The Making of the Representative for Planet 8

Blurb

The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 is a 1982 science fiction novel by Nobel Prize in Literature-winner Doris Lessing. It is the fourth book in her five-book Canopus in Argos series and relates the fate of a planet, under the care of the benevolent galactic empire Canopus, that is plunged into an ice age. It was first published in the United States in January 1982 by Alfred A. Knopf, and in the United Kingdom in March 1982 by Jonathan Cape.
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt of The New York Times wrote in a review of this book that "the effect of the story is powerful and immediate – with all the drama of good polar-exploration literature, and the eloquence, at its best, of the King James Bible." However, John Leonard, also of The New York Times, was critical of Lessing's switch to science fiction and in a review of this book, complained that "Mrs. Lessing is no longer very interested in people. She has come to feel that individuality is a 'degenerative disease'... She seems ... to be in the process of junking not only traditional narrative and conventional characters but the details of feeling as well..."