Kingsmeat

Infobox short story |
name = Kingsmeat
title_orig =
translator =
author = Orson Scott Card
country = United States
language = English
series =
genre =
published_in = "Analog Yearbook"
publication_type =
publisher = Baronet Books
media_type = Print (Paperback)
pub_date = 1978
english_pub_date =
preceded_by =
followed_by =

"Kingsmeat" is a short story by Orson Scott Card. It appears in his short story collections "Unaccompanied Sonata and Other Stories" and "Maps in a Mirror". It was first published in the "Analog Yearbook" (1978) edited by Ben Bova.

Plot summary

A human colony world is taken over by an alien breeding couple. Under normal circumstances, the aliens would immediately consume all of the humans. One human (the Shepherd) manages to tame them by feeding them non-essential bits of his fellow colonists. This forestalls the human's doom for several years until they are rescued by offworld astronauts. The astronauts try to convince the people of the planet that the Shepherd is the only reason they survived, but the colonists retaliate by cutting off the Shepherd's limbs.

ee also

*List of works by Orson Scott Card
*Orson Scott Card

External links

* [http://www.hatrack.com The official Orson Scott Card website]