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Sanctuary

 analog dec 88
white papers
   
Sanctuary
12000 words

The convent of the sisters for the Missions to Africa was housed in a one-time castle on a low promontory which threw aside the long North Atlantic rollers like the bows of some great, basalt ship and gave to those who dwelt there, in whatever direction they chose to look, a view of scenery of such wild and extravagant beauty that it was almost in questionable taste.

Sister Augustine, who heads a Rest Home on the North Irish (or Whiteland) coast, invokes the archaic law of Sanctuary to protect an inkured alien castaway from the paranoid temporal powers.  If there’s a wrong note in this archetypal James White story – pace, structure, characterization, what-have-you – I must have missed it.  Except, perhaps, the extraordinarily powerful TV presenter named ‘Ben Matlock’!


Synopsis by Graham Andrews
 
First Publication:
  •  ANALOG, December 1988
  • voted best novelette 1988

Publication history:
  •   The White Papers (see under Books).

 

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