There and Back Again

Pat Murphy

ISBN 10: 0812541723 / ISBN 13: 9780812541724

Published by Tor Science Fiction, 2000

About this Item

1st pr. SIGNED by AUTHOR on the title page. Book is square, solid, and unread. When you receive this book, you'll feel as though you've stumbled into a cave and come across.an elven sword named Glamdring -- or the crown of the fabled Prester John -- a ring of invisibility.or even a Magic Lamp, prosaic as that may sound! You MAY even cartwheel with glee! In protective archival bag!

Seller Inventory # 030059

Bibliographic Details

• Title: There and Back Again
• Publisher: Tor Science Fiction
• Publication Date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0812541723
• ISBN 13: 9780812541724
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Condition: Fine
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)

About this title

Synopsis

Bailey was heading home in his steam-powered rocket when he found a message pod. It was only by luck that he spotted it, disabled and drifting in an eccentric orbit around a large M-type asteroid. Strange to find a message pod so far from interstellar trade routes, drifting through the Asteroid Belt around Old Sol. Bailey picked up the message pod, and notified its owners that he had it. And that was the beginning of the adventure. The next thing he knew, the legendary Gitana, adventurer extraordinaire, was arriving at Bailey's asteroid home, and then he was on a starship, heading for the center of the galaxy!

Review

Pat Murphy, writing as her imaginary friend/alter ego Max Merriwell, presents a view of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit through the lens of space opera.

Bailey Beldon, a norbit who loves a good tale of adventure from the comfort of his asteroid belt home, unexpectedly becomes an unwilling protagonist when adventurer Gitana and a group of powerful Farr clones show up on his doorstep to retrieve a message pod he has scavenged. The message--from another Farr clone--includes a map of previously unknown wormholes and the tantalizing promise of a glorious Snark, the Farr term for alien artifacts left behind by the Old Ones.

Bailey suddenly finds himself light years from home and in the company of an oddball assortment of characters, including a 'pataphysician named Gyro Renacus, who, along with Gitana, appears in Murphy's Wild Angel, and Fluffy, a fighter pilot who is part cat. (Max Merriwell even writes Murphy in as a character.)

Assisted by his tone-deafness, his pragmatism, and a Mobius strip that can slow time to a crawl, Bailey pits himself against Resurrectionists who use the clones as spare parts, trancers who hypnotize with music, pirates, gigantic metal-eating spiders, and the Boojum--the Snark left to guard the treasures the adventurers seek.

Murphy's prose sparkles throughout. Her tone ranges from the dazzlingly descriptive (as in her portrait of the heart of the galaxy) to the crisply active to a fairy-tale tone that brings to mind the soothing voice of Maurice Evans, making There and Back Again a choice novel to cozy up with on a rainy day. --Eddy Avery