THE X FACTOR

The author, one of the most imaginative in the science fiction field (Night of Masks, and Ordeal in Otherwhere, 1964, are her most recent) leads her hero Diskan Fentress on an unusual journey outward from one strange planet to another, and also inward in the realms of his subconscious. The inhabitants of Vaanchard had created a paradise of the most refined sort for all but Diskan, the misfit. Diskan was, at least in terms of this environment, a primordial type, unable to appreciate the subtlety and the polish of his surroundings. Although limited in his capacity to reason, the urge to find a world where he belonged motivated him to effect an escape to unexplored planet. Alone in an unpredictable place, he is involved in a struggle between the good forces (the small brothers-in-fur with whom he carries on a sort of extra-sensory communication) and the destructive enemy in a chase across the bleak landscape and through the dream-like corridors of the ruins of an old city. It is an offbeat book in which action is vague, even secondary, but mood and emotion are sharply evoked.