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| Books 3-5 |
4 years ago,
I blogged about
Jack Rawlins and some of the commentary that he had published about
Jack Vance's
Demon Princes series. One of the things that Rawlins published in 1986 was an interview of Vance. In that interview, Vance mentioned that among all his many works he really liked
The Palace of Love because it includes the
mad poet Navarth, but he quickly added that he also liked
The Face and
The Book of Dreams.
One of the sources cited by Rawlins in 1986 was Terry Dowling, who had previously published several bits of commentary on Vance. In particular, in 1982 Dowling published "
Kirth Gersen - the other Demon Prince" (which you can download
here). That was shortly after the final book in the series was published and Dowling explored the idea that
Kirth Gersen, the protagonist of the series, is actually little more than another
Demon Prince, similar in many ways to the
5 Demon Princes that he destroys in the 5 books of the series.
Dicots
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| Book 2 in the series |
Back in 2009, in
the 14th post to this blog, I mentioned that when reading stories, ..."I do not find a stark dichotomy between good and evil interesting..." Lucky for me, Vance never tried to depict a stark dichotomy between Gersen and the
5 Demon Princes that he hunts to their death. Vance made no effort to depict Gersen as a boy scout; the emphasis is on brutal effectiveness and getting a dirty job done. Along with Vance,
Isaac Asimov also had an interesting approach to including good and evil in his stories, as discussed
here.
What is a
Demon Prince? Vance shows readers how some authors in Gersen's future time tried to define the term "
Demon Prince". The context for such definitions was the dichotomous division between the
Beyond and the central worlds of the human galaxy: the
Oikumene. As described by
Jan Holberk Vaenz LXII: "The most important fact of human life is the infinity of space: the Beyond." Vaenz commented on the psychological perspective of people living within the comfortable safety of the Oikumene. Vaenz suggested that their reaction to the existence of an endless Beyond had resulted in a dampening of human enterprise. However, Vaenz noted: "
men of enterprise indeed exist, though sadly enough most of them work Beyond".
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| Book 1 in the series |
In the frontier worlds of the Beyond, there is no law and that raises the possibility that there can be no criminal acts in the Beyond and "hence, no criminals". Vance began the first book in the Demon Princes saga with this suggestion: "...
the distinction of a few hundred miles ... can transform heinous crime into simple unqualified circumstance".
At the beginning of Chapter 10 in
Star King, we are given a peek into a book called
The Demon Princes by Caril Carphen. Carphen explains that it was
Demon Prince Malagate who controlled the region of the galaxy that includes Mount Pleasant, Gersen's boyhood home. It was Malagate's habit to extort money from the settlements within his domain. Maligate destroyed Mt. Pleasant when the community refused to meet Malagate's demand for protection money. Since the population of Mount Pleasant was several thousand, Malagate invited other "princes" to join him in destroying Mount Pleasant and enslaving the population. Gersen and his grandfather escaped from the raid on Mt. Pleasant and from then on, Gersen's life was built around finding and killing the
5 Demon Princes who destroyed Mt. Pleasant.
Caril Carphen seems to reject the idea that evil acts committed in the Beyond are not crimes and are instead simply "
unqualified circumstance". According to Carphen,
Demon Princes are not mere criminals or madmen. More to the point, they each have a unique "style" that seems to create a special flavor of newness for their crimes. For example, in the case of Malagate's handling of Mayor Paragiglia of the city Desde (who advocated for a militia that could defend the planet Caro against attack), Malagate kidnapped the mayor and tortured him for 39 days. The torture of Mayor Paragiglia was televised and broadcasted to Caro and much of the galaxy. Now, that's style.
Demon Prince style.
What of the other
Demon Princes who Gersen destroys? Firstly, of prime importance to Gersen, they all helped Malagate destroy Mount Pleasant and Gersen's family. Gersen discovers that
Kokor Hekkus rules a planet of the Beyond where he keeps the entire planet enslaved for his entertainment. In
The Killing Machine, in need of money, Kokor Hekkus systematically kidnaps the children of the galaxy's 100 richest families and holds them for ransom.
Viole Falushe also has his own planet in the Beyond where he raises "tax" money by forcing all the women into prostitution. At his "Palace of Love" he voyeristically performs erotic experiments on imprisoned test subjects. His first crime, as a young boy, was stealing a spaceship, kidnapping his classmates from school and selling them into slavery.
