"Beauty" Dasce's "poor taste in skin-toning" |
In the opening scene of Star King, Gersen is relaxing at Smade's Tavern when he meets a hard-drinking spaceman, a planet locator named Lugo Teehalt. Teehalt proceeds to "drink rashly and talk wildly". The story told to Gersen by Teehalt is perplexing and disturbing. Both men are troubled and cautious, so for a while they speak rather philosophically about luck, exploring for new planets and ignorance.....
Cover art by Gino D'Achille |
Gersen replies: "...uncertainty breeds indecision, which is a dead halt. An ignorant man can act".
As fate has it, Teehalt goes on to burden Gersen with more than words. Teehalt is murdered and Gersen ends up in possession of the recorded location of an Earth-like planet that was recently discovered by Teehalt in the far Beyond. The remaining events of the story play themselves out and Gersen is able to use the new planet as bait to coax his adversaries into the open.
click map to enlarge (source) |
In 1973, Vance published Trullion, which turned out to be the first of three related novels in the Alastor Cluster series. The protagonist is Glinnes Hulden, a young man returning home after ten years of off-planet military service. Glinnes soon discovers that the once peaceful Fens of Jolany Prefecture (see map to the right) are being pushed into turmoil by a new dissident movement, Fanscherade. Before Glinnes can arrive home after the sudden death of his father, the Fanschers take possession of Ambal Island and sell it to the mysterious Lute Casagave. Glinnes wants his land back, but he needs money in order to void the sale of Ambal Island.
by Jasper Holland |
Lacking any other means to quickly raise the money needed to buy back Ambal Island, Glinnes attempts to win the money by playing Alastor Cluster's major spectator sport, hussade. For a few short months, Glinnes pursues his goal with single-minded dedication, but everything around him seems to conspire to thwart his efforts to recover Ambal Island. Finally, after series of stinging setbacks, Glinnes finds himself with no money and in a state of "stupefied depression", the world as he knew it seemingly in fragments. Perhaps worst of all, he has fallen in love with with a beautiful hussade sheirl, Duissane, who will soon marry a local aristocrat.
However, just when Glinnes seems defeated, he discovers that bits of information accumulated during his seemingly futile activity of his past few months do miraculously provide him with exactly the knowledge that he needs to solve his many vexing problems. Finally, he regains Ambal Island, wins a fortune in money, and at the end of the novel, Glinnes walks off along a beach with Duissane, her rich fiancé having just been killed. Glinnes thus learns that not only can an ignorant man act, but even acts of seeming futility can, in the end, help a determined man.
In the late 1980s, Vance began publishing the Cadwal Chronicles, a series of three novels that feature Glawen Clattuc as the main character. Like Gersen and Glinnes before him, Glawen quickly finds himself knee deep in trials, travail and mysterious unseen forces threatening to disrupt his goals and plans. The first major setback of his career as a novice police officer comes when he finds himself betrayed by a co-worker. Glawen is held prisoner inside the Monomantic Seminary at Pogan's Point on the planet Tassadero. He is imprisoned by the perverse and demented Ordene Zaa, an ally of Simonetta Clattuc ("Smonny"). Smonny is an outcast from Araminta Station who has spent years seeking revenge against Glawan and the other residents of the Station.
Sessily Veder in her butterfly costume |
Only after months of imprisonment and finally escaping from the Seminary does Glawen realize that his co-worker, Kirdy, is the murderer of Glawen's former girl friend, Sessily Veder. Kirdy had secretly long despised Glawen and when given the chance, he immediately betrayed Glawen to Zaa and abandoned him on Tassadero. Kirdy then returned home to Cadwal and falsely reported to Station authorities that Glawen was dead.
by Jack Vance |
Cover for Trysta and Ekcolir |
Since 2012 I have be receiving a trickle of information from Ivory Fersoni about the secret history of Humanity and the structure of the past few Realities that have existed. Ivory was honest with me: from the very start of our relationship she let me know that it was her intention to escape from Earth. I've recently lost contact with Ivory and I suspect that she has moved on to a new life on other worlds. I'm left struggling to process and understand the information that she pushed in my direction. (update on Ivory)
During the short time when we were active collaborators, Ivory insisted that I attribute the content of Trysta and Ekcolir to Thomas. I know much about the life of Thomas because I have in my brain a swarm of memory nanites that once resided in the brain of Thomas. However, I continue to have trouble fishing out useful information from that jumble of memories. Trysta and Ekcolir were the parents of Thomas, but they are long dead and Thomas was separated from them at a young age. As muddy as they are, sometimes the scrambled second hand memories from Thomas are our best source of information about Trysta and the other Realities.
source |
For many years, Thomas was technically insane. His mental health did improved during a period when he had removed the invading nanites from his body, but he later took back those nanites which then carried even more foreign memories that had been acquired from the mind of the interim host. The most challenging part of sorting through those memory stores is that I have no good way of distinguishing truth from fantasy. Thomas was a fiction writer, and his mind was always cluttered with worlds of his imagination. Can I trust anything that I learn from Thomas?
our Reality Chain |
But, enough of my troubles. If I have learned anything from Gersen, Glinnes and Glawen it is that I must do something. I can't let uncertainty bring me to a "a dead halt". I intend to focus my efforts on one critical part of the challenging problem that now confronts me. I've mapped out the sequence of Realities that have led to the world as we know it (diagram to the left). Trysta and Ekcolir will be composed with about 47% of the story content being events in the Ekcolir Reality and about 47% concerned with what took place in the Grean Reality (or, as I often think of it, the Asimov Reality).
