Publisher description: Starhiker is ostensibly a straightforward adventure story, but what begins as external action from the floating city of The Fragrant Cloud to the land of the Tfeligen becomes an internal landscape in which Bo, a wandering minstrel from earth, must travel. The time is thousands of years in the future when the earth is a backwater planet ruled by a race of benevolent despots called the Hrau. Our solar system is only a minor interstellar relay stop controlled by the Hrau. However, Bo's vivid imagination is a powerful weapon against the Hrau's restrictions as he secretly roams from colony to colony seeking truth and the company of kindred spirits. The blind pursuit of an impossible destiny leads him just to the other side of his dreams.