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.

RIP: Harry Harrison (1925-2012)

Harry Harrison, science fiction writer and author of the Stainless Steel Rat series (about which I've written before), has died at the age of 87. I'd be lying to say that Harrison was one of my favorite SF writers -- his worldview was, for the most part, very different than my own -- but I nevertheless have a great fondness for him, so news of his death saddens me. My fondness comes from the fact that Harrison didn't take himself or science fiction too seriously. Most of his literary output was satirical or contained elements of satire, both of sci-fi and of the real world. For that reason alone, I think he's a writer deserving of approbation. My fondness also derives from Harrison's championing of the international auxiliary language of Esperanto, an adolescent fixation of mine that I was delighted to see represented in his stories. He will be missed.

Pulp Science Fiction Library: The Stainless Steel Rat

Alongside Poul Anderson's Sir Dominic Flandry, one of the longest-running characters from the Golden Age of Science Fiction is James Bolivar diGriz, also known as "Slippery Jim" or "the Stainless Steel Rat." The latter nickname is also the title of the story in which he debuted, published in the December 1957 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Harrison would, in 1961, also use the title for a novel that contained the original 1957 story, its 1960 sequel (The Misplaced Battleship), alongside completely new material. Over the course of the next five decