Murders at Dig B

Interior art for "Hard Luck Diggings"
Click image to enlarge.

The first Magnus Ridolph story, "Hard Luck Diggings", was published in the July 1948 issue of Startling Stories. To celebrate the fiction of Jack Vance here in May 2020, I've been reading all of the Magnus Ridolph stories. I saved Vance's first Ridolph tale for last because I wanted to compare and contrast it to "Worlds of Origin" which was written ten years after "Hard Luck Diggings".

image source

Vance claimed to have written "Hard Luck Diggings" in a single draft as part of an attempt to write more quickly, get more stories published and make more money. 💰

Vance became well-known for placing interesting background information at the start of his stories. For example, he once imagined a writer of the far future named Jan Holberk Vaenz LXII who was allowed to provide a few words of wisdom at the start of Chapter 6 in Star King. Vance began "Hard Luck Diggings" with the first of a series of quotes from Magnus Ridolph:

a quick course in Ridolph Logic

Dig it
Vance had an uncle who was involved in "mining deals" and while growing up Vance was willing to engage in all kinds of experiences, including work at a mine. In school, he was tempted to study mine engineering, but in the end he was able to build a career around writing and story telling.

Mail-ship from Starport on the beach near Diggings A.

For "Hard Luck Diggings", Vance imagined that "space-sickness" would be as common as sea-sickness. In Vance's Magnus Ridolph stories, travel between planets through outer-space is very similar to 20th century travel over the seas by ocean-liner. Vance would later discover telex crystals and how to use them to rapidly send messages through interstellar space, but here, mining Superintendent Rogge must wait for the arrival of the mail-ship from Starport in order to learn if help for his problem is onboard.

Death in Diggings B!
Re-imagined for the Ekcolir Reality
with a role for women at the mine.

Radio Days and the danger of first drafts
Rogge "radioed" T.C.I. two weeks previously, asking for help, so he is expecting a man from the Terrestrial Corps of Intelligence who can help deal with the unexplained deaths that have been killing off his miners. Eventually, Vance learned to stop saying that interstellar calls were sent at faster-than-light speeds with radio waves.

Rogge is not pleased when he learns that the gray-haired Magnus Ridolph (not a member of T.C.I.) was sent out by the Commander at Starport. Ridolph's first question is to ask Rogge if there are any intelligent natives on the planet. Rogge mentions the gray-colored plant life and the native rodents, but he reports no highly intelligent lifeforms on the planet other than the miners (actually, he devotes significant amount of breath to complaining about the stupidity of his workers 🙁).

In the Ekcolir Reality.
Mew Rudolph is a western harikap from
 the planet Sarkovy who has several
adventures with Magnus Ridolph Jr.
Image credits: "Rudolph" by Oliver Green
and see the cover art here.

Ridolph and Rudolph
In the Ekcolir Reality, the analogue of Jack Vance was born as twins. I like to imagine that in that alternative Reality, Joan Vance would have written some Magnus Ridolph stories featuring women in prominent roles.

I wonder why Jack Vance never wrote any more Magnus Ridolph stories after 1958. I can pretend that in the Ekcolir Reality, John and Joan Vance lived well into the 21st century and continued creating more stories, possibly featuring a Magnus Jr. and his partners in galactic sleuthing, such as the fast-shooting Mew Rudolph from Sarkovy.

In the Ekcolir Reality, Joan Vance also wrote an account of Magnus Ridolph Junior's mother, the circumstances of his birth and childhood, and how Magnus Ridolph Senior became aware of the existence of his son.

image source

Killer Ghost
As a long-time Star Trek fan, I could not stop myself from imagining that there might be some sort of as-yet-unseen native creature that was killing Rogge's miners. Ridolph suggests that the mining operation may have disturbed a protective spirit of the planet. With two more deaths on the day that the mail-ship arrives, Rogge is becoming desperate for a solution to the mystery of the endless killings. Some of the miners try to quit their jobs and return to Starport onboard the mail-ship.

With no confidence in Ridolph, Rogge makes an interplanetary call to the T.C.I. commander at Starport. The Commander listens to Rogge's complaints about Ridolph's investigative methods then advises Rogge to follow Ridolph's advice.

