100x

In the Ekcolir Reality.
original cover art by Earle Bergey
and Rudolph Belarski

This is my 100th blog post of the year. Since I like to celebrate arbitrary numerical milestones, I'm going to take this as an excuse to continue my celebration of the first 100 years of the Vance Era.

As this current year moves towards its end, I'm also making preparations for 2017 and the 25th anniversary of the death of Isaac Asimov.

The subject of this blog post is a sparkling eclipse; the interface between Asimov's adventures in Deep Time and what Vance wrote about them in our previous Reality.

Retrofuturians
In the Ekcolir Reality, the replicoid of Asimov organized the Writers Block and made it possible for science fiction writers such as John Vance (an analogue of Jack Vance) to write stories that reflected events in the previous Reality: the Asimov Reality.

In the Ekcolir Reality.
Original cover art by Hannes Bok.

Zeta claims that she also had an analogue in the Ekcolir Reality. That "earlier version" of Zeta had extensive interactions with an "earlier version" of the Dead Widowers who carried out investigations of Deep Time.

According to Zeta, that team of historical investigators in the Ekcolir Reality had a formal name that they had borrowed from Deep Time: the Historical Institute. However, on a day-to-day basis, they usually referred to themselves half jokingly as the Retrofuturians. With our attention focused on Deep Time, soon, Zeta and I were discussing exobiology from the perspective of Ifness, an agent of the Historical Institute.....

Mount Pleasant on the planet Providence

The Historical Institute
I asked Zeta if there was any relationship between "the Institute" as described in the Demon Princes series and the Historical Institute of the Durdane series. She replied, "After Dwyddion took control of the Institute, he called upon Zodiac Control to launch an investigation into the hidden force that was behind Treesong's attempt to take control of the Institute. That investigation led to discovery that the IPX was close to taking control of the production of Intersplit space drive engines by acquiring the Jarnell Corporation.

During the early period of the "Trysta Truce", R. Gohrlay was content to explore ways to adapt humans to the Bimanoid Interface by doing experiments at isolated communities such as Mt. Pleasant. However, Grean had a much more audacious plan. After allowing humans to spread outward from Earth to thousands of nearby exoplanets, Grean wanted to halt further space travel, isolate each settled world and use those worlds as biological laboratories.

In the Ekcolir Reality. Original
cover art by Edward Palfrey.

The Institute had originally been created by R. Gohrlay as a way to find mutant humans who might arise and have an altered interaction with their nanites. The Institute claimed to act so as to put controls on the pace of technological innovation. "Behind the scenes", that control was already efficiently exercised by the zeptite endosymbionts inside each human, but the Institute could function as a "honey trap" to attract mutant humans who became free of zeptite control and who resented the publicized anti-technology goals of the Institute.

When Grean began to put restrictions on human space travel, R. Gohrlay shifted the mission and purpose of the Institute. It evolved into the Historical Institute, which retained a record of every human-settled planet and it deployed a group of agents who monitored those worlds, constantly searching for useful human variants. According to Zeta, R. Gohrlay had the ability to teleport her agents from world to world, so those agents did not need to bother with space ships. During that era, one goal was to create the Ek'col as a human variant that could be used to integrate some particularly useful Asterothrope gene combinations into the human population of Earth.

Roguskhoi. Cover art
by Edward Palfrey

Later, after about 10,000 years, when humans were again allowed to travel outward from Earth, the people of planets such as Durdane were brought back inside a unified human space-faring civilization. Vance's Durdane Trilogy takes place shortly before members of the Historical Institute such as Ifness were finally able to openly interact with the people of Durdane after a 9,000 year period of that planet's isolation from Earth.

Emphyrio by Jack Vance

Somewhat later, the people of Halma were also "liberated" and fully linked into galactic civilization during the time of the second great outward migration of peoples. Humans of that time colonized more distant parts of the galaxy, including Alastor Cluster.

