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A multi-dimensional explosion hurls the starship's few passengers across the galaxies and onto an uncharted barren tundra. With no technical …
In his classic book, T.E. Lawrence - forever known as Lawrence of Arabia - recounts his role in the origins …
Araminta Station is a 1987 science fiction novel by the American writer Jack Vance. It …
Wayness turned back to Glawen. “Tell us about the battles. .Have you seen them?”
“Twice. When you’re at the lodge they’re hard to ignore.”
“What happens? Are they as bad as Julian fears?”
“They are spectacular, and in some ways rather grim.”
Julian gave an ironic snort. “Please instruct me in the ways that they are other than grim.”
“It’s mostly in the mind of the beholder. The banjees don’t seem to care.”
“That’s hard to believe.”
“The battles would be easy to avoid, if they were so inclined.”
Julian brought a booklet from his pocket. “Listen to this article: ‘The banjee battles are extremely dramatic and picturesque events; happily they have been made accessible to the tourist.
“‘Squeamish folk be warned: these battles are horrifying in their frenzy and in the hideous deeds which occur. Shouts and screams rise and fall; the trumpeting cries of victory mingle with the anguished moans of the defeated. Without surcease or pity the warriors wield their mighty instruments of death. They slash and strike, probe and thrust; quarter is neither extended nor expected.
“‘For the Gaean onlooker, the battles are poignant experiences, rife with archetypal symbology. Emotions are aroused to which the contemporary mind cannot even fit a name. No question as to the quality of the spectacle; the encounters reek with color: portentous reds, the black gleam on the bizarre angles of armor and helmets; the alkaline blues and greens of the thoracic cushions.
“‘The air at Mad Mountain is heavy with the sense of majestic force and tragic destiny’ - it goes on in that vein.”
“It is vivid description,” said Glawen. “The official guidebook is put to shame, and in fact barely mentions the battles.”
“Still, are not the facts in order?”
“Not altogether. There are not so many shrieks and moans, but grunts and curses and bubbling sounds. The females and bantlings stand by unconcerned and are not molested. Still, there’s no denying that the warriors tend to hack at each other.”
Wayness asked: “Forgive me my morbid curiosity - but exactly what happens?”
“The battles seem absolutely pointless and could easily be avoided. The migration routes run east-west and north-south, and cross just below Mad Mountain Lodge. When a horde is approaching, the first signal is a low sound: an ominous murmur. Then the horde appears in the distance. A few minutes later the first attack squad comes running along the route - a hundred elite warriors armed with thirty-foot lances, axes, and six-foot spikes. They secure the crossing and stand guard while the horde runs past. If another horde is passing, the approaching horde does not wait until the other one has gone by, as logic would dictate, but instead becomes indignant and attacks.
“The warriors bring down their lances and charge, trying to force open an avenue for their own group to pass. The battle continues until one or the other of the hordes has negotiated the crossing. It’s a disgrace to go last and the defeated horde sets up a great howl of hurt feelings.
“About this time tourists run down for souvenirs, hoping to find an undamaged helmet. They prowl through the corpses pulling and tugging. Sometimes the banjee is still alive and kills the tourist.
“The dead tourist is not ignored by the management. His picture is hung in the gallery as a warning to others. There are hundreds of these pictures, of folk from almost as many worlds, and they are a source of fascination to everyone.”
“I find the whole business disgraceful,” said Julian.
“I think it’s distasteful myself,” said Glawen. “But the banjees won’t stop fighting and the tourists won’t stop coming - so Mad Mountain Lodge stays open.”
“That is a cynical attitude,” said Julian.
“I don’t feel cynical,” said Glawen. “I just don’t feel theoretical.”
“I’m sure that I don’t understand you,” said Julian stiffly.
Milo asked: “So what is your scheme for the banjees - assuming you were allowed free rein?”
“My first thought was a set of barricades which would hold one horde back while the other passed, but barriers or fences are easily broken down or avoided. At the moment I’m considering ramps and an overpass so that the banjees can go their separate ways without coming into contact with each other.”
“Be reasonable, Julian. You must know that you won’t be allowed any such project. Have you never heard of the Charter?”
