Plot: 3/9. It’s a bit tedious.

One spaceman asked Fox to read a journal salvaged from a signal rocket just outside the asteroid belt.

The narrator investigated Prott, a telepathic species in deep space, alone. His mentality crumbled gradually as lots of Protts sent him a welter of mostly incomprehensible information through telepathy. But he decided to stay there entire life for fear of bringing unsolvable trouble to the Earth. His self-sacrifice was only recorded in the signal rocket that he sent to the solar system intentionally.

In the end, Fox revealed that Protts eventually followed the signal rocket and polluted human’s minds with persistent bellyaching.

Core: 5/9. I think it a satire on those people who continuously bellyache and those who listen to them owing to their spirit of self-sacrifice. Also, Clair expressed the possible trials and tribulations in communicating with distinct species.

Plus I think Prott actually alludes to Marcel Proust (1871-1922) and Clair maybe mocked Proust’s writing style in this article (1953).

Character: 2/9. It’s unreasonable for the narrator to stay in the deep space for such a ludicrous distrust towards the ability of humankind.

World and Others: 1/9. Why did the bursar approve his solo research without any prompt communication? It’s too unpractical.

Overall: 3/9. I can sense St. Clair’s dark humour here but I don’t appreciate her skill of storytelling here.

By the way, I like this opinion.

St. Clair thought the field didn’t always understand or reward sophisticated humor, too invested in a headlong rush toward the perfect earnest.

It’s said that this article was not claimed as the best of Clair’s works, so maybe I would read more of her.