Well, I solved a minor mystery the other day, while searching for that "Twilight Zone" episode for @arouetta. There's a book I just love; Ingathering: The Complete People Stories, by Zenna Henderson. I don't know how many of you have read her work; there are a lot of people who say that it's "mawkish" or "too sentimental." But a lot of kids who felt like they were different from all the other children growing up have found her stories to be a refuge, and some of the great S.F. authors of today consider her work to have influenced theirs:
The People are aliens. Back in the 19th century on earth, The People discovered that their planet, The Home, was going to be destroyed (if I remember correctly, their sun was either dying or going to go nova) and they just had time to build space ships so they could evacuate. They had no destination in mind; the ships went in all different directions, hoping that at least some of them would find planets on which they could live. One of them made it to earth, but, possibly because it was such a rush job to build it, the ship burned on re-entry and crashed. Many of The People made it out of the ship in their individual "life slips," but they were scattered all over the southwestern U.S., some with others of The People, some alone.
The People possess certain abilities that humans consider to be in the realm of the paranormal. They can remember things that their direct ancestors experienced. They can levitate. By using solar power they can move objects with their minds. And they can communicate telepathically. Individuals may possess other, more specialized talents, like an ability to sense the location of metals, or the ability to go into someone's mind and fix the things that are wrong, or the ability to sense details about a person's body, negating the need for an X-ray machine. In the southwest, in the early 19th century, these abilities tended to be cause for fear among the humans they encountered, with the result that some were murdered horribly for being "witches." Some of The People lived their entire lives alone, making a life for themselves among the humans, but always different, always separate, because it was dangerous to let anyone know who you really were. Some of the children were found and adopted by humans, and raised as human, and never could explain their unusual abilities, perhaps even to themselves. Some of The People married humans, and discovered that their DNA and human DNA could mix, so they had children, with mixed results on how much of The People's abilities the children possessed. And some of The People found other People with whom to make a life. Many of the life slips came down near the crash site, in a remote canyon; those People founded a community in the canyon. They had good relations with their neighbors, but their community was remote, and mostly they kept to themselves.
The canyon community is always on the lookout for two things: others of The People, who may need assistance, and a good teacher. They've had bad luck with teachers; most years they have enough school age children to justify asking the state to provide them with a teacher for their one-room schoolhouse, but, given their remote location, the state has trouble finding teachers willing to go there. The result is that they've gotten a lot of extremely elderly teachers, women (in Ms. Henderson's day teachers were mostly women, especially at the elementary school level) who wanted one last year of teaching before retirement, or retired teachers who needed money and were looking for a temporary assignment. And as the children start growing up, they come into their powers. For a six-year-old who has just learned to levitate it can be quite difficult to remember to always keep your feet on the ground around the teacher. One result of this is that some teachers have had heart attacks, and are buried in the little cemetery in the canyon. Another is that some teachers have left, feeling that perhaps they've been hallucinating, so they shouldn't be around children. And a third is that several teachers have informed the state that "It was an interesting experience, but please don't ask me to go back there ever again." Not surprisingly, the state keeps hoping that this year, maybe the canyon won't have enough children to insist on a teacher. It never happens. The People are strong believers in education, so, in a pinch, some of their recent high school graduates will sign up for a refresher course to bring the numbers high enough (and to keep an eye on those six-year-olds who have so much trouble keeping their feet on the ground). It has gotten to the place that the canyon community has sent one of their young graduates off to teacher's college; having a teacher who wants to live in the canyon, and knows about The People because she's one, too, just seemed like a good idea, and one of their young women has a talent for it.
