Number One

origins project

I previously listed Jack Vance and Isaac Asimov as my two favorite writers of science fiction stories. Yes, they are both dead, but there is good reason to suspect that their literary creations will continue to be read by future generations of Sci Fi fans. In my own case, I find it impossible to resist keeping Asimov and Vance alive in my own fan fiction stories.

Asimov's struggle

Asimov was a tireless promoter of both science fiction as a literary genre in general and his own writings. Since 1977 there has been Asimov's Science Fiction magazine keeping alive the Asimov name. There are many fan-created websites that provide guides to reading Asimov's science fiction (example). Much of Asimov's science fiction is readily available in ebook format.

The man who invented Eternity

Long, Medium, Short
In the case of Asimov, I have no difficulty suggesting paths by which new readers of his work can begin to explore his writing. His short story "Cal" is a fun introduction to his robot stories. Similarly, I recommend his time travel novel The End of Eternity as an entry point for a reader who wants to start sampling Asimov's longer works. At the very long end of the Sci Fi reading spectrum, I'm eternally impressed by how Asimov knit together his positronic robot stories with his famous Foundation saga. See this page for details.

Whimsical depiction of Asimov traveling through time to meet Jack Vance.

More Knitting

The League of Yrinna

What about the works of Vance...  where should a reader begin (ebooks available here)? Trullion was the first novel by Vance that I ever read and I suggest that it is a good first read for a Sci Fi fan who is beginning to explore Vance's fiction. Is it possible that Trullion was given an unfair advantage simply by being the first Vance novel that I read? I've been asking myself that question for years and exploring my personal reasons for obsessing over Vance's stories.

cover by Eric Ladd

4 years ago, I began thinking seriously about the difficult task of selecting among Vance's novels and deciding which is my favorite. Since that time, I've written a sequel to Trullion, so I suppose that has further biased me in the direction of selecting Trullion as the one Vance novel that I would recommend for someone who has never read any of Vance's stories.

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Three years ago I fantasized that Vance and Asimov had co-authored a story called Cryptesthesiology. It is fun to imagine that Vance and Asimov were part of a struggle to find a safe path to a future among the stars for Humanity in an age of rapid technological change.

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Finally, last year, I wrote a story about how Isaac Asimov traveled back through time in order to save the life of Jack Vance. I like to imagine that it was essential for Humanity's future that Jack Vance live long and share his science fiction stories with us.
 
One of Three

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Trullion is one of three novels written by Vance that are set in Alastor Cluster. Trullion was the first of these stories to be written, and with its setting in the Fens, it seems to have been the closest to Vance's heart. Marune and Wyst are also interesting novels, but Trullion is my favorite. I like to imagine that in earlier Realities, Vance was able to write 3 additional Alastor Cluster novels, for a total of six.

cover by Darrell Sweet

There is a good review of Trullion by Thomas M. Wagner. Wagner stressed the fact that Trullion is interesting. Part of what makes Trullion interesting is the setting: Originally published in 1973, Vance created an imaginary world dominated by a type of free-love philosophy similar to that explored by California "hippies". The plot revolves around a social revolutionary movement that arises in opposition to the dominant "free love" culture of Trullion. Adding to the interest generated by Vance's imaginative world building is the colorful array of characters that Vance throws together in the story.

Trevanyi camp (source)

Wagner mentions that Glinnes Hulden must deal with "his team's shierl". Glinnes meets and begins "dealing with" Duissane before she becomes a hussade shierl. When Glinnes arrives back on Trullion after serving in the military for ten years, he discovers that Duissane's family is literally living in his back yard. Duissane's family is Trevanyi, a minority group on Trullion.

Source. (click image to enlarge) The Hulden family home is on Rabendary Island, in the Fens

cover art by Jasper Schreurs

Duissane's family (the Drossets) is nomadic, living in tents and moving from place to place around Trullion. They met Glay Hulden (the twin brother of Glinnes) when Glay was wandering around Trullion for a few years. Glay now owes the Drossets favors, so he allows them to pitch their tents on Rabendary Island. Immediately upon returning home after his tour of duty in the military, Glinnes comes into conflict with the Drossets.

