Short Science Fiction Story Review Brian Aldiss The Mutant Millennia

Tweet

Spoiler alerts A self contained science fiction story, but also part of Aldiss’s epic Galaxies Like Grains O Sand cycle of interconnected stories spanning millions of years. Having learned to travel across space fast, humanity begins to change. There are telepathic healers able to get into a patient’s mind, and there are theories of other pending sudden evolutionary jumps forward. The narrator meets someone who believes humans will kill anyone showing signs of evolving into anything better than a human, thus stifling evolutionary progress, but this idea is thwarted by the mutation being the ability to absorb other people and become a shapeshifter able to take their place. After being blamed for murders committed by the shape-shifters, the narrator flees to an island where he decides to drink himself to death rather than be absorbed by the new beings. This isn’t a great story, and just serves as a stepping stone between other, better stories in the series. Arthur Chappell