The Terran State (Part II) by James Maliszewski
Further Thoughts on Interstellar Governance
Read on Substack
Monday, March 30, 2026
Pulp Science Fiction Library: Demon Princes
A good case in point is Jack Vance. Vance is a paladin of Appendix N, being one of only a handful of writers Gary Gygax singled out as being one of the "most immediate influences" upon his vision of Dungeon & Dragons. Of course, Gygax did so for Vance's tales of the Dying Earth, whose magic system he adopted for the game, and not for his science fiction tales, of which there are a great many – indeed, far more than his fantasy stories.
Among the most celebrated of Vance's sci-fi works is his "Demon Princes" series, the first of which, Star King, was serialized in the December 1963 and February 1964 issues of Galaxy Magazine before being published by Berkeley Books later in '64. The first three books in the five-book series appeared fairly quickly, with The Killing Machine also appearing in 1964 and The Palace of Love in 1967. The fourth and fifth books, The Face and The Book of Dreams, did not appear until more than a decade later, in 1979 and 1981 respectively, which was right around the time I first entered the hobby of roleplaying.
However, I wouldn't take much note of any of these books until several years into my introduction to Traveller. That places it somewhere in the vicinity of 1982 or '83, depending on when it was that I first acquired Citizens of the Imperium. That supplement, along with 1001 Characters, is notable for having included Traveller stats for a selection of literary SF characters, ranging from John Carter of Mars to Slippery Jim diGriz to Dominic Flandry. At the time, I already knew many of these names from novels and stories I'd read. Others, though, were new to me and they sent me off to the local public library on a quest.
Among those unfamiliar names would be that of Kirth Gersen. Citizens of the Imperium associates him specifically with the second book in the series, The Killing Machine, but also mentions it as part of a five-book "Demon Princes" series. To my youthful mind, "Demon Princes" didn't sound like the title for a science fiction series, so I was initially confused as to why it was included alongside more well-known pillars of SF. Likewise, I had not yet read any of Vance's space operas, so my confusion was only heightened. Fortunately for me, I eventually got around to tracking down Star King and its four sequels. I enjoyed them so much that I sought out more of Vance's science fiction and the rest is history.
The titular Demon Princes of the series are not supernatural entities by five interstellar crime bosses, against whom Gersen wishes to exact revenge for their past in bringing ruin upon his home planet. Having been trained by his grandfather for this purpose, Gersen dedicates his life to hunting down them down so that justice may be done. Each of the five novels follows his pursuit of one of these Demon Princes. Though the novels include plenty of action, one of the things that's most interesting about them – or at least is to me – is how much investigation and infiltration they include. Gersen's efforts to locate his quarry, some of whom have gone to great efforts to conceal their identities, is every bit as central to Vance's stories as is dealing with them once they've been found.
Though linked, each novel presents a largely self-contained exploration of a different world or culture, often shaped by the personality of the Demon Prince Gersen is presently seeking. Consequently, the series, like so much of Vance's oeuvre, is a picaresque adventure through strange societies with elaborate social codes and fragmented political systems where justice is personal rather than institutional. That makes Gersen’s quest more than just a hunt for enemies; it becomes an extended engagement with questions of identity, culture, and obsession in the far future, all of which play to Vance's strengths as a writer and storyteller.
Prior to writing this post, it had been decades since I last read any of the Demon Princes novels and that's a shame. Like so many of the books that inspired Traveller, they're fast-paced, pulpy adventures filled with quirky and memorable characters and equally quirky and memorable situations. They're not deep scientific speculations about a possible future and that's OK. Sometimes, you just want to read a fun, engaging novel about one man's quest to bring justice to some bad guys who deserve what's coming to them. In that respect, the Demon Princes series delivers and does so enjoyably.
Friday, March 27, 2026
By Any Other Name (Part II)
A couple of years ago, I wrote a post in which I briefly touched on the variety of names by which the Game Master or referee is known in older roleplaying games. Since I'm currently knee-deep in revising Thousand Suns, which uses the term GM, I found my mind wandering a bit back to this topic, trying to remember what alternate terms the RPGs of my youth employed.
A quick check through my library revealed the following, but, as ever, I am certain I missed some important ones. Feel free to fill in any obvious blanks in the comments. I have intentionally not included games whose term is Dungeon Master, Game Master, or referee, since these aren't especially noteworthy.
