As It Was — Reading Notes

The Catalog vs. the Text: Hunting as a Pretext

The catalog lists "Hunters -- Fiction" and "Human-alien encounters -- Fiction," but the excerpts reveal a more specific dynamic. Pritchard is a big-game hunter, yet his primary goal is not hunting aliens but retrieving a woman named Cornelia Boyce. He says, "We want the wench, boys. We want her on account of last night." The aliens—described as "reptiles and big insects"—are attacking Boyce's "people," and Pritchard intervenes not out of curiosity but to "buy ourselves a stack of chips and sit in on the game."

The hunting framework is a cover for a rescue or capture mission. The text emphasizes tactical language: "planned and directed attack," "defense arc," "war of extermination." The aliens are not passive subjects of a hunt; they are organized combatants. The catalog's "Life on other planets" is present but subordinated to a conflict narrative.

Voice and Structure: Dialogue-Driven Exposition

Payne uses dialogue to convey information and character. Pritchard's exchanges with Sturgis and Greene reveal plot points: the nature of the attack, the missing girl, and the plan. For example, Sturgis asks, "Who's fighting whom? Or what's fighting which?" and Pritchard replies, "This is a planned and directed attack." This technique avoids lengthy narration.

The prose is brisk, with short sentences and action verbs: "jets whined on down," "howled through a long pendulum swing." The point of view stays close to Pritchard, filtering events through his observations. The excerpts show no interior monologue; instead, external action and dialogue drive the story.

Recurring Details: The Alien Setting as a Character

Thisbe II is not a backdrop but an active element. The sky is lavender, the sun magenta, and the horizon "disturbingly close." The landscape includes "olive-hued hills" and "fists of rock" with "straight planes of cleavage." These details recur: the olive turf, the purple sky, the mirrored mountain flanks.

The setting also affects the plot. The ship's reflective surface makes it a beacon. The "primrose light" of Piramus and the "deep blue shadow" of a mountain spear mark time and space. The battle takes place in "long ribbony grass, now mashed and matted flat." The environment is not merely described; it is integral to the action.

The excerpts offer a narrow window into As It Was, focusing on a single battle sequence. Readers should note that the catalog subjects may mislead: the story is less about hunting or alien encounter than about a tactical intervention in an alien war. The missing context—what happened "last night," who Cornelia Boyce is, and the nature of the "bad dream"—remains outside these passages. Approach the text as a fast-paced action narrative with a strong visual sense.

I keep returning to the strange, lavender quiet of Payne's alien dawn, that precise hush before the chaos. It reminded me, oddly, of the slower dread in Cave-Dwellers of Saturn — Inside the Classic, where the real tension isn’t the hunt, but the uneasy waiting between breaths. A similar feeling of being watched by something that doesn’t quite think as we do.