Review by Elizabeth C. Bunce
I was first introduced to Zenna Henderson’s “People” in fourth or fifth grade. A tale of her aliens on Earth was included in our class reader, and though I lost details like title and author, I never forgot their almost magical abilities or the beauty of Henderson’s prose. I encountered them again in college, and it was like being reunited with old friends. A different story, yes, but surely these were those same aliens I read about in elementary school! A few years later, I stumbled across a newly-published omnibus edition, Ingathering: The Complete People Stories from NESFA Press. Within I rediscovered both tales, along with whole generations of Henderson’s uplifting stories of immigrants, community, and belonging.
The collection includes seventeen interwoven short stories, tied together with framing narratives from previous collections, all featuring a race of aliens known simply as “the People.” Physically indistinguishable from humans, the People crash-landed in the Southwest U.S. after fleeing the destruction of their planet. They possess extraordinary abilities like teleportation, telepathy, and molding light into matter, abilities they carefully shield from the prying eyes of outsiders.
Shield, yes—selfishly hoard, no. In Henderson’s stories of the People, a culture of generosity and altruism emerges. According to a chronology by editors Mark and Priscilla Olson, the People arrived around 1890, and the stories span the next sixty or seventy years, bouncing around in time and space but never veering far from the heart of what makes the People the People. First published between 1952 and 1974, these are alien stories, refugee stories, tales of pioneers and immigrants cut off from their home and making a new life in a strange land among often suspicious strangers.
Each story can be read as a standalone, but they bind together as an interconnected whole—rather Henderson’s recurring theme, in fact. Many stories feature teachers (Henderson considered herself a teacher first, a writer second), so young characters figure prominently. As do the extended families of the People and the larger rural Southwest community of old mining towns and homesteaders. Published in the golden era of classic 20th century sci-fi, they’re a refreshing antidote to militaristic and technocratic alien encounters, a warm flipside to the Cold War.
In Ingathering we meet mixed-species siblings Peter and Bethie, yearning to understand their heritage. There’s the unforgettable Francher kid, talented and troubled in equal measure. Human couple Mark and Meris are changed forever when they find a lost child wandering—er, floating—outside their cabin. Sweet young teacher Valancy Carmody can’t hold down a job because she’s just… odd… until she finds herself teaching a school full of young People. We grieve with a widowed grandmother as she watches the last days of the Home and gets caught up in the excitement of her People’s hasty exodus to space. We fall in with siblings Remy and Shadow as they help a crotchety old neighbor build a spaceship so he can bury his son on the moon. We hang out at a hippie commune, and dip in for a time to an urban nursing home. But we always seem to come back home, wherever that may be, thanks to the touch of the People.
This is almost its own genre–it’s cozy sci-fi, alien arrival stories in contrast with outright alien invasion stories or those that do more with alien arrival conflicts. It’s definitely not E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Farmageddon, or Explorers, but also not The Day the Earth Stood Still, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Alien Nation, They Live, or The War of the Worlds. Most of the first contact, alien invasion, or other close encounter stories lean into the paranoia. This one is about inclusiveness and community.
Ingathering: The Complete People Stories includes an introduction, a chronology, an author biography, a short autobiographical essay by Henderson, and bibliographies of Henderson’s other works.
Highly recommended for students of classic science fiction, speculative fiction by women, and anyone looking for a true comfort read, Ingathering: The Complete People Stories is available here on Amazon.
