For some odd reason, the plots, but not the names, of these books have stuck with me. I’d really like to attach the correct names to the tomes. So here are the book plots:
[ol][li]Set in the far future where people easily travel from one planet to another via “transfer booths” (teleportation). Of course, before anyone can teleport to a planet, a booth as to be taken there. This is the job of “Explorers” who are generally abandoned orphans and grow up on the starships.[/li][li]Ostensibly a true story by an American who lived in one of China’s Muslim areas, converted to Islam so he could marry a local woman, got involved in dealing/(re)distribution drugs, got arrested, tried, and spent some years (forgot how long) in a Chinese jail. The story has some rather interesting interactions with other foreign inmates.[/ol][/li]
Thanks if you can post the actual names of these books!
BTW: If anyone else is having a similar issue recalling book titles, feel free to add what you remember of the plot, characters, etc., and let’s see if you get your answer.
Could you give some more details about the first book - is the story about the explorers, or is that just a background detail? Interstellar FTL portal networks that have to be set up by slower than light travel are an element in several books (“A Million Open Doors” by John Barnes, “Hyperion” by Dan Simmons), so a bit more detail would help.
“Transfer booths” is the phrase used by Larry Niven to describe his human teleportation devices in his Known Space series. (The Puppeteers use stepping disks.) That might help limit the search.
There are transfer booths (or the equivalent) in Harlan Ellison’s excellent published screenplay of Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot, but not in the original stories IIRC. But they aren’t placed by abandoned orphans.
Davies, the author of the above, seems to be the same person as the inmate called “Gareth” in a memoir by another Westerner held in the same prison: Monkey House Blues by Dominic Stevenson (2010).