- Ars Magica: Storyguide
- Call of Cthulhu: Keeper of Arcane Lore
- Chill: Chill Master
- Ghostbusters: Ghostmaster
- Golden Heroes: Script Supervisor
- Marvel Super Heroes: Judge
- Skyrealms of Jorune: Sholari
- Space Opera: StarMaster
- Star Ace: Campaign Master
- Starfaring: Galaxy Master
- Star Trek (Heritage): Mission Master
- The Fantasy Trip: Fantasy Master
- The Morrow Project: Project Director
- Timemaster: Continuum Master
- Toon: Animator
- Top Secret: Administrator
As I'm said, I'm sure there are others, especially after 1990 or thereabouts. Still, I must confess I was a bit surprised by how few I could identify. My recollection was that, back in the day, every roleplaying game had its own unique name for the referee, but I suppose I was mistaken.
Thursday, March 26, 2026
Science Fiction is Fantasy
I've mentioned before that one of my favorite What's New with Phil & Dixie strips appeared in issue #65 of Dragon (September 1982). In it, Phil Foglio muses on the surprising similarities between fantasy and science fiction. It's a great comic and one I can still, more than forty years later, quote almost verbatim. While Foglio probably wasn't being entirely serious, one of the reasons the strip's humor lands is that there is more than a little truth to his flippant comparisons of these two supposedly distinct genres.
As a lifelong science fiction fan – take a drink! – I've observed how often many of my fellow fans have advanced the notion that science fiction is somehow more “serious” or at least more plausible than fantasy. There seems to be this unspoken assumption that science fiction possesses some kind of intellectual legitimacy that fantasy lacks, perhaps based on the idea that spaceships and robots are, in some meaningful way, closer to reality than dragons and sorcery. I understand the logic behind this perspective, but I simply don't find it convincing.
I obviously say this without any dislike of, let alone malice for, science fiction – quite the contrary. I'm a big fan of the genre, probably a bigger fan, in fact, than I am of fantasy. That's why I increasingly feel that the distinction between the two genres as they're commonly understood rests on a foundation that is far shakier than we'd like to admit. Science fiction, despite its name, is not really about science. It's simply another mode of storytelling and one that's rarely more plausible than fantasy. The difference between the two genres lies not in what is possible, but in what we are willing to believe.
To understand better what I mean here, it helps to take a look at the history of imaginative literature over the centuries. Human beings have always told stories about things that do not exist, whether they're spirits, enchanted forests, utopian societies, lost worlds, or journeys beyond the horizon of the known. These stories served many purposes, often religious, philosophical, and moral, but they all had one thing in common: they evoked the marvelous.
In the past, the marvelous was typically framed in explicitly supernatural terms, such as miracles or magic. These were the explanatory frameworks available to premodern people. A flying chariot was thus the purview of the sun god and immortality the product of drinking from a magic spring. To people living in earlier eras, that was explanation enough. However, as the intellectual climate started to change in the 16th and 17th centuries, the language of the marvelous changed with it. The old supernatural explanations lost their cultural authority, at least among the educated. In their place arose the new explanatory tools of reason, science, and technology.
Science fiction is, in the realm of imaginative literature, the heir to this cultural transformation. It takes the same fundamental human desire to imagine worlds beyond our own and to transcend our mortal limitations and clothes it in the language of Science. Instead of magic carpets, we have grav belts; instead of philosopher’s stones, we have nanotechnology; and so on. Yet, in most cases, these speculative future technologies are not meaningfully more plausible than their fantastical counterparts.
Faster-than-light travel, for example, is a staple of science fiction because it allows characters to visit other star systems on a human timescale. However, unless our understanding of physics is very wrong, FTL is almost certainly impossible. The same is true, in different ways, of many other common elements of sci-fi, such as artificial gravity, sentient robots, or force fields, never mind the routine colonization of distant planets.
I feel that we readily accept all these sci-fi concepts not because they are in any sense likely, but because they are framed in the language of science. That language carries cultural authority and that authority lends them the illusion of plausibility, even when the underlying ideas are, in fact, no more plausible than a wizard’s spell. The key difference between science fiction and fantasy, then, is not that one is "realistic" and the other is not. It is that they draw upon different sets of cultural assumptions.
In a society where belief in magic or the supernatural is widespread, stories of sorcery don't feel implausible. In a society shaped by centuries of scientific advances, stories framed in technological terms feel more credible, even when they stretch (or outright ignore) the limits of current knowledge. Most people today no longer believe in fairies, but we do believe, often without much reflection, that Science will one day solve nearly any problem. Consequently, we assume that, for example, interstellar travel or artificial intelligence are not merely imaginable, but inevitable.
