This wasn’t available, but the library had a copy of Mr Spaceman. I was unimpressed by the dust jacket in blue and yellow, featuring a pair of feet in takkies (Zimbabwe-speak for ‘tennis shoes’). It looked like an old-fashioned child’s book. Once I began reading, I changed my mind very quickly. Desi, an alien spaceman, has been given the task of studying the people of Earth. They are a strange lot. He ‘quakes in the turbulence’ of their words and thoughts. Intermittently, he beams human beings onto his space ship, listens to their dreams, hopes and fears, and then returns them to earth, none the worse for an experience they don’t remember. He is disturbed by the yearnings of these ‘primary creatures’, many of whom are conscious only of a restless, unfulfilled longing. ‘Dashing somewhere, all of them were seeking something...’ Desi is unable to find anyone who leads a life of ‘bland contentedness’. Nobody is happy. Each person he encounters yearns, often for something he is unable to identify.
