The Return [Audio CD]

I loved this. I didn't think I was going to at the beginning, it had been so long from the originals.
As I read further though I began to enjoy the delicate skewering of the politicos the tree huggers, the religious nuts....
Nobody does it like Bova!

Astronaut Keith Stoner was part of an American-Russian space venture when the alien starship arrived. He became trapped inside; frozen for almost two decades and never time merged with the alien technology. Found drifting, he was brought back to earth where he was revived. However, Keith knew he no longer was human and did not belong so he built a starship based on the alien side of him and left the planet with his Jo Camerata to explore the cosmos.

Over a hundred years later, he comes home but now understands how profound Thomas Wolfe's "You Can't Go Home Again" is. He and his mate Jo (accompanied by their children Cathy and Rick) recognize nothing. Mankind is killing the planet with the greenhouse effect rapidly turning the orb into a neo-Venus and the extreme conservatives hold power with a strict rigid iron fist while ignoring the consequences of doing nothing to save humanity's goring the planet. Keith leaves his family in orbit to do some surveillance, but except for the odd underground rebel, mankind's reign seems through

The fourth Stoner tale (see VOYAGERS, THE ALIEN WITHIN and STAR BROTHERS) is an interesting cautionary science fiction thriller that warns readers to take global warming seriously and kick out demagogues before it is too late; sort of homage to Zager and Evans' "In the year 2525". The story line is fast-paced as Keith and Jo are in for a rude awakening re the earth starting with the melted polar cap and that his knowledge of history does not match the official records of the planet he orbits. However, this earth he finds is never adequately explained in regards to how he and his family got there and why Ben Bova chose THE RETURN to take place where it does as the blending seems disjointed to fans of the author who will recognize early on references to the Goddard project on Saturn.

Harriet Klausner

The Return (2009) is the fourth SF novel in the Voyagers series, following Star Brothers. The initial volume is this series is Voyagers.

In the previous volume, a nanotechnology plague was released into the population. The Star Brothers were spread to protect against the Horror. Then Stoner and his family flew to the stars.

In this novel, Keith Stoner has come home again from the stars with his wife and two children. But home has changed while they were gone. In fact, they seem to have slipped between timelines.

Raoul Tavalera has also come home again -- without his sweetheart Holly -- and it too has changed. His family is still there, but society has devolved into tyranny.

Angelique Dupre was born as Aretha Deevers in a tent city in Georgia. She changed her name after joining the Sisters of the Savior, a New Morality order.

In this story, twenty-two years ago, a starship entered the system and was tracked to the vicinity of Jupiter. Then it disappeared, but recently emitted messages from Earth orbit to scientists around the world. Naturally, the politicians, military chiefs and religious leaders suppressed these messages.

Keith is getting impatient with the political intransigence. His wife Jo tries to calm him down, but Keith is determined to contact leading scientists. He starts tinkering with the aurora borealis.

Raoul has recently returned from the Goddard habitat near Titan. He thought life back on Earth would be exciting, but finds it to be rather dull. The New Morality keeps interfering with his life.

Raoul finds his homecoming party to be a flop. People keep eyeing the surveillance scanners in the corners and talking low. When he takes his Mom out to the back yard, the scanners mounted on poles seem to watching them and she keeps watching them.

When Raoul asks about the Northern Lights shining overhead, nobody wants to talk about it. The police ask people to stay indoors at nights because of the emergency, but none know what the emergency is. His questions get him a free ride to a New Morality building in the west.

Raoul finds himself working for Sister Angelique. She discusses the Northern Lights with him. She mentions that the authorities fear that the public will see this expansion of the aurora as a sign of the coming of the end of the world. She wants him to help her investigate the situation.

Shortly thereafter, Raoul finds himself having a conversation with Keith in the starship. The surveillance cameras record him sitting quietly in his chair for many minutes. Angelique asks what he was doing and he tells her about Stoner.

From then on, Raoul becomes the middle man between the New Morality and Stoner. Keith appears several time near Raoul and is even recorded by the omnipresent cameras. Angelique takes Raoul to many meetings within the New Morality and with national politicians.

This tale links the Voyagers trilogy with the Planet series. But now the trilogy has a fourth volume. One wonders if the Orion stories will be linked as well.

This novel seem to conclude the Voyagers series, but maybe not the end of the Planet sequence. Leviathans of Jupiter appears to belong to that series. Read and enjoy!

Recommended for Bova fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of highly advanced technology, political intrigue, and good Samaritans.

-Arthur W. Jordin

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