''Child of Fortune'' is a 1985

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

novel by the American author Norman Spinrad. Like his previous book ''

The Void Captain's Tale ''The Void Captain's Tale'' is a 1983 science fiction novel by the American author Norman Spinrad. ''The Void Captain's Tale'' takes place three or four thousand years in the future in an era called the Second Starfaring Age, a setting Spinrad ...

'', ''Child of Fortune'' takes place three or four thousand years in the future in an era called the Second Starfaring Age. It is a

coming of age Coming of age is a young person's transition from being a child to being an adult. The specific age at which this transition takes place varies between societies, as does the nature of the change. It can be a simple legal convention or can b ...

story about a young girl's ''

wanderjahr In a certain tradition, the journeyman years () are a time of travel for several years after completing apprenticeship as a craftsman. The tradition dates back to medieval times and is still alive in France, Scandinavia and the German-speaking c ...

'', a rite of passage that all adolescents in the Second Starfaring Age are expected to undertake before they become adults. Critical reaction to the book was mixed, with some critics dissatisfied with Spinrad's long ornate polyglot writing. Others were more positive, finding the difficult language worth the effort.

Plot

The book is presented as an autobiographical tale, CHILD OF FORTUNE, ''A Historie of the Second Starfaring Age'' by Wendi Shasta Leonardo, and it includes an introduction written by the fictional narrator. Adolescents in the Second Starfaring Age are expected to embark on a journey of self-discovery called a ''wanderjahr'', "the eternal journey from childhood to maturity through the wondrous and terrible chaos of the region between." The wanderers are known as "Children of Fortune", and their culture contains elements of the

carnivalesque Carnivalesque is a literary mode that subverts and liberates the assumptions of the dominant style or atmosphere through humor and chaos. It originated as "carnival" in Mikhail Bakhtin's ''Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics'' and was further develope ...

and 1960s

flower Children Flower child originated as a synonym for hippie, especially among the idealistic young people who gathered in San Francisco and the surrounding area during the Summer of Love in 1967. It was the custom of "flower children" to wear and distribute ...

. The ''wanderjahr'' is typically a fairly long journey that only ends when the wanderer adopts her adult name (her ''freenom'') and chooses her life's work. Some never complete this rite of passage, and remain Children of Fortune their whole lives. The novel is the story of Wendi Shasta Leonardo's ''wanderjahr''. The story begins when Wendi (known by her childhood name Moussa) leaves her home planet, Glade, with only a return ticket home, a small amount of spending money, and a sex-enhancing ring. She travels to the planet-sized city of Edoku, where she quickly burns through all her money and becomes a mendicant. She is adopted by a group of Children of Fortune known as the Gypsy Jokers. Moussa falls in love with the leader of the Gypsy Jokers, Pater Pan, who teaches her the art of ''ruespieling'' (story-telling) and gives her the name Sunshine. After the abrupt disappearance of Pater Pan, Sunshine leaves Edoku with a wealthy Child of Fortune named Guy Vlad Boca. They sample the hedonistic life of the Honored Passengers aboard the interstellar Void Ships and eventually arrive on the planet Belshazaar. On Belshazzar, there is a large forest known as the Bloomenwald, which is the source of a plethora of naturally occurring psychedelic drugs. The trees use intoxicants to induce mammals to perform

pollination Pollination is the transfer of pollen from an anther of a plant to the stigma of a plant, later enabling fertilisation and the production of seeds, most often by an animal or by wind. Pollinating agents can be animals such as insects, birds ...

duties, and many Children of Fortune are trapped by the forest ecosystem. Through her force of will, Sunshine is able to lead a group back to reality. This becomes the basis for her first original composition as a ''ruespieler'', "The Pied Piper of the Bloomenwald". Sunshine's tale attracts the attention of an author who convinces her to go find Pater Pan, so that the story will have an ending. Sunshine finds Pater Pan addicted to the Charge, a kind of electronic drug. As he is dying, she experiences his entire life story in a kind of ecstatic vision. Sunshine ends her ''wanderjahr'' and adopts the ''freenom'' Wendi.

Style and themes

In a 1999 interview, Spinrad spoke about his use of language in his "far-future" novels, ''Child of Fortune'' and ''

'': "In these books, people speak this kind of mélange language of human languages, to the point where everybody speaks their own dialect of this common language – their own ''sprach'' of ''lingo'', I call it. I hasten to say, these books are at least 80% in English! But in Void Captain's Tale, the starship captain speaks a more Germanic form, and in Child of Fortune it's more latinate and Italian." Critic Wendy Erisman saw ''Child of Fortune'' as a work of

utopian A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book ''Utopia'', describing a fictional island society ...

science fiction. Spinrad's ''wanderjahr'' is a prototypical

rite of passage A rite of passage is a ceremony or ritual of the passage which occurs when an individual leaves one group to enter another. It involves a significant change of status in society. In cultural anthropology the term is the Anglicisation of ''rite ...

that takes place in three stages: separation, margin, and reintegration. Traditional "stagnant" utopias are based on oppressive social controls, but the freedom or the "margin" phase of the ''wanderjahr'' "becomes an impetus for creativity and social change" that allows young people to take their place in a constantly evolving utopia. Spinrad has called the book "an Anarchist novel, because there's no government".

Criticism

The book reviewer H. Kirchhoff felt that " r all its invention and flash, the book is irretrievably marred by Spinrad's arch, self-consciously ornate language." A common criticism was that the book was too long and "overblown". A short review in the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

'' was guardedly positive: "Entertaining if you read it in long stretches, but picking up the rhythm of the in-house jargon, a pastiche of German, French, Spanish and Hindu (I believe) takes some getting used to." ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' was also mostly positive, stating that the difficult language was "worth the effort".

References

{{Reflist 1985 American novels 1985 science fiction novels American bildungsromans American science fiction novels Novels by Norman Spinrad