Some more adventurers gone adventuring, sci-fi style... Gulliver Foyle, from Alfred Bester's "The Stars My Destination", a very reluctant adventurer, on a very dark road; Felix, from John Steakley's (An author who I miss very much. With only two full length novels published, the characters in Armor and Vampire$ call to me and haunt me to this day. He passed away at the age of 59. Rest in peace, John) "Armor", his pursuit of oblivion birthed the part of him that ensured he would survive; Donal Graeme, the Genetic General, who was so much more than his people knew, and became something even his brilliance couldn't predict; William Mandela, from Joe Haldeman's "The Forever War", not on an adventure at all, but thrown down a deep, twisting hole by his own people; Sam, from Roger Zelazny's "Lord of Light", a colonist on a distant planet, who eventually is made over into a god (through extreme amounts of time, and superior technology, which by this point the offspring of the original colonists have forgotten), and then decides to tear the entire establishment down; Gerswin from L.E. Modesitt, Jr's "The Forever Hero", who in some ways, reminds me of Donal Graeme. A primitive "devilkid" who is transported from Earth to the seat of the interstellar government, trained, and through a combination of virtual immortality and highest order thinking, unravels said government and restores Earth to it's primeval state; and Juan Rico, from Robert Heinlein's "Starship Troopers". This is one of the books that got me into the sci-fi genre. I've read some talk about various controversies perceived in this one... All I can say is that it tells of the journey of a soldier in the trenches, and his experiences throughout training, and during the war. If you read some of Heinlein's novels that follow this, I think they repute many of the claims of controversy about this work. Regardless, one of my favorites by him, and as I mentioned, a gateway novel into the realm of science fiction.
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