User:Puddytang/Child of Fortune

Child of Fortune is a 1985 science fiction novel by the American author Norman Spinrad. Like his previous book The Void Captain's Tale, Child of Fortune takes place in a fictional universe called the Second Starfaring Age. It is a coming of age story about a young girl's wanderjahr, a rite of passage that all adolescents are expected to undertake before they become adults.

Plot
The story is told from the point of view of the protagonist, Moussa Shasta Leonardo. Spinrad envisions a wealthy federation of worlds where people typically live for thousands of years. After finishing their formal studies, adolescents are expected to embark on a journey of self-discovery called a wanderjahr. The waderjahr 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 Moussa's wanderjahr.

The story begins when Moussa leaves her home planet and travels to the planet-sized city of Edoku. 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 interstellar Void Ships and eventually arrive on the planet Belshazaar.

On Belshazar, there is a large forest known as the Bloomenwald, which is the source of a plethora of naturally occurring psychedelic drugs. Many Children of Fortune lose themselves in the forest, but 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 an electronic consciousness enhancer. As he is dying, she experiences his entire life story, a millennium of wanderings. Sunshine ends her wanderjahr and adopts the freenom Wendi Shasta Leonardo.

Style and Themes
In a 1999 interview, Spinrad spoke about his use of neologisms in his "far-future" novels: "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 science fiction. Spinrad's wanderjahr is a prototypical rite of passage 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.