Home is where the heart wishes to be

kw: book reviews, science fiction, interstellar travel, aliens, trilogies

Alan Dean Foster writes one of the best known SciFi series, a light-hearted collection now numbering twelve novels, "Flinx of the Commonwealth". The "Founding of the Commonwealth" trilogy followed and is interwoven with these. Foster has a host of other series and stand-alone novels numbering more than one hundred. I don't know if he writes nonfiction also, but his fiction output rivals that of Isaac Asimov.

The Candle of Distant Earth completes his most recent "Taken" trilogy, begun in 2004. Volumes 1 and 2 are Lost and Found and The Light-Years Beneath My Feet. The trilogy's premise: Marc Walker is captured by aliens and finds himself a captive on a ship bearing numerous captives from many alien races. They are to be sold to zoos and collectors of alien "pets".

The first volume is concerned with Walker's gradual acceptance of interaction with some very different beings, their alliance, escape, and rescue by a more powerful alien civilization. The second covers the adventures of Walker and his alien friends as they gain the confidence and allegiance of a race that agrees to help them find their way home. In the third, they find their home planets, though they have all changed a great deal; homecoming isn't as expected, in each case. Along the way, their original captors occasionally intervene, trying to recover "lost inventory", or at least restore their "honor" by killing the escapees.

Hmmm. That's a pretty succinct story line. But it is more involved than a High Concept premise. The theme is really coming of age, a genre I heartily enjoy.