You Shall Know Them (Magill’s Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature)
At a glance:
- Author: Jean Bruller
- First Published: 1952
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Science fiction—evolutionary fantasy
- Time of Work: The mid-twentieth century, after World War II
- Setting: New Guinea and London, England
- Genres: Long fiction, Science fiction
- Subjects: Murder or homicide, Twentieth century, Religion, England or English people, Fratricide, parricide, or filicide, London, Infants, Apes, Evolution
- Locales: London, England, New Guinea
The Plot
The premise of You Shall Know Them is an unlikely situation in which a man is willing to sacrifice his life for the clarification of a point of law. The point at issue is the legal definition of a human being. The question, “What is man?” has been posed or answered many times by poets, scripturalists, anthropologists, and lexicographers, among others, but never by legislators. None of the answers has ever been declared fully satisfactory, much less definitive. Vercors’ story reminds the reader that the identification of what exactly defines a person has...
[The entire page is 1048 words long]
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