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Star King

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_The Star King_ (1964) by Jack Vance was originally a two-part serial in _Galaxy_ (1963-64) and was accompanied by some properly spectacular illustrations by Ed Emshwiller. The front cover to the Berkley paperback contained the phrase "a science fiction novel by Jack Vance, winner of the 1963 Hugo award". Readers might be forgiven for assuming that _The Star King_ was the Hugo winning novel. But it was not. Vance did win a Hugo in 1963 for his 1962 novella, "The Dragon Masters". But the best novel winner for 1963 was Clifford D. Simak's _Way Station_. For 1964, the winner was Fritz Leiber's _The Wanderer_. _The Star King_ was not even a Hugo nominee, indicating that most readers probably viewed it as a high-class space opera rather than an sf classic. This assessment is probably about right.

_The Star King_ is the first of a quintet of novels called the Demon Princes novels. Perhaps a few words about the series would not be amiss. Two sequels to _The Star King_ followed in fairly short order: _The Killing Machine_ (1964) and _The Palace of Love_ (1967). Then, after a long hiatus, came the last two novels: _The Face_ (1979) and _The Book of Dreams_ (1981). _The Star King_ and _The Palace of Love_ were magazine serials. The other three were original book publications. I would argue that the last two novels are the best, or at least the most original.

The quintet is a series of revenge adventures. The hero, Kirth Gerson, has been trained to become an instrument of revenge. His main purpose in life is to hunt down and destroy five Demon Princes who engineered a raid that destroyed Gerson's home planet, killing his parents. In _The Star King_, Gerson goes after the first of the Demon Princes, a Star King named Attel Malagate. (In the magazine serial, he was named Grendal.) Early in the novel, Gerson comes within a hair of catching him; but he badly bungles things, and Malagate escapes. However, Gerson gets posession of the co-ordinates to a planetary Eden that Malagate badly wants. And so he sets himself up as bait. There are some colorful villains, an amiable heroine, and some absolutely dazzling alien worlds.

Robert Silverberg, in a rather stern review, took Vance to task for what he called unnecessary padding before each chapter: excerpts from future newspaper interviews, histories, handbooks, philosophical tomes, science texts and the like. I believe that these non-fact excerpts add color and clarification to Vance's bustling galaxy. Do you want to know how Smade deals with malefactors on his planet? What weaseling is? Why some people say that there will always be a Beyond? Why the planets of the Rigel Concourse did not get named after English heroes? What is meant by a planet's psychic aroma? Read the excerpts. And there are the occasional inside jokes. One future author is Jan Holberk Vaenz LXII, a phonetic version of Vance's real name. Perhaps this author is a distant ancestor of John Holbrook Vance!

When he was a child, Kirth Gersen's village was raided and massacred by the five Demon Princes. He and his grandfather escaped and, at his grandfather's encouragement, Kirth has spent his life training and preparing for revenge. Now it's time...

Jack Vance's DEMON PRINCES saga consists of five short science fiction novels which each tell the tale of how Kirth Gersen tracks down and deals with one of the evil men who killed his family. In the first installment, The Star King, Kirth is looking for Attel Malagate, aka Malagate the Woe, who may be masquerading as a university academic. Along the way, Kirth must get past Malagate's henchmen, including the memorable Hildemar Dasce, also known as Beauty Dasce or Fancy Dasce:

"Into the hall stepped the strangest human being of Gersen's experience.

'And there,' said Teehalt with a sick titter, 'you see Beauty Dasce.'

Dasce was about six feet tall. His torso was a tube, the same gauge from knee to shoulder. His arms were thin and long, terminating in great bony wrists, enormous hands. His head was also tall and round, with a ruff of red hair, and a chin seeming almost to rest on the clavicle. Dasce had stained his neck and face bright red, excepting only his cheeks, which were balls of bright chalk-blue, like a pair of mildewed oranges. At some stage of his career his nose had been cleft into a pair of cartilaginous prongs, and his eyelids had been cut away; to moisten his corneas he wore two nozzles connected to a tank of fluid which every few seconds discharged a film of mist into his eyes. There was also a pair of shutters, now raised, which could be lowered to cover his eyes from the light, and which were painted to represent staring white and blue eyes similar to Dasce's own."

Yikes!

Kirth Gersen is the type of hero who was popular back in the 1960s when this series was written: a single unattached worldly man who's clever and brave, but only slightly more clever and brave than his enemies -- a James-Bond-type hero. His enemies are James-Bondish, too (Beauty Dasce reminds me of Jaws from The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker). In fact, these are the kind of books that would make great movies because they're short, the plot is tight, fast, and action-packed and there's plenty of violence, but it's not gory. There's even a bit of romance and mystery.

But what sets these stories above most novels and movies of this type is Jack Vance's succinct, perfect prose and the scope of his active imagination. In his science fiction novels, he's got an entire fictional universe to work with and he makes the most of it, offering us fascinating and ever-changing vistas, races, and cultures.

Here are some often used themes for stories of all genres: Revenge, the rescue of a love interest from danger, good versus evil. Here is a common type of science fiction, explored endlessly by countless authors - space opera. Throw these ingredients together and you have a book most likely indistinguishable from all the others out there with similar ingredients, right? Not a chance.

Here is the simple story at a glance. Kirth Gersen's family members were victims of an atrocity many years ago. His obsession since then has been with finding those responsible, and he has prepared well for the search. Gersen chases some clues to locate one of the guilty, a Star King who is not human but is a master at appearing to be so. Along the way he must rescue a potential love interest who becomes entangled in the whole affair.

The brilliance of the book is in Vance's own style of creating such a memorable story from seemingly ordinary material. The background and circumstances do not unfold smoothly, in a straight line. Rather, details appear in between scenes, which further explain the revealed events. The result is flawless development of suspense, mystery and action. It is never confusing or hard to follow, but Vance leads the reader along at his own pace, and it develops with perfect calculation. I became fascinated with the universe Vance begins to build, without knowing the precise point at which that happened. The writing is also flawless. The colorful and challenging style demanded my attention, and I was happy to give it.

Science fiction has not been without challenges to its well-being, for many reasons. But the foundation it is built upon was crafted by the finest of literary and imaginative carpenters, who could create remarkable structures. Here is a short book, a small house if you will. It dwarfs many grander mansions, constructed in more modern times. These small houses will still stand when others decay and crumble. Maybe the secret is not as complicated as we always are willing to believe.