According to Zeta, the Retrofuturians were able to piece together a fairly coherent account of the genetic engineering and artificial selection steps that led to humans who could use the Bimanoid Interface.

Sci Fi in the Ekcolir Reality

The last steps in the long process of searching the human genomic statespace involved the Pheni and sending some of the finely crafted humans back to the 20th century from the far future of the Asimov Reality.

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Fanfiction Disease

Where Parthney and Kach first meet.

I've been thinking about free will, determinism and slavery. I'm currently writing about Parthney and Kach and their lives on Hemmal, a distant planet where genetically modified humans live out their lives in complete ignorance of Earth and the origins of the human species. What they do not know is that humans, as a species, were created by the Huaoshy, an ancient artificial lifeform that originated in a distant galaxy about a billion years ago. Parthney is an oddly mutated human, which allows him to become aware of the fact that the humans on Hemmal are part of a complex breeding program. After visiting Earth, Parthney comes to view his former life on Hemmal as a type of slavery. My problem is, I can't think about a story that I am writing without also thinking about the stories of my favorite authors....

Gersen dispatches three henchmen.

Gersen's family. While thinking about slavery in science fiction I began to think deeper into the case of Kirth Gersen, the protagonist of the Demon Princes novels by Jack Vance. This series of novels begins:

"What a paradox, what a fearful reproach, when the distinction of a few hundred miles (nay, as many feet or even inches!) can transform heinous crime to simple unqualified circumstance!"

The fundamentally transformative boundary is the poorly-defined line that separates the lawless "Beyond" from the policed core of civilized worlds at the heart of the Oikumene. Vance's stories are set in a future when humanity is spreading outward into the galaxy and there are many lawless planets beyond the reach of the IPCC (the Interworld Police Coordinating Company).

Mount Pleasant on the planet Providence

In particular, Gersen was born in the Beyond at the community of Mount Pleasant. Among Gersen's earliest memories is the raid on his home village by space pirates. The historic "Mount Pleasant Massacre" which resulted in the death and enslavement of the community and was the evil handiwork of the five Demon Princes.

Although both Gersen and his grandfather witnessed the raid on Mount Pleasant and survived, we learn surprisingly little about what happened to Gersen's parents. The most simple assumption is that neither of Gersen's parents survived the Massacre, but we are never told that by Vance. We are told, in a memory from Gersen of his grandfather, that:

"Many fine things your father had planned for you: learning and useful work and a life of satisfaction and peace."

Why was the community of Mount Pleasant destroyed?

Enslaved!

Do the math.  In The Palace of Love, we learn that a skilled slave, who works in a tapestry factory in the city of Sabra on the planet Murchison, sells for 3,000 SVU. By convention, an SVU (Standard Value Unit) is set to the value of an hour of unskilled labor. In The Killing Machine, we learn that the Demon Prince Kokor Hekkus can earn 100,000,000 SVU in ransom by kidnapping just one person of wealth. Does it make sense that the Mount Pleasant Massacre would have been carried out by the Demon Princes in order to protect or advance their financial opportunities?

We have been told that the community of Mount Pleasant refused to pay protection money or taxes to Malagate the Woe. The community had grown to 5,000 residents and perhaps felt that they had accumulated the required resources to defend themselves. Malagate had to take dire action or lose the power to extract money from communities like Mount Pleasant. At stake is perhaps 50,000,000 SVU per year of steady income for Malagate and his fellow Demon Princes.

In The Book of Dreams, set many years after the Mount Pleasant Massacre, we learn that Howard Treesong has risen to become the "Lord of the Overmen", but at the time of the Mount Pleasant raid he was apparently just attaining his "full criminal stature" and participated as one of the pirate ship captains who could function as "enforcers", sent to raid Mount Pleasant and paid off in booty- what ever they could steal from the raided community.

