= Blue Princess: The Storybook Festival =
Earlier Title *PIONEERS*
SF Novel by John Argo (The Haunted Village 1997)
25 light years from dying Earth, a fresh, earth-like planet broadcasts radio invitations to come to a thriving alien starport. Paul and Licia Menard (lovers) join Earth's six final surviving humans to journey 1,000 years and join a star-faring civilization.
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Update 2021: I have since released an edition of this same novel titled *Blue Princess: The Storybook Festival*. The Blue Princess of the title is Auska, the beautiful blue alien princess of planet N-60A on which the last six surviving humans from a destroyed Earth arrive in desperate response to mysterious radio messages. The Storybook Festival is the novel's original completed manuscript title c.1973.
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What the pioneers find is however a world of jungles and plains, with no sign of advanced civilization, but ancient ruins everywhere. They find blue-skinned, stone age villagers with dim cultural memories of star flight. As six excavate an ancient, purposely sealed chamber in the village of Akha—they begin unearthing answers to questions nobody ever thought to ask. Those questions involve not only the Storybook Planet (from the novel's original concept name) but the fate of now-lost Earth, and the Empire of Time (series by John Argo).
Already, one of the pioneers is dead—from a lander crash upon leaving the mothership. Dead is engineer Tynan’s spouse, Nancy-meaning one of three breeding pairs is lost. Another couple, the Wengs, are lost somewhere—it’s not clear if their life craft burned up in orbit, or crashed and burned, or if the two scientists are struggling alone and lost someplace far away. Paul and Licia’s lander burned up on crashing, though the twojust barely escaped unhurt. With each of the three life craft/landers that is lost, an entire library of dead Earth’s civilization is gone forever.
Just three pioneers are accountedfor in Akha: the dangerously explosive trio of Licia and Menard--plus the odd man in: handsome, rugged Tynan, who soon starts eye contact with Licia. Sparks fly. One of the men must leave, forever, on his own in a vast wilderness haunted by roaring beasts. Will it be Menard or Tynan? Ancient laws of evolution, survival, rivalry, and conquest kick in—the Human Condition, at its last gasp, far from lost Earth.
Is there any hope for mankind? Menard and his fellow surviving pioneers befriend a beautiful, exotic blue princess named Auska. Her father is a local stone age shaman who, like all his people, is illiterate—and yet, he wears a metal disk that carries with it telepathic images of a fabulous, long ago starport named Avamish.
The Blue Princess, young Auska, becomes part of a pioneer love polygon, a Platonic link to all mysteries. Is she clever and deadly, or a brave pioneer in her own right? Every year, shamans and folk from around the blue world gather in eerie, crumbling, empty Avamish for the annual Storybook Festival. The three pioneers, joining Auska and her father, seem destined to fined their fate on a long journey to the ruined starport—which contains far more secrets than anyone had imagined. And now, as locals come streaming to the dead city from all directions, Avamish calls the pioneers into its muted and haunting embrace.
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