Greater Galactic Commonwealth. He agonises about the choice up until the final page at which point the author, having done a jolly good job of convincing the reader that neither choice is a good one, seems to have flipped a coin and picked one of the roads for his character with the vague suggestion that merely deciding one course over the other is sufficient for Paul's happiness. I was about as convinced by that line of reasoning as I was by the story in general. ( )

Shadows in the Sun is an odd little book. The blurb on the back coupled with the cover art suggests the book is about an anthropologist, Paul Ellery, studying the relatively small Texan town of Jefferson Springs and gradually coming to the shocking realisation that every single one of the town's inhabitants is in fact an alien.

The first couple of chapters support this hypothesis pretty well, since they introduce an anthropologist, Paul Ellery, who is studying the relatively small Texan town of Jefferson Springs and who has gradually come to the shocking realisation that every single one of the town's inhabitants is in fact an alien. It reads like the book has started in media res, and I waited for quite a few of the book's scant pages for the flashbacks to start and to find out what aroused Paul Ellery's suspicions. But the flashbacks never come, the book simply starts quite late in Paul's tale, a few hours before he gets the ultimate proof to confirm his hypothesis.

The rest of the story is essentially built around the notion that the aliens—who are in fact humans, with Chad Oliver trying to sell the unlikely notion that Earth-like planets abound in the Milky Way, and on each one humans have evolved to be the dominant species—are willing to let Paul become a member of their society, and him having to choose between a suddenly worthless existence on Earth or an overwhelming and inevitably never satisfactory life as a citizen of the Greater Galactic Commonwealth. He agonises about the choice up until the final page at which point the author, having done a jolly good job of convincing the reader that neither choice is a good one, seems to have flipped a coin and picked one of the roads for his character with the vague suggestion that merely deciding one course over the other is sufficient for Paul's happiness. I was about as convinced by that line of reasoning as I was by the story in general. ( )

Good book. In my recent review of classic SF books I have come across a few good authors that I had missed years ago. Chad Oliver is one of these. As soon as I finished this book I began looking for his other works.

This is an interesting story about a man who has discovered (stumbled across) a community that has been forever altered by forces not of earth. Now he has to decide what to do about it if anything. ( )

Jefferson Springs, Texas: popolazione 6.000 anime; strada principale, sonnacchiosa, traversata dalle rotaie della ferrovia. Tante casette anonime. Film di terza visione, un giornale settimanale colmo dei pettegolezzi locali. Ma... tutta la popolazione vi è arrivata negli ultimi quindici anni. In questa vecchia città, non c'è neppure un vecchio. Tutti partecipano alle riunioni obbligatorie, strettamente segrete. Dopo le nove di sera, non c'è una luce in tutta la città... tranne le luci azzurrine dietro le persiane chiuse dove le famiglie si raccolgono in segreti conclavi. Jefferson Springs, Texas: un noioso paesino di provincia... o la postazione avanzata del futuro?
Un'altro studio di "antropologia aliena" da parte del Dr Chad Oliver. L'ambientazione stavolta è tipica della FS americana degli anni 50 , la colonizzazione aliena (come ne "L'Invasione degli Ultracorpi" ) parte da un paesino sperduto della provincia americana. Ma l'approccio al tema non è banale, Oliver esamina il rapporto con la comunita' aliena dal punto di vista di una complessa interazione sociologica , senza le forzature ideologiche tipiche dell'America della guerra Fredda con L'URSS (nella SF Usa degli anni 50, l'alieno "cattivo" spesso si sovrapponeva al "sovietico").