Icerigger

Icerigger

Cover of the first edition
Author	Alan Dean Foster
Cover artist	Dean Ellis
Language	English
Genre	Science fiction
Publisher	Ballantine Books
Publication date	1974
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Paperback)
Pages	304
ISBN	0-345-23836-2
OCLC	1956381
Followed by	Mission to Moulokin

Icerigger is a 1974 science fiction novel by American writer Alan Dean Foster. Like many of Foster's science-fiction novels, Icerigger takes place within his Humanx Commonwealth fictional universe. The book's two sequels are Mission to Moulokin and The Deluge Drivers.

Plot

Following a criminal kidnapping gone wrong, Ethan Frome Fortune, a simple salesman and sophisticated interstellar traveler, finds himself stranded on the alien, deadly frozen world of Tran-Ky-Ky. With him are professional adventurer/soldier of fortune Skua September, the interstellar tycoon and his daughter who were the targets of the kidnapping, a vacationing schoolteacher, and the sole surviving kidnapper.

They survive the frigid conditions and indigenous flora and fauna in their wrecked lifeboat long enough to be rescued by representatives of the local feudal government – who are facing a crisis of their own. Their arrival, and the fantastic wealth represented by the worked metal of their lifeboat, has coincided with an upcoming visit of The Horde. This nomadic swarm descends on various city-states every one-to-two years, exacting tribute as the price for not destroying their community... while rampaging through it. This time, the locals have decided to put up a fight.

Fortune and his companions soon realize that their only hope of reaching the planet's sole interstellar outpost - a year's perilous journey away by local wind-driven ice-rafts - lies in actively supporting their hosts in their fight for survival.

External links

• Icerigger title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Alan Dean Foster homepage