The Red One

Most readers, would choose The Red One as London’s finest short work of science fiction. Reminiscent of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, it tells of a lepidopterist named Bassett who hears a strange musical sound on the shore of one of the Solomon Islands. To discover its source, he travels into the jungle, is severely wounded by headhunters, grows delirious, and nearly dies. He is saved by a native girl and taken in by her tribe, where he grows friendly with its medicine man and chief “head-​curer.” Through Ngurn he learns that the tribe worships the source of the sound as “The Red One” sometimes called “The God-​Voiced” or “The Star-​Born.”