The Forgotten Planet

About the Characters in This Book

This is something of an oddity among fiction stories, because some of its characters may be met in person if you wish. Down at the nearest weed–patch or thicket you are quite likely to see a large and unusually perfect spider–web with a zig–zag silk ribbon woven into its center. Its engineer is the yellow–banded garden spider (Epeira Fasciata) whose abdomen may be as big as your thumb. I do not name it to impress you, but to suggest a sort of science–fiction experience.

Take a bit of straw and disturb the web. Don't break the cables. Simply tap them a bit. The spider will know by the feel of things that you aren't prey and that it can't eat you. So it will set out frightening you away. It will run nimbly to the center of the web and shake itself violently. The whole web will vibrate, so that presently the spider may be swinging through an arc inches in length, and blurred by the speed of its swing. You are supposed to be scared. When you are alarmed enough, the spider will stop.

That spider, very much magnified, is in this book with crickets and grasshoppers and divers beetles you may not know personally. But this is not an insect book, but science–fiction. If the habits of the creatures in it are authentic, it is because they are much more dramatic and interesting than things one can invent.

Murray Leinster