Silverberg wrote this at 22, and it burns. Colony Eight on jungle planet Damballa was supposed to be humanity's fresh start. When Jim Reese comes home, he finds his friends hollowed out, their minds colonized by the sinister Dr. Tersen. They don't resist. They don't recognize him. They serve. What follows is a tense cat-and-mouse thriller about one man trying to wake up a population that's forgotten it was asleep. Silverberg layers colonial allegory beneath the pulp surface, asking uncomfortable questions about identity, autonomy, and who really controls a world. It's not subtle. But at 22, you wouldn't expect subtlety. You would expect fury, and you get it.
