Dreams of Dawn

By Marti Steussy

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345352335
• ISBN13: 9780345352330
• Release Date: October 1988
• Publisher: Del Rey Books
• Length: 313 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.

Customer Reviews

What dreams may come...

In 'Dreams of Dawn', Marti Steussy gives us a look at another piece of the universe she created in 'Forest of the Night'. There are no cross-over characters; everyone in this novel is new to the reader. However, the overall structures and ideas are still the same: this a future in which humanity has gone forward into the universe in a tentative way, exploring planets and beginning colonisation for human beings in cooperation, for the most part, with other intelligent species encountered along the way. Protocols have been set up, worked out over long and painful experience, that certain trained teams, called the First-Inners, would be the first to explore new potential planets, to determine if the colonists pose a threat to the indigenous population, particularly those that might possess intelligence. This is reminiscent of the Star Trek Prime Directive, save that there is no non-interference policy here, but rather a search for means of cooperation. Like the first story, there is a colony already in place, the planet having been cleared by the First-Inner team for a colony that is well-established and thriving. There are several species here, who consider not only the newcomers alien, but are also alien and mysterious to each other (think of the relationship, or lack thereof, of whales to humans, for a broad comparison). The Kargans had a life-cycle that changed them from one form to another in three stages, the third stage of which was alien to the others.Steussy creates a colony world not too much different than a rural town perhaps in the old West of North America - far from production centres and population, relying on their own product for the most part, but also active in trade. This is very different from the more 'traditional', sanitised and plastic colony-bubbles of most science fiction.When trouble begins to arise on the planet, First-Inners return to investigate, but find difficulties on both sides of the issue. The main characters here are the First-Inner team, some special Kargans and colonists, but the real point of the story becomes the mystery to be solved - that mystery is not what is happening to the Kargans (the human food supply, alien to young Kargans, is to blame) but what should happen to them in the normal course of their lives. Even to the Kargans, it is a mystery. The key question here is similar to that in the first novel: Can they learn to communicate before a disastrous confrontation takes place?It is quite fitting that Marti Steussy, biochemist, Hebrew scriptures scholar and minister, would put so many rich elements into this story, too. The science makes sense, though I confess to have gotten lost on first reading at some of the biochemistry (I am an astronomer at heart). The change of the Kargans can be likened to life-stages of human beings, but especially those who are in search of special callings - the biblical phrase 'many are called, but few are chosen' is particularly apt for the final Kargan m