After devising the means to tap into the wealth of information in the Sedronic Domain, Ivory and her clone sister Angela made significant progress in their explorations of the Ekcolir and Grean Realities. However, I'm still baffled by how the transition from the Foundation Reality to the Grean Reality was accomplished. I know that Asimov was involved in that transition, but Asimov was acting as Grean's tool in the dirty low-level grunt work of clearing the last positronic robots from Earth. Angela was not able to discover the secret of how Grean finally defeated the positronic master mind, R. Gohrlay.
Change Your World |
Wallowing in my ignorance, I feel like Glinnes upon his return home to Trullion. He was driven by pride and his sense of duty to recover Ambal Island. However, his efforts to do so were a source of great frustration. Still, Glinnes could not live his life in peace if every day, when glancing out from his front porch on Rabendary Island, he looked across Ambal Broad to where Lute Casagave resided on land that rightfully belonged to the Hulden family. Similarly, how can I, or any of us here on Earth, go on about our lives if we are not free to determine our own futures? I must discover if it is we humans, Grean or R. Gohrlay who is in control of the fate of Humanity.
Time traveling Grean the Kac'hin (top, left) in two places at once |
Lately, I've been wondering if Ivory is on the Moon, possibly working to obtain the nanite tools that could help us resolve doubts about the fate of R. Gohrlay and whether we Earthlings have any free will. [update: the search for Gohrlay]
source |
Ivory's "science fiction" |
I see now that Ivory's past efforts in publishing her "science fiction" stories were her way of using the knowledge she had obtained from her cloned sister Angela as bait to attract the attention of the Overseers. I believe that there is now a new type of Overseer in control of the Earth Observation effort, but Ivory was able to learn little about the intentions of the new Overseers and the continuing activities at Observer Base on the Moon.
During the past two years, I've grown comfortable believing that Ivory is competent and in control, but what if she managed to upset Grean or R. Gohrlay, triggering action by an Overseer? If so, Ivory might now be a "guest" at Observer Base, unable to leave and having no means to communicate further with me.
If I continue to publicize Ivory's exploits, I might also attract Overseer attention and "win a ticket" off this planet. Alternatively, I like to believe that the days of hidden Overseers relentlessly keeping Earthlings in a state of ignorance about our past are truly over. However, I find it impossible to escape doubt and uncertainty that arises from how easy it is for aliens with advanced technology to hide among we Earthlings.
Grendel
source |
Vance populated Trullion with both humans and the aquatic Merlings. |
Based on what I have learned from Ivory, Izhiun and Thomas, a galaxy full of many different life forms and the remnants of past civilizations is exactly what we should expect to find out there, not the sterile abiotic blank slate depicted in Asimov's imagined human diaspora among the stars. And yet, some version of Asimov's "human only" Galactic Empire did exist in the Foundation Reality. In Trullion, the planet where Vance's story is set must be shared by humans and the native Merlings. The Merlings claim as their domain the underwater parts of the Fens and the humans claim the land. The two competing species show no mercy to the other when individuals are found trespassing in the other's domain. Both the sister and father of Glinnes are killed and taken away to a "Merling dinner table".
A Feek (source) |
cover art by Ed Emshwiller (1953) |
Galaxy magazine, 1963 |
Beowulf
source |
source |
Here is the initial description of Grendel from the Beowulf poem:
134r (source); 3 lines are overlined in color |
102 wæs se grimma gaést grendel háten
103 maére mearcstapa sé þe móras héold
104 fen ond fæsten· fífelcynnes eard
Besides the name "grendel", the one word I recognize here as essentially unchanged in modern English is "fen". In the poem, Grendel (and his kin) have, since the dawn of mankind, had dominion over wet places like marshes and fens.
Portland Moor |
water = wæter (lines 93, 471, 509, 516, 1260, 1364, 1416, 1425, 1514, 1619, 1631, 1656, 1693, 1904, 1989, 2242, 2473, 2722, 2791)
marsh = fen (also fenn and mós) (lines 104, 764, 820, 851, 1295, 1359)
swamp = mór (lines 103, 162, 450, 710, 1348, 1405)
sea, surf = brim (lines 28, 222, 568, 569, 847, 1051, 1493, 1506, 1593, 1599, 1910, 2803, 2930)
2007 |
Here is my attempt at a modern prose translation of how the ancient poet introduced Grendel (from lines 99 - 104, including the three color-coded lines shown above):
"Men lived happily until a horrible demon who was named Grendel, a creature of hell, began to commit atrocities. [Grendel's] kind had been impelled by the Creator to reside in their stronghold, the domain of marsh-creatures, an area of desolate moors and fens. [Grendel] was a well-known stalker of the marshes."
bog mummy |
Bogeyman
"Boogie Man" - "...larger bogs can be very dangerous....they are the origin of our term boogie-man"
Boggart by Corbistiger |
.....and he spoke of the Boogie Man over the sea
who lived in the Bog, with his spirit so free.
When the men of the bog would twinkle at night
casting their shadows - 'twas a spooky old sight.
Jack Vance described his "Grendel the Monster" character as an alien that was almost impossible to distinguish from humans. These aliens, the so called "Star Kings" of planet Ghnarumen, evolved as lizard-like creatures in swamps, but over time they adopted human form. While trying to escape capture on "Teehalt's Planet", the Star King crawls into a hole in a river bank. Gersen comments that Star Kings eat worms and insects and so the Star King should "do quite well on what he finds underground".
see this |
It is fun to imagine that alien creatures (Vance's Star Kings) living on Earth might have stimulated human poets to construct the Beowulf poem. In the pre-science fiction age, people could only think of Grendel as a monster. In the Exode Trilogy I face a similar problem: is there a way to convince the people of Earth that our world has long been visited by aliens?
Related reading: Ghyl and A Star King
visit the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers |
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