TY - BOOK AU - Wilson,Richard AU - Ashman,William TI - The Inhabited T2 - Produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1953 AV - PS PY - 2010/// CY - Salt Lake City, UT PB - Project Gutenberg KW - Science fiction KW - Short stories KW - Human-alien encounters -- Fiction N1 - Release date is 2010-02-25; Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net; Original publication data not identified N2 - "The Inhabited" by Richard Wilson is a science fiction novella written in the early 1950s. The story revolves around an extraterrestrial traveler sent to Earth by a dying race, seeking a new world suitable for habitation. The theme explores concepts of identity, control, and the consequences of a stagnant civilization. The narrative follows a nameless alien who becomes a "spy" by inhabiting various beings on Earth, starting with a cat and then progressing through the minds of humans. Through these experiences, the traveler grapples with their inability to control the minds they enter, ultimately finding themselves trapped in the psyche of a mentally ill man named Mersey. As Mersey articulates the dire state of his original civilization, the alien realizes that their race's survival might come at a cost that compromises their identity. The story culminates in a poignant struggle between the needs of the traveler’s people and the realities of life on Earth, leaving readers to ponder the implications of empathy, existence, and the quest for a new home. (This is an automatically generated summary.) UR - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31392 ER -