Windhaven
| Author | George R. R. Martin, Lisa Tuttle |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science Fiction |
| Publisher | Bantam Books, Simon & Schuster |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover and Paperback) |
Windhaven is a science-fiction and fantasy novel co-written by novelist and screenwriter George R. R. Martin, but mainly by novelist Lisa Tuttle. The novel is a collection of three novellas compiled and first published together in 1981 by Simon & Schuster. It was later reprinted by Bantam Spectra in hardcover in 2001, and in mass market paperback in 2003. Windhaven was nominated for a Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 1982.
The novel recounts events which occur on the fictional planet Windhaven. Its inhabitants are the descendants of human space voyagers who crash-landed on Windhaven centuries before the events of the book take place. After the crash, the survivors spread out across the many islands of Windhaven's primarily oceanic planetary surface and settled. In order to preserve tenuous lines of communication across vast seas, the stranded population constructed mechanically simplistic gliding rigs from available space-ship wreckage, which could be kept aloft by human pilots almost indefinitely in Windhaven's extremely windy atmosphere. After centuries of using this practice as the principal means of maintaining continuous social contact, Windhaven's "flyers" have developed into a class clearly separate from all others. Additionally, the flyer class maintains ownership of the flying rigs—which are commonly known as "wings"—by keeping them within dynastic flyer families and, therefore, none of Windhaven's people aside from those born into flyer families can legitimately aspire to ever wear them. These class-based differences serve as the impetus for the novel's character-driven narrative.
Maris is a young peasant girl who lives with her mother on the remote island Lesser Amberly. Her father, a fisherman, was killed an unspecified number of years before and Maris hardly remembers him. Though Maris and her mother survive mostly as scavenging "clam-diggers," they also collect refuse that washes onto the nearby beaches after violent coastal storms. Early one morning, Maris and her mother rise from bed and scour the beaches near their hovel for valuables after a particularly brutal tempest. Maris's search is largely fruitless and she recovers little. Afterward, however, she has a pivotal encounter with one of Windhaven's resident flyers.
Lesser Amberly itself is home to three flyers, one of whom, an adult male named Russ, lands on the shore near where Maris has concluded her search. Maris timidly approaches Russ and, during the chance meeting, he treats her with kindness and she, in turn, reveals to him that her most ardent wish is to become one of Windhaven's flyers.
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