Ray Aldridge writes, "I've been a potter and stained glass designer for about fifteen years. I've built a series of sf-oriented windows that deal with the same subject matter as 'Floating Castles' — the impact (often fatal) of high tech cultures on primitive ones." "Floating Castles" is a complex story of a man trapped by his personality, whose passions bind him inextricably to his — and his culture's — fate.The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, December 1988
Ray Aldridge
Slavery is the corporate foundation of the powerful Pangalic Worlds where Ruiz Aw leads a dangerous double life, as an enforcer for the Art League that so brutally controls its slaves and as an Emancipator dedicated to eradicating the cruel business. After escaping from a herd of slaves, and voyaging across the perilous and magical world of Sook, he and his band of refugees become trapped a rotting city called SeaStack. The biomechanical city however, has secrets that no one can begin to fathom. Ruiz must use his skills to kill for money, and the battle for safety just might a secret that will challenge the foundations of the universe.
Ruiz Aw is an Art League enforcer sent to investigate the disappearance of several slaves from the planet Pharaoh prior to their being "harvested". They are the property of the Art League and their property has been stolen. Ruiz is an ex-slave now working for the League, doing its corporate slave trading dirty work. Pharoah is a planet of slave herds, castes and imagination. It is a planet without hope or freedom. It is a planet of slave poachers. Ruiz must go undercover to find these poachers for the league but he has a conflicting responsibility: he is also the Lone Emancipator, a man with an oath to bring down the slave trade and destroy the League. He alone is the galaxy's last chance. However, if Ruiz is caught or his plan uncovered, the Gencha death net anchored deep within his brain is programmed to kill him!