Alternate version in the Ekcolir Reality. Left;
Captain Julica from the mail-ship joins Ridolph
for the jeep ride over to Diggings B.

You'll have to read "Hard Luck Diggings" to learn why the deaths are occurring only at Diggings B and not the nearby Diggings A. Ridolph quickly solves the mystery by making use of his keen eye to spot the key difference between the two mines.

Ridolph also survives the vicious attack on his life that was illustrated in the black-and-white illustration shown at the top of this blog post.

Based on his observations of the diggings, Ridolph quickly decides that the murderer is not human, but Rogge can't help himself from imagining that the perp is a human: a homicidal maniac. Ridolph is not buying that theory because Rogge has shifted all the personnel between Diggings B and Diggings A and the deaths all continue only at Diggings B. Then, his first night on the planet, Ridolph becomes the first person to be attacked at Diggings A.

Language Barrier

In the Ekcolir Reality. Original
cover art by Milton Rosenblatt.

One of the major problems facing science fiction story tellers is the language problem. When your characters are meeting new creatures on distant planets, how do you avoid the story bogging down while everyone learns a new language? For "Hard Luck Diggings", Ridolph calculates that since humans have been on this mining planet for seven months, the natives have had more than enough time to learn English.

Further, Ridolph deduces that the natives are capable of hearing him and instantly understanding every word he says, both while out in the jungle and while he is inside the Diggings A buildings. And, dear reader, Magnus Ridolph is seldom wrong about mysterious aliens. Well, in any case, these assumptions speed the progression of the plot, even if they strain credulity. Vance never let technical details or scientific implausibility get in the way of a story.

In the Ekcolir Reality.
The Ruby Tree by Joan Vance.

Future Technology. An interesting bit of information is provided by Ridolph: it has been thirty years since a law went into effect protecting the lives of native creatures on planets that are visited by humans. When Vance wrote the story, it was also just a few years after atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. When Rogge gives Ridolph a tour of the mines, they jump into a jeep and in the course of the story, mention is made of Ridolph's Hi-Tek™ slide-rule.

In later Magus Ridolph stories, Vance introduced computer terminals and their use to search for information. Vance was accommodating himself to the technology of his age but more importantly he was having fun with his love of trees and minerals. Writing these Ridolph adventures in the late 1940s, Vance was laying a foundation for his later novels. As training exercises for Vance, these little mystery stories worked well, allowing him to develop the germs of fun ideas that he would later explore in more detail in longer works of fiction.

Re-imagined in the Ekcolir Reality. The
 Superintendent Rogha's adventures. She
helps Ridolph learn about the native trees.

Arguably the finest of the Magnus Ridolph stories
I'm glad I read all ten of the Magus Ridolph stories; do I have a favorite?

"The Kokod Warriors" is my favorite among the 10 Magnus Ridolph adventures. With a cast of thousands (mostly alien warriors, but also including 5 women), I like to imagine Vance sitting by the pool, writing "The Kokod Warriors" and picturing in his mind how the events of this story might appear on the big screen in theaters.

Maybe here in 2020 the state of the art in computer animation has reached the point where Vance's swarming armies of 2-foot-tall alien warriors could be done well enough to turn this old Sci Fi story into a movie and likely SIHA winner, by Deneb.

Related Reading: the 2020 celebration of Jack Vance:

This looks like a futuristic Vancian tree house.
"Stardust" by George Korf       CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

         1950 "The Potters of Firsk"
          1951 "Son of the Tree"
           1948 "Sanatoris Short-Cut"
            1948 "The Unspeakable McInch"
             1949 "The Howling Bounders"
              1949 "The King of Thieves"
               1950 "The Spa of the Stars"
                1950 "Cosmic Hotfoot"
                 1952 "The Kokod Warriors"
                  1958 "Worlds of Origin"
Related Reading: August 2020 celebration of Vance
Next: the robots of Triskelion

visit the Gallery of Science Fiction Posters and the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers

Meth of Maetho

Magnus (left) and Fiamella (right)

The final Magnus Ridolph story, "Worlds of Origin", was first published in the February 1958 issue of Super-Science Fiction. Ridolph was a fan of mathematics and he could have quickly calculated that 10 years passed between publication of the first story in the series and publication of "Worlds of Origin".

