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The Coming of the Goonga is a 4000-word short story by Gary W. Shockley, about a war between humans and aliens. It was first published in June of 1984 in The Clarion Awards, edited by Damon Knight, an anthology of some of the best stories that had originally been written at The Clarion Workshop for science fiction writers.

Spoiler Warning: Plot details and/or information about the ending follow. If you wish to enjoy the work first, stop reading here and return at another time.

Plot

The narrator is an alien, who describes how a human expedition came to his planet. He and and his kind observed the humans for awhile, particularly two humans named Lola and Roxanne, who were lovers and whom the aliens named Awakener and Loud Giant. One day, one of the aliens extended it’s tentacles, which they call Goonga, and killed Awakener. Loud Giant vowed revenge, and launched a bloody war against the natives. These aliens, when they die, retain a kind of consciousness, and can still impart wisdom and experience to their friends; in this stage they call themselves “Manuscriptors”, and so they are not that upset when the humans slaughter most of their people. They lay a trap, by luring the humans into a final battle, where Loud Giant is finally killed and the humans are defeated. They then struggle to translate the human language and documents, and when they do they learn that Loud Giant has promised to send many more humans to this world to continue the slaughter, and when they learn this, the aliens “rejoice.”

Reprints

This story has been reprinted in Donald Wollheim's The 1985 Annual World's Best SF.