Howard Treesong began his criminal career by murdering a few of his school chums and he then went on to become a mass murderer and the master criminal of the Oikumene. Treesong ruthlessly tries to become Emperor of the human galaxy. Seemingly of lesser rank is the
Demon Prince Lens Larque, who seems to limit his activity to a single star system of the Oikumene, close to the Beyond. Still, Larque is widely feared because of his "stylish" habit of capturing and slowly whipping his enemies to death.
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| Hildemar Dasce |
In "Kirth Gersen - the other Demon Prince", Dowling calls Kirth Gersen a
Demon Prince. What are Gersen's special "style", crimes and behaviors that prompt Dowling to label him a
Demon Prince? According to Dowling:
1) Gersen does not use laws and law-enforcement to achieve his ends. Instead, he
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Jerdian on the planet Dar Sai, as
first seen by Gersen in Serjeuz:
"Delightful and superb,"
thought Gersen. (source) |
1a) uses the same methods as the criminals. For example, Gersen poisons the poisoner Suthiro (one of Malagate's men). Gersen also completes the prank designed by Larque in order to get petty revenge
on the stuffy Methlen father who put an end to Gersen's love affair with
Jerdian. Gersen tricks the Darsh out of their worthless Kotash stock shares, even stealing some shares off of a dead miner. After Kokor Hekkus obtains his 10,000,000,000 SVU of ransom money, Gersen steals it from Hekkus and makes no effort to return it to the people who paid the blackmail to Hekkus. Gersen is willing to torture an associate of Malagate in order to obtain information and during the course of his investigations he impersonates a police officer and a judge. Gersen blasts a hole in the hull of Navarth's houseboat in order to force the mad poet to provide information about Viole Falushe. Hildemar Dasce (one of Malagate's henchmen) is left by Gersen to a fate worse than death: imprisoned on a lost world.
2) According to Dowling, after destroying the
5 Demon Princes, Gersen discovers, "
What an unexpected and alarming impasse it is to be in, to destroy these five individuals of style and imagination, these overreachers and transcendants, and to be left surrounded by decent respectable folk with infinite hypocrisies and double standards, their indecisiveness their humdrum longings and the lack of cosmopolitan imagination."
2a) Gersen is misguided in his single-minded effort to eliminate the
Demon Princes. According to Dowling, any society needs evil-doers because they "
define and
strengthen the values of that society". Dowling tells us that "
the
actions of individuals like the Demon Princes have a beneficial effect
upon society".
3) Gersen's motivations are not significantly different than those of Lens Larque or the Sarcoy venifice Suthiro (one of Malagate's henchmen). Their actions were determined by their upbringing and as adults they are unable to change their ways.
4) According to Dowling, Gersens life work is futile; "
he knows that other 'arch-fiends and overlords of evil' will only rise to take the place of those he has eliminated".
In conclusion, Dowling suggests that upon reaching the end of Vance's Demon Princes saga, one should conclude that the saga is, "
the story of an avenger whose work is done, a man whose dedication to the quest has left him alone and unrivalled, resembling the magnificent quarry he has hunted for so long, himself a final Demon Prince, the final tragic overreacher who has reached too far."
Lumpers and Splitters
I find Dowling's thesis to be misguided sophistry. Rather than lump Gersen together with the
Demon Princes, I prefer to categorize him as a different type of creature. For me, a better way to view the Demon Princes saga is through the lens provided by Isaac Asimov. We should recognize that readers enjoy stories in which they are kept guessing about the true nature of the protagonist. Is he misguided? Should he succeed? These are the questions that keep us turning the pages.
Compare Vance's Demon Princes saga to
E. E. Smith's Lensman saga in which we are presented with the do-good Arisians vs. the evil Eddorians. In contrast to that simplistic good vs. evil plot, Vance takes us well beyond such a simple dichotomy in the Demon Princes saga.
Vance depicts Gersen as being aware of the danger that he is a programmed mechanism, little different from the men who he destroys. However, in the end, we should notice that Gersen has perfected his relationship with
Alice Wroke. Together they have defeated Treesong and in the end Gersen says, "I am done." Readers can well imagine that Gersen and and Alice will have a wonderful life together. Go ahead, call him a demon (if you must), but Gersen is a different kind of demon than the men he has destroyed. Alice knows the difference, even if Dowling does not.
Next:
Cosmic Justice
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