Dwyddion's house at Athmore Violet

The Institute.
"Who are our basic enemies? This is a secret, unknown even to those basic enemies." -Xavier Skolcamp, Fellow of the Institute

 "We have agents everywhere. We know a thousand tricks to discourage research, sabotage experiments, distort data. We therefor control the dissemination of knowledge." -Madian Carbuke, Fellow of the Institute

During the course of the Demon Princes saga, Vance provides readers with some insight into The Institute. The Institute constantly acts to limit technology and keep humanity in a cultural state that is as close as possible to the conditions of ancient man on Earth.

In The Killing Machine,  Kokor Hekkus kidnaps the children of Duschane Audmar. Audmar is a high ranking member of the Institute. While discussing Hekkus, he tells Gersen, "The Institute finds him remarkable and regards certain by-products of his evil rewarding." Gersen believes that the powerful Institute could easily eliminate the Demon Princes, if it only bothered to try.

In The Book of Dreams, Gersen is told by Leta Goynes, another high ranking member of the Institute, "The Institute tends to ignore ordinary social problems, even criminals as egregious as Howard Treesong."

Alice Wroke

Gersen learns that Treesong has tried to take control of the Institute, killing the top leadership except for Dwyddion, who becomes the new head of the Institute. Gersen learns that Dwyddion is the only remaining person who knows a great secret that was kept by the small leadership group of the Institute. Dwyddion must now decide if there is to be a major change in strategy and a new direction for the Institute.

Alice Wroke. In The Book of Dreams, Gersen meets and befriends the miraculous Alice Wroke, the daughter of one of the high ranking Institute leaders who was killed by Treesong. Alice tells Gersen that her father worked at Wild Isle, a kind of resort for wealthy gamblers. Does it make sense that a high ranking member of the Institute would work at Wild Isle? As Alice describes the situation, her father was a "consultant", making sure that the gambling machines fleece the gamblers. Gersen expresses the view that criminals control the gambling casinos, but Alice insists that her father was no criminal.

Fanfiction disease. Sometimes science fiction stories work themselves into a corner. In The X-Files we were introduced to the idea of an on-going alien invasion, but it seemed like the main objective for Chris Carter was to avoid actually having the invasion because allowing aliens to exterminate humanity would be bad for buSine$$ in Hollywood. Since the alien invasion never materialized, I could not resist creating some X-Files fanfiction stories set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe. I imagined Scully being subjected to an "alien abduction" and taken to the Moon where she learns that the aliens have no intention of invading Earth. While on the Moon, some Interventionists recruit her to help solve the global warming problem.

When Isaac Asimov returned to work on his Foundation saga in 1982 he quickly painted himself into a corner. He could see no good way to move the plot past Foundation and Earth. Rather than write a sequel to Foundation and Earth, Asimov went back and wrote two prequels to the original Foundation stories. Asimov seemed reluctant to introduce aliens into his Foundation stories. I had no such reluctance and so I went ahead and created The Start of Eternity, a fanfiction sequel for both Asimov's time travel novel The End of Eternity and Foundation and Earth. The Start of Eternity makes use of the Huaoshy in the role of the aliens who come to our galaxy from "far, far away".

Dr. Wye

When Carl Sagan died I was left wishing that he had been able to bring us a sequel to Contact. After waiting and wishing for years, I finally went ahead and started a fanfiction television series that continues on from the end of the Contact film. The television series is set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe, so the space aliens are shown as being much more intimately involved with Earth than was suggested in Sagan's original story.

But not too intimately. In fact, it is against the rules for aliens to visit Earth. However, rules are made to be broken and there are other interesting visitors to Earth even if they are not aliens. In the Contact movie we never get to meet any of the scientists and engineers who build The Machine. In the Contact television series, Ellie Arroway gets to work with Dr. Wye while they try to understand the advanced technology of The Machine. Dr. Wye is the Exodemic equivalent of Dr. Who. She looks like a human, but where does she come from? Somewhere beyond Earth.

I've also sketched out how to construct an Exodemic sequel to Assignment Nor'Dyren, a Sci Fi adventure story by Sydney Van Scyoc.