Cover by David Mattingly.

The relationship of Glinnes with Duissane brings new meaning to the idea of falling in love with the girl next door. Glinnes is immediately attracted to Duissane, but he soon learns that the Drossets robbed and murdered his brother Shira. The Drossets also rob and beat Glinnes, leaving him at the mercy of the man-eating merlings. Glinnes survives the attack; he burns for revenge against the Drossets but he is still smitten by Duissane.

Underwood-Miller edition

A romance between Glinnes and Duissane seems impossible, but even more unlikely is that Duissane becomes a hussade shierl. Nobody can remember another Trevanyi girl being a shierl. Compounding the unlikelihoods, Duissane's father has only given Duissane permission to be shierl for the hussade team that Glinnes plays for. In Vance's skilled authorial hands, the multiplying absurdities become sources of drama and even humor. Still, for my fan fiction sequel to Trullion I've tried to imagine logical reasons for the unlikely collision of Glinnes and Duissane.

Baroba Felice, a hussade sheirl

I suspect that Vance was simply having fun and trying to place difficult challenges between Glinnes and happiness, which makes for an interesting story and keeps readers turning the pages. We learn that Shira apparently tried to seduce Duissane. This resulted in a dangerous clash of cultures. Shira and Glinnes are Trullion's version of jocks; they grew up playing hussade and chasing girls. They would not hesitate to ask a pretty girl for casual sex. In contrast, the Trevanyi seem to treat their daughters like valuable property. Duissane's father apparently views it as his responsibility to defend the virginity of his daughter; so he killed Shira.

Rabendary Island

Here are the first words spoken by Duissane to Glinnes: "Oh you wicked urush, you've spoiled our meal. May your tongue grow a beard. And you with your paunch full of dog-guts, get away from this place before we name you a stiff-leg Fanscher. We know you, never fear! You're a worse spageen than your horn of a brother..."

Later, Glinnes and Duissane are alone together on a small island. Glinnes attempts to seduce Duissane and he kisses her. Duissane pushes him away and says, "You're all alike you Trills! You reek with cauch; you brain is a single lecherous gland. Do you aspire only to turpitude?" And then a bit later, "Oh you are a despicable person; I want nothing to do with you."

Duissane seduces Glinnes

However, just 15 pages later, when Duissane suspects that Glinnes has come into possession of a large amount of money, she comes to his house and tries to seduce him. "Duissane dropped her cape. She wore only sandals and a thin frock." Duissane said, "Henceforth, I live only to exalt you, to make you the happiest of men." However, when she realizes that Glinnes has no money, she leaves him and agrees to marry a wealthy aristocrat (Lord Gensifer).

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Eventually, towards the end of Trullion, Duissane's father and Lord Gensifer are both dead. Glinnes finally does end up with a large sum of money. At the end of the novel, Glinnes and Duissane walk together down a beach and we can imagine that finally nothing remains to keep them apart.

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Duissane is an interesting character because she desperately wants to transcend the restricted existence that she was born to. This contrasts starkly with Glinnes who seemingly enjoys the kind of life that he was born into and would happily live as his father had lived. However, Glinnes has his life disrupted by both Duissane and his brother Glay.

Investigating Lord Gensifer's
dealings with space pirates.
(source)

Fanscherade
Glay joins the revolutionary Fancher movement that seeks to create a new way of living on Trullion, one entirely opposed to the conventional Trill lifestyle that Glinnes enjoys. Through the entire story, Glay is a source of annoyance for Glinnes.

In particular, Glay sells one of the two islands that is owned by the Hulden family, donating the money to the Fanscherade revolutionaries. However, Vance is a master of constructing plots in which great rewards are ultimately gained by a protagonist who persists in his pursuit of a goal against the tide of adversity.

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In the end, after Fanscherade has been crushed by the social momentum of Trullion, Glay returns home to Rabendary Island. Glinnes finds it impossible to remain angry at Glay: it is through Glay's actions that Duissane came into his life and while scheming to buy back Ambal Island Glinnes had managed to obtain a large fortune, thirty million ozols.

But is it Science Fiction?

