L.E. Modesitt Jr. discussion

The Silent Warrior is the second book of the Forever Hero trilogy which is now available as one book The Forever Hero. Back when I read it, all I could find was the middle book & I loved it. It wasn't long before the trilogy was issued as one book that I found both the others; Dawn for a Distant Earth, the first, & In Endless Twilight, the third.

Has anyone else read them?

No, I haven't read any of these books. They sound interesting, though, so I will look into them. My family is taking a road trip to Colorado this summer and I will need some reading material.

No, got a short synopsis for it?

The Forever Hero blurb:

Thousands of years in the future, Earth is a desolate ruin. The first human ship to return in millennia discovers an abandoned wasteland inhabited only by a few degenerate or mutated human outcasts. But among them is a boy of immense native intelligence and determination who is captured, taken in, and educated, and disappears - to grow up to become the force behind a plan to make Earth flower again. He is, if not immortal, at least very long-lived, and he plans to build an independent power base out in the galaxy and force the galactic empire to devote centuries and immense resources to the restoration of the ecology of the Earth.

Sounds cool.
This is not on-topic and you can delete it if you want, but have any of you read The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide? All 6 books?
I also have another question. How many of you would be interested in reading a novel about miniature dragons who try to wipe out the human race?

I didn't care for the Hitchhiker books. I tried reading it several times & watching the movie. The humor just didn't tickle me.

As for miniature dragons, it depends on how it is done.

I read the Forever Hero trilogy as one book a couple years ago. It was a fun set and very different from the Recluse style. Like an earlier post commented about the difference between his fantasy vs science fiction, it was different.
Miniature dragons eradicating man kind? Sounds either a dark dark horror or whimsical. I'd say yes to the dark horror version, no to the whimsy.

T

It's pretty whimsy. It's more of a teenage/kid novel, I guess.

Kayla, I know a lot of adults that like it. I'm just not much on British humor. I fell asleep watching "Monty Python & the Holy Grail" at a drive-in with one of the prettiest, nicest girls I'd been out with to that point. I guess what I use for a sense of humor just doesn't tickle that way.

Blasphemy!

Armaments, chapter two, verses nine through twenty-one.
And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, "O Lord, bless this thy hand grenade, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy." And the Lord did grin. And the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths, and carp and anchovies, and orangutans and breakfast cereals, and fruit-bats and large chu..
Skip a bit, Brother...
And the Lord spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it.

Oh, and we can not forget that today is Towel Day

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towel_Day

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

How many of us had our towels?

Jim wrote: "The Forever Hero blurb:

Thousands of years in the future, Earth is a desolate ruin. The first human ship to return in millennia discovers an abandoned wasteland inhabited only by a few degenerate ..."

I am going to have to read this series. I love end of the world sagas!