Enchantress from the Stars

Enchantress from the Stars is a young adultscience fiction novel by Sylvia Engdahl published by Atheneum Books in 1970. It was her first book and is set in the Anthropology Service universe (1970 to 1981).^[1] Its sequel The Far Side of Evil (1971) features the same heroine, Elana, and the two are sometimes called the Elana series,^[1][2] although the sequel is quite different in tone.

Enchantress was a runner up for the 1971 Newbery Medal, the American Library Association award to the previous year's best children's book by a U.S. author. It won the 1990 Phoenix Award from the Children's Literature Association as the best English-language children's book that did not win a major award when it was originally published twenty years earlier. The award is named for the mythical bird phoenix, which is reborn from its ashes, to suggest the book's rise from obscurity.^[3] A new American hardcover edition was issued by Walker and Company in 2001 with a foreword by Lois Lowry and an afterword by the author.^[1] Next year it was a finalist for the Book Sense Book of the Year Award in the Rediscovery category.

Engdahl wrote parts of Enchantress in the 1950s; many concepts in the novel date from that time, prior to Star Trek and other 1960s science fiction. In a 1997 journal article, "Enchantress from the Stars: Sylvia Louise Engdahl, Star Trek and Science Fiction", Carol Littlejohn writes that many of the themes and concepts in the novel (such as the peaceful exploration of space without interfering in the history of other planets) are similar to those in Star Trek.^[4] However, the author notes that her characters take the rule of non-intervention much more seriously than does Star Trek's crew of the spaceship Enterprise.^[2]

تنتمي إيلانا إلى حضارة مسالمة ومتقدمة تقنيًا تجوب الفضاء تُدعى "الاتحاد"، وهي حضارة تراقب العوالم التي لا تزال في طور النمو، وتسمح لها بالتطور دون أي اتصال أو تدخل. تتسلل إيلانا إلى سفينة لمرافقة والدها في مهمة إلى أندريشيا، حيث اعتُبر التدخل ضروريًا بعد أن غزت إمبراطورية متقدمة تقنيًا (فيلق الاستكشاف الإمبراطوري) الكوكب طمعًا في موارده. ولتقود حطابًا شابًا (من سكان الكوكب) ضد الفيلق (دون أن تكشف له حقيقة أي من الحضارتين الفضائيتين)، تتنكر إيلانا في زي ساحرة. تُدرّبه هو وشقيقه على التحريك الذهني في محاولة لإجبار الفيلق الإمبراطوري على مغادرة أندريشيا بسلام. كما تُعطيه أدوات متنوعة، موهمةً إياه بأنها سحرية.

• قائمة سلسلة إيلانا في قاعدة بيانات الخيال التأملي على الإنترنت