- Publisher: BALLANTINE BOOKS
- Publish Date: 1989
- Pages: 216
- ISBN: 9780345339751
- Author: Frederik Pohl
Homegoing by Frederik Pohl is the story of Sandy Washington. Sandy was found by an alien race as an infant when his parents’ spaceship was lost. His parents did not survive, but the aliens saved him and raised him as a human (as best as they could) on their interstellar ship. The alien’s knowledge of Earth and Earth culture came primarily from intercepted radio and television broadcasts. These broadcasts came to an end some years before the ship was able to make it to Earth. They want Sandy to integrate into human culture and provide them intelligence before a true ‘first contact’ is made.
About the first third of this book covers Sandy’s life on Hakh’hli ship. He has a group of friends who are helping him to learn human culture and to prepare him for his ‘return’ to Earth. Once on Earth, he has to decide where his real allegiances lie. Is he a human? Is he an alien? How much does biology count versus conditioning? Have the aliens been truthful? Have the humans?
I liked this book a lot for several different reasons. Pohl does a good job of envisioning an alien culture and how a human raised in such a culture might respond. Given that it was published some 35 years ago, Homegoing is surprisingly prescient with its concern with Climate Change and Pandemics and space debris and how they might affect a future Earth. He also presents a reasonable vision of that future planet and how it might respond to contact from an advanced ‘benevolent’ race.
Part space opera, part culture clash, Homegoing is worth the time to go home and read.
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