The Brains of Earth/The Many Worlds of Magnus Randolph

[Every so often, the Journey features a guest reviewer.  In this case, it is Keith Henson, a friend of our own Vicki Lucas.  Keith works at Heinrich GeoeXploration, studies for his degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Arizona, and owns two buildings with two apartments each, in one of which he lives. His interests include pyrotechnics and amateur rockets.

(Keith's in the cowboy hat)

He also digs scientificition, and he happened to pick up the new Ace Double hot off the shelves.  And so, without further ado, may I present Keith!]

by Keith Henson

Heading home from work I stopped off at my favorite bookstore. There near the bottom of the SF section is a new Ace Double, both by Jack Vance, 45 cents. Vance is one of the authors I read with pleasure since running into a copy of The Dying Earth.

Eliminating Mind Parasites

The Brains of Earth is a somewhat conventional SF story, with unlikeable aliens, and competent (for the most part) humans. The story starts with a description of events at the end of a war to rid the alien population of mind parasites (nopals) on the planet Ixix. This motivates the local aliens (Tauptu) to travel to Earth, which is saturated with nopals, and kidnap a scientist, one Paul Burke. The aliens remove his nopal (a painful task). They then assign Burke an impossible task (clear Earth of nopals) and return him to Earth. The rest of the story plays out as Burke discovers an even more serious mind parasite, the ghre, which are kept at bay by the nopals. Burke convinces the aliens that their problems are even worse than they think, and they set out on an expedition seeking the physical location of the mental projections.

I found it to be a decent story, consistent with good dialog, if not quite up to the standards of The Dying Earth.  Usually you can open a Vance story to any place and identify it as Vance by reading a few paragraphs.  I tried this with The Brains of Earth and it didn't work.  Still it's hard to award Vance less than three stars.

Short Stories of a Problem Solver

The other side of the double is The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph, a series of short stories set in exotic places (mostly planets). The stories feature an elderly goateed gentleman problem solver in detective mode. (Vance also writes mysteries.) The stories usually start with Ridolph in a financial bind of some kind and he outsmarts the people who took advantage of him, all in supercilious tones and Jack Vance's unique literary style. Applying the reading test to identify the story as Vance's, here is a sample that does work:

Magnus Ridolph sighed, glanced at his liqueur (Blue Ruin). This would be the last of these; hereafter he must drink vin ordinaire, a fluid rather like tarragon vinegar, prepared from the fermented rind of a local cactus.

Magnus Ridolph is more fun than the other side of the double, four stars. Altogether well worth the 45 cents.

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The Tree Lord of Imeten, by Tom Purdom

by John Boston

Tom Purdom has had a dozen stories scattered among the SF magazines over the past near-decade, and one prior novel (and Ace Double half), I Want The Stars.  His second novel is also Doubled, back to back with Samuel Delany’s Empire Star, reviewed last month.  It’s called The Tree Lord Of Imeten, and is decorated with a John Schoenherr cover as dispirited and unattractive as that of its other half.

by John Schoenherr

The novel, however, could not be more different in style and spirit from Delany’s.  Purdom is solid, Delany mercurial; Purdom plays the game, Delany plays with the game.

The story opens in a human colony on an extrasolar planet, with protagonist Harold hiding behind a tractor with his bow and arrows, so the people who killed his father and best friend won’t shoot him too.  His childhood friend Joanne appears and conveys the bad guys’ offer: they can leave, with food and equipment, and go down from the human-inhabited plateau to the jungly lowlands, where there are sentient—or at least structure-building—inhabitants that nobody knows much about.

But what are these people on the plateau fighting about, and how did it get this bitter?  It’s not explained, which seems incongruous at first, but as the book progresses, it becomes clear that that’s part of the point. 

Harold and Joanne, pulling a wheeled cart full of supplies, first encounter the Itiji, sentient catlike animals who attack and are driven away, but clearly have language if not hands.  They then are found and captured by the other species, the Imetens, tree-dwelling primates with hands as well as language, the beginnings of ironworking, and of course conflict among tribes.  They also enslave the Itiji to pull their carts and bear their burdens. 

Harold first persuades the Imetens that he can be useful to them, and attains a reasonably safe and privileged position for Joanne and himself.  But he hates slavery, and soon enough contrives an escape for himself and Joanne and a number of Itiji slaves.  The Imetens do not take emancipation lightly, and war ensues.  Harold must help the Itiji by creating warmaking technology that they can use without hands, under his leadership of course, and ultimately brings peace after heroic feats at arms. 

The story is most basically about people cast out of their society who have to find a place in another one, since, as Purdom hints earlier (and notwithstanding Harold’s lone heroics), humans on their own are nothing in the long run.  That’s why Purdom was right not to explain what the colonists were fighting over; it can never matter again for his characters, who are now committed to a new life in a new tribe.

This is a well worked out book, dense with detail and invention, but the latter parts drag a bit, and also revert towards the standard fare of exotic-planet opera, with long descriptions of battle strategy and hand to hand combat and Harold’s exploits with sword and shield.  The ending also feels a bit rushed.  Three and a half stars, and high expectations for this promising writer’s future work.

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