Moritaba

Interior art by Virgil Finlay

First published in Startling Stories, November 1949, "The King of Thieves" is another Magnus Ridolph story by Jack Vance. In The Book of Deams (1981), crime-lord Alan Treesong is referred to as the king of thieves and he almost becomes the first Emperor of the Galaxy.

In order for Magnus Ridolph to become the king of thieves he must steal the crown of the current king of Moritaba. Here is how Vance describes the planet Moritaba: "The climate is damp and unhealthy, the terrain is best describes as the Amazon Basin superimposed on the Lunar Alps ... under the hot yellow light of the star Pi Aquarii."

introductory blurb for "The King of Thieves"

image source

The king of Moritaba lives at his palace in the jungle town of Challa, which is "reminiscent of ancient Polynesia". Challa is inhabited by a human-alien hybrid species called the Men-men. The "culture" of the Men-men is built around theft. The most accomplished thief becomes king.

In the Ekcolir Reality.
Original cover art by Robert Jones.

Why does Magnus Ridolph travel to Challa? On the crown of the king are decorative telex crystals. Telex crystals are in demand across the galaxy because they are the basis of interstellar communications. The special high-frequency vibrations of telex crystals make it possible to communicate through space over the vast distances between worlds. Somewhere near Challa is a rich source of telex crystals.

In the Ekcolir Reality.
Original cover art by Arnold Kohn

Uranium
In the late 40s, uranium was on Vance's mind. While staying in the king's palace at Challa, Ridolph looses all of his belongings to thieves and he is about to loose his chance to gain access to the telex crystals of Moritaba. At the last minute, he makes use of uranium to solve all of his problems.

You'll have to read "The King of Thieves" to find out the details. It involves the ghostly creatures that are shown on the top image of this blog post. They are "near-gaseous creatures" from the planet Archaemandryx. Ridolph has a gang of them imported to Moritaba and over-night they steal the king's crown and several other valuable items in Challa, making Ridolph the new ruler of Moritaba.

Origins of the Men-men.

Vance's Magnus Ridolph stories are mostly devoid of female characters. I like to imagine that in the Ekcolir Reality, women dominated the golden age of science fiction and the analogues of Jack Vance (twins John and Joan) wrote somewhat different Magnus Ridolph stories than the ones we have here in our world.

Roguskhoi. Cover art
by Edward Palfrey

Vance makes a distinction between "orthodox biologists" and those in the future who accept the fact that humans were able to breed with he natives of Moritaba. Similarly, in some of his earliest stories, Isaac Asimov imagined that humans could successfully breed with Martians.

Eventually, writing in Star King,  Vance suggested that there had been "ancient astronauts" who traveled among the stars of the galaxy long before modern humans first evolved. Further, those alien star travelers were responsible for shaping human evolution and the evolution of other alien species, particularly the residents of Lambda Grus III, the so-called "Star Kings".

Genetic Engineering

Shanne, an artificially crafted humanoid.

So what might Vance have imagined as the unorthodox biology that would have allowed the Men-men to come into existence? Writing in 1949, I wonder if Vance could have imagined some kind of genetic engineering that would successfully mix human and alien genes. For later stories such as his Durdane Trilogy, Vance imagined artificially engineered human variants such as the Roguskhoi. In Emphyrio, Gyle discovers that his beloved Shanne is an artificial lifeform that was crafted by the alien Damarans.

Related Reading: more celebration of Vance's fiction in 2020

Next: Jack Vance's "The Spa of the Stars"

visit the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers