Greatheart Silver is a 1982 science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 ISBN 0-523-48535-2 written by Philip José Farmer

Philip José Farmer

Philip José Farmer was an American author, principally known for his award-winning science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories....

. It is a collection of three of Farmer's stories from the series Weird Heroes

Weird Heroes

Weird Heroes, "New American Pulp", was a series of novels and anthologies produced by Byron Preiss in the 1970s that dealt with new heroic characters inspired by the classic pulp magazine characters...

published in the 1970s with the title character, a lineal descendant

Kinship

Kinship is a relationship between any entities that share a genealogical origin, through either biological, cultural, or historical descent. And descent groups, lineages, etc. are treated in their own subsections....

 of Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...

 and Sally Hemings

Sally Hemings

Sarah "Sally" Hemings was a mixed-race slave owned by President Thomas Jefferson through inheritance from his wife. She was the half-sister of Jefferson's wife, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson by their father John Wayles...

, working for the Acme

Acme Corporation

The Acme Corporation is a fictional corporation that features prominently in the Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote cartoons as a running gag featuring outlandish products that fail catastrophically at the worst possible times...

 Zeppelin

Zeppelin

A Zeppelin is a type of rigid airship pioneered by the German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin in the early 20th century. It was based on designs he had outlined in 1874 and detailed in 1893. His plans were reviewed by committee in 1894 and patented in the United States on 14 March 1899...

 Corporation as a blimp pilot

Aviator

An aviator is a person who flies an aircraft. The first recorded use of the term was in 1887, as a variation of 'aviation', from the Latin avis , coined in 1863 by G. de la Landelle in Aviation Ou Navigation Aérienne...

 and private detective

Detective

A detective is an investigator, either a member of a police agency or a private person. The latter may be known as private investigators or "private eyes"...

.

Plot summary

Greatheart Silver, the thirty-year-old first mate on Acme Zeppelin 8, is the sole survivor of an attack by the Mad Fokker, an air pirate and World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 veteran

Veteran

A veteran is a person who has had long service or experience in a particular occupation or field; " A veteran of ..."...

 who was mothballed by the United States government because it could not undo his mental conditioning. Bendt Micawber (the CEO of Acme Corporation and the descendant of Mr. Micawber

Micawber

Micawber can refer to:*Wilkins Micawber, a character in David Copperfield, a novel by Charles Dickens*A noun, meaning "One who is poor but lives in optimistic expectation of better fortune," from the Dickens character...

 from David Copperfield

David Copperfield (novel)

The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery , commonly referred to as David Copperfield, is the eighth novel by Charles Dickens, first published as a novel in 1850. Like most of his works, it originally appeared in serial...

) cites his survival as dereliction of duty. Receiving a plastic

Plastic

A plastic material is any of a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic organic solids used in the manufacture of industrial products. Plastics are typically polymers of high molecular mass, and may contain other substances to improve performance and/or reduce production costs...

 prosthetic leg as well as his pension

Pension

In general, a pension is an arrangement to provide people with an income when they are no longer earning a regular income from employment. Pensions should not be confused with severance pay; the former is paid in regular installments, while the latter is paid in one lump sum.The terms retirement...

 as compensation, Greatheart is fired from Acme. During his recovery, Greatheart's fiancee breaks up with him and his Sioux

Sioux

The Sioux are Native American and First Nations people in North America. The term can refer to any ethnic group within the Great Sioux Nation or any of the nation's many language dialects...

 grandmother sends his a birdcage with two raven

Raven

Raven is the common name given to several larger-bodied members of the genus Corvus—but in Europe and North America the Common Raven is normally implied...

s inside. He names them Hugin

Hugin

Huginn and Muninn are two ravens associated with the god Odin in Norse mythology.Hugin may also refer to:*Hugin , a reconstruction of a Viking longship in Ramsgate, England....

n and Muninn after the Norse god

Norse mythology

Norse mythology, a subset of Germanic mythology, is the overall term for the myths, legends and beliefs about supernatural beings of Norse pagans. It flourished prior to the Christianization of Scandinavia, during the Early Middle Ages, and passed into Nordic folklore, with some aspects surviving...

 Odin

Odin

Odin is a major god in Norse mythology and the ruler of Asgard. Homologous with the Anglo-Saxon "Wōden" and the Old High German "Wotan", the name is descended from Proto-Germanic "*Wodanaz" or "*Wōđanaz"....

's all-seeing ravens.

Using his skills with computer

Computer

A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...

s to alter his records and receive a glowing reference from Micawber, Greatheart is soon employed by the Phoenix

Phoenix, Arizona

Phoenix is the capital, and largest city, of the U.S. state of Arizona, as well as the sixth most populated city in the United States. Phoenix is home to 1,445,632 people according to the official 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data...

 branch of Acme Security-Southwest. Under the tutelage of Fenwick Phwombly (who describes himself, though is never identified, as the Shadow

The Shadow

The Shadow is a collection of serialized dramas, originally in pulp magazines, then on 1930s radio and then in a wide variety of media, that follow the exploits of the title character, a crime-fighting vigilante in the pulps, which carried over to the airwaves as a "wealthy, young man about town"...

), Greatheart journeys to the town of Shootout, where many aging villains have gathered for a last great crime. However, they are stopped by a group of aging heroes

Superhero

A superhero is a type of stock character, possessing "extraordinary or superhuman powers", dedicated to protecting the public. Since the debut of the prototypical superhero Superman in 1938, stories of superheroes — ranging from brief episodic adventures to continuing years-long sagas —...

 including Phwombly in an action similar to the gunfight at the OK Corral.

Two years later, Greatheart (named for the character in Pilgrim's Progress) is disguised as an employee of Acme W-W Cleaners and narrowly avoids averting a kidnapping. The victim of the terrorist group turns out to be Micawber's estranged daughter, Jill Micawber, who went under an assumed name so she would not be associated with her ruthless father. Greatheart traces the kidnappers, despite the efforts of Micawber to trail him, to the Fokker D-LXIX Press building, specializers in erotica

Erotica

Erotica are works of art, including literature, photography, film, sculpture and painting, that deal substantively with erotically stimulating or sexually arousing descriptions...

 owned by Acme Zeppelin.

Using a DRECC computer, executive Rade Starling can transform any printed work into a sensually appealing one (e.g. Glinda of Oz

Glinda of Oz

Glinda of Oz: In Which Are Related the Exciting Experiences of Princess Ozma of Oz, and Dorothy, in Their Hazardous Journey to the Home of the Flatheads, and to the Magic Isle of the Skeezers, and How They Were Rescued from Dire Peril by the Sorcery of Glinda the Good is the fourteenth Land of Oz...

becomes The Secret Life of Glinda of Oz, or The Good Witch Goes Bad) and after knocking Greatheart out reveals his plan, with a microchip

Integrated circuit

An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is an electronic circuit manufactured by the patterned diffusion of trace elements into the surface of a thin substrate of semiconductor material...

 embedded in the books' front covers, to overwhelm readers' emotion

Emotion

Emotion is a complex psychophysiological experience of an individual's state of mind as interacting with biochemical and environmental influences. In humans, emotion fundamentally involves "physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience." Emotion is associated with mood,...

s and make them euphoric and suggestible. With the help of Jill, a previous acquaintance of his from UCLA, Greatheart enables Starling's project to overwhelm him and his associates. Since the project was conducted on Acme-owned property, Greatheart has sufficient blackmail

Blackmail

In common usage, blackmail is a crime involving threats to reveal substantially true or false information about a person to the public, a family member, or associates unless a demand is met. It may be defined as coercion involving threats of physical harm, threat of criminal prosecution, or threats...

 on Micawber to prevent his harassing him again.

With Jill's leverage, Greatheart marries her and (with Micawber's grudging blessing) becomes captain of Acme Zeppelin 49. On a trans-Pacific

Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...

 journey to Minerva

Republic of Minerva

The Republic of Minerva was one of the few modern attempts at creating a sovereign micronation on the reclaimed land of an artificial island in 1972. The architect was Las Vegas real estate millionaire and political activist Michael Oliver, who went on to other similar attempts in the following...

 with a cargo of iridium

Iridium

Iridium is the chemical element with atomic number 77, and is represented by the symbol Ir. A very hard, brittle, silvery-white transition metal of the platinum family, iridium is the second-densest element and is the most corrosion-resistant metal, even at temperatures as high as 2000 °C...

 and platinum

Platinum

Platinum is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Pt and an atomic number of 78. Its name is derived from the Spanish term platina del Pinto, which is literally translated into "little silver of the Pinto River." It is a dense, malleable, ductile, precious, gray-white transition metal...

, another group of kidnappers attempts to abduct Jill and encounters a Brittany

Brittany

Brittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...

 separatist group on board. When gunshots go off and penetrate the airbag as well as short out the computers on the bridge, the groups must work together to reach land.