One of the key moments in the genre is the arrival of the hero in the new planet; it’s a well-oiled plot device and gives way to a number of actions that will set the pace for the novel. After the arrival, our hero will need to quickly adapt to the new world and discover his/her role in the local society (start of the main quest). In the classic works of the genre, the journey is usually something worth a few lines of description and, optionally, some mumbo-jumbo in a pseudoscientific tone. The same happens for the return of the hero, where the mysterious phenomenon that connects Earth and the new planet is set to work backward – usually after a secondary quest dedicated to retrieving one or more useful objects to make it work.
Angelo Benuzzi 