Let the Spacemen Beware   by Poul Anderson

Possibly the shortest novel I’ve ever read: twelve short chapters, which introduce a world and slowly unveil suggestions of a deep, sinister, secret there. There has to be one as the world is otherwise perfect: there are no police as there is no crime, no hunger, no need for an economy; everybody happy to help each other always. They are people who mostly shun technology for a simpler life, though understand deep physical theory. It is a well-worn trope which does at first put one off the work, but it is a hint of something wrong in the background that keeps you reading.

While the mechanics of the planetʼs years and seasons are very clearly laid down, the passage of time through the work is not. In the end, one has no idea how long the spacemen were on the planet for. Probably something like an Earth month? The temporal jumps happen between the chapters, the opening of each of which seems to introduce new relationships between the spacemen and the locals.

There is a funny mash of American (Neuvamerican Namericans!) culture and Welsh vowels in the language, which gives the prose a texture which just seems very unlikely to occur any time in the future.

On the whole an interesting little tale, cleverly done with no plot holes that I could see.

SPOILER

The planet is populated by people descended from three individuals, but genomic diversity happens through, once per year (about five Earth years), the flora filling the air with spores which cause random genetic mutations in everybody, accompanied by a madness within which some killings take place, providing a survival-of-the-fittest aspect to the genetic evolution of the people. The spacemen, being aliens and hence an invasive threat to the species, are sure to be killed in that process, barely surviving the escapade.