M. A. Foster

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Michael Anthony Foster is a science fiction writer, born in Greensboro, North Carolina on July 2, 1939. He spent over sixteen years as a Captain and Russian linguist in the United States Air Force. He currently lives in Greensboro with his wife.

[edit] "Ler" books

He wrote a loosely-connected trilogy about an offshoot of humanity called the Ler: The Warriors of Dawn(1975), The Gameplayers of Zan(1977), and The Day of The Klesh(1979). The Gameplayers of Zan takes place much earlier than the others, on Earth, and details the Ler's departure from Earth; the other two books cover two separate human-Ler encounters on other planets. The "game" from the title of The Gameplayers of Zan is based on cellular automata, a more intricate version of Conway's Game of Life.

The Warriors of Dawn mostly concerns the relationship between a human man and a ler woman, and The Day of The Klesh represents the ler as a mostly inscrutable humanoid race. The Gameplayers of Zan, on the other hand, discusses the origins of the Ler as an engineered offshoot of humanity, and is as much about ler culture as their interactions with humanity.

Ler reproduce infrequently, generally becoming fertile only every ten years. Most ler females have only two children, but occasionally they have a third, and twins are not unknown.

Ler family structure is organized around a "braid". A braid starts with two "in-parents". They mate and produce the "elder outsibling". Then each of the in-parents goes forth and brings back another ler of the appropriate gender, the "out-parents". The in-parents each mate with an out-parent and produce the "insiblings", ten years younger than the elder outsibling. Then the out-parents mate and produce the "younger outsibling", ten years younger than the insiblings. The insiblings remain in the braid and become the in-parents to the next generation; the outsiblings will leave to join other braids as out-parents. The rare surplus children tend to be given the responsibility of beginning completely new braids together.

Ler communicate mainly using a verbal language called Singlespeech. Each ler has a name consisting of three syllables, e.g. "Mallenkleth", though their intimates sometimes use shortened versions of the name. Various categories of objects always have names with the same numbers of syllables, e.g. stars have five-syllable names. There is also a less-frequently used mode of communication called Multispeech, which uses all the available communication channels, verbal and nonverbal, to convey information much more rapidly than Singlespeech ever could.

[edit] The Morphodite Trilogy

This series consists of: The Morphodite (1981), Transformer (1983), and Preserver (1985). The title character is a reluctant assassin who can change forms, alternating sex and decreasing in age as it does so. The stories themselves are centered on either a different planet or in space with short segues that lead the reader from place to place.

In The Morphodite, we discover the initial character, Rael, as a fearsome assassin who has never been unleashed upon the world. He is caged in The Mask Factory and his captors fear him much more than any of their other creations. Note that Rael is not a bioengineered assassin, he instead is able to initiate Change through a form of meditation. The process of Change is similar to a small death without the "ever after" aspects of it and not something that Rael does lightly. Additionally, Change involves a forced decrease in age of 10-20 years rendering the number of Changes in a short period of time limited. We discover why Rael is so feared shortly after his introduction - he has discovered a scientific method of predicting or divining the future. Most particularly, the art can identify the single person who's death would precipitate societal change. This is touched on in more depth in Transformer; however, in brief, it is likened to a version of I Ching that is both scientifically rigorous and orders of magnitude more complex. This divination tool is referred to as "the art" through the books. The Morphodite charts Rael's unleashing on the unchanging world of Oerlikon and the changes that he unleashes upon it.

Oerlikon is an out of the way world that has gathered a group of people who desire to suppress change. In order to do so, they have a highly regimented society and the equivalent of a police state. This unchanging state is artificially enabled by an outside party who has stationed researchers throughout Oerlikon. Rael changes Oelikon by killing one of the observers using his assassin skills and his divination art. As the first domino begins to tumble, the observed suddenly become aware of the observers and interrogation's of captured observers leads society into a spiral of self-destruction. Rael initiates Change and becomes Damistofina, a younger, female version of himself. Damistofina is identified as the Morphodite leading her to kill her pursuer and Change again into Phaderus, an even younger, male version. Eventually the upheaval grinds to a halt and Phaderus gathers small groups of refuges to himself as a sort of mind-healer. He does not go on to be king or gain immense power, instead he is at peace.

In The Transformer, we resume where Phaderus left off. Content with his life, a few adopted children and a gather-woman. He is recognized as an adviser to the local ruler because of his efforts at providing peace. Unfortunately, there is more to the researchers than we originally supposed. Before Phaderus was Rael, he was a woman named Jedily Tulily. Interestingly, Jedily was originally an observer who somehow displeased the Regents of Heliarctos and was dumped into The Mask Factory to be used up as a test subject. Upon discovering that Phaderus still exists, they dispatch assassins to destroy him. Through a convenient quirk of fate, Phaderus is summoned to the local ruler when the attempt occurs. His lover and adopted children are not so lucky. Initiating Change again, Phaderus becomes Nazarine, a young woman who is barely out of her teens. Nazarine realizes both that she cannot Change again without becoming an infant and that the Regents (unknown to her at this point) won't stop trying to kill her.

Following back through her past, she recovers some of the documents from The Mask Factory that lets her determine that Jedily was an off-world observer. After making that connection, Nazarine travels to the only spaceport intent on traveling off-planent. She purchases a ticket on a ship while the Regents assassins follow closely behind. One of her companions is killed by an assassin but gives up her new name in the process. Faren Kiricky, a ship tech, and Dorje, a ship security officer, befriend Nazarine and help her to identify the assassins. After using her art of divination, Nazarine confronts the data processor of the assassin pair and convinces her that Nazarine already knows how to win. In despair, the data processor commits suicide. The killer of the assassin pair evades capture by entering the bowels of the ship. Nazarine and Faren track and finally confront him. Nazarine tells him that no matter what he does, his actions will actually destroy the Regents - and then she lets him go. Nazarine discloses what she is to Faren and asks her to take care of Nazarine. Faren agrees and Nazarine initiates Change resulting in a male infant.