“The Charter is as moribund as the Naturalist Society. I don’t mind telling you that the LPF is studying its options.”
“Consider all the options you like. Plan ramps and overpasses to your heart’s content, though how you can call this official business is beyond me. It’s Peefer business and Julian business, at Conservancy expense. There, if you like, is cynicism.”
Slowly Julian turned his head and surveyed Milo under hooded eyelids, and for an instant the curtain of genteel accommodation was torn.
Milo spoke with an unwonted edge in his voice. “More than anything else you want to set a precedent for Peefer meddling in the environment. The next step would be to invite the Yips to lay claim to the land. The Peefers would build grand estates for themselves in the choicest areas of Deucas. Confine all the wild animals behind fences. I assure you, Julian, it won’t work.”
— Araminta Station by Jack Vance (51%)
Araminta Station is a 1987 science fiction novel by the American writer Jack Vance. It …
Starting my third Vance series (after Durdane and Tschai). I'm commenting on this novel as a standalone read - the remaining two entries are to be read.
Cadwal is a planet with three continents orbiting a binary star. Designated a nature conservancy a millennia ago, the novel's titular station was set up on the planet as a base for conservation efforts. Over the centuries a permanent population took root, whose culture stems from the initial bureaucracy. This de facto nation, known as the Conservancy, has resorted to shipping in the far-future equivalent of coolie labour to perform menial jobs and do hard labour. Rigid social stratafication is the norm: Conservancy citizens are assigned a number upon adulthood which determines all their future prospects. The imported labourers are called Collaterals - essentially low-caste members of society. There's a breakaway settlement too, Yipton, a city-state of thatch and bamboo built partially …
Starting my third Vance series (after Durdane and Tschai). I'm commenting on this novel as a standalone read - the remaining two entries are to be read.
Cadwal is a planet with three continents orbiting a binary star. Designated a nature conservancy a millennia ago, the novel's titular station was set up on the planet as a base for conservation efforts. Over the centuries a permanent population took root, whose culture stems from the initial bureaucracy. This de facto nation, known as the Conservancy, has resorted to shipping in the far-future equivalent of coolie labour to perform menial jobs and do hard labour. Rigid social stratafication is the norm: Conservancy citizens are assigned a number upon adulthood which determines all their future prospects. The imported labourers are called Collaterals - essentially low-caste members of society. There's a breakaway settlement too, Yipton, a city-state of thatch and bamboo built partially on a lagoon.
Glawen Clattuc is our hero, a young man who works for the IPCC, the de facto police/investigation force. While Vance uses the police procedural formula to drive the plot (much of the novel amounts to a missing person search), the real focal point is the socio-political mess his latest offshoot of humanity has got itself into. In spite of its comfortable idyllic surface, Conservancy society is regressive and inbred, completely straightjacketed by the past and unwilling to reconcile the contradictions it presents to its inheritors. The novel asks, among many things, at what point a society is no longer bound, legally or morally, by the priorities of its forebears. Outside the bounds of Araminta Station authority lie the Yips. Vance uses a boys' trip to Cadwal's only brothel to portray an interesting independent culture, which I hope is developed further in the other novels.
It's an interesting read but small sections of it drag a bit (perhaps 10% of the total). World > plot > characters.
Araminta Station is a 1987 science fiction novel by the American writer Jack Vance. It is the first part of …
Read it in three sittings. Tells the story of Kaul Braun a piano tuner in 1960s London, going about his day-to-day. During his chats with flatmates Kolm and Strohmayer, their World War II experiences often come up, as do the Nazi war crimes tribunals currently underway on the continent. Braun's is a tale of escalating paranoia and the power of disbelief. It's a very focused thriller, simply but effectively told. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.
Read it in three sittings. Tells the story of Kaul Braun a piano tuner in 1960s London, going about his day-to-day. During his chats with flatmates Kolm and Strohmayer, their World War II experiences often come up, as do the Nazi war crimes tribunals currently underway on the continent. Braun's is a tale of escalating paranoia and the power of disbelief. It's a very focused thriller, simply but effectively told. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.
