Planet of the Dryads

image credits

Here in August, I'm in the middle of celebrating the fiction of Jack Vance. Vance had some education in science when he studied at U.C. Berkeley and his knowledge of science shines through in his written stories.

In his novel Star King, Vance tackled the mystery of our origin as a species. In the fifty years since the writing of Star King, we have entered into the era of genomics and we can now compare our own genes to those of the Neanderthals. Neanderthals and Denisovans were human variants and most living humans carry some "Neanderthal genes". However, while several human subspecies like the Neanderthals once simultaneously inhabited Earth, they all died out except for us: what we think of as "anatomically modern humans", jargon arising from the paleological study of the skeletal remains of long-dead apes.

cover art by Gino D'Achille

Vance suggested that anatomically modern humans did NOT evolve on Earth. Vance imagined that technologically-advanced space aliens came to Earth about 100,000 years ago, took some Neanderthals to a distant exoplanet (Lambda Grus III) where anatomically modern humans evolved. Then, 50,000 years ago, the space aliens brought some of the newly-evolved anatomically modern humans back to Earth. Soon after that, the other human variants of Earth such as the Neanderthals went extinct.

In Star King, Vance provided this backstory for the human species in order to introduce an alien species that could live among humans and not be detected as being an alien creature. That alien species, referred to a the "Star Kings", evolved on Lambda Grus III. The proto-Star Kings had the ability to evolve rapidly by "transmission of acquired characteristics". While living on Lambda Grus III with humans for about 75,000 years, the proto-Star Kings came to closely resemble humans.

the tryp'At

I love the idea of the alien Star Kings living (often undetected) among humans. In the Exode Saga, there are several human variants (the Kac'hin, Prelands, the Buld, the Ek'col, the tryp'At, etc) that have unique anatomical features that distinguish them from anatomically modern humans. In Vance's story, a Star King can be surgically altered and disguised so as to make it difficult to tell a Star King from a human. In the Exode Saga, human variants such as the Kac'hin sometimes use nanotechnology to alter their morphological features, thus making it possible for them to live among anatomically modern humans undetected.

Kirth Gersen, the protagonist in Vance's Demon Princes saga, sees a Star King named Malagate at Smade's Tavern in the year 1524. By the end of Star King, Malagate is dead. Sadly, even though Vance wrote four more novels in the Demon Princes saga, there was no further mention of Star Kings and aliens. 😕

Cosmopolis, October 1923

Last year, I wrote out a timeline of events in the Demon Princes saga. In constructing that timeline, the largest mystery was created by a date that comes on page 1 of Star King. Most of the dates provided by Vance are between the year 1479 and 1526. However, on the first page of Star King, Vance gives the year 1923 for an issue of Comopolis magazine with its featured article being "Smade of Smade's Planet". Vance used quoted text from an interview with Smade in that magazine article to establish some background for the Star King story.

According to Vance, there is a new calendar for the space age. The old Earth method for counting years was taken as a starting point, but the year 2000 of the old calendar became year zero for the new Space Age calendar. Thus, '1932' would actually be the year 3932 as we count the years. However, according to other dates provided by Vance, that was about 400 years after Smade lived on Smade's Planet. Odd.

A Feek, a newly evolved
human variant from the
world New Concept

While Vance was not afraid to include mention of space aliens in his Demon Princes saga, he also developed the idea that human populations on distant exoplanets could diverge from human norms. A dramatic example was provided by Vance in The Book of Dreams where he described a human sub-population that preferred to walk on its "four legs" and graze: the Feeks. Apparently the Feek had lost the ability to speak. I've previously explored the idea that by preventing human children from speaking, they might better utilize their capacity for telepathic communication. Vance made that idea explicit in his novels Wyst (the Weirdlands Witches) and Ecce and Old Earth (Myron and Lydia).

In Star King, Vance mentions an isolated religious group, the Tunkers of Mizar Six. The Tunkers use only a carefully defined set of 812 words. This religious sect was studied by Lugo Teehalt, an advanced student at Sea Province University from 1485 to 1489. Teehalt wrote a thesis titled "The Meaningful Elements in the Eye Movements of the Tunkers of Mizar Six". Was Teehalt interested in telepathy, possibly because of his own limited telepathic powers?

image source

Kirth Gersen meets Teehalt at Smade's Tavern in the year 1524. Teehalt is a locater, a hired explorer of the galaxy, who has recently discovered a valuable Earth-like planet. Teehalt is murdered by Malagate, but Gersen manages to come into possession of the navigational records that will lead him to "Teehalt's Planet", a world with natives called 'Dryads'.

New Data from Yōd
 Teehalt is a hard luck case. Here is what he tells Gersen about luck: "Where the luck lies, that I don't know. Good luck looks to be bad luck, disappointment seems happier than success... But then, bad luck I would never have recognized as good luck, and called it bad luck still..." Teehalt is speaking (rather incoherently) about his luck in having found a valuable Earth-like planet. Normally, such a discovery would be good luck and would lead to a high-paying bonus for a locater. However, Teehalt's sponsor is Malagate, the Demon Prince. Teehalt does not want to simply give the new planet to Malagate.

Research in the Department of Galactic Morphology.

Perhaps Teehalt's "bad luck" can be traced back to the year 1492, when he was working as an instructor at Sea Province University, an institution on the planet Alphanor where the School of Juridical Studies had for centuries turned out graduates who rose to the upper ranks of the IPCC. During Gersen's lifetime, the secret headquarters of the IPCC was located on Alphanor.

