The Captain of Estel: Books One and Two

by Sylvia Engdahl

Overview

The pair of books in this volume tell of the long and momentous life of one man and the strange turns of fate that take him from his planned career as an ordinary starship pilot to acclaim as a legendary hero and ultimately to a destiny far beyond anything he or his contemporaries could have imagned. The trilogy’s third book Envoy of the Flame, which is available separately, is about the impact of his legacy on the future of humankind and the role of a young woman in bringing that impact about. These three are an independent and quite different story from Sylvia Engdahl's other novels with "Flame" in their titles,which though set two centuries earlier need not be read first. For more reviews see their separate editions.

Book One: Defender of the Flame

“This book reaches back to the brio and speculation of Engdahl’s classic books of the Seventies.” —Literary critic Nicholas Birns

Product Details

BN ID:	2940167738362
Publisher:	Ad Stellae Books
Publication date:	10/30/2024
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	871 KB

About the Author

Sylvia Engdahl is the author of eleven science fiction novels. She is best known for her six traditionally-published Young Adult novels that are also enjoyed by adults, all but one of which now have indie editions. That one, Enchantress from the Stars (available from its current publishers) was a Newbery Honor book, winner of the 2000 Phoenix Award of the Children's Literature Association, and a finalist for the 2002 Book Sense Book of the Year in the Rediscovery category. Her Children of the Star trilogy, originally written for teens, was reissued by a different publisher as adult SF.

More recently she has written five independently-published novels for adults, the Founders of Maclairn duology and the Captain of Estel trilogy. Although all her novels take place in the distant future, in most cases on hypothetical worlds, and thus are categorized as science fiction, they are are directed more to mainstream readers than to avid science fiction fans.

Engdahl has also issued an updated edition of her 1974 nonfiction book The Planet-Girded Suns: Our Forebears' Firm Belief in Inhabited Exoplanets, which is focused on original research in primary sources of the 17th through early 20th centuries that presents the views prevalent among educted people of that time. In addition she has published several collections of essays.

Between 1957 and 1967 Engdahl was a computer programmer and Computer Systems Specialist for the SAGE Air Defense System. Most recently she has worked as a freelance editor of nonfiction anthologies for high schools. Now retired, she lives in Eugene, Oregon and welcomes visitors to her website at www.sylviaengdahl.com. It includes a large section on space colonization, of which she is a strong advocate, as well as essays on other topics and detailed information about her books.