The Way the Novel Functions

In the s-f story you read then dream, a person is

an inch. And so a flower is a monstrous thing,

an insect monstrous more. Out rooting, Unkh

and Titi-bara and 7 others of the Tribe were caught defenseless

in the open by a Tiger Wasp-and 8 were never found but

Tuska's body was, injected with that waxy stuff

the wasplings eat on hatching: nobody would touch it now,

it wasn't fit for proper Tribal burial and, from the sun,

it swelled to deep sebaceous-yellow in a day.

There's also pleasure here: the wedding night is ritually spent

in a full-blown rose, the couple tussling in that overfolded

tissuey embrace; or simply keeping watch by night,

the ring of fires making ingots of the acorn husks

the rest of the Tribe curls sleeping in. . . . Though

mainly it's fear, it's guardedness and fear, it's every minute

under attack. The Hornets will dive in a pack or by ones.

The Mantis is 3-men tall but blends in all too greenly.

It will devour a child with horrible motions of etiquette,

its leg can be used for a saw. And at night, the armor-plated

Stalker Beetles, heavy, yet so quick, their jaws

can slice a throat like aspic. One is breaking

through the slats right now, is gripping you. . . . You

wake. It's day. It's only a day. It's only the common

enormous day to get through, the day with its 6

invisible legs and its feelers, the day on your chest.