A later series, like the Taken books beginning with Lost and Found ( 2004), tends to replicate, but at a lower energy level, Foster's skilful deploying of complicated plots in worlds and galaxies conceived in pleasing detail, as does The Tipping Point Trilogy, beginning with The Human Blend ( 2010), a new series featuring Genetic Engineering in a Near Future world on the verge of environmental collapse ( Ecology). Sometimes reminiscent of the earlier work of Poul Anderson, the sequence is expansive and colourful, though tending to melodrama and prone to the fable-like use of such sf and fantasy elements as ESP and dragons. Strange Music: A Pip & Flinx Adventure ( 2017) is straightforward. A further internal sequence, the Founding of the Commonwealth tales, comprises Founding of the Commonwealth 1: Phylogenesis ( 1999), Founding of the Commonwealth 2: Dirge ( 2000) and Founding of the Commonwealth 3: Diuturnity's Dawn ( 2001), and details the founding of the loosely knit, humane Commonwealth as humans and the Alien thranx edge gingerly towards partnership, while at the same time Flinx begins to suspect that his uncanny empathy with an immensely powerful ancient Tar-Aiym weapon/artefact may suggest that he may himself be an artefact designed, it may be, to save the Galaxy.
#ALAN DEAN FOSTER THE DAMNED DRIVERS#
A second, looser sequence consists of Nor Crystal Tears ( 1982) Midworld ( 1975) a connected trilogy made up of Icerigger ( 1974), Mission to Moulokin ( 1979) and The Deluge Drivers ( 1987), the three comprising some of his best work to date Voyage to the City of the Dead ( 1984) and Sentenced to Prism ( 1985).
The central sequence follows the life of young Flinx, a seeming orphan with Psi Powers and the friendship of a highly potent pet alien named Pip, and beginning with For Love of Mother-Not ( 1983) a connected trilogy made up of Foster's first novel, The Tar-Aiym Krang ( 1972), Orphan Star ( 1977) and The End of the Matter ( 1977) Bloodhype ( 1973) and Flinx in Flux ( 1988) later volumes either infill or, like the superior Running from the Deity ( 2005) and Flinx Transcendent ( 2007), continue his long story. Several of his best books fit into a loose sequence of novels set in a multifarious Galaxy dominated by the Humanx Commonwealth, a venue well suited as an arena for Space Operas and encounters with Alien races. Who Needs Enemies? (coll 1984), The Metrognome and Other Stories (coll 1990) and others, including Exceptions to Reality (coll 2007) Foster is best known, however, for his prolific, competent and long sustained output of novels and novelizations. Foster began publishing sf with "Some Notes Concerning a Green Box" for The Arkham Collector in 1971, and has collected short stories in With Friends Like These. (1946- ) US author, raised in Los Angeles interestingly, he has listed Carl Barks (1901-2000) – the creator (long unacknowledged by Disney) of the best Comic strips and Big Little Books in the Disney stable – as one of his formative influences, specifically on his depiction of older characters.
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