In this blog post, I want to explore the roles that women had in Jack Vance's Magnus Ridolph stories. I want to pay full respect the realities of the culture that Vance existed in. He lived in a time that was not quite ready for stories about women having adventures in space as equal partners with the male story characters. However, it is worth asking: to what extent was Vance pushing for change and seeking opportunities to give females more interesting roles in his stories?

cover by Gene Szafran

I got hooked on Jack Vance's writing when I read Trullion, which was published in 1973. Before I began reading Vance's short stories, the oldest works of his that I had read were his 1958 The Languages of Pao and the 1964 Star King. There were huge changes in the nature of Sci Fi story telling between the 1950s and the 1970s.

Isaac Asimov, writing in 1983 about "women and science fiction" (in the January issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine) said, "Prior to public recognition in the United States that babies are not brought by the stork, there was simply no sex in the  science fiction magazines."

Trullion, first printing

I'm not sure when the stork went out of style, but I still have my faded yellow copy of Trullion that was published in 1973, and we can take it to be a data point midway along the continuum from the "no sex" era of science fiction to the later works of Vance, particularly Ecce and Old Earth which stars Wayness Tamm. Jack Vance lived through the entire transformation of the science fiction genre from its "no sex" origins to the current age when women can now routinely play important roles in Sci Fi stories (even in Hollywood).

Traditional roles in science fiction. You
always needed a few women around to wash
 dishes or be the daughter of the mad scientist.

Vance depicted Magnus Ridolph as being very interested in applied mathematics. Ridolph could have put together a statistical analysis of how women were written into both
1) the stories of the Bible
   and
2) golden age science fiction tales. My guess is that such a statistical analysis would reveal a close match between how women were portrayed in the Bible and the roles that they played in early science fiction stories.

Cultural momentum is a powerful force. Vance's Magnus Ridolph stories such as "Worlds of Origin" depict humans from various planets as having their behavior determined by the customs of their world of origin. Science fiction story tellers were no different: they also struggled to break away from traditional depictions of murderous robots, evil aliens and domestic women always one step behind the male hero or maybe fluffing his pillow.

In the Ekcolir Reality.

In our Reality, "Worlds of Origin" was written right at an inflection point, a time when some writers were finding inventive ways to provide larger and more interesting roles for women in science fiction stories. "Worlds of Origin" features the anthropologist Lester Bonfils and his miserable destiny of failure and defeat... and, yes, there is a woman lurking behind the sagging and nervous figure of Mr. Bonfils.

Poor Bonfils tells Magnus Ridolph, "I am harassed by a woman. She is busily engaged in killing me." Then, after provoking some sad compassion from Magnus, Bonfils rushes off, busy with his anthropological endevors.

In the Ekcolir Reality.

I like to imagine that in an alternate Reality, women had a more active role in the development of science fiction as a literary genre. In such an alternate timeline, there could have been a female analogue of Jack Vance, and some of the Magnus Ridolph stories might have been written somewhat differently, possibly with larger roles for women.

And why should the anthropologist in a story be a man? Yes, in the 1950s, women were very under-represented in scientific professions, but I like to think of science fiction story tellers as being among the first to shift away from traditions and stereotypes. For example, in the 1970s we could finally get a science fiction story like Assignment: Nor'Dyren by Sydney Van Scyoc which has a female anthropologist.

In the Ekcolir Reality. Vance depicted
the Hub as being a space station
composed of many modular bubbles.

An idea that Vance incorporated into several of his stories is that for some cultures it is normal for women select the man of her choice and ask him to marry. This is the type of situation that Lester Bonfils ran into while he was on the planet Journey's End. A common feature of Magnus Ridolph stories is that some of the most interesting action takes place off stage, before the events of the story begin. Sadly, we never learn any details about Bonfil's nontraditional courtship at south Kharesmon on Journey's End.

Ridolph and Bonfils meet at a space station called the Hub, a place where folks (including aliens) from both near and far worlds of the galaxy come and go, arriving aboard passing spaceships. In particular, while relaxing in the lobby of the Hub, Ridolph takes note of a woman who Vance describes as having "miraculous beauty". The description continues: "She was dark and slight, with a complexion the color of clean desert sand; she carried herself with a self-awareness that was immensely provoking."

In the Ekcolir Reality.

The proprietor of the Hub, Pan Pascoglu, informs Ridolph that this dazzling woman claims to be the wife of Bonfils, but strangely, Bonfils and the woman are never seen together. That night, Bonfils dies and in the morning, Pascoglu admits that there is no security force at the Hub and he asks Ridolph to help figure out who killed Bonfils. How can Ridolph refuse?

Pascoglu provides Ridolph with a list of everyone at the Hub who arrived on the same spaceship with Bonfils. On that list is "Fiamella of Thousand Candles", the immediately obvious suspect. Ridolph is not satisfied with the list of suspects; he demands that Pascoglu provide information about their worlds of origin. Pascoglu is useless, so Ridolph spends a few hours doing research in the Hub's library, investigating the diverse cultures of the suspects.

Ridolph interviews suspects in the library.

When interviewed by Ridolph, Fiamella is pleased that Bonfils is dead, but she denies having blasted a hole in his head. Ridolph soon learns that Fiamella selected Bonfils as her husband and then threatened to kill him when he tried to leave her behind on her home world, Journey's End. When Fiamella explains that her preferred method of killing is to "kill by love", Ridolph is intrigued. He and Fiamella flirt for a bit, but they both agree that the gray-haired Magnus is too old for the spunky Fiamella.

In the Ekcolir Reality

Sadly, Vance could go no further in his exploration of Fiamella's special talents (what Vance calls her ability to inflict "death by means of amorous attrition"); it was 1958 and the science fiction genre was still emerging from its era of self-censorship. I suspect that Vance was trying to imply that in order to regain her honor, Fiamella was prepared to stalk and harass Bonfils across the vast expanses of interstellar space until either he relented and accepted her as wife and companion or until he died. Fiamella seems pleased that Bonfils died so quickly: now she can return home, her honor regained.

Solving crimes by telepathy

In the Ekcolir Reality.

You'll have to read the story to discover who killed Bonfils and why at the end of the story Pascoglu fears that he will be the next victim. The alien who appears on the list of suspects as (no name) is a Meth of Maetho, who has a somewhat human appearance but a totally different internal biology. Vance hints that this creature from the planet Hecate has telepathic powers and seems to know who killed Bonfils. However, the alien says, "... the person involved wishes his deed to pass unnoticed, and why should I disoblige him?" This attitude infuriates Pascoglu. Pascoglu and the alien trade threats. The alien claims to be able to unleash a plague of alien spores upon the Hub and Pascoglu can do nothing but insist the alien depart on the next spaceship and never return to the Hub.

Related Reading: celebrating Jack Vance in 2020

Next: I read my 10th Magnus Ridolph story

visit the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers

Martha Chickering

In the Ekcolir Reality.
Original cover art by Earle Bergey

"The Kokod Warriors" by Jack Vance was first published in the October 1952 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories. In need of ca$h, Magnus Ridolph cannot ignore a plea from Martha Chickering (secretary of the Women's League Committee for the Preservation of Moral Values) that he help clean up the disgraceful conditions on planet Kokod. Tourists travel to Kokod from distant worlds intent on the opportunity to bet on outcomes of bloody battles between warring tribes of native creatures.

Sadly, having set Ridolph in motion, Martha is absent during most of the action in "The Kokod Warriors". Two other members of the Women's League are present at the luxurious Shadow Valley Inn on Kokod during Ridolph's visit; Mrs. Chaim and Mrs. Borgas, the president and treasure, respectively of the League. These two ladies get caught up in the Kokod warfare.

