Pulp Science Fiction Library: Deathworld

Though not my original intention, apparently I am going to be writing more posts about the stories that gave birth to the characters described at the back of the Traveller supplements 1001 Characters and Citizens of the Imperium. Taken together, these stories form something I elsewhere dubbed "Appendix T," being for Traveller what Appendix N was for AD&D: a window into the kinds of tales characters, and situations the creator of the game found notably enjoyable and/or influential on his thinking as he created it. 

A couple of years ago, I noted a "problem" with Appendix N and the putative Appendix T suffers from a similar problem. Marc Miller provides no commentary on the books and authors he cites, leaving it to us to figure out what and in what way they were inspirational to him. This is in contrast to, say, the literary appendix found in RuneQuest, which is much more explicit about the debts owed to its contents. This fact in no way lessens the value of reading any of these books, but it does sometimes make it harder to declare definitively that this or that element of a roleplaying game was based on something from a particular book.

And sometimes it's quite obvious. That would seem to be the case for Harry Harrison's 1960 novel, Deathworld, which was originally serialized over the course of six issues of Astounding Science Fiction before being collected under a single cover and published separately by Bantam in September of the same year. The book's success would result in two sequels, both of which were also serialized in Analog (the new name of Astounding) in 1964 and 1968 respectively. Though I've read all three of these novels, this post focuses primarily on the first and, in my opinion, best of the trilogy.

Deathworld follows the adventures of Jason dinAlt, a gambler with limited psionic abilities that prove useful to him in his chosen vocation. Jason travels to the planet Pyrrus after impressing its ambassador with his skill at gambling. Pyrrus possesses an extraordinarily hostile environment, consisting of high gravity, violent weather, seismic instability, radiation, and a biosphere in which every organism, from animals to plants to microbes is lethally adapted to kill humans. Pyrrus is quite literally a deathworld and Jason seeks to test his mettle against its many dangers. Gambling is not just his profession, it's also representative of his character. He's a risk taker by nature and the deadliness of Pyrrus intrigues him on almost a primal level. 

The planet's settlers survive there only through constant training and militarized discipline. Despite this, enough of them still die that their numbers continue to dwindle. Consequently, Jason becomes intrigued by why the planet is so uniformly hostile and why the colony is failing despite the extreme measures it has taken. While doing so, Jason discovers a second group of human colonists, the “grubbers,” who live in the wilderness in relative harmony with Pyrrus. Unlike the city dwellers, whom they call "junkmen," the grubbers use psionic “talkers” to coexist with the planet’s life and kill only when necessary. Jason then comes to realize that the biosphere of Pyrrus itself is psionic and reacting collectively to the behavior of the colonists who have settled on it. Thus, around the city, all life is telepathically unified in hostility, responding to their constant aggression with coordinated, evolving attacks. Attempts by the city dwellers to destroy the source of this hostility only worsen the situation, confirming that the conflict is systemic rather than merely localized.

Having discovered this, Jason theorizes that Pyrrus is not inherently a deathworld but has only become such in response to human attitudes. The city dwellers' indiscriminate violence has triggered the planet’s ecosystem into treating them as an existential threat, while the grubbers’ more balanced approach allows a degree of coexistence. Jason's solution is, therefore, not technological but cultural. He proposes the gradual integration of the two groups of colonists, with exchange of knowledge and a shift toward living in harmony with the planet's environment. In this way, Jason offers them a path by which Pyrrus can cease to be a deathworld and become a home better suited to human life.

As I said, it's pretty easy to see what this book inspired in Traveller. First, there's Jason dinAlt himself, who's an archetypal space-going adventurer, driven by a desire to challenge himself against whatever the galaxy throws at him. Second, there's the low-level psionic abilities, something Traveller has included since the beginning. Third, and probably more importantly, there's the mystery surrounding the deadly nature of Pyrrus and its environment. Traveller adventures are full of planets like this, where its society, history, or environment (or some combination of them) are presented as problems to be solved. Taken together, Deathworld strikes me as having obvious connections to Marc Miller's masterpiece.

On a personal note, I came to Deathworld and its sequels because of having read Harrison's other series of pulp sci-fi romps featuring the Stainless Steel Rat. Though different in both their content and overt style, the two series share certain traits, most notably their social satire and use of Esperanto. Though I can't be certain, I believe it was one or the other of these series that first introduced me to the constructed language and I've been an admirer of it ever since. That's why Thousand Suns employs Esperanto as a stand-in for the universal Terran language of the setting. Regardless, Deathworld is a quick, fun read and worth your time if you can find a copy. It's short and unpretentious, both of which I consider cardinal virtues in a literary age replete with their opposites.