Anyway, one day I wanted to tell Roger about one of the stories that I especially enjoyed, so I started with a little background: where The People came from, their unusual abilities, the traumatic experiences many of them had in their earliest days on earth, and the fact that Ms. Henderson was a teacher and most of her stories are centered around teachers. And, to my surprise, Roger started telling me a different one of The People stories, "Pottage," which is the story of a small town named Bendo, which is probably the largest community of The People outside of the canyon. Bendo is remote from any large towns, but it doesn't have the protection of a canyon, and it was founded by People whose most recent ancestral memories were of seeing their loved ones burned alive for being "witches." The result is that in Bendo, all alien talents are suppressed, to avoid being different, because different is dangerous. Levitating and moving things with the mind are considered to be especially dangerous, so things like running and jumping are discouraged; it's too easy to get carried away when you take your feet off the ground. Even small children shuffle their feet when they walk in Bendo. However, these are still The People, so they believe in educating their children and every year they ask the state to send them a teacher, and one year their teacher is very young, freshly graduated from teacher's college, where her roommate was the young woman from the canyon. She's a human, but she knows about The People, and she's able to put two and two together when she hears the children whispering. And she knows that Bendo's rules about running and jumping are unhealthy for children, so one day she assigns the students to write an essay titled "I remember the home." And she tells them that she has full control over the classroom and schoolyard - it's part of her contract - so as long as they're at school levitating is allowed. Inevitably, of course, one day the patriarch of the community comes to the school to check up and catches a child levitating. He bellows, the child panics and falls and is seriously injured, and if you have any chance of reading this book do so to find out what happens after that. (Sorry, no spoilers.)
Well, I confirmed that this was, indeed, one of the stories from Ingathering, and asked Roger where he had encountered it, since I knew he hadn't read the book, and he said he saw it on television; he thought it had been made into a "Twilight Zone" episode. So when I was searching for that episode for @arouetta I took the opportunity to see whether I could find out the name of this episode as well. I couldn't, for the excellent reason that Roger didn't see it on "The Twilight Zone." Only one of Zenna Henderson's stories made it to that show, and it wasn't a People story. No, what Roger saw was the pilot episode of a series that had been proposed but never made it past the pilot, probably because they cast William Shatner as the patriarch of Bendo, and (I think) the entire series was to take place in Bendo so Shatner could be the star.
Anyway, excellent book, available (to the best of my knowledge) only in hard cover and published by NESFA, the New England Science Fiction Association, ISBN 0-915368-58-7. They first published it in 1995, so by now it may well be available from Thrift Books.
Margret
Ms. Henderson was a school teacher, and most of The People stories feature school teachers, either as the protagonist or as a primary focus of the story.
The People are aliens. Back in the 19th century on earth, The People discovered that their planet, The Home, was going to be destroyed (if I remember correctly, their sun was either dying or going to go nova) and they just had time to build space ships so they could evacuate. They had no destination in mind; the ships went in all different directions, hoping that at least some of them would find planets on which they could live. One of them made it to earth, but, possibly because it was such a rush job to build it, the ship burned on re-entry and crashed. Many of The People made it out of the ship in their individual "life slips," but they were scattered all over the southwestern U.S., some with others of The People, some alone.
The People possess certain abilities that humans consider to be in the realm of the paranormal. They can remember things that their direct ancestors experienced. They can levitate. By using solar power they can move objects with their minds. And they can communicate telepathically. Individuals may possess other, more specialized talents, like an ability to sense the location of metals, or the ability to go into someone's mind and fix the things that are wrong, or the ability to sense details about a person's body, negating the need for an X-ray machine. In the southwest, in the early 19th century, these abilities tended to be cause for fear among the humans they encountered, with the result that some were murdered horribly for being "witches." Some of The People lived their entire lives alone, making a life for themselves among the humans, but always different, always separate, because it was dangerous to let anyone know who you really were. Some of the children were found and adopted by humans, and raised as human, and never could explain their unusual abilities, perhaps even to themselves. Some of The People married humans, and discovered that their DNA and human DNA could mix, so they had children, with mixed results on how much of The People's abilities the children possessed. And some of The People found other People with whom to make a life. Many of the life slips came down near the crash site, in a remote canyon; those People founded a community in the canyon. They had good relations with their neighbors, but their community was remote, and mostly they kept to themselves.
The canyon community is always on the lookout for two things: others of The People, who may need assistance, and a good teacher. They've had bad luck with teachers; most years they have enough school age children to justify asking the state to provide them with a teacher for their one-room schoolhouse, but, given their remote location, the state has trouble finding teachers willing to go there. The result is that they've gotten a lot of extremely elderly teachers, women (in Ms. Henderson's day teachers were mostly women, especially at the elementary school level) who wanted one last year of teaching before retirement, or retired teachers who needed money and were looking for a temporary assignment. And as the children start growing up, they come into their powers. For a six-year-old who has just learned to levitate it can be quite difficult to remember to always keep your feet on the ground around the teacher. One result of this is that some teachers have had heart attacks, and are buried in the little cemetery in the canyon. Another is that some teachers have left, feeling that perhaps they've been hallucinating, so they shouldn't be around children. And a third is that several teachers have informed the state that "It was an interesting experience, but please don't ask me to go back there ever again." Not surprisingly, the state keeps hoping that this year, maybe the canyon won't have enough children to insist on a teacher. It never happens. The People are strong believers in education, so, in a pinch, some of their recent high school graduates will sign up for a refresher course to bring the numbers high enough (and to keep an eye on those six-year-olds who have so much trouble keeping their feet on the ground). It has gotten to the place that the canyon community has sent one of their young graduates off to teacher's college; having a teacher who wants to live in the canyon, and knows about The People because she's one, too, just seemed like a good idea, and one of their young women has a talent for it.
Anyway, one day I wanted to tell Roger about one of the stories that I especially enjoyed, so I started with a little background: where The People came from, their unusual abilities, the traumatic experiences many of them had in their earliest days on earth, and the fact that Ms. Henderson was a teacher and most of her stories are centered around teachers. And, to my surprise, Roger started telling me a different one of The People stories, "Pottage," which is the story of a small town named Bendo, which is probably the largest community of The People outside of the canyon. Bendo is remote from any large towns, but it doesn't have the protection of a canyon, and it was founded by People whose most recent ancestral memories were of seeing their loved ones burned alive for being "witches." The result is that in Bendo, all alien talents are suppressed, to avoid being different, because different is dangerous. Levitating and moving things with the mind are considered to be especially dangerous, so things like running and jumping are discouraged; it's too easy to get carried away when you take your feet off the ground. Even small children shuffle their feet when they walk in Bendo. However, these are still The People, so they believe in educating their children and every year they ask the state to send them a teacher, and one year their teacher is very young, freshly graduated from teacher's college, where her roommate was the young woman from the canyon. She's a human, but she knows about The People, and she's able to put two and two together when she hears the children whispering. And she knows that Bendo's rules about running and jumping are unhealthy for children, so one day she assigns the students to write an essay titled "I remember the home." And she tells them that she has full control over the classroom and schoolyard - it's part of her contract - so as long as they're at school levitating is allowed. Inevitably, of course, one day the patriarch of the community comes to the school to check up and catches a child levitating. He bellows, the child panics and falls and is seriously injured, and if you have any chance of reading this book do so to find out what happens after that. (Sorry, no spoilers.)
Well, I confirmed that this was, indeed, one of the stories from Ingathering, and asked Roger where he had encountered it, since I knew he hadn't read the book, and he said he saw it on television; he thought it had been made into a "Twilight Zone" episode. So when I was searching for that episode for @arouetta I took the opportunity to see whether I could find out the name of this episode as well. I couldn't, for the excellent reason that Roger didn't see it on "The Twilight Zone." Only one of Zenna Henderson's stories made it to that show, and it wasn't a People story. No, what Roger saw was the pilot episode of a series that had been proposed but never made it past the pilot, probably because they cast William Shatner as the patriarch of Bendo, and (I think) the entire series was to take place in Bendo so Shatner could be the star.
Anyway, excellent book, available (to the best of my knowledge) only in hard cover and published by NESFA, the New England Science Fiction Association, ISBN 0-915368-58-7. They first published it in 1995, so by now it may well be available from Thrift Books.
Margret
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