After creating fanfiction stories that are set in the fictional universes of Asimov, Sagan and Chris Carter, I've come to the conclusion that I can "rescue" any science fiction story that has worked itself into a corner or come to a dead end...or simply ended before I want it to end. How? By embedding the plot in the Exodemic Fictional Universe. This blatant pattern of hubris is a particularly virulent type of Fanfiction Disease.

Fanfiction sequel to The Book of Dreams. I wish Vance had written a sequel to The Book of Dreams. He left me wanting to how Alice had met Treesong and what would happen to the Institute under the guidance of Dwyddion. Is it true that none of Gersen's family survived the raid on Mount Pleasant?

Stories set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe generally involve ongoing tension between Overseers and Interventionisists. It is easy for me to imagine that the Institute functions as a front for Overseers who want to limit the pace of human technological development. I imagine that Overseers make routine use of criminals like the Demon Princes. In the case of Treesong, things get a bit out of control when he decides he is going to become the first emperor of the Oikumene.

Standing in opposition to both the Institute and criminals like Treesong are the Interventionists, a small cadre of humans who want to liberate humanity from the restrictions that are imposed by the Overseers.

I imagine that the parents of both Alice and Gersen were/are Interventionist agents. After the death of Treesong and leaving Bethune Preserve Alice and Gersen go to Wild Isle in search of Alice's mother, who, after the death of her husband and the disappearance of Alice, has gone into hiding.

Wild Isle Inn

Gersen and Alice visit Cletus Parsival at Wild Isle Inn. They learn that Cletus knew Ervin Umps as well as Ervin's brother and his wife. It is easy for Gersen to confirm that "Stanley Sparkhammer" previously rented rooms at the Inn and hosted a banquet at the Rainflower Room. However, both Cletus and the local police are baffled by the news that "Sparkhammer" murdered all his guests at the banquet. Gersen begins to draw upon his vast wealth and commissions the IPCC to investigate what Ervin Umps had been doing on Cytherea Tempestre and to help find Eileen Wroke, Alice's mother.

Eventually, Eileen is traced to Terranova, Denebola V. Gersen and Alice visit Terranova and she shows him her childhood home. After some detective work they finally find Eileen. She is happy to see that Alice is safe, but fears that her husband was tortured before he died and might have revealed Interventionist secrets to Treesong.  Eileen is pleased to meet Gersen and she tells him that his parents were Interventionists and that Gersen's mother is still alive.

Alice and Gersen are surprised to learn that their parents were secret members of an organization that struggles against the Institute. Eileen is intrigued by the fact that Gersen saved the life of the new head of the Institute and she wants to contact Dwyddion. Gersen wants to find his mother and Alice is intent on finding out if it was Ervin Umps who killed her father or some as yet unidentified member of Treesong's gang.

Gersen learns that following the Mount Pleasant Massacre his mother was sold into slavery by Viole Falushe. She was eventually rescued by Interventionists and continued her work at the new Interventionist training base that was established to replace the one lost at Mount Pleasant. After a sly trick, Gersen penetrates the concealed Interventionist base and meets his mother. She is intrigued by Gersen's description of Treesong's odd behavior and insists that they return to Bethune Preserve to examine Treesong's body. She explains to Gersen the existence of nanites, a powerful tool used by Overseers. The Interventionists have a secret research program aimed at learning how to program and control nanites.

The story unfolds from there with Gersen and Alice trying to decide if they agree with their parents' Interventionist philosophy. Perhaps they can be used by the Interventionists as bait in an effort to draw out the Overseers and allow the Interventionists to capture the needed technology that allows for control of nanites. If you want to help write a fanfiction sequel to The Book of Dreams, let me know!
__________________________________________
possible titles:
Tail of the Lion
Tale of the Lion
________________________
...in an alternative universe....

Lerand Wible

AI-generated image

I previously blogged about the Aquarius Trilogy, stories written by an analogue of Jack Vance who lived in the Ekcolir Reality. In the first book of that trilogy, The Clones of Sogdian, Kirth Gersen became caught up in a dangerous investigation of a secretive organization called Zodiac Control.

I've never read The Clones of Sogdian, but apparently Gohrlay did. Previously, I've referred to Gersen's partner during the events of the Aquarius Trilogy as "Drusilla I", but according to Gohrlay her name was Karalin Umdys.

Previously, I was aware that that Retz, who worked with Viole Falushe, was secretly an agent for Zodiac Control and Karalin played a role in revealing his secret identity.

Wible Resort on Sogdian

The opportunity to unmask Retz arose after Gersen became aware of some of the more heinous biological experiments that were carried out on Sogdian.

After visiting Retz and collecting all of the records of those experiments and the commentaries on them that had been written by Viole Falushe, Gersen turned the documents over to Rundle Detteras at Sea Province University on Alphanor in the Rigel system.

rehabilitation center, Sogdian

The Sogdian Experiments
Detteras quickly reviewed the materials and recommended that a rehabilitation facility be established immediately for the treatment of the most severely damaged victims of the Sogdian experiments. Gersen contacted Lerand Wible and asked if he had made progress on the design for a floating lagoon that had been commissioned by Viole Falushe. Wible had indeed worked out the details for construction of a floating city on Sogdian. With funding from Gersen, the treatment facility was quickly built from modular components that were shipped to the Sirneste Cluster and assembled according to Wible's plan.

After the first phase of construction was complete, Gersen left Retz and a team of doctors from Alphanor in charge of the rehabilitation center. Wible continued to build the Central Core of what was to eventually become known as Wible Resort and additional housing pods in the Outer Ring.

IPCC

Returning to Alphanor, Gersen next made his fateful discovery of Karalin Umdys on the Esplanade at Avante. When the "guardians" of Karalin suddenly disappeared, Gersen commissioned the IPCC to investigate. Known to Karalin as Jose and Viquie Umdys, IPCC investigators were only able to find a few weak linkages from them to the Institute.

No Nanites For Me

source

On the morning when Gersen received his report from the IPCC, Karalin asked him, "Why would the Institute be connected with Viole Falushe?"

Gersen took Karalin's hand and they went to the garden restaurant of their hotel. Gersen ate quietly and struggled internally with doubts about the wisdom of exposing Karalin to the grim details of his life. Puzzled by Gersen's silence, Karalin gently revived the topic of conversation. "Aren't you a member of the Institute?"

original cover art by John Berkey

Gersen shrugged. "I have not been active in the Institute since I was a lad, but I've never canceled my rank or abandoned my status as a member."

"If you asked the Institute for help, would they tell you anything about Jose and Viquie?"

Gersen slowly shook his head. "The IPCC investigated that possibility. They got nothing useful from the Institute and I'm certain that I would have no better luck."

Gersen again thought about his long-standing goal of publishing a series of articles about the Institute in Cosmopolis. A half dozen articles were ready for the press, but he feared going toe-to-toe with the Institute.

Karalin reached across the table and took hold of his hand. "You're not telling me everything."

Gersen nodded. "I have no right to involve you in my troubles." Still, Gersen reflected, Karalin was intelligent and well educated. Quite possibly she had heard useful information from Jose and Viquie during the years that she had lived with them. Gersen's hope that she might have useful knowledge was balanced against the possibility that upon further investigation of her upbringing and life, Gersen might learn that she had also been the subject of biological or psychological experimentation.

She squeezed his hand, "If it helps, I've decided to involve myself with you and the mysteries of my origins. I don't want to live my life in ignorance."

Gersen was torn between two paths forward. He was eager to forget about Viole Falushe and move on to fresh investigation of the two remaining Demon Princes. However, he was puzzled and disturbed by the evidence suggesting that both Kokor Hekkus and Viole Falushe had connections to the Institute. Gersen himself and his personal war against the Demon Princes had been revealed to Duschane Audmar, a high ranking member of the Institute. It might be unwise to ignore the Institute.

"Kirth, you are stubborn." Karalin asked firmly, "Why won't you tell me your thoughts?"

