The Star Beast

The Star Beast is a juvenile science fiction novel by Robert Heinlein whereas "The Star Beast" is an adult science fiction short story by Poul Anderson, published in Super Science Stories in 1950 and republished in several Anderson collections, including Alight In The Void (New York, 1993).

"The Star Beast" occupies just forty two pages of Alight In The Void so is not a novel but nevertheless, in the pulp tradition, is divided into chapters with individual titles:

Chapter I, Therapy for Paradise
Chapter II, "Tiger, Tiger!"
Chapter III, Dark Victory

The opening sentence:

"The rebirth technician thought he had heard everything in the course of some three centuries." (p. 61)

- informs us that we are dealing with characters who live for several centuries and who practice something called "rebirth" although this seems to be more technological than spiritual. Indeed, it turns out not to be the Buddhist concept of rebirth.

The rebirth technician informs Harol, who wants to spend a couple of years as a tiger, that an animal whose ontogeny opposed its phylogeny would not be viable. I had to use a dictionary for both these words and to try to understand the distinction that was being made. Like some later, longer works by Anderson, this story shows a future in which artificial intelligence has rendered human intelligence redundant. I will continue to reread it with interest.