Fleeing from his home world, young Tadko Darusko arrives on the planet Monna searching for his only living relative, his father. But his father is away on a journey, and Tadko is stranded on Monna with no friends, no means of support, and no identity papers. Evading the authorities, Tadko must find a way to survive until his father's return, hoping that his father can intervene in his case before he is arrested as an illegal alien….

Margaret Howes's novel reminds me of the science fiction I read as a high school student in the 1950s. It has old-fashioned sense of wonder: a vision of a future that is bigger and better than the present. In addition, the novel has a down-to-earth quality that reminds me of the work of Clifford Simak especially, but also Theodore Sturgeon and Isaac Asimov in Caves of Steel. All these classic SF writers put ordinary people with ordinary problems into their stories about aliens, robots and faster-than-light travel. In The Wrong World, a young man arrives on an unfamiliar planet, seeking a father he has never met. But his father is off-world. The young man has no entrance permit and almost no money. His problem? To take care of himself and avoid the police for 80 days, until his father returns. In dealing with this human-sized problem, the hero travels across his father's planet, meets aliens and many kinds of human, discovers that he has qualities he never expected and learns surprising truths about himself and his home planet. If you think something's been missing from science fiction in recent decades, try The Wrong World. And if you think recent science fiction has been just fine, try it anyway. --Eleanor Arnason, author of Ring of Swords, A Woman of the Iron People (winner of the James Tiptree, Jr., and Mythopoeic Fantasy Awards), Daughter of the Bear King, To the Resurrection Station, and The Sword Smith

Margaret Howes is a storyteller of subtle grace. Her "wrong world" is utterly believable, as full of people who are as varied and interesting--and good and bad--as on our own. Tadko is a nice young man, but naive, and his culture is very different from Monna's. The plot chugs along in a leisurely way that belies its relentless power--and the wonderful, apparently bottomless ability of Margaret Howes to invent detail. No "fate of the universe at stake" here, only one young man trying to stay free long enough to ask his father one question. This is good science fiction, and good story telling, and a memorable ride. If you go there, don't eat the squelt.
--Mary Monica Pulver (a.k.a Monica Ferris), author of Murder at the War, Ashes to Ashes, Original Sin, Show Stopper, Crewel World, Framed in Lace, A Stitch in Time


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Margaret Howes is a retiree who was a storyteller in the Society for Creative Anachronism (an organization which recreates the Middle Ages). She has drawn maps for the books Murder at the War by Mary Monica Pulver, The Best of Leigh Brackett, and the Underwood-Miller edition of Showboat World by Jack Vance. She has had short stories published in The Tolkien Scrapbook and Sword and Sorceress VIII. She is one of the authors of the novel, Autumn World (Stone Dragon Press, 2000), which she wrote in collaboration with Joan Marie Verba, Tess Meara, Deborah K. Jones, and Ruth Berman. The Wrong World is her first solo novel.