Our Lady of the Sauropods by Robert Silverberg

"Our Lady of the Sauropods"

by Robert Silverberg

Form: Short story

Year: 1980

ID: 841

Publication history:

Comments:

This was the first piece of short fiction Silverberg wrote after his 1970s sabbatical, written at the urging of Ben Bova and Robert Sheckley at Omni. Using fossil DNA, scientists have brought dinosaurs back to life and put them on an island to study them. There's dissent among the scientists whether they should allow tourists to visit the island. Sound familiar? But this Dino Island is an L5 space station, so the creatures can't escape and harm anyone. Or can they?

The main issue in this story is this: if dinosaurs dominated the planet for so many millions of years, who's to say they didn't have a kind of civilization? Our human cultures are so centered on buildings and other physical manifestations of technology that we can't imagine a civilization not based on manipulation of the environment. This idea was also treated in Downward to the Earth.

The audio adaptation is available from Audible.com.

Other resources:

[None on record]