Mrs. Chaim and Mrs. Borgas returning to Shadow Valley Inn after an altercation with Kokod warriors.

interior art for "The Kokod Warriors" by Paul Orban

As a reader of Jack Vance's Cadwal Chronicles, many aspects of "The Kokod Warriors" struck me as familiar. Ridolph is depicted as drinking Blue Ruin 🍸, just as Chilke and Glawen do in Throy. In Throy, Chilke and Glawen visit Stronsi Ranch on the planet Rosalia where Chilke falls in love with Felitzia Stronsi (commonly known as "Flitz"), the owner of the Ranch.

Related: Vance writes for television.

After visiting Rosalia, Chilke, Glawen and Flitz return to Glawan's home planet, Cadwal, a world that is similar to Kokod, where warfare between native tribes on a remote planet provokes both opposition (from the Life, Peace and Freedom movement) and also a steady stream of tourists who enjoy the spectacle of the endless battles.

On Page 63 of the October 1952 issue of Thrilling is the notice shown to the right on this page. When he was hired by Fox, Vance moved to Los Angeles and began working on $alary, a big $tep up from selling short stories to Sci Fi magazines.

One of the printing errors in "The Kokod Warriors".

However, that Hollywood cash cow died before much progress was made towards getting a Magnus Ridolph adventure onto the screen. 🙁

"... two personable young women were issuing betting vouchers..."

Samuel Mines, the editor of Thrilling expressed doubt that the folks in Hollywood would successfully capture the quirks of Ridolph as expressed in Vance's written stories. Mines says nothing of the many typographical errors that exist in the text of "The Kokod Warriors" as printed by Thrilling.

In "The Kokod Warriors", Magnus Ridolph makes a quick study of the Kokod warriors and discovers that only one human speaks their language, the local representative of the Commonwealth's agency that is tasked with protecting native life on planets of the galaxy, a man named Everley Clark.

Martha and Altamira
Click image to enlarge.

Making use of Clark's linguistic skill and his knowledge of the warriors, Ridolph arranges for several nearby tribes to all attack Shadow Valley Inn, quickly putting it out of business, as originally requested by Martha Chickering.

While at Shadow Valley Inn, Ridolph learned that Mrs. Altamira Borgas came to Kokod in order to place bets on the battles. Immediately after the attack on Shadow Valley Inn by native tribes, the next tourist space ship (the Archaeornyx) arrives, bringing Martha to Kokod. When Mrs. Olga Chaim sees Martha, she says, "Get us clothes. Those frightful savages tore us to shreds."

In the Ekcolir Reality.
Original cover by David Mattingly

Upon Marth'a arrival at the devastated ruins of Shadow Valley Inn, Vance describes her as "... a woman of notable bust, correctly tinted, massaged, coiffed, scented and decorated". Ridolph diplomatically says nothing to Martha about the fact that Altamira had been betting on some of the battles being fought by the Kokod warriors.

Stepping out of the Archaeornyx, Martha is dismayed to see her two friends from the Women's League running around in an agitated state, wearing shredded clothing. "The Kokod Warriors" ends with Altamira showing her battle bruises to Martha and Ridolph quietly booking passage off of Kokod aboard the waiting Archaeornyx.

By this time, the warriors of Kokod have returned to their Tumbles after the battle. Vance often imagined special roles for trees in his stories. At the center of each native village (Tumble) is a stele (which started as a single tree) where "each victory is celebrated by the addition of a shoot, which joins and augments the main body of the stele. The Rock River Stele is 17 feet in diameter, and is estimated to be 4,000 years old".

The rules of war on Kokod
re-imagined in the Ekcolir Reality.
Original cover by Henry Van Dongen

Don't worry too much... the Inn's guests, including the ladies of the League of Women survived; the warriors of Kokod are only two feet tall, but a swarm of them completely ransacked the Inn while trying to claim the battle flag that Ridolph planted on its roof. Also, don't worry about the owners of Shadow Valley Inn.

Ridolph's Revenge

Julius See and Bruce Holpers Realty™

Vance devotes considerable effort to creating a backstory in which Ridolph was previously cheated out of a large investment in real estate by the owners of the Inn, Julius See and Bruce Holpers. Before Ridolph puts See and Holpers out of business, he wagers on the outcome of a battle and takes most of their money. Since Ridolph never gambles, he plants land mines in the battle field as a way of making sure that he will win his wager.

in the Ekcolir Reality - original
cover art by Earle Bergey

To add injury to injury, Mrs. Chiam was also cheated in a real estate deal crafted by See and Holpers. At the end of "The Kokod Warriors" she is not only outraged that the staff of Shadow Valley Inn did not protect its guests from the rampaging natives, she is also ready to have See and Holpers arrested for their shady real estate dealings.