This assumption is rarely examined, being simply an article of faith in the religion of Progress. Science fiction, at least it's popularly understood, taps into this faith. It reassures us that the future will be wondrous, because the universe will yield its secrets and our ingenuity will use those secrets to overcome all obstacles. Even when SF presents darker visions of the future, it still does so within the same overall framework that depicts technology as powerful, transformative, and, perhaps most important of all, central to human destiny.
Fantasy, by contrast, draws on different symbols, those derived from mythology and folklore. Its marvels are overtly impossible and, therefore, easier for contemporary audiences to dismiss as “mere” imagination. Nevertheless, the imaginative function of the two genres is remarkably similar. That's why I hope this post won't be read as a critique of science fiction, but rather as a celebration of the kinship between science fiction and fantasy.
Science fiction is not, in my opinion, diminished by being understood as a form of fantasy. On the contrary, it's elevated by placing it within a long and venerable tradition of imaginative storytelling that stretches back to mankind's earliest myths. It is one of the ways people today continue to grapple with the unknown, express our hopes and fears about the future, and explore questions that lie beyond the reach of empirical inquiry. Likewise, fantasy need not be defended as if it were secretly “realistic.” Its value lies precisely in its freedom from any such constraints.
Both genres, in their different ways, encourage us to imagine the world differently. They create spaces in which we can ask “what if?” without being bound too tightly to what actually is. If I can be a little mawkish, I'd day that fantasy, broadly defined, gives form to our dreams, our anxieties, and our aspirations. Whether the stories exploring these subjects is expressed through the language of magic or technology is, in the end, a secondary matter.
None of this is to say that science fiction cannot engage with real science or that it has not, at times, anticipated genuine technological developments. Anyone who's read science fiction, especially in its formative years, know that it has indeed done both and often done so brilliantly. However, I think it's worth remembering that, as a genre, it is no more bound by reality than fantasy. Its most enduringly popular images, like FTL starships and intelligent robots, are not predictions. They are myths for a technological age. To insist otherwise is to mistake the trappings of science fiction for its substance.
Wednesday, March 25, 2026
Retrospective: The Argon Gambit
Today, I make good on a promise I made two weeks ago to write a retrospective on the other adventure included in GDW’s Double Adventure 3 for Traveller, The Argon Gambit. Compared to its companion, Death Station, it rarely receives much attention, even among dedicated Traveller fans. That’s understandable to a degree, since it is more closely tied to the Third Imperium setting and therefore less easily adapted to other contexts. Even so, The Argon Gambit is a solid scenario that plays to Traveller’s strengths as a more “serious” science fiction RPG. Rereading it, I was struck by how influential it must have been on me when I was younger, as its overall structure closely resembles many of the scenarios I’ve written or refereed over the years.
The Argon Gambit is very explicitly set in the Solomani Rim, far removed from the familiar Spinward Marches. This sector is defined primarily by human conflicts, especially the ideological tensions between the Solomani and the Third Imperium. Solomani belief in the superiority of Terran humans casts a long shadow here, shaping the sector's politics in ways that The Argon Gambit exploits for their adventure potential.
In terms of structure, the adventure begins simply, in a way that familiar, almost clichéd, for longtime players of Traveller. The characters, in need of money, are hired to steal a set of genealogical documents from a villa in the titular city of Argon on the planet Janosz. Like all such jobs, it appears straightforward at first, but, as it turns out, the documents in question are being used for blackmail and their contents carry explosive political implications, since the Solomani Party places great emphasis on the genetic "purity" of its members.
After the initial job, The Argon Gambit becomes a political mystery involving a three-way struggle within the local Solomani Party. A hardline supremacist, a moderate rival, and an ostensibly neutral power broker all maneuver for advantage. Behind them lurks a deeper game. The patron who hires the characters is himself an Imperial agent, seeking to manipulate events so that both major factions are discredited, leaving his own puppet in control.
It's a terrific set-up for an adventure that could only really work within the context of GDW's Third Imperium setting. That's both a blessing and curse, depending on how wedded one is to the game's official setting. For me, it was great, but I can easily imagine people less enthused with the setting finding it too obscure or focused on setting-specific minutiae to be useful. That's why I suspect The Argon Gambit doesn't get as much love as Death Station.
At the same time, the adventure, designed by Frank Chadwick, makes excellent use of the classic Traveller adventure components, like rumors, which it categorizes by source and ties to the characters’ backgrounds (e.g. Navy, TAS, noble title, etc.). These rumors are essential to understanding the situation on Janosz, though their presentation is frustrating. The referee must piece together the scenario much as the players do, only really understanding the full scope of what's happening after reading explanatory notes at its very end. That's not a problem as such, but it means the referee probably needs to read the adventure several times before attempting to run it (yes, yes, I know, that's only common sense ...).
More interesting, I think, is the moral ambiguity of the scenario. Everyone involved is compromised in some way and acting according to their own best interests. There's no obvious "right" way to proceed. The characters begin as pawns in someone else’s scheme, but, as they uncover more of what's actually happening, they, in turn, have the opportunity to bring about a conclusion that they think is best and the adventure passes no judgments on that. Consequently, it's a very open-ended and heavily reliant not just player choice but referee implementation. This is the kind of adventure that could kick off an entire campaign – or complicate an existing one.
It's a shame that The Argon Gambit isn't better known and appreciated. As I said at the beginning of this post, I hadn't realized the extent of its influence over my own personal style and preferences as a referee until I re-read it in preparation for writing this. I tend to include lots of moral ambiguity and compromised figures in my games. While I don't favor "edgy" or "dark" content, I likewise shy away from clear "good guys" and "bad guys," preferring NPCs whose motivations and actions are more muddled and, dare I say, human. I'm not sure I picked these tendencies up solely from The Argon Gambit, but there's no question the adventure played a role in my doing so, hence my continued affection for it after more than four decades.
Tuesday, March 24, 2026
REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "Dragonchess"
Issue #100 of Dragon (August 1985) was a milestone for the periodical, as well as for me. For the magazine, it was a portentous number to use as an occasion for celebration. For me, though I didn't know it at the time, it represented the end of an era. The same month that this was released was the last time I attended a "games day" hosted by a public library. It may have even been the last such gathering my local public libraries sponsored, since I don't ever recall hearing of others. Even if it wasn't, I remember well that my last one was a rather underwhelming affair, with far fewer participants than previous ones and most of those who did attend were much younger than I. There weren't nearly as many teenagers, let alone college students or adults, and that disappointed me.
From my perspective, it seemed as if the demographics of the hobby had changed over night and I didn't like the change, especially now that I was one of the "older kids" I looked up to when I was younger. In retrospect, it's obvious to me how hypocritical I was back then, wanting to distance myself from the 10 year-olds clutching their Elmore-covered Basic Sets the way I had done with Sutherland-covered one a mere six years before. But six years is a long time in the life of a child and, as a teenager, I wanted no reminders of my younger self. Thanks goodness that the teenagers of my younger years did not feel the same way!
There was more to it than adolescent snobbery, though. The hobby really did seem to be changing by late 1985 and, while I was still as keenly interested in it as ever, it became much harder to find people with whom to play and, for the most part, the new RPGs coming out held much less appeal to me than those published in the years before. Issue #100 wasn't my last issue of Dragon, but I did let me subscription lapse not long thereafter; it would never again play as central a role in my connection to and understanding of the hobby after that.
The funny thing is that, for all the fanfare surrounding issue #100, it wasn't a particularly memorable issue. The only things I still remember about it are the adventure set in 20th century London and Gary Gygax's article (and accompanying Greyhawk short story) about a chess variant called "dragonchess." Dragonchess is a three-dimensional version of chess, with boards representing the sky, the land, and the underworld. I'd known about 3D chess variants ever since I'd watched Star Trek in reruns in the mid-70s, but this was, I think, the first time I'd ever seen the rules for such a game – and by Gary Gygax no less! Needless to say I fell completely in love with the idea of playing dragonchess.
There were, of course, two problems with this. First, and perhaps most importantly, I am a terrible chess player. I can barely hold my own in a regular game; learning and mastering a variant that uses three boards at once was almost certainly going to be beyond me. Second, to play dragonchess, one must assemble the boards for oneself and that, too, requires skills I did not possess. This didn't stop me from trying, of course, but I utterly failed to do so. Ultimately, I gave up the idea of having three boards stacked on top of one another and instead opted for having three boards placed side by side. This required me – and the poor souls I goaded into playing with me – to keep track of which squares on one board were "over" or "under" others. That was hardly insurmountable but it was nevertheless trying, particularly when one considers how many other aspects of standard chess Gygax changed in his variant.
