Patrimony (novel)

infobox Book |
name = Patrimony


image_caption =
author = Alan Dean Foster
country = United States
language = English
translator =
cover_artist = Robert Hunt
genre = Science fiction novel
publisher = Del Rey Books
release_date = October 30, 2007
media_type = Print (Hardback)
pages = 240
isbn = ISBN 0-345-48507-6
preceded_by = Trouble Magnet
followed_by = Flinx Transcendent

"Patrimony" is a science fiction novel by Alan Dean Foster. The book is the thirteenth chronologically in the Pip and Flinx series, released in October 2007.

Plot

Once again diverting from his assigned task of finding the ancient Tar-Aiym weapon that will help save the galaxy from the approach evil, Flinx lands on the planet Gestalt, known as Tlel to it natives, looking for his father. In the previous volume of the series Flinx was told his male parent, a former member of the Meliorare Society, was now living on an obscure minor planet that was part of the Commonwealth. Though the information was suspect coming from a dying member of the Meliorares, Flinx jumped at the opportunity. Following a series of adventures including his attempted murder at the hands of a local hit man hired by the Order of Null, Flinx finds his father. Or rather, he finds the last man associated with Flinx's creation. As a semi-successful experiment in eugenics the man Flinx finds is just another Meliorare in hiding, but the man reveals to him that Flinx was simply the product of so much DNA splicing, he has no real parents. No father who donated sperm, and his dead mother was nothing more than a surogate womb for hire. Upset that Flinx was hardly the super-genetic success they had hoped for, Flinx's creator attempts to kill him, but only wounds the minidrag Pip in the process before Flinx's erratic yet powerful mental gifts saves his life, but destroys all traces of the scientist.