Science fiction stories often deal with imaginary scientific and technological advances and their imagined impacts on people and societies. I feel comfortable viewing Vance's Alastor Cluster stories as science fiction because it is as if Vance asked, "What types of worlds might exist if humans were given access to cheap and convenient interstellar space travel technology?"

And Aliens, too

image source

Trullion, like many Vance stories, includes alien creatures. The native merlings of Trullion are taken for granted by the human residents of the planet. Lord Gensifer along with the father and sister of Glinnes are killed by merlings. Another endless source of danger are the space pirates who constantly raid the planets of Alastor Cluster.

a star-watch

I like to imagine that Alastor Cluster is an artifact, an artificial star cluster, created by aliens. "Out toward the rim of the galaxy hangs Alastor Cluster, a whorl of thirty thousand live stars... Alastor presents a flamboyant display of star-streams, luminous webs, sparkling nodes."

Alastor Cluster was a playground for Vance's imagination. Trullion is a fine starting point for readers who want to explore the many worlds of Jack Vance.

Related Reading: "The Alastor Network"

Next: Killdozer! by Ted Sturgeon

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Vale of Xian

Poetry by Bunny Burns (source). NASA image.

In my previous blog post I described an active investigation aimed at discovering if a useful form of nanotechnology might be recoverable from Deep Time. "Useful" in the sense of helping we Earthlings defend ourselves. Here, I want to mention some additional clues from the fiction of Jack Vance that might help us solve the mystery of how nanites can be used by aliens to control human behavior.

Green Star
In the novel Throy, Vance mentioned a mystery involving Gilbert's Green Star. Previously, I realized that there was a long-standing confusion about the existence of "green nanites" as a relatively new type of nanite that had been deployed on Earth as part of the endosymbionts that reside within we humans.

original cover art by Paul Chadwick

Those new nanites were not actually green, they were named after a Kac'hin agent of the pek: Grean. Grean developed these special nanites with the help of the Phari during the Asimov Reality.

Yōd recently revealed that an analogue of Jack Vance who lived in the Ekcolir Reality wrote about the importance of "green stars" for teleportation. The closest "green star" to Earth is about 185 light years away, located in the constellation libra. These "green stars" are full of special sedrons that allow them to act as foci within the pek teleportation network of our galaxy.

When Ekcolir was sent into the past, he was well aware of the location of Grean's Star and 20,000 years ago he named a constellation the "star fisher". That "star fisher" was at the boundary between the modern scorpius and libra constellations. In the sky, find Antares and then imagine a starfish with arms pointed at both Antares and the two brightest stars in libra.

Zubeneschamali, the star of the northern claw.

Previously, I assumed that the pek systematically gathered sedrons from planets like Earth because sedrons are needed for fast-than-light space travel. However, there are many types of sedrons, some of which will interfere with long distance teleportation through the galaxy unless their natural distribution in the universe is altered. Apparently the pek have been making the needed alterations in our galaxy for the past couple of billion years.

The different types of Hierions and Sedrons.

To correctly arrange the distribution of sedrons for teleportation, the main source of sedrons, the stars, must be mined for sedrons. Most of the sedrons of a galaxy must be concentrated in a few special locations. Doing so will simplify the quantum computations that make teleportation possible.

It is difficult to imagine how sedrons might be extracted from stars, but doing so may be no more difficult for the pek than it is for us to refine metals like gold from raw gold-containing ore. How the pek might transport vast quantities of sedrons from star to star is another mystery, but if they have advanced teleportation technology, maybe they can teleport sedrons from star to star.

According to Yōd and her collaborators at the library of the Writers Block, Grean had a base of operations in the Zubeneschamali star system, which functions as a long-range teleportation node. Zeta believes that Ekcolir was trained for his missions to Earth at Grean's base. Then, while on Earth and talking to Earthlings, Ekcolir apparently never hesitated to point out the location of the star that he came from.

Anney's report from the Buld Reality

The Vale of Xian
Jack Vance was fond of including mention of ghosts in his stories. In Trullion, both Duissane and Glinnes casually discuss the habits of ghosts on Trullion.

In the Ekcolir Reality.
Original art by Luis Royo.

