F is for Foster

As I was saying to Jenny, for a short while when I was about twelve ‘Nor Crystal Tears’ by Alan Dean Foster was my favourite book. I guess I liked the idea of the species out there that is naturally complementary to humanity, our missing half, that we would recognise as soulmates despite their alien appearance and pair up with. Or maybe I just made that up now. Anyways, I liked it a lot.

The first Alan Dean Foster book I read was ‘Icerigger’, and before I read it I had seen the Tran in Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials, as well as Foster’s name on the cover of any number of Star Trek adaptations. The Tran-ky-ky of my young imagination was a very real and vivid place. I could imagine so well the starting scene with the humans cooped up in the crashed spaceship, and the siege, and the pools of blood being chipped out of the ice. It is the book of my acquaintance that has the distinction of being lent out and not returned the most times: I think I have owned three copies, and I don’t have one now. Now I feel like re-reading it again, though I know it would disappoint me. I should like to read all the Humanx Commonwealth books again at age twelve. I remember being grievously disappointed in ‘Nor Crystal Tears’ when I read it again when Keating was Prime Minister. Maybe I have just grown too ready to find fault with things. Maybe my imagination has just atrophied, so I can no longer breathe the same life into the pages that I once did. Maybe the problem is not his writing, but my reading, and my impatience with so many things I once enjoyed is not me growing wiser, but just more cynical and impatient. I have just visited Alan Dean Foster’s web site, which is still full of boyish enthusiasm and has some neat maps, you see, so I feel guilty now...