Prodigal Sun
Prodigal Sun by Philip E High
Another mass sci-fi paperback I found and knew nothing about. Prodigal Sun follows the story of Peter Duncan, a human raised by aliens who returns to Earth after a devastating war with a different alien race. He is greeted by the authoritarian government who believe him to be a spy or saboteur, rather than simply a fellow human, or an ally. But, what exactly are Duncan’s reasons for returning to Earth?
Prodigal Sun definitely has a lot going on within its relatively short read. We learn about the massive war with the Vrenka race, and our uneasy relationship with Duncan’s adapted race the Mattrain. We discover that much of Europe has been blown to pieces and the survivors live underground (albeit living an interesting life themselves) The ruling governing body on the surface is straight out of any fascist nightmare, all while technology has advanced leaps an bounds, especially on the military front. There’s a lot of ideas.
Duncan himself is an interesting character. He’s referred to throughout the story as a Superman due to his superior intellect, and for me that’s the part of the story I found most interesting. While all the other threads were cool, they were maybe a little undercooked and deserving of either their own book, or for this one to be longer. But the insecurity about Duncan did play out throughout.
Interestingly back on the planet Mattrain Duncan sees himself as nothing more than an intelligent ape compared to the intelligence of the Mattrain themselves (who never treat him as less than) but on Earth he’s instantly pinned as smug, arrogant, and due to his advanced intelligence, extremely dangerous. Whatever technological help he can give they instantly want, but Duncan knows better than to hand over superior tech to warmongers.
There’s a large cast of side characters playing different roles in Duncan’s journey without us every learning to much about them. Again, the book is crammed full of fantastic ideas, but didn’t quite have the space to examine them. That said, I liked everyone well enough, especially his journalistic sidekick Gaynor. The government man Rickman also had an interesting arc in the last third of the book.
Prodigal Sun is part spy book, part a military sci-fi, and has heavy elements of dystopia. The world building in the Devastated Area should have been its own book as it’s amazing, and I liked the backdrop of coming out of a war with an alien race. The characters are a little undeveloped, but play their parts in the overall story, and Duncan’s story is an interesting one despite a lot of his thoughts and reasons being hidden. It’s a decent read, especially for big sci-fi ideas, it just perhaps needed to be either a little longer, or slightly more focused on one or two those great ideas, rather than ten.
