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

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