to revolt against the status quo. In a flashback of his last conversation with Isobel, we learn that Crawford does not believe he will survive the revolution this time around. Major themes Black Sheep As with Black Man's Burden, Border, Breed nor Birth, and The Best Ye Breed, the title "Black Sheep Astray" plays on a Rudyard Kipling poem; in this case, as the story's epigraph ("We're little black sheep/Who've gone astray,/ Baa-aa-aa!") indicates, on the refrain of "Gentlemen Rankers." A gentleman ranker is a person of privilege who, despite his education, serves as an enlisted man, usually because he has disgraced himself or transgressed his society's mores, and so is considered a "black sheep". The continuous revolution The need for a continuous and "endless" social revolution against the status quo is a recurrent theme in Reynolds' work (see, for instance, the short story "Utopian"). In "Black Sheep Astray," Crawford's "third world revolution" also becomes a "second generation of continuing revolution" when he acknowledges that the young Abraham and his associates must create their own agenda to solve North Africa's present problems. References 1973 short stories Science fiction short stories