A roman om människor på en vattenplanet som använde järnvingar som gjordes av ett förstört bosättningsfartyg

Windhaven av George R. R. Martin och Lisa Tuttle.

The novel recounts events which occur on the fictional planet Windhaven. Its inhabitants are the descendants of human space voyagers who crash-landed on Windhaven centuries before the events of the book take place. After the crash, the survivors spread out across the many islands of Windhaven's primarily oceanic planetary surface and settled. In order to preserve tenuous lines of communication across vast seas, the stranded population constructed mechanically simplistic gliding rigs from available space-ship wreckage, which could be kept aloft by human pilots almost indefinitely in Windhaven's extremely windy atmosphere. After centuries of using this practice as the principal means of maintaining continuous social contact, Windhaven's "flyers" have developed into a class clearly separate from all others. Additionally, the flyer class maintains ownership of the flying rigs—which are commonly known as "wings"—by keeping them within dynastic flyer families and, therefore, none of Windhaven's people aside from those born into flyer families can legitimately aspire to ever wear them. These class-based differences serve as the impetus for the novel's character-driven narrative.