This book is set in the 1660's, and tells the story of Sarah Blundy who …
It had been a complicated case and the town was by no means convinced of her guilt. She had killed a man whom she said had raped her, but the jury judged this a lie because she had fallen pregnant, which cannot occur without the woman taking pleasure in the act. Normally her condition would have spared her the gallows, but she had lost the child and also any defense against the hangman. An unfortunate outcome, which those who believed in her guilt considered divine providence.
Lower assured me his attendance was necessary; a hanging is a detestable sight, but one of his many fascinations was when exactly the moment of death occurs. This related directly to our experiments with the dove in the air pump. Most of those hanged asphyxiate slowly at the end of the rope and it was a matter of some considerable interest to him—and to physick in general—how long it takes for the soul to depart. He was, he assured me, a considerable expert in the matter. For this reason, he positioned himself next to the tree to take notes.
He also got his corpse, once he had tipped the officials and paid a pound to the family. He had it carried to an apothecary of his acquaintance and, after he prayed in his fashion and I in mine, we began work. Some anatomization we performed there—I took the heart while he cracked open the skull and drew some delightful sketches of the brain—then we jointed the rest and placed the portions in several large vats of spirit which the apothecary undertook to deliver to Crosse's shop. He also wrote a letter to Boyle telling them the vats were on their way and should on no account be opened.
"I don't know that he will be so very pleased," he said, once he had washed his hands and we had retired to the inn for food and drink. "But where else could I send them? My college refuses to have corpses on the premises for any length of time, and if I sent it to anyone else they might well practice on it before I returned. Some people have no shame in these matters.”
As for the rest of our trip, there is little point in going into details. The patients came in thick and fast once we had established ourselves in the various inns on our route and I returned ten days later sixty-five shillings the richer. The average fee was four pence, nobody ever paid more than one and sixpence, and when I was paid in kind I had to sell the various geese and ducks and hens at a discount to local traders (we ate one goose, but I could hardly return to Oxford with a farmyard menagerie trailing behind me). All this should give an idea of how many patients I treated.
That morning I extracted four teeth, drained several gallons of blood (fancy notions about therapeutic efficacy get you nowhere in the country; they wanted their blood let and that was what they were determined to have), bound wounds, tasted piss, applied salves and took in seven shillings. A brief pause for lunch and then we were off again; lancing sores, wiping pus, setting joints and taking in eleven shillings and eight pence. Throughout, all of Lower's grand theories about the new medicine were abandoned. The patients were not interested in the benefits of iatrochemical potions and were disdainful of innovation. So, instead of prescribing careful concoctions of mercury and antimony, we rebalanced humors like the most hidebound of Galenists, and consulted the stars with a fervor worthy of Paracelsus himself. Anything which might work, for we had not the leisure to consider novel approaches, nor the reputation to apply them.
— An instance of the fingerpost by Iain Pears (21%)
This book is set in the 1660's, and tells the story of Sarah Blundy who …
The English Civil wars are living memory. A king is back on the throne, and a nation remains wary of Rome while adjusting to its newfound peace.
Pears begins with a simple plot detail, the death of a university academic. Readers have this story recounted by a Venetian fop called Marco da Cola, who introduces characters and remarks on the strange land and customs he finds himself amidst. The author gradually 'pulls the camera back' to reveal a web of intrigue and inhumanity involving a wide cast, years in the making, and he does it by retelling the same series of events from three additional perspectives. After the Venetian's version comes that of a proud hothead, bent on restoring his father's honor. Next comes the entry from a high-placed civil servant, convinced of the superiority of his own assessment. The last part is told by a priest in love.
…The English Civil wars are living memory. A king is back on the throne, and a nation remains wary of Rome while adjusting to its newfound peace.
Pears begins with a simple plot detail, the death of a university academic. Readers have this story recounted by a Venetian fop called Marco da Cola, who introduces characters and remarks on the strange land and customs he finds himself amidst. The author gradually 'pulls the camera back' to reveal a web of intrigue and inhumanity involving a wide cast, years in the making, and he does it by retelling the same series of events from three additional perspectives. After the Venetian's version comes that of a proud hothead, bent on restoring his father's honor. Next comes the entry from a high-placed civil servant, convinced of the superiority of his own assessment. The last part is told by a priest in love.
