The first in a trilogy continued by Winter in Eden and Return to Eden, this brilliant book supposes that the dinosaurs were never wiped out and that when primates evolved into humans they did so based on New World primates. Intelligent saurian scientists come to the Western hemisphere and discover that intelligent mammals bar their way. The Eden series is perhaps my favorite science-fiction trilogy. The best aspect of the alternate universe was that Harrison supposed that instead of embracing technology, the saurian scientists become biologists, breeding plants and animal to fulfill functions that humans would construct tools for. Their vessels are modified leviathans, their weapons are mutated lizards that spit poison darts, mutated frogs have been bred to the point that they serve as optical devices…

Harry Harrison crafted a masterful alternative reality in only three books and I found it endlessly fascinating. The narrative embraces an alien view of humanity, as well as the human view of an awful invader. The Eden trilogy is, above all, the struggle of native people resisting an alien invader, and makes light—and politically veiled—for any primate concerned with maintaining his viability in his native land.