Home Fires
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Gene Wolfe takes us to a future North America at once familiar and utterly strange. A young man and woman, Skip and Chelle, fall in love in college and marry, but she is enlisted in the military, there is a war on, and she must serve her tour of duty before they can settle down. But the military is fighting a war with aliens in distant solar systems, and her months in the service will be years in relative time on Earth. Chelle returns to recuperate from severe injuries, after months of service, still a young woman but not necessarily the same person—while Skip is in his forties and a wealthy businessman, but eager for her return.
Still in love (somewhat to his surprise and delight), they go on a Caribbean cruise to resume their marriage. Their vacation rapidly becomes a complex series of challenges, not the least of which are spies, aliens, and battles with pirates who capture the ship for ransom. There is no writer in SF like Gene Wolfe and no SF novel like Home Fires.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Against a backdrop of science fictional elements such as time dilation through space travel, cyborgs, and brain downloads, Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductee Wolfe (The Sorcerer's House) builds a romance and a mystery. Successful lawyer Skip Grison wants to find a wonderful gift for his contracted paramour, Chelle Blue, now 20 years his junior after an interstellar military tour. After reuniting Chelle with her estranged mother, Vanessa, whose consciousness has been downloaded into a new body, Skip takes Chelle on a round-the-world cruise that turns into an almost screwball comedy of hijackings and chaos as shadowy people may be trying to get to Skip, Chelle, Vanessa, or someone else entirely. Red herrings and unknown, mistaken, or confused identities saturate the novel, making this well suited for readers, especially mystery readers, who don't often read science fiction.