Each successive account informs prior ones, serving to either muddy details that used to be clear, or crystallizing their importance. Entire characters, their background and motives and capabilities, are thrown into a whole new light. It's a mystery novel but it isn't concerned with whodunit as opposed to who-done-what and how it got done. There are several excellent reveals that tie plot threads together. The final account by the priest is quite introspective and does the least plotwise, but is where the novel really bears its heart - for while you think you're reading one type of story for much of the book's 600-odd pages, Pears is about to reveal another.
Interested readers shouldn't alternate between this and other books. This demands persistent attention. I found it worth diagramming the character relationships. It includes a 'dramatis personae,' many members of which are real historical figures. It's skilfully plotted and pretty engrossing.
This book is set in the 1660's, and tells the story of Sarah Blundy who is accused of murder. The …
This book is set in the 1660's, and tells the story of Sarah Blundy who is accused of murder. The …
Adam Reith and company are on a response mission to the planet Tschai, 212 light years away, after receiving a signal. Their reconnaissance craft soon gets hit by a missile from the planet's surface, stranding Reith with little hope of return.
Tschai hosts four distinct races who are at odds with each other to varying degrees. The Chasch, industrious urbanites, the Dirdir, highly stratified sport hunters; the Wankh, inscrutable in their cities of black glass, and hovering above (below) it all, the Pnume, aloof insectoid chroniclers of the surface's changing fortunes, a morbid subterranean priesthood. All four races employ a sub-race - mankind - or Chaschmen, Dirdirmen, Wankhmen and Pnumekin - brought to Tschai millennia ago in mysterious circumstances. Planet of Adventure is an escape story at first glance, and a good one, but it's also portrait of an alternate humanity that is profoundly dysfunctional, robbed of its inclinations …
Adam Reith and company are on a response mission to the planet Tschai, 212 light years away, after receiving a signal. Their reconnaissance craft soon gets hit by a missile from the planet's surface, stranding Reith with little hope of return.
Tschai hosts four distinct races who are at odds with each other to varying degrees. The Chasch, industrious urbanites, the Dirdir, highly stratified sport hunters; the Wankh, inscrutable in their cities of black glass, and hovering above (below) it all, the Pnume, aloof insectoid chroniclers of the surface's changing fortunes, a morbid subterranean priesthood. All four races employ a sub-race - mankind - or Chaschmen, Dirdirmen, Wankhmen and Pnumekin - brought to Tschai millennia ago in mysterious circumstances. Planet of Adventure is an escape story at first glance, and a good one, but it's also portrait of an alternate humanity that is profoundly dysfunctional, robbed of its inclinations to discover, to know, to imagine and create, and in some cases even its resemblance as human. What if we took Us and made us serfs of our domain instead of masters, and let that cook for 100 millennia? asks Vance. The nature of individual liberty and agency are also explored.
Reith teams up with Traz, an adolescent boy with major responsibilities and major totems to uphold, and Anacho, a Dirdirman fugitive. There is little character introspection (Reith is a Neil Armstrong-James Bond of the far future who doesn't have a qualm with kicking heads in if he has to) but they are still competently sketched, as are the supporting cast. The worldbuilding is the true highlight. Tschai is vibrantly colorful yet worn through. Tschai is pungent and rank and unfair and brutally transactional and at home with itself. Tschai works. Yet in retrospect it feels like all Vance ever describes is the color of the sky, the murky light cast by its star Carina 4269, the cuisine, and various episodes of haggling. I still enjoyed my time there.
The four books total about 450 pages. It's effectively a single four-volume novel. Vance doesn't muck around - his plotting and pacing is lean, in contrast to nearly any modern fantasy author, where 450 pages wouldn't see the first book finished. He achieves immersion by means other than padding the time investment. I wish SF/F authors rediscovered the value of basic writing economy (they might actually finish more series). I love Vance's brand of refined pulpiness and plan to read more of him.
