Found: Sci-Fi: Competing Planet Managers Watch a Fake Mud Execution

Original topic subject: Sci-Fi: Competing Planet Managers Watch a Fake Mud Execution

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Found: Sci-Fi: Competing Planet Managers Watch a Fake Mud Execution

1KyranIsteran
jun 29, 2023, 9:51 pm

A short story or a relatively short novel, I can't recall which, that I read about 20 or 25 years ago. It was a science fiction story set in a star system named, I think, Angalia!, which translated to "Watch out!" or "Look out!" from Swahili, and starred a small group of humans traveling to the planets they are going to manage for a period of time. There may have been a prize or something they were competing over, and they all tried to make their planets the best in some way.

One of the characters, who I recall was the most likable and least... unpleasant, had a boring, mud-covered planet with some poor natives that ate crappy food shipped down to them, and ended up at one point hosting the others and showing off how cruel he was by executing a native in a mud pool which he claimed was hot enough to strip the flesh from its bones; turns out it was all an act and the mud made a good mud bath.

2MissSquish
jun 29, 2023, 10:39 pm

It's in Brain Ships

"If the Loosies don't please him, he cooks them alive in that boiling mud! ... What could they have to do with Angalia, a planet where no intelligent sentients existed?"

3sueelleker
jun 30, 2023, 3:22 am

4KyranIsteran
jul 13, 2023, 12:57 am

That's the one! Thanks so much!