3888 a Space Opera: Return 3888: a Space Opera

RETURN is the first volume of a trilogy set in 3888. It starts on Earth but is largely set on primitive but modernizing VonStaufen's World. Advanced Earth and her sister "advanced" planets complacently dominate the galaxy while allowing the second-, third-, and fourth-world planets to progress and lose ground, advance and stumble in their own humorous fashion toward galactic standards and acceptance. Our heroes (he might say Victim, she would shout Heroine), are father Constanteen and daughter Theodora. He was born the "runt of the litter," of a middle-rank baron, off in the backward galactic West and allowed to play at romantic hero, and even at soldier, but not prepared for any responsibilities. Nothing much was expected of him. Thea was born on Earth in an Edinburgh babybank from her offworld parents' genetic "deposits," making her one of the few Earthlings not from the standard genetic strain produced by the babybanks with their 71 varieties. At six she discovered that VonStaufen's World's legendary and super-heroic founder, Helmuta VonStaufen, had been reborn in her and was puching her forward to battle evil "back home." After 17 stress-free, indolent years on prosperous, sophisticated, dull, and (some say) degenerate Earth, they are expelled, conscripted into a civil war by a megalomaniacal Amazon, and he (unwillingly) and she (gleefully) become Heroes of the Revolution.