In the Name of the Father
Gigante. A giant planet twenty thousand times bigger than Earth. Huge distances. A red star named Kolos. Twelve satellites. A Gigante day equivalent to thirty days and thirty nights of our time (standard time). A still mysterious world affected by incandescent spheres and electric storms of unusual violence; a difficult, hostile world that nomadic or sedentary human peoples from different systems in the Galaxy try to domesticate.
Young Zaslo Merticant, an ethno--‐linguist by profession, lands on Gigante, having come from distant Azadée, in search of mythic giants whose skeletons were exhumed by an expedition centuries earlier. And, as another objective, he intends to kill his father, Koeb, who abandoned him even before he was born and whose departure led to his mother’s decline, leaving him an orphan at eighteen.
A sudden development in technology enabled him to arrive ahead of Koeb, who had left twenty years before him, and whose space ship will land on Gigante in about twenty years’ time (standard time). So twenty years remain – or four local months – for Zaslo to discover the secret of the giants before returning to Magniz, the only planetary astroport, to lay in wait for and kill his father. Considering the speed of the air or land vehicles used on the giant planet, he knows that it takes more than fifty years to do the return trip to Bragant where the remains of the giants have been found, so the trek is in theory impossible...
An encounter with Madilia, a young woman also determined to find the giants, persuades him to attempt it. He has also heard tell of the legendary Guild of Travellers, men who ride on electric currents flowing around the vastness of Gigante. Is it really possible to travel on currents so intense that they can instantly burn you to a crisp?
This is the story of a learning process: gaining knowledge about a world of destructive anger, mastering a phenomenal energy, moving towards inner peace, discovering his fundamental role in the future of the human peoples scattered over Gigante...
This project has been created in collaboration with Alain Grousset, an author writing for young adults. He tells the story of Koeb, the father, in the novel entitled: In the name of the son, Gigante...