The Founder

By the 25th Century CE the slow building conflict between the billions trapped a greenhouse Earth and the 20 million Offworlders spread across the solar system approaches the breaching point. In the distant Uranus system, Edward Fundan, a habitat builder with vast resources, builds a star ship. Other, earlier treks to the nearby systems were begun long before, but Fundan will use Phoenix reaction energies to achieve much higher velocity. Before he can finish the job, he is poisoned. His grandson, carefully raised to handle the job, takes over. Despite resistance from his own family, a powerful spacer clan, Dane completes the "Founder". On the way he strikes a pact with the devil, in the shape of the Khalifi Clan, a semi-outlaw group that clings to ancient Arab ways. The Founder escapes the system ahead of the efforts by the Earth Social-Synthesis government to prevent it, possibly the last star ship that will ever do so...

Rowley's ( The Vang ) latest is an episodic tale of a man's ambition to build a giant spaceship and sail it to liberty among the stars. Even after Dane Fundan completes his massive project, the last free space-colonization vessel, and offers passage to those who want to escape the domination of Earth's World Government, his unholy alliance with wealthy, corrupt Arabs threatens to turn the craft into an interstellar slave-ship. In the absence of a plot beyond the chronicling of the journey itself, the book moves along without compelling force. Each new scene of cruelty on Earth, on the starship, or on the New World is a self-contained drama in which the band of expatriates keeps learning the same lesson: treachery will be found wherever conscious life appears. Despite the 25th-century setting, Rowley's message is a time-worn platitude: people must purge the dross from their own souls or risk incurring their own destruction.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.