Customer Reviews

Dawn for a Distant Earth: The Forever Hero, Volume 1

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Be warned I am a sucker for any themes that involve immortality. Even so I think you will find the Forever Hero series of books very absorbing. Modesitt has written quite a lot of good novels and series, so it was no surprise for me to find this gem among his other pearls.

The story concerns the interaction between a galaxy spanning human empire and a savage, born on post apocalyptic Earth. As it turns out this young man does not age, at all. He also has a burning desire to see the mother of the human race, Earth, be renewed after its centuries of environmental devastation. In order to achieve this he has to overcome a universal apathy and direct opposition. To spice up the story our hero has almost super human reflexes and a natural inclination to use deadly weapons. Throw in a few unrequited love affairs and you have the makings of a classic space opera.

All in all the series makes for a great escape from the every day grind.

Dawn for a Distant Earth (1987) is the first novel in The Forever Hero trilogy. Sometime in the distant future, Earth has achieved the stars and colonized many planets. However, the home world continued to suffer from ecological problems caused by wars and pollution. When the ecollapse finally occurred, Earth became a hellhole of poisoned land and sea, savage weather, and toxic ground fogs. The population dropped from billions to a few thousands.

The Earth colonies formed a Federation and later an Empire and somehow lost contact with Earth. After countless years, an Imperial scout rediscovered the planet and the ISS Torquina was sent to survey the world. They found a wasteland of scattered ruins, mostly uninhabited and almost uninhabitable. The remaining animals were generally inedible due to toxin levels, as were many plants.

In this novel, the Torquina finds two populations on the planet: shambletowners and devilkids. The shambletowners live in squalid homes behind guarded walls and raise relatively uncontaminated food in trays. The devilkids, however, live in separate family groups, widely scattered in hidden nooks among the ruins, and gather their food from the poisoned land. Both groups are the prey of coyotes and rat packs.

The Torquina crew captures an injured devilkid and tests his abilities. He is extremely strong with a high intelligence and a blinding fast reaction time. The boy takes the name MacGregor Corson Gershwin and is educated as an Imperial, becoming an ISS officer and pilot. He returns to Old Earth as a flitter pilot supporting the scientists studying the ravaged world.

In this story, Gershwin gradually develops a dedication to restoring Old Earth to her former glory. He recruits other devilkids, sending them to be educated in the Empire, and uses them as the nucleus of his organization on Old Earth. Since he is Earthborn, the Empire rejects his requests for transfer to another assignment. Thus, with his longevity, he eventually becomes the commander of Old Earth Base. However, Imperial support for the reclamation effort has dwindled over the decades and Old Earth is having difficulties in getting mission related supplies and equipment.

While Gershwin was awaiting transport to his assignment on Old Earth, he shared one night of love with Caroljoy. They each remembered that night for the rest of their lives. Although Gershwin doesn't know for years, Caroljoy became pregnant with his child. She was married to a Duke, who cherished both her and the child, but she still remembered her Lieutenant.

This novel introduces the myth of the Captain, the prophet who preaches the rebirth of Old Earth and the leader who establishes the effort to banish the deadlands and to bring back the cool, green grass and trees to Old Earth. Nothing stops him, for he is destined to bring Old Earth back to life again. Even the Empire is reluctant to interfere with his destiny.

Highly recommended for Modesitt fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of individual daring and dedicated perseverance with a touch of romance.

-Arthur W. Jordin

Readers be warned: you have to read all 3 books in this trilogy to truly enjoy these books.

Gerswin is a devilkid, an orphan living alone among the pollution and dangerous animals of a ravanged and mostly unpopulated Old Earth. Living in the wasteland has made Gerswin a primitive though intelligent savage, and the extreme conditions has made him into a physical superman. When a galactic empire survey vessel takes returns to Old Earth and takes him on board and educates him and allows him to mature to full strength you can be sure interesting things will happen. The trilogy tells of Gerswin's struggles against powerful forces over the centuries as he engages in a mammoth lonely crusade.

The trilogy is exciting at times and tells an interesting story. The setting and mood resembles the author's later Ecolitan stories.

Modesitt's Dawn for a Distant Earth follows the exploits of the "devilkid" Gerswin as he tries to rebuild Old Earth. Centuries after the near-total collapse of Earth's civilization, an Interstellar Imperial cruiser rediscovers Old Earth and the destruction that was wrought upon the planet more than a millenia ago. The officers aboard the cruiser capture a single child from the planet -- Gerswin -- and teach him more civilized ways. As a devilkid, Gerswin had to scrounge for every ounce of his existence, fighting giant rats, coyotes, and rather mean shambletowners...the last vestiges of civilization on Earth...if one can consider a shambletown civilized at all. Gerswin is ultimately sent to the Imperial Academy where he obtains a commission and is then sent back to become part of the effort to reclaim Old Earth from the near-total environmental/political/social devastation. After many decades, Gerswin is put in charge of the reclamation effort...but beauracracies never change and it becomes harder and harder for Gerswin to get the materials he needs from the Empire to patch-up Old Earth. Ultimately, Gerswin has to resort to extreme measures to insure that his obsession -- restoring Earth to its former glory, or at least livability -- is not permanently shut down.

This is the first Modesitt I've read, and I have to admit that I wasn't overly impressed. Dawn for a Distant Earth wasn't a bad book, but I found the prose kind of clunky to read at times, as well the book having extending slow periods I had to trudge through. Now, most all books are slow at times, but I didn't find the characterizations strong enough to aid in bringing us through the slow parts of the book. Also, I found just about all of the characters -- including the main protagonist, Gerswin -- to be "distant" throughout much of the book; I rarely got intimate glimpses into the characters' psyches. Though there are a few touching moments, especially regarding the interaction between Gerswin and a "lost love". Overall, I have every intent of finishing this trilogy, but if the second and third books follow the same path as the first, I think it'll be a while before I read any more Modesitt.

Earth is ravaged and polluted, and those living there just get by. The conditions have spawned a mutant, Gerswin. When he is tested by the crew of a ship that finally rediscovers Earth, they find out about his superhuman abilities, both physically, and mentally.

Due to his immortality, he ends up working at reclaiming Earth for a long time, and is a natural leader for the project, recruiting other scavenger children and outsiders to help him.