ALAN DEAN FOSTER – The End of the Matter. Pip & Flinx #4.Del Ray, paperback original; 1st printing, November 1977. Cover art by Darrell Sweet. Multiple later printings.

   In this, the fourth adventure in a long-running series (18 novels and a handful of short stories), the orphaned young man nicknamed Flinx continues his search for his parents – or, well, just his father now; although she is now dead, he has learned who his mother was in the book immediately preceding this one. Pip, by the way, is a minidrag (flying snake) who accompanies him, wrapped around his neck, wherever he goes.

   And since Flinx has his own spaceship (!), he can go wherever a casual hint suggests he go, even with members of a cult of black-clad assassins hard on his trail. Along the way he picks up other companions, some of whom do not survive. One that does is a blue four-eyed, four-armed, four-legged alien who speaks only gibberish in verse.

   There is more at stake than finding Flinx’s father, though. A whole section of the known universe is at risk of being swallowed up by a rogue collapsar, unless Flinx and his friends can avoid his enemies long enough to find the ancient weapon, now lost, that can stop it.

   I don’t think I will spoil anything by telling you that that is exactly what they do, with enough knowledge of theoretical astrophysics on their side, The fun is getting there, in good old-fashioned Edgar Rice Burroughs style, mixed with more than a dash of Edmond Hamilton, in his early “world wrecker” days.

   This is pure out-and-out space opera, in other words, but written in a wholly literate fashion by an author who knows what adventure is all about, when you have the whole universe at your disposal to set your stories in.