Near the end of the story, Vance includes a report from a Kokod warrior as trascribed by Clark. The natives refer to Shadow Valley Inn as "Big Square Tumble". The warrior described the behavior of Mrs. Chiam and Mrs. Borgas during the battle: "We encountered a first line of defense consisting of two rather ineffectual warriors... uttering terrible cries, the two warriors retreated, luring us towards prepared positions inside the tumble..."

Fiamella

Related Reading: the May 2020 celebration of Jack Vance's fiction
2019: "The Sub-Standard Sardines" a Magnus Ridolph tale by Jack Vance

Next: Magnus Ridolph meets the miraculous Fiamella

visit the Gallery of Science Fiction Posters and the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers

Star-Matter

Interior artwork for "Cosmic Hotfoot".
A Magnus Ridolph story by Jack Vance.

The short Magnus Ridolph story "Cosmic Hotfoot" was first published in the September 1950 issue of Startling Stories. Down on his luck and low on funds, Ridolph is off to the lifeless mining planet Jexjeka to solve the mystery of disappearing workers.

The entire planet of Jexjeka is owned by Howard Thifter, a man who Ridolph knows by reputation as an "unscrupulous blackguard". Mineral-rich Jexjeka is the sole planet in a strange trinary star system out past the border of the Commonwealth. The three suns are called Rouge, Blanche and Noir, the later being a "dark star". Thifter employs alien Thalurians who, as anaerobic lifeforms, can survive on Jexjeka, a world with no atmosphere.

Hot feet in the Ekcolir Reality.
Original cover by Earle Bergey

Mission of Gravity
The only attractive features of Jexjeka are the mineral deposits, including crystals of pure titanium the size of a house. There are also uranium deposits on Jexjeka and Thifter is ready to ship back to the Commonwealth worlds large amounts of centaurium and atomite.

The interior artwork for "Cosmic Hotfoot" is rather mysterious. Are there ghost-like residents of Jexjeka who spirit away the missing workers? You'll have to read the story and discover along with Ridolph the solution to the mystery of the disappearing workers.

A common theme in Magnus Ridolph adventures is blustering, short-sighted and impatient adversaries who Ridolph can out-smart with his calm, logical thought processes and vast knowledge of the galaxy. While busily working his mining operation, Thifter has never bothered to examine the orbital dynamics of Jexjeka's trinary star system. ∞

The mineral-rich planet Dar Sai.

At the end of the story, Ridolph has satisfied the terms of his agreement with Thifter, but the mean-spirited mining mogul refuses to provide interstellar transport and return Magnus to civilization. Thinking quickly, Ridolph maneuvers Thifter into creating the titular "cosmic hotfoot" and conditions that force Jexjeka to be quickly evacuated.

From the very beginning of the story, Ridolph and Thifter don't get along with each-other. However, in the end, Ridolph gets the last laugh; a cosmic joke similar in nature to the rather famous ending of Vance's 1979 novel The Face.

The typical ending of a Magnus Ridolph story features Ridolph's now humiliated adversary saying something like, "Just wait until the next time we meet... I'll get my revenge!"

in the Ekcolir Reality

At the beginning of "Cosmic Hotfoot", Ridolph is on the planet Azul, walking along Caffron Beach beside the Veridical Sea. Ridolph mentions the King of Maherleon's harem, but no details are forthcoming. 🙁

In an alternate Reality, Vance might have taken time to include a romantic entanglement for Ridolph in "Cosmic Hotfoot". We are told that Magnus once owned a zoo on Azul, but we learn nothing about his collaborators for that project. Was that zoo inspired by the King of Maherleon? Maybe the King buys rare metals such as atomite that are mined on the planet Jexjeka.