Yōd

According to information recently obtained from Yōd, Lugo Teehalt was recruited as an undercover IPCC operative and sent to the Beyond; his mission to infiltrate the headquarters of the radical Syntocinate sect on the planet Syntoraxis IV. The Syntocinates believed that by infusing their children with the necessary chemicals it was possible to merge their consciousnesses with the patron god of the sect: Elysia.

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Before going Beyond, Teehalt made the news on Alphanor when he was convicted of selling the illegal hallucinogen psiloconocybis on the Sea Province University campus. Teehalt discovered that the Syntocinate sect was funded by the Dexad. The Overcentenial fellows of the Institute were funding several research efforts aimed at allowing the leadership of the Institute to attain immortality.

Chemical substances such as psiloconocybis facilitated disruption of the normal linkages between a person's femtobot endosymbiont and their cortical neurons. It then became theoretically possible to transplant such a disconnected endosymbiont into a new brain, preferably that of a healthy young individual.

Teehalt woke up one morning in a back alley of Sailmaker Beach, most of his remaining memories from the past 25 years little more than a tangled heap of disorganized fragments.

Robin decides to stay on Teehalt's planet

Over the next few years, he was able to re-assemble a nearly normal conscious mind although he remained haunted by strange dreams, visions of a beautiful planet in the far Beyond that was home to a telepathic type of 'plant people' and the belief that he had acquired paranormal telepathic powers while living on Syntoraxis IV. This is when Malagate, under his identity as Gyle Warweave, hired Teehalt as a locater.

Teehalt's visions led him to the planet of the Dryads, a world that had long ago been home to a space-faring species. The Phari routinely assisted such technologically advanced species towards a type of physical transcendence that allowed them to end their existence as biological creatures and take up residence in the Hierion Domain as an artificial life form. With help from the Dryads, Teehalt realized that, were he to return to Alphanor, Malagate the Woe would gain possession of the planet of the Dryads.

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I've previously suggested that it was the alien Dryads who made use of Teehalt and Gersen to defend themselves against Malagate.

I've also previously suggested that the replicoid of Vance was given access to information from within the AR Simulator while in residence at the Writers Block. Vance's replicoid was able to pass information about the future of the Asimov Reality to Earth, leading to the creation of Jack Vance's stories such as Star King. Writing and publishing stories in the Ekcolir Reality, the two Vance analogues on Earth were able to provide very detailed accounts of how aliens guided human cultural development within the Asimov Reality.

However, it is easy for me to imagine that there were imperfections in the original data that were extracted from the AR Simulator by the replicoids of Asimov and Vance. I recently suggested that even Grean might become involved in trying to optimize the process of extracting more information from the AR Simulator.

the mind clones at work

However, my current concerns surround Rylla and the mind clone network. Above, I've described new information received from Yōd that hints at early work, during Gersen's lifetime, aimed at developing human telepathy. What additional details about the Asimov Reality can be transmitted by Yōd to the Editor?

What mysteries remain? Yōd has hinted to me that her search for relevant information inside the AR Simulator has broadened. An important potential source of information about human telepathy are the positronic robots of Earth.

Several of Isaac Asimov's science fiction stories included as a character one of Asimov's most famous literary creations, the "humaniform" robot Daneel. The story of how Daneel was crafted by Dr. Han Fastolfe has never seemed credible. I've long suspected that Fastolfe received help from Interventionist agents.

cave robot

Complaint
I'm frustrated by
1) the fact that Vance introduced readers to the alien Star Kings, then never mentioned them again after the end of Star King.
and also
2) Asimov's account of Daneel's origins, which is essentially in the pattern of other Sci Fi stories where a Mad Scientist invents something fantastic and then that invention can never be duplicated.
3) Gersen tells Pallis Atwrode that they will some day be able to return to the Planet of the Dryads, but Vance never managed to take readers back to that world. 😞

Asimov's account of how Dr. Han Fastolfe and his daughter created a telepathic robot seems like a teaser, a story fragment that leaves much of the truth untold. Once created, robots like Daneel used telepathy to make sure that nobody else would ever make additional humaniform or telepathic robots. However, Daneel did craft Galaxia and he found a way to confer some level of telepathic ability on humans. Yōd is now at work in the AR Simulator trying to reveal how information from the Foundation Reality about human telepathy may have been used during the development of human variants (such as the Ek'col and the tryp'At) with telepathic powers within the Asimov Reality.

In the Ekcolir Reality (source)

Writing in his Demon Princes saga, Jack Vance casually mentioned the existence of robots within the Asimov Reality, but provided no details. Yōd's latest message from inside the AR Simulator suggests that she has met a positronic robot who "lived" in the far future of the Asimov Reality. It should be interesting to see if Yōd is able to learn anything useful from that robot. The frightening alternate possibility is that positronic robots in the Asimov Reality may have worked hard to conceal themselves and they may not approve of Yōd's effort to reveal the secrets of their activities in that Reality.

Wendy's Avente Adventure

What if the year "1923" (on page 1 of Star King) is a remnant of when Vance first wrote about Star Kings back in the Ekcolir Reality? There was a different (Etruscan) calendar in use in that reality. Could Jack Vance, writing in the Buld Reality, have purposefully included that discordant date there on page 1 as a clue, a hint concerning the origins of his story in another Reality?

Related Reading: The line of thought discussed above is continued at these blog posts... 1) "Star Queen" and 2)  "Wendy's Avente Adventure". Grean the Kac'hin spearheads an investigation of Vancian mysteries in the Asimov Reality.

Next: a positronic robot in the AR Simulator

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