Growing Up on Big Muddy
An astronaut named Kaiser crash-lands on an alien world he christens Big Muddy, and what follows is one of the more unsettling premises in mid-century science fiction: a symbiotic organism begins rewriting his body and mind, forcing him to regress toward childhood while simultaneously adapting him to survive on a world where the native life breathes a poison atmosphere. The seal-like natives, initially appearing primitive, reveal a slow-burning intelligence that Kaiser's transforming mind begins to mirror. What emerges is a strange, almost haunting meditation on identity and what humanity actually means when the machinery of self is stripped away and rebuilt by something alien. De Vet writes with genuine philosophical restlessness, and the final act poses a question that lingers: when you can no longer remember what you were, are you still you?
