The Vagrant Planet. Phantastic Novel in Stories

Angela and Karlheinz Steinmüller
Collected Works Vol. 11.

Since the 27th century, space habitat 5 is orbiting Mars, a ten-kilometre-long hollow cylinder. The space fleet is using the habitat as the first reintegration station for astronaut who return from very long interstellar flights. These astronauts have started their journeys many decades, sometimes even many centuries ago. They come from different cultures, different backgrounds – with their own histories and their specific problems. Finding a place in that what they regard as a future world is only one of their challenges. The times, they are changing. And with them, memories of the past change. When the astronauts return, they learn, that the epochs they have left behind are remembered by historians and by the public in quite other ways than they recollect them. Nolens volens, they slip into the role of witnesses of their period.

Content

• Prologue: An Empty World
• Among Veterans
• Exchange
• The Vagrant Planet
• Memories, Volatile and Irretrievable
• Beyond Twenty-five Twenty-five
• The Trainee
• Plus Ultra: Parting
• Appendix