"I will, but not here." He rose and guided her towards the exit. Karalin needed only a few minutes to pack her travel bag and then they were on their way to the space port. An hour later with Alphanor shrinking below them, Gersen activated the star drive of the Distis Pharaon and he turned to Karalin. "Now we can speak freely. It is almost certain that the Institute has suppressed powerful technologies. The question becomes: are those technologies secretly available and still made use of by some?"

"What technologies? Made use of for what?"

"It is hard to imagine what we cannot see, but here is an example: the cloning technology that gave you your life."

Thamber

Karalin shrugged. "Why does it matter if I am a clone or if Viole Falushe obtained cloning technology from the Institute?"

"I don't know." Gersen projected an image of an Earth-like planet on the main display of the flight deck. "My thoughts went in another direction. Do you recall the planet Thamber?"

"Of course. Its location was made public just last year. News reports described it as the playground of Demon Prince Kokor Hekkus."

"I believe that the long life of Kokor Hekkus was made possible by cloning. If so, it means that he was able to pass his memories along from clone to clone."

"But the report was that Kokor Hekkus used biochemical techniques to extend his life."

"That appears to have been a half-truth. I had tests performed on the body of one of his aides who claimed to be hundreds of years old. However, analysis revealed that his body was only about fifty years old."

Karalin felt a shiver up her back. "Are you suggesting that Viole Falushe not only made me but also provided me with false memories?"

Gersen put an arm around Karalin and tried to put her mind at ease. "No, I don't think so. However, I worry that he and Retz were using some other technology on Sogdian to experiment with the control of emotions."

Karalin was startled by the possibility. "Are you saying that he could have made me fall in love with him?"

Gersen activated a viewer and showed Karalin pages from one of the notebooks that had been kept by Retz. "Read this."

Karalin scanned the documents and then turned back to Gersen. "Exactly who is this 'Retz'? He clearly has scientific training."

"At first I assumed that he worked for Viole Falushe, but I might have had that backwards."

"He seems to have believed that he could control the thoughts of those poor test subjects."

Gersen nodded. "That is my fear. If so, then he probably also controlled the thoughts of both Viole Falushe and myself. When I reflect on the situation, I don't understand why I trusted Retz to care for the victims of the evil human experimentation that took place at the Palace of Love."

Karalin asked, "But how could Retz take control of your mind?"

Gersen shrugged. "To understand that, I must return to Sogdian, but it will be dangerous. If Retz learns that I suspect him of being the mastermind behind Viole Falushe, he might simply eliminate me. I don't want to expose you to such a dangerous situation."

Karalin shook her head decisively. "You have it backwards again. I am the solution to your problem. I can get close to Retz and learn the truth."

"Very well, if you are willing to risk your life, then I'll make use of you. But we must take precautions; I don't want to lose you."

Karalin took gold of Gersen's arm and rested her head against his shoulder. "Do you have a plan?"

"We'll take an indirect approach. We will be on hand for the opening of Wible's Resort. We'll make no effort to visit Retz. We must entice Retz into our trap. And I want you to be in disguise. Have you ever wanted red hair?"

source

Karalin laughed. "Disguise?  I'll play that game. Just don't expect me to have my breasts enlarged."

Gersen put his arms around her, "A good spy has no inhibitions. For now, our only concern is our trap and how to attract the attention of Retz."
^{________________________}
This blog post is part of a  series that celebrates the fiction of Jack Vance. Other posts in the series:
March 6 - Mirky Porod
April 9 - Vance +100
May 7 - Scutinary Vitalists
May 15, 2016 - Director of Forestlands
May 26, 2017 - Perfection of Joy
^{________________________}
Next Blog Post: The Gaia Intervention 

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The Medium Future

I just found "Jack Vance and the Medium Future" by Robert Gibson. Gibson suggests that, "The ease of interstellar travel has the effect of retarding other types of scientific advance."

I suppose the idea is that in the Vance Universe it becomes easy for people to ride a spaceship to another world and live happily without any need to develop advanced technologies such as robots with human-like intelligence. Sorry, but that just does not do it for me. Even if 99.99% of humanity was content to live a bucolic existence on worlds such as Trullion, all it would take is that other 0.01% to keep pushing the envelope of technological development.

Gibson also mentions, "the deliberately anti-progress organization called simply the Institute, which is rumoured to use unscrupulous means to suppress inventions that might free mankind from toil". I think that the kind of technological stasis that is seen in Vance's "medium future" would only be possible if there was an active mechanism for the prevention of technological innovation. In the Demon Princes series, Vance carefully developed the Institute as a powerful force, with some even fearing that the Institute might soon start placing limits on space travel.

At the end of The Book of Dreams, the status of the Institute is very uncertain. The new head of the Institute is shown as being unsympathetic to the "secret" of the former leadership. Alice Wroke's father is revealed to have been a member of the ruling council of the Institute.

I think it would be a tribute to Vance if a sequel to "The Book of Dreams" was written. The sequel could explore the mystery behind Howard Alan Treesong's rise to rank 99 within the Institute. Why did Alice Wroke's father avoid the banquet where the rest of the Dexad was poisoned? What new directions are taken by the new leadership of the Institute? What will Gersen and Alice do after leaving Bethune Preserve?

Related Reading: ideas for a sequel to The Book of Dreams.

Image. Public Domain. Source

Wild Isle

source

Since 2012 I have been imagining how to interpret Jack Vance's stories about the future as having been inspired by actual historical events from the Asimov Reality. In that Reality, humans had been given access to advanced technology in order to allow people to spread to thousands of exoplanets where human genetics and breeding experiments could be performed.

Asterothropes: the females
are larger than
the hermaphrodites.

Human breeding experiments? The goal was to create a human variant that could efficiently use the Bimanoid Interface, allowing for a kind of technology-assisted telepathy.

Deep Time
Previously, in the Mallansohn Reality, R. Gohrlay had created the Asterothrope. Asterothropes are a human variant with the ability to use the Bimanoid Interface. As hinted at by Isaac Asimov in his novel The End of Eternity, Noÿs Lambent, an Asterothrope from the far future, was able to use her command of the Bimanoid Interface to control the thought patterns of men such as Andrew Harlan.

see

However, under the restrictions imposed by the Trysta-Grean Pact, Asterothropes could not remain on Earth to help guide Humanity into an uncertain future. According the technical definition used by the Huaoshy, Asterothropes are not human and after the Trysta-Grean Pact was in effect, all non-humans had to be removed from Earth. So, it was back to the old drawing board.

In the Asimov Reality

source

I've previously imagined that the parents of Alice Wroke and Kirth Gersen were Interventionist agents. Among the Interventionists of the Asimov Reality, a fear had arisen suggesting that alien forces were at work, providing dangerous technologies to humans in an attempt to cause the destruction of humanity in a technological catastrophe. One of the great mysteries was how the "Jarnell Intersplit" had been created, providing humanity with faster-than-light space travel.

Agent of Zodiac

In Gersen's time, Zodiac Control, a special investigative unit of the Institute, attempted to take control of the Jarnell Corporation and learn the origin of "sedron pod" space drive technology. However, even centuries later, during the life of Glinnes, mysteries persisted about the origins of both the hierion and the sedron-based technologies that had been provided to humans. Powerful organizations like the Institute and the Historical Institute continued to suppress scientific research efforts and keep many planetary populations isolated as genetic laboratory worlds.

Alice at a Si Shi Shim dance

It seems possible that Alice's father was an agent for Zodiac Control. Endowed with a special femtobot endosymbiont, Howard Treesong was able to influence the behavior of people like Benjamin Wroke, facilitating his rise to the highest levels of the Institute's hierarchy. Treesong discovered that Alice Wroke had inherited her father's ability to partially connect to the Bimanoid Interface. That allowed Treesong to use Alice as his tool for investigating the Cosmopolis contest that had been devised by Gersen (a new sister publication, Extant, was launched to actually host the contest).

original cover art by
Margaret Brundage and
from this cover

I like to imagine that Alice and Kirth had some type of weak telepathic connection to each other via the Bimanoid Interface. As described by Vance in The Book of Dreams, as soon as Alice came within visual range, Kirth looked out the window and noticed Alice standing across the street. Vance tells us that Kirth took an immediate interest in Alice, for several reasons. We are told that the third reason was, "...rising from his subconscious, and perhaps most important of all."

source

Zeta suggests that under the terms of the Trysta Truce, there was very little Overseer activity during the human space age of the Asimov Reality. The IPX was controlled by Overseers and their main efforts were devoted to monitoring the efforts of R. Gohrlay to genetically modify humans.  Ironically, Gersen always distrusted the Institute while maintaining a working relationship with the IPCC.

source

The Final Reality
After much effort and even some help from the Phari, R. Gohrlay managed to create the tryp'At as a new human variant that could remain on Earth in the Final Reality. The tryp'At could efficiently use the Bimanoid Interface and by Viewing the future, R. Gohrlay had come to believe that the tryp'At were needed in order to assure the survival of humans as a species.

source

At the same time when the tryp'At we created, the Ek'col were crafted by the pek and Ekcolir was used to finally end the Time War. Ultimately, R. Gohrlay realized that the tryp'At were a danger to Earth's future, so she engineered a change to the Bimanoid Interface. That forced the tryp'At to end their role as the Overseers of Earth.

Wild Isle

cover by Gino D'Achille

There are several interesting "coincidences" and mysteries in Jack Vance's Demon Princes saga that I like to attribute to the fact that Vance's stories were inspired by actual events but he was restricted from revealing secrets about how we Earthlings are controlled and guided by aliens.

torture at Brinktown

An unexplained coincidence in the first novel in Vance's saga is how, in a very short period of time: 1) Gersen learns the names of the 5 Demon Princes, 2) he also learns that Malagate is an alien Star King and 3) he obtains the encoded location of Teehalt's planet. This odd coincidence is discussed in my previous blog post.

the final novel in the
Demon Princes saga

A mystery in the last novel of Vance's saga is how Benjamin Wroke, who works in a casino on Wild Isle, rises to become a member of the Institute's ruling Dexad. I like to imagine that after the death of Howard Treesong, Alice Wroke and Kirth Gersen visited Wild Isle and investigated the death of Benjamin Wroke. They discovered that Treesong spent considerable amounts of time on Wild Isle trying to maintain his control over profits from the gambling casinos.

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Benjamin Wroke had been provided with "cover" and established as an employee at one of the casinos. While trying to penetrate Treesong's criminal organization and learn the secrets of his great success as a criminal, Benjamin worked with Treesong in a scam that allowed them both to rise to level 99 members of the Institute. As Gersen suspected, this required considerable "mind bending", which Benjamin and Treesong were able to accomplish by means of their ability to make use of the Bimanoid Interface.

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However, eventually Treesong murdered Benjamin. In fact, Treesong tried to murder the entire Dexad so that he could take control of the Institute. However, it was the mass murder of the Dexad that allowed Kirth Gersen to obtain and publish a photograph of Treesong. At that point, Treesong was able to use Alice as his spy in an attempt to infiltrate Gersen's operation at Cosmopolis (Extant) magazine.

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According to Caril Carphen, author of The Demon Princes, Treesong was a master criminal because of his "organizational genius". He was known for the "elaborate methodicity of his programs". According to Carphen: "By all accounts he enjoys the company of beautiful women, none of whom seems to benefit from the association either spiritually of financially. To the contrary, the romances of which anything is known all end tragically, if not worse."

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It is only through her lucky collaboration with Gersen that Alice avoids becoming another of Treesong's badly-used lady friends.

Related Reading: The Alice Investigations

Next: return to the planet Trullion

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