Eccentric Galactic psychologist Tan Porus is facing two huge problems. One is a squid whose bizarre behavior he’s been attempting to rationalize, finally resorting to using an imaginary quantity in the equations which describe its psychology. The other is his wife, who is not behaving the way she should. When graduate students start playing around with the squid, they trigger a response which causes it to emit a death field which nearly proves disastrous for more than just Tan Porus.

This sequel to “Homo Sol” is fun, but lacks the historical significance of its predecessor. It also has a more checkered history, since Campbell rejected it (it didn’t have the human/non-human confrontation of “Homo Sol”) and it bounced about a bit before finally selling. It is, nonetheless, better than much of Asimov’s earlier works and worth reading.

Found In

	The Early Asimov