Related Reading: more Magnus Ridolph

Next: "The Kokod Warriors" by Jack Vance

visit the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers

Mephitoline

In the Ekcolir Reality.
Original cover art by Earle Bergey

To celebrate the stories of Jack Vance, I've been reading his Magnus Ridolph stories. In "The Spa of the Stars", Ridolph must find a way to protect guests at a resort from predatory dragons, jungle creatures and sea beetles. Along the way, he floats the idea of marketing malodorous Mephitoline as a cure-all. Ridolph is always on the lookout for a new get-rich-quick scheme.

All the events depicted in "The Spa of the Stars" take place on a far planet in the Eta Pisces star system. "The Spa of the Stars" was first published in the July 1950 issue of Startling Stories.

"The Spa of the Stars" is the sixth (of 10) Magnus Ridolph story that I read. I've been wondering when a female character would finally show up. Now, a pleasure resort has opened on the planet Kolama, so we should have some female guests, but sadly the customers of the Spa are being attacked by local wildlife and driven away.

Introductory blurb for "The Spa of the Stars" which features interior art by Virgil Finlay

In the Ekcolir Reality

When Ridolph arrives on Kolama, one of the three remaining guests at the Spa of the Stars is an elderly lady who was attacked by a flying dragon... now she's spitting mad and ready to sue the resort's owner, Joe Blain. Survivors such as the elderly lady are the lucky ones; there is mention of other less fortunate guests who were killed by native creatures. For example, nine guests were killed by sea-beetles on the opening day for the resort!

I like to imagine that in an alternate Reality, female writers such as Joan Vance (the analogue of Jack Vance in the Ekcolir Reality) dominated the golden age of science fiction. The Magnus Ridolph stories flowing from the pen of Joan Vance would have had a somewhat different emphasis.

Imagine the Spa's marketing brochure! Interior artwork for "The Spa of the Stars" by Virgil Finlay

from the Spa's brochure

In "The Spa of the Stars", there is even a female character who speaks a few words: Miss Mayla, the assistant of Mr. Blain. Here is Vance's description of Mayla: "She was slender, flexible, and her flesh had the compelling, clutchable look of a marshmallow". In the face of all the dead customers at the spa, the cheerful Mayla attempts to "make lemonade" and cleverly suggests turning the beach-side resort into a big-game hunting lodge.

Joe is not ready to give up his dream of running a luxury hotel and tourist-friendly resort with "the lobby full of stylish women". Joe crafted a brochure which boasts of the planet Kolama basking in the "tingling radiance" of the white star Eta Pisces. The brochure features the image of "a lovely nude woman with apple-green skin standing under a tree". Joe even has plans for attracting gamblers to Kolama by building a race track.

Sailfin Mollies

In the Ekcolir Reality.

During construction of his resort, Joe had the assistance of intelligent native creatures that he calls "Mollies". Here is how Vance described the Mollies: "... sort of a fat gray shrimp, 4 feet tall, walking on little stumpy legs... with big stary eyes".

The Mollies helped with tasks like digging a hole for the foundation of the hotel. The only problem with the Mollies was their offensive odor. However, during the time when the Mollies were working at the construction site, there were no attacks by the planet's predators such as the dragons.

Blain suspects that the Mollies can repel predators with their foul stench. He journeys into the jungle, finds a village of the Mollies and returns with a bottle of the stinky fluid that the Mollies first concoct and then contentedly wallow in.

Snakes and gorillas of Kolama
in the Ekcolir Reality.
Original cover art by Walter Parke

Music Soothes the Savage Beast
Magnus Ridolph finds a better solution to the problem of the wild animal attacks at the Spa. You will have to read the story yourself to learn his method for defeating dragons, flying snakes and even the sea-beetles.

Maybe in the Ekcolir Reality, Joan Vance could have expanded her role, depicting Mayla as Joe's partner in creating the Spa. I suggest that Mayla could have worked as the "house detective" for the grand hotel at the Spa of the Stars and collaborated closely with Magnus Ridolph, helping discover how to protect the guests from flying snakes and jungle gorillas.

Related Reading: more Vance for May 2020

Next: Jack Vance and the Dark Star

visit the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers