Kelly, James Patrick. Planet of Whispers. Messengers Chronicles No. 1. Tor, 1985.
James Patrick Kelly has done something unusually difficult. He has made a career as a short story writer and an anthology editor. Reading Planet of Whispers, I can see why he doesn’t often work in the usually more lucrative long form. What we have here is a short story idea padded out to 240 pages. That is too bad, because there is an interesting idea at the heart of it. We have a planet with a devolved hominid species that resembles either cats or bears, depending on which reader you ask. Suffice it they are furry. They have a post-literate, pre-industrial agricultural society. A cultural crisis ensues when they are visited by a star-faring species with technological and biological secrets to trade for wheat. Contact with the aliens produces a mental awakening that inspires artistic creativity and voices in the head that sometimes make them schizoid. Unfortunately, the plot stumbles along and doesn’t quite know what to do with itself. Meh. ( )