Publisher’s Blurb
. . .a race evolving over centuries from the muddy waters of some delta, in a planet lightyears away . . . Suppose, too, an encounter with man, for both races have evolved space flight, though along totally different lines. Inevitably there is a clash . . . A gulf of understanding separates utod and man . . .

Brian Says

A novel written in anger following inhumane experiments on dolphins. Space-going men and women find an alien race, the utods, on a planet alien to both parties. The utods enrich their lives and bodies by wallowing in their own droppings, a ceremony incompatible with terrestrial preconceptions: according to the latter “civilisation is reckoned as the distance man has placed between himself and his excreta”. Result: disaster. A serio-comic novel with diverse multi-national characters exemplifying human madness.

FIRST EDITION: Faber & Faber 1964