An Ace fantasy

Since the 1970s, Alan Dean Foster, who just turned 71, has been a popular and prolific author of fantasy and science fiction novels. I am wondering if his career might easily have taken off in a different direction early in his career, however.

I recently found found Foster's 1988 novel, Maori, a paperback original, in my library and decided to read it. The book may have been sent to me for review, but I managed to ignore it for nearly 30 years. When I started reading I had no idea what to expect. I recognized Foster's name as a sci-fi writer. The novel's cover calls it "the epic historical fantasy of the year!" On the back it says, "One man ... on the mystical adventure of a lifetime" and "discovered a magical world beyond his strangest dreams" and "a dazzling epic fantasy of a strange but enchanted land."

It turns out the novel has more in common with James Michener's Hawaii than Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. It tells the history of New Zealand from the early 19th century when whalers stopped there to resupply their ships to the late 19th century when it became the first part of the British Empire to give women the vote. In between were decades of war between the white settlers and the Maori natives. Mostly we follow the story through the eyes of Robert Coffin, a businessman who builds his fortune while helping to build a country, yet managing to destroy those he loves along the way.

The novel might qualify as a fantasy in the way any novel is a fantasy, the work of the author's imagination. But Ace Books, Foster's publisher at that time, built its reputation selling fantasy and science fiction, not serious historical novels. So what were they to do with Maori? What they did, apparently, was to disguise it as a fantasy novel, thus disappointing those who bought it expecting a fantasy and keeping it hidden from those readers who might have actually enjoyed it. Had I known what it is, I might not have waited three decades to read it.

It's too bad, for Maori is a good novel, one that deserved a wider audience than it probably received. Had it gotten that audience, Alan Dean Foster might have chosen to write more books like it.