The Night Shapes

Author of Hugo Award Winner "A Case of Conscience," describes his latest work, The Night Shapes , as a historical novel. He may be right. It may be true that the extraordinary events he describes could have happened.

Even today, many parts of Africa are still largely unknown, belief in primitive powers still strong. But in the early 1900's, at the time of which Blish writes, vast areas of the continent remained unexplored, witch doctors reigned supreme, their remarkable powers inexplicable but certainly undeniable, and forests, plains, jungle and mountain teemed with forms of life then unencountered by modern man.

So maybe The Night Shapes could have happened. We don't pretend to know. But we do know that provable or not, fantasy or merely fiction, The Night Shapes is one of the most hair-raisingly entertaining adventures any reader could enjoy.