Five centuries after humanity lost contact with Kana, a starship arrives to reclaim the descendants of its forgotten colonists. Kenyon expects resistance from people who have slipped from technological civilization into ritual and legend, but nothing about Kana makes sense. The planet that once possessed no land is now covered with islands. The old floating settlements have vanished. Food seems almost nonexistent. Yet the inhabitants are healthy, strong, and absolutely determined to remain.

Elyra, a young woman of Kana, offers Kenyon something his companions have failed to obtain: an explanation. She asks him to follow her into the plume-forest after sunset and meet the mysterious “father” her people credit with saving them centuries earlier. Kenyon believes superstition has replaced history, but the deeper he travels into the forest, the harder it becomes to dismiss what surrounds him. The drums are beating. The ground beneath his feet feels strangely warm. And when the people of Kana gather in darkness, Kenyon discovers that this supposedly primitive culture has formed a relationship with its world that no visitor from the stars could have anticipated.

Blood Lands first appeared in the December 1952 inaugural issue of Dynamic Science Fiction. Alfred Coppel turns the familiar lost-colony story into something considerably darker, placing technologically confident outsiders on a world where their assumptions become increasingly dangerous.

Alfred Coppel (1921–2004) began publishing science fiction with “Age of Unreason” in Astounding Science Fiction in December 1947.