Reporting from the Hierion Domain, Yōd's replicoid has seen a report from Angela and Anney Fersoni about the alien creatures who were the original inhabitants of Trullion. After humans arrived on Trullion, it was possible to have some degree of contact with those aliens in the Vale of Xian. Humans such as Duissane, who could use their Bimanoid Interface to contact the natives of Trullion, sometimes reported seeing ghost-like birds in the Vale. The legend was that those "ghosts" could collect human souls and archive them in the Vale of Xian.

original art work by Virgil Finlay

Yōd suggests that the "ghosts of Xian" were part of the Phari-designed network of sedronic species that had been collected together in Alastor Cluster. Zeta is skeptical that those "ghosts" were actually green. Grean discovered critical human gene combinations on Trullion and assembled them to make possible a Bimanoid Interface that allows some humans to make contact with their replicoids in the Hierion Domain. Once again, humans who overheard discussion of Grean's "ghosts" on Trullion apparently mistakenly applied the term "green ghost" to the sedronic inhabitants of Trullion. Zeta suggests that these "human errors" are most likely the result of "information editing" performed on human minds by the tryp'At Overseers.

Next: 11 science fiction-oriented episodes of The X-Files

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Jack Be Nimble

cover art by Jasper Schreurs

I've previously blogged about Trullion by Jack Vance. Much of the plot for this novel involves the sport hussade, which takes the form of ritualized hand-to-hand combat, played before a crowd on grid of runways suspended over a pool of water.

"The ideal hussade player was powerful, intelligent, cunning, nimble and merciless."

Alastor Cluster
Welcome to the planet Trullion, one of 3,000 inhabited worlds of Alastor Cluster. It is a quiet world where most of the residents are something like hippies from the 1970s. The protagonist of Vance's story is Glinnes Hulden, a resident of the Fens. The Huldens are a sporting family and like his father and his older brother before him, Glinnes grew up playing hussade.

Glinnes grows up near the mouth of the Saur River, on Rabendary Island. Click on the map to enlarge.

Baroba Felice, sheirl of the Voulash Gannets

Life on Trullion is mostly quite relaxed and the majority of Trills prefer to enjoy simple lives of ease and pleasure. Vance informs us that an average Trill seldom works very hard and then only to:

"... earn a pulsor for his boat,  a pot for his kitchen,  a length of cloth for his paray: that easy skirt-like garment worn by men and women alike."

Like Glinnes, Vance grew up in a rural river delta. Vance adopted the needed discipline to write a million words a year and earn a living writing stories. Glinnes took on the discipline required of a top hussade player, following the advice of his father:

"Run five miles every day to develop your stamina. Jump the practice pits until you can make sure landings blindfold."

1953

With a taste for adventure, at the age of 17 Glinnes joins the Whelm, Alastor Cluster's space-faring military that tries to protect the cluster's residents against endless and persistent raids by space pirates. While in the Whelm, Glinnes continues to play hussade. He terminates his service in the Whelm and returns home to the Fens when his father suddenly dies.

Duissane's aunt Nadya (source)

Upon returning to Trullion, Glinnes meets a Trevanyi woman named Duissane Drosset. The Trevanyi are a small minority group on Trullion, something like Earth's gypsies. Glinnes is immediately attracted to the fiery Duissane, but he soon discovers that the Drossets recently killed his older brother.

Fanscherade

Culture Clash

Glinnes schemes to achieve revenge against the Drossets, but he also faces additional challenges. A new social movement has grown on Trullion: Fanscherade. The Fanschers, mostly of the younger generation, now stand in opposition to the gluttonous, amorous and undisciplined ways of their parents.

While Glinnes was away from Trullion, Glay, his twin brother, has become a Fanscher. Glay donated to the Fanscherade organization a large amount of money that he obtained from selling a valuable portion of the Hulden family lands.

Upon returning home, Glinnes is mystified by the Fanscherade movement and he is determined to regain the lost Hulden family property. Akadie the mentor, a long-time friend of Glinnes, tries to explain the Fanscherade movement:

Cover by David Mattingly.

