“Exploration Team” was first published in Astounding Science Fiction, March 1956. You can read it on Archive.org. It is story #8 of 22 for The Best SF Stories of 1956 group read. “Exploration Team” won the 1956 Hugo Award for best novelette, and has been often reprinted.

In this future that Murray Leinster imagines, humans colonize the galaxy, but are unfairly restricted by intergalactic laws. Huyghens, our human protagonist, along with four Kodiak bears and an eagle, decides to illegally explore Loren Two. Huyghens knows he’s an outlaw but is also an idealist fighting for his way of life and against what he considers is unwise legal oppression. The story begins with a Colonial Survey officer, Roane, landing on Loren Two expecting to find a robot built approved colony but discovering Huyghens squatting illegally instead.

This is my second reading of “Exploration Team.” I liked it much better this time, but I don’t think it’s a classic or deserved a Hugo award. Of the stories we’ve read so far for group read 67, I’d have voted for “Brightside Crossing.” I’d rate the story ***+, meaning I thought it fun enough, but it’s not something I’d want to reread in the future.

Loren Two reminds me of the worlds in the Deathworld series by Harry Harrison, science fiction novels about planets where indigenous life is so violent survival is almost impossible. “Exploration Team” is more an adventure story with philosophy than speculative science fiction. Huyghens is against humanity depending on robots. He is out to prove that humans and their animal companions make better exploration teams. Leinster stacks the deck against robots because he never shows robots making a good effort. I think “Exploration Team” would have been a better story if robots were shown competing fairly within the story — instead they are Leinster’s straw bots.

Leinster has a limited vision of what robots can do. He imagines them being confined to specific programmed functions. Unfortunately, Leinster didn’t foresee robots learning like today’s large language models. Still, Leinster works hard to make a case against robots, and I believe it’s essential to the story. Personally, I believe robots will eventually surpass our abilities and make much better space explorers. They can endure a wider range of temperatures and don’t need to breathe, eat, or drink, nor will bacteria or animals want to eat them.

I guess science fiction fans back in 1956 really liked this story about Grizzly Adams in space. I think modern readers would be horrified by its solution of hunting threatening species to extinction. And Leinster never considers the possibility that Loren Two would evolve its own intelligent species, or even consider the intelligence of the existing species. Of course, this is the 1950s and colonialism is still in vogue, and it’s well before animal rights and ethical considerations for what other planets and evolutionary paths they might take.

What makes this story likable are the bears Sitka Pete, Sourdough Charley, Faro Nell, and the cub Nugget. Robert Heinlein and Andre Norton produced several successful juvenile science fiction novels in the 1950s that featured animal companions. That factor might have influenced Hugo voters.

Here’s what Mike emailed me about the story:

The only thing "Exploration Team" has going for it are the mutated Kodiak bears. Such an outrageous idea provides impetus to an otherwise rickety story.

The story centers on the ongoing battle against the native sphexes, cold-blooded belligerent carnivores. 

The story suffers whenever Huyghens launches into his countless anti-robot screeds. "But you can't tame wilderness with 'em!" In the end, the humans defeat the sphexes by using modified robots, making Huygens seem like a bit of a bloviating dingbat.

The story is told with a certain breathless quality:

"And the sphex whirled. Roane was toppled from his feet. An eight-hundred-pound monstrosity straight out of hell--half wildcat and half spitting cobra with hydrophobia and homicidal mania added--such a monstrosity is not to be withstood when, in whirling, its body strikes on in the chest."

We are repeatedly reminded that sphexes "looked as if they had come straight out of hell."
And we learn that "...lustfully they fueled tracked flame-casters..." Really? Lustfully? 

But it doesn't pay to scrutinize a story like "Exploration Team." Come for the action, stay for the bears.

One writing flaw I noticed while reading was that Leinster kept repeating himself. There are several places in the story where he would describe something, and then a few pages later describe it again with the same words. Plus, the story was too long. Unlike Mike, I accepted the criticism of the robots as the purpose of the story. Leinster promotes his character as an individualist, and protester. I thought Huyghens and the bears did make a good team. But I also can imagine a human and robots making an even better team. Unfortunately, I don’t want to imagine a future where we go around consuming all the planets in the galaxy like we’ve consumed our home world.

James Wallace Harris, 12/14/23