Mid-Flinx [Paperback]

Alan Dean Foster (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Del Rey; First Edition edition (1996)
• ASIN: B000OVCMAG
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,188,437 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Alan Dean Foster's work to date includes excursions into hard science-fiction, fantasy, horror, detective, western, historical, and contemporary fiction. He has also written numerous non-fiction articles on film, science, and scuba diving, as well as having produced the novel versions of many films, including such well-known productions as "Star Wars", the first three "Alien" films, "Alien Nation", and "The Chronicles of Riddick". Other works include scripts for talking records, radio, computer games, and the story for the first "Star Trek" movie. His novel "Shadowkeep" was the first ever book adapation of an original computer game. In addition to publication in English his work has been translated into more than fifty languages and has won awards in Spain and Russia. His novel "Cyber Way" won the Southwest Book Award for Fiction in 1990, the first work of science-fiction ever to do so.

Foster's sometimes humorous, occasionally poignant, but always entertaining short fiction has appeared in all the major SF magazines as well as in original anthologies and several "Best of the Year" compendiums. His published oeuvre includes more than 100 books.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fun with a carniverous planet, August 19, 2004

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mid-Flinx (Mass Market Paperback)

This 1996 entry in the popular science fiction "Flinx" series is non-stop action space-adventure from first page to last. Flinx, the product of illegal genetic experiments, who grew up an orphan on the streets, has the useful but stressful and uncontrollable ability to read emotions in those around him.

As the story opens, Flinx, 20 and the owner of an interstellar space craft with a unique drive, is at loose ends, looking for peace and quiet on a backwater world. But the local bully takes a shine to Flinx's longtime companion, an empathic and poisonous flying snake, or minidrag, and insists on buying it.

When the situation becomes life-threatening, Flinx and his snake, Pip, flee the planet, instructing the space ship to fly into random uncharted space. The ship takes them to a supposedly undiscovered planet, covered with jungle a mile thick. Flinx exits his lander - and is nearly killed by a huge, transparent flying creature.

But something draws him on to explore this lush and beautiful world where the flowers have hidden teeth and even the water may reach up and grab you. For the first time in years, his headaches are gone. Risking death with every cautious step, he is finally rescued from a most ingenious botanical predator by a band of humans - descendants of a lost colony ship long forgotten.

These humans have companions, not pets, but apparently native creatures whose lives are bound inextricably (unto death) with their particular human. And they and the humans have some sort of peculiar empathic relationship with the planet.

Meanwhile, Flinx's enemies are hot on his trail -- no sooner is one set apparently neutralized than another appears.

Foster has a lot of fun with the creation of this life-teeming world. Everything has a function and a place in the planetary, evolutionary scheme of things. And it appears this strange and marvelously dangerous place has some importance in the destiny that draws Flinx through this series. Readers will hope so anyway as Foster's latest creation offers an endless source of thrills and surprise.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars For ADF Fans, February 6, 2004

By 

Rodney Meek (Austin, TX) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mid-Flinx (Mass Market Paperback)

This is another novel from Foster's Humanx Commonwealth universe. Here, his series hero Flinx smashes headlong into Midworld, a strange super-green plant-dominated world that was the subject of a previous standalone non-Flinx novel. (One thing that ADF excels at is creating cool worlds with fully realized environments and deadly flora and fauna, such as in Cachalot and Sentenced To Prism.)

On account of evil scientists having messed with his fetal DNA or something, Flinx is this young guy that has a few mind powers rattling inside his skull. So he's got this empathic ability plus a few other latent talents. Also his best friend is a non-sentient Alaspinian mini-drag, basically an extremely venomous flying snake with its own low-grade empathy skill. In any case, a rich psychotic merchant on a backwater colony world sees Pip the mini-drag and demands to buy her, but Flinx refuses to sell, and then has to flee when the merchant goes all postal. Luckily, Flinx has this rockin' spaceship that he acquired in an earlier novel from some super-aliens, so he zooms off in a random direction and ends up on Midworld, a planet which is not on any Commonwealth charts and which is the home to a small long-lost now-adapted group of human settlers.

There, a wandering Flinx meets a trio of the neo-natives and agrees to help them, since an accident has separated them from their Home Tree and they need assistance in getting back. But then the monomanical merchant catches up, because no one can say no to him. And much else happens from that point, including an appearance from the most excellent AAnn, which are these neat yet evil reptiloids that live to conquer everything, but with extreme politeness, accompanied by a gestural language component that allows them to convey nuances like third-degree regret or fifth-degree smugness.

A lot of the good stuff here has to do with the fact that virtually every creature and plant on Midworld is hyper-dangerous, so your best bet is to burn everything on sight, except that of course the vegetation is adapted to counteract this as well and you would be met with explosive results. Anyway, you'd best believe that people are dying left and right, getting decaptitated or infested with parasites or dissolved into goo. Dude, this would make a fantastic straight-to-cable movie!

So I liked it, although ADF's often-florid writing style and intermittently omniscient narration might take some getting used to. But I've been reading this guy since I was, what? maybe 15 or something? I think he rules. And he does a pretty good job with characters and can throw a few plot twists and stuff, so I can definitely recommend his material for those looking for a fairly quick and romping read. (Avoid the trilogy about the founding of the Commonwealth, though--it's fairly weak.)

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars where's the next one?, July 29, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Mid-Flinx (Mass Market Paperback)

I love all of foster's pip-and-flinx book's and am waiting fro the next. There are still a lot of unanswered questions fro all of his books that I wish he qwould answer. If anyone has heardf of qa new Flinx book please tell me???