World Inverting
In creating the imagined world Trullion, Vance was able to cleverly invert the social conditions of mid-20th century Earth. Rather than a world with hippies rebelling against their conservative parents, the Fanscherade youth movement of Trullion involves an attempt by the younger generation to create a new age of orderly conduct and achievement. The Fanschers cut their hair short and dress in clean gray uniforms, holding themselves aloof from typical Trill pursuits like hussade.

cover by Gene Szafran
I have a copy of the June
1973 edition of Trullion.

Strangely, the Beatles, who in the 1960s represented the winds of change in the cultural atmosphere of Earth's middle 20th century America, could just as easily serve as icons representing the gray-suited Fanschers of Trullion. Through the nimble artistry of Jack Vance, the pattern of Earth's cultural change has been neatly inverted to create a social backdrop on Trullion for the personal struggles of Glinnes.

Duissane Drosset
By the end of Trullion, the Fanscherade movement has been crushed. Through persistence and good luck, Glinnes has managed to regain ownership of the parcel of family land that Glay previously sold off. Duissane's father and brother (the murderers of Glinnes' older brother) are now dead.

Vance ends the story at this point, and the final scene of the novel suggesting that Glinnes and Duissane might have a future together:

The final two paragraphs of Trullion.

Merlank, the lone continent of Trullion. (source)

In the way that Vance wrote Trullion, Duissane is something of a mystery. Normally, Glinnes would never have had significant contact with a Trevanyi woman. It was only through an odd quirk of fate that the Drosset family was present on Rabendary Island when Glinnes returned home from serving in the Whelm.

During the time when Glinnes was away from Trullion, Glay spent several years wandering around Merlank, the only continent of Trullion. While on his travels, Glay lived for a time with the nomadic Drossets.

Trevanyi camp

The Trevanyi develop odd skills like the art of knife juggling. While usually keeping themselves apart from most ordinary Trill pass-times like hussade, the Trevanyi are willing to mingle with the Trill majority and even participate as entertainer at Trill parties and starwatches.

Owing them favors, Glay must have offered the Drossets a chance to pitch their tents for a while in the forest of Rabendary Island. When Glinnes arrives home after 10 years in the Whelm, the Drosset family is camped near his home and Glinnes meets Duissane on his first day back.

Hussade Sheirl

Underwood-Miller edition

Strangely, Duissane becomes a hussade sheirl, even though nobody can remember another time when a Trevanyi was a member of a hussade team. The other players on a hussade team fight to protect their sheirl against the charges mounted by the opposing team's players.

Vance never explains why it is that Duissane is given permission by her father to join a hussade team and why that permission is granted specifically for the team that Glinnes plays for. I like to imagine that unseen forces were at work, bringing together Glinnes and Duissane for some special purpose. However, I suspect that Vance simply wanted to construct an unlikely romance as part of the literary game he played: Vance wanted to place many challenges in the path to a happy future for Glinnes.

In the Ekcolir Reality

Cauch
Duissane tries to seduce Glinnes by giving him cauch. Cauch is a valuable drug derived from a mold that grows on Trullion. The Trills routinely think of cauch as an aphrodisiac, but it is fun to imagine that the Trevanyi know how to use it for additional purposes. What if cauch can be used to activate the Phari endosymbionts that reside within the inhabitants of Alastor Cluster?

For A Search Beyond, I imagine that in the Ekcolir Reality an analogue of Jack Vance not only wrote additional novels set in the Alastor Clustor, but that version of Vance had access to more information about events that occurred in the Asimov Reality.

The Nicotine Mystery

Currently, to study the possibility that cauch was a form of nanotechnology, I'm making use of Yōd and her ability to access information within the Hierion Domain. We are pursuing the possibility that "cognitive amplifiers" such as cauch might have been stored and archived within the Hierion Domain.

A replicoid of Vance and Yōd's replicoid are working together in the Hierion Domain at the library of the Writers Block to further this investigation. So far, we have hints that both nicotine (on Earth) and cauch (on Trullion) may contain the same Phari nanites. From my end, I'm trying to make use of the infites that I obtained from Ivory. Ivory and her clone sisters previously investigated this topic by means of their access to the Sedronic Domain.

Next: Jack Vance and Isaac Asimov in Eternity

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