Portee Old Town

The Book of Dreams

Jack Vance published Star King in 1963. The last of the five novels in the Demon Princes series was finally published in 1981. In The Book of Dreams, Vance depicts a matured and mellowed Kirth Gersen. Some 40 years after Vance was done with Gersen's saga, I recently wrote a fan fiction story about Kirth Gersen, but my story depicted Gersen in his prime, while he was still engaged in his heroic effort to destroy the five Demon Princes. I can't really picture Gersen as an old man. Can a fictional character be frozen in time and never age?

Mary Godwin as a Fictional Character

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Three years ago, I wrote a 6,000 word story which was my attempt to imagine a science fiction story that Mary Godwin might have written in an alternate universe where it might be possible for a woman born in 1797 to actually write science fiction.

At that time (July 2016), I completed Part 1 of Fru'wu: Our Alien Prometheus and optimistically expected to quickly write Part 2. However, I got distracted and never wrote Part 2 (8,000 words) until this month, November 2019.

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Vance paused 12 years between publishing The Palace of Love and The Face, so my 3 year break between Part 1 and Part 2 of Fru'wu: Our Alien Prometheus can't hold a candle to Vance.

The Mary Godwin character who appeared in Part 1 of Fru'wu: Our Alien Prometheus is very young, still a teenager. The Mary who appears in Part 2 is at least 140 years older. Living such a long life is not explained by good genes and clean living. The original Mary in 1816 is intrigued by the idea that alien agents are at work on Earth, shaping the course of human history. When she displays a burning desire to learn more about the aliens, a copy of Mary is made.

Betty

Mary2 is an artificial life form, composed of nanoscopic components. The Exode Saga features several such artificial life forms, including Betty.

Mary2 can assemble her nanite components into any desired physical form. During part of her artificial life she uses the bodily form of a Nereid and lives in the ocean of Ver'la. Eventually, Mary2 returns from the Galactic Core to Observer Base and lives again among the humans of the Writers Block. I'm not sure what age a woman would select as her desired age if she could control her physical appearance. For Part 2 of Fru'wu: Our Alien Prometheus I provide no description of Mary2. I don't really care how old Mary appears to be, so I leave her appearance up to the imagination of readers.

Super Powers

Investigating artificial life forms.
Getting a head in the Ekcolir Reality.
Original cover art by
Walter Popp, Earle Bergey and this.

If Mary2 can alter her physical form then what are the limits to her abilities? I imagine that Mary2 was equipped with a "nanite control program" that allows her to shape her own physical form, but I do not imagine that she has other "super powers". In particular, in the course of the story it becomes apparent that Grean can take control of Mary2's behavior. In some sense, Grean has access to even more sophisticated nanite control technology than does Mary2.

1 more Twist
Not only is Mary2 an artificial life form; when she is interviewed by Colleen Liscan, they are inside the Ekcolir Reality Simulator. Thus, the Mary who is depicted in Part 2 of Fru'wu: Our Alien Prometheus is a simulation of an artificial life form. Grean is aware that they are inside a simulator, so she may have means besides infites that make it possible to control the behavior of Mary and John Vance. Maybe Grean can control some features of the ER Simulator.

Extant

The End?
In The Book of Dreams, Kirth Gersen is fabulously wealthy. He has arranged to live in the city Pontefract on the planet Aloysius. It is here that he meets Alice Wroke and takes her to dinner at Murdock's Bay View Grill in Partee Old Town. Poor Alice is on edge; she is being used by master criminal Howard Treesong to infiltrate Gersen's magazine, Extant, which Gersen created and published as a means of trapping Treesong. Alice has been ordered to seduce Gersen and learn his secrets. Having tapped into her communications with Treesong, Gersen knows the pickle that Alice is in when she invites him up to her room for a drink.

Alice Wroke

Gersen is smitten by the miraculous Alice, so he can't even begin to think about taking advantage of her difficult situation. He tells her everything she wants to know and bids her good night.

"animated by an almost supernatural enthusiasm"

Grean

At the end of Part 2 of Fru'wu: Our Alien Prometheus, Colleen knows that Grean the Kac'hin used her advanced nanite technology to make Colleen fall in love with Georgy White. Colleen talks Grean into reversing that "magic spell", and she no longer has her erotic infatuation with Georgy. However, as the story ends, Colleen still does not know if Georgy remains under Grean's "magic love spell".

How did the alien Fru'wu
help create the human species?

Jack Vance usually arranged for his novels to end rather abruptly, with readers wondering what will happen next to the protagonist. Maybe in 12 years I will write Part 3 of Fru'wu: Our Alien Prometheus, and reveal what happens to the steamy relationship between Colleen and Georgy.

Fru'wu: Our Alien Prometheus

Also, after three years, I don't really remember why I originally called the story Fru'wu: Our Alien Prometheus and not Nereid: Our Alien Prometheus. I suspect it was only because "Frankenstein" and "Fru'wu" both start with the letter 'F', but maybe Part 3 will have a larger role for the alien Fru'wu and advanced technologies that they have tried to share with Earthlings such as the teree.

Related Reading: 200 Years of Frankenstein
   and: the Fru'wu in 2024
also: Mary in the Foundation Reality
Next: A holiday memory from the future

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