"Prime Commandment"
by Robert Silverberg
writing as Calvin M. Knox*
Form: Short story
Year: 1958
ID: 908
Publication history:
- 1958: Science Fiction Stories January 1958, Magazine
- 1969: Dimension Thirteen, Ballantine Mass market paperback, 215 pp.
- 1971: Eva en de Dreieentwintig Adams, Bruna , ISBN 90-229-9008-7, 156 pp., in Dutch as Eerste Gebod
- 1982: World of a Thousand Colors,
- 1983: World of a Thousand Colors, Priam Trade paperback, 329 pp.
- 1984: World of a Thousand Colors, Bantam Mass market paperback, ISBN 0-553-24059-5, 331 pp.
- 2000: Alexandria Digital Literature, Alexandria Digital Online
- 2000: Fictionwise, Fictionwise Online
Other resources:
[None on record]
Comments:
Three hundred years ago, a colony ship crash landed on Beta Andromedae XII. The survivors made do with what they had, and fortunately the planet was warm and bounteous. As generations passed, a religion grew out of the story of the Ship crashing and the founding of World. Then comes another colony ship, this one promised the supposedly uninhabited world of Beta Andromedae XII for themselves. It's a group of puritanical Christians who left Earth to escape the influence of unholy sinners, and the people they find on their planet certainly don't meet standards of sanctity. The new arrivals see only three choices: 1. Go back to Earth; 2. Convert the savages; 3. Kill them.