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Promised Land

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They had set out from Earth in search of the promised land and after centuries of flight they believed they had found it. It was already inhabited, but by a primitive and peaceful humanoid race that gave them no opposition.

This was the situation when the HOODED SWAN landed on its information-seeking mission for the vast interstellar libraries of New Alexandria. Grainger, man of the double-mind, realized early that there was something odd about the truce between the xenophobic colonists and the docile natives.

It took a fleeing wide-eyed native child to bring the Promised Land suddenly to critical mass. What was there about this little girl that could so take an entire planet to the edge of Kingdom Come? That was what Grainger's minds had to find out and quickly.

Cover art by Kelly Freas

Published in 1974 by DAW.

  The starship Zodiac had taken centuries to cross the interstellar gulf between Earth and Chao Phrya - centuries during which generations of men and women waited out their lives in rigidly controlled conditions, dedicated to a single purpose. That purpose was to deliver their descendants into a Promised Land, to build their own new world.

Those descendants were not about to welcome interference from the galactic community, and were bitterly resentful of outsiders who wanted to trespass on the world which they regarded as so completely their own. But the Promised Land was inhabited already, by the enigmatic Anacaona, and the galactic community could not stand by and watch the aliens subjected to the will of the colonists.

Into this hostile and mysterious world comes Grainger, pawn of the New Alexandrian scientist and politician Titus Charlot, in pursuit of an alien girl who may hold the key to the puzzle of Chao Phrya. The search takes him deep into the rain forest, whose dangers he must face without weapons or knowledge. And there comes a time when even the resources of his mind-parasite, the wind, must run out...

Cover by Bob Marchant

Published in 1975 by Dent.
ISBN:0-460-04280-7

  Starship Zodiac carried its cargo of men and women across the centuries-wide interstellar gulf between Earth and Caho Phrya. It delivered its passengers into a Promised Land -there to create a new world.

J ealous of their territories, resentful of outsiders, the descendants soon began to subject the alien Anacaona to their own will.

Into this hostile and mysterious world comes Grainger aboard his starship Hooded Swan, in pursuit of an alien girl who could hold the key to the enigma of Chao Phyra ...

Cover by Angus McKie.

Published in 1978 by Pan.
ISBN:0-330-25267-4

 

In omnibus Swan Songs.
Translated into French as: Terre Promise.
Translated into German as: Die Welt der Verheisung; also in omnibus Die Saga vom Raumpiloten Grainger.
Translated into Japanese.

Review by Ian Braidwood

Cast of Characters:
Grainger, Eve Lapthorn, Titus Charlot, Linda Petrosian, Max Volta - Tartaglia, Danel, Mercede, the wind, Michael and Alyne.

This story starts with Grainger on New Alexandria, waiting for a new assignment from Titus Charlot.

Bored of drinking and reading, he borrows a car and goes for a drive in the country, where he rescues a young Anacaonaian girl from the two men chasing her; only to be picked up by the police.

The next day the girl is kidnapped and Grainger is guiding the Hooded Swan to Chao Phyra, where the girl's people originally came from. However, the descendants of the crew of the generation starship Zodiac have settled the planet and they guard their rights jealously. They make it difficult for the crew of the Hooded Swan to do anything. Under-manned and under-equipped, Grainger is forced to journey through the hazardous Chao Phyran jungle in search of the abducted girl.

These books really fly past and they are so easy to read that they barely touch the sides.

Thematically, this centres around how vanity can mislead; Charlot, the human Chao Phyrans and Grainger are all mislead by their expectations about the nature of the Chao Phyra's indigenes.

One criticism is the most of the story is taken up with the journey through the jungle with the plot exposition squeezed, deflatingly, into a single conversation.

The Brian Stableford Website