Child of Fortune

This is the most ragingly 1960s book I've ever read that wasn't produced by '72. Somehow, it took Spinrad till the mid-'80s to sum it ALL up in the form of an idealized coming-of-age-in-space story set in a culture with a pronounced "journeyman" phase that's celebrated as the cornerstone of identity-building; yes, this is in the same universe as the Void Captain's Tale, which is all about spaceships powered by mentally unstable women strapped into mindblowing-orgasm machines, which probably hints that this ain't aiming at subtle. Written in a pretentious but utterly suitable polylingual style full of Germanic and Spanish and pseudomystical Japanese and Sanskrit, it's totally over the top and totally right on. Plus, it involves traveling show more gypsy tribes, piles of tantric sex, a fetishization of adventure, a planet full of pernicious flowers producing millions of psychoactive compounds, proud Zelaznyesque mythic indistinguishability between science and magic, an old-school cryogenic immortal or two, and a big fat helping of Northrop Frye hero questing turned into a full on kunstlerroman.Seriously, a very particular kind of person is gonna find this as awesome as I did. Some of those people will be really lame, but the book isn't. show less

A timeless paean to the 1960s, both a Bildungsroman and Künstlerroman of a distant star-flung future, a cautionary tale of losing oneself in Dionysian pursuits, a psychedelic romp with a sexually gifted ragamuffin princess. A memoir in a unique, challenging, mannered polyglot voice, no doubt opaque to the feckless reader, it will reward the true Child of Fortune.

I picked this up at Powell's because I remembered loving it as a kid. Apparently I was hypnotized by the combination of two dollar words and sex, because that's all this book consists of. Spinrad is especially fond of 'puissance', 'hypnogogic' and 'lingam'.

Here's a random sentence: "In truth, as I knew even then, the weltanschauung which had so consumed my soul with dread under the influence of the psychotropic had been little more than the heightened subjective apprehension of the rudiments of quantum cosmology which we are all taught as children."

In a word, unreadable.

This book made an impression on me when I read it in my late teens or early 20's. I remember rereading it several times. Moussa's angst and her need for self-discovery reflected my own at the time. A delightful book.

I read this book in the 80's when I was just starting my own wandering of fortune. A classic coming of age story with some pretty accurate drug trips and "green" messaging.