Tracking Hobbits Through Space...

That's where Gitana, a free-wheeling "seeker of truth", comes into the picture. As Gandalf occasionally induced the Tooks to seek adventure, so Gitana enjoys a generations-long relationship with Beldon's family. Although there's no overt sign that Gitana is anything more than a traveller who lives long and prospers through the magic of relativity, she is a definite Gandalfian character with some sensibilities of her own. Bailey, it seems, has found a message pod adrift in space which belongs to the Farr Clone. The Clone is a complex community of women (and men) who were all cloned from Myra Farr, an ancient explorer who has managed to become...deathless. As in Durin the Deathless. The Farr Clone takes on the role of Tolkien's Dwarves, but though they may seem Dwarf-like in some respects (they are insular, clannish, secretive, suspicious, and somewhat greedy), they have their own peculiar traits. The message pod brings in Gitana and members of the Farr Clone to launch an expedition deep into the galaxy, and Bailey is brought along for the ride because Gitana decides that he will be needed. And that's as much of a spoiler as I'm going to write. You can read the first chapter on Murphy's Web site, but you need to read the whole book to get the sense of it all. One experience I had time and again was that -- even though I was reading the book expecting to find Hobbit-like encounters/characters, it was usually only after a section was finished that I could see where the inspiration came from. It's not an obvious retelling of The Hobbit at all, even though it's obvious There and Back Again owes a great deal to The Hobbit. The story proceeds very much like The Hobbit, but there are some twists. And though Murphy has been very faithful to the characterizations in the original work (unlike some film and television adaptations we could speak of), she has added a few new quirks and traits. The overriding theme of the story is voiced in the quixotic Latin phrase "Eadem mutata resurgo", "Though changed, I arise again the same." The author is playing with the audience. She knows we know this is a familiar old story, a beloved favorite, but it's not exactly the same old story. There and Back Again contains some of the classic SF infodumps of the great adventure yarns of yesteryear, but every piece of information is worked into

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