Dragonchess had a much larger number of pieces – 42 per side, consisting of 15 different types. Likewise, many of these pieces had unique moves unlike those in standard chess. Furthermore, some pieces behaved differently depending on which board they were currently situated, while others were bound to a single board. The object of dragonchess is the same as regular chess, so that is at least familiar. However, the larger number of pieces and types, not to mention the presence of three dimensions, made it much more difficult to grasp. That's not a criticism of the game itself, which looked like it'd be a lot of fun when played by two opponents who are both skilled at standard chess and well acquainted with the unusual aspects of dragonchess.
Alas, I was neither of those things and, while enthusiastic for the game, I was not very good at teaching its rules to others. Add to it that I didn't have a "proper" board and it's little wonder I never got the chance to play many games of dragonchess. Nowadays, I look back on my efforts with more than a little embarrassment – the follies of youth! One of several that this issue of Dragon brings to memory.
Monday, March 23, 2026
Pulp Science Fiction Library: The Rebel Worlds
The Flandry stories have long been favorites of mine. I was probably introduced to them through Traveller, whose Third Imperium setting borrows liberally from Anderson's "Technic" future history featuring Flandry and his predecessors, Nicholas van Rijn and David Falkayn. Though I fell in love with these tales for their espionage-inflected action, what ultimately solidified their place in my affections was their understated melancholy. Flandry, as an officer of the Imperial Navy, is duty-bound to defend a sclerotic empire he knows is dying because he believes the alternative – the Long Night – is worse. Something about that spoke to me, even in my teen years, and, the older I get, the more it does so.
This theme is central to Anderson's 1969 novel of Flandry, The Rebel Worlds. The novel begins with Flandry being dispatched to Alpha Crucis sector to deal with the titular rebellion brewing there. The uprising began after Admiral Hugh McCormac, a respected and decorated officer, uncovers corruption abuses by the imperial governor of the sector. McCormac attempts to remove the governor, as is his right, but is instead arrested, along with his wife. The admiral eventually escapes custody and becomes the leader of a growing insurgency, not just against the corrupt governor but against the Empire itself.
Flandry is ordered by Naval Intelligence to deal with this problem, but, as he investigates conditions in the sector, he finds that the rebels’ grievances are legitimate and that imperial rule there has indeed become exploitative and short-sighted. Complicating matters further, he becomes personally entangled with people connected to the rebellion, including the admiral’s wife, with whom he falls in love. Despite his sympathy for the rebels, Flandry ultimately concludes that allowing the revolt to succeed would weaken the Empire at a critical moment and hasten its ultimate collapse, an outcome he cannot countenance. He therefore works, with reluctance and increasing cynicism, to undermine the rebellion and restore imperial control, even as he recognizes that any victory he achieves for the Empire is only temporary but comes at the cost of justice.
What I most enjoy about The Rebel Worlds is Anderson’s refusal to grant either Flandry or the reader a moral "escape hatch." The rebellion is justified; there is no doubt about that. Admiral McCormac is an honorable man responding to genuine abuses and his grievances against the Empire are real. Flandry himself recognizes this. Even so, he also believes that the consequences of successful revolt, even one undertaken for the "right" reasons, would serve as a catalyst for the Empire's collapse. The novel thus presents its central conflict as being between competing goods rather between something so simple as "good" and "evil."
This is the thematic core of the Flandry series. The Terran Empire is thoroughly corrupt and declining, but it still serves as a bulwark against the coming dark age of fragmentation and loss. Flandry is under no illusions about the Empire’s flaws. Indeed, the tragedy of the character lies in his clear-eyed understanding of them. Nevertheless, he chooses to defend it, not out of loyalty, let alone optimism, but because he judges the alternative to be worse. His is a calculus of decline, where every action preserves a flawed order at the cost of perpetuating its injustices.
That tension gives The Rebel Worlds its melancholy. Flandry’s wit, his indulgence in pleasure, even his romantic entanglement with McCormac's wife serve as a way of enduring the burden he carries. He succeeds in crushing the rebellion, but the victory is hollow. Because of his actions, the Empire endures for a little while longer. The Long Night is only postponed rather than prevented. That's enough for Flandry – or at least that's what he keeps telling himself in both this story and the others Anderson write about him.
If I may be so bold, I'd argue that The Rebel Worlds is about tragic responsibility. Though carrying himself with great panache, Flandry is not a hero who saves the day. Rather, he is a man who kicks the can of interstellar collapse down the road a little farther in the hope that, at the very least, he will never experience it during his lifetime. For Flandry, there are no clean choices, only necessary ones. Anderson's talent as a writer is that he doesn't cheer this or present it in a cool or edgy way. It's ultimately sad and tragic and that's probably why it continues to resonate with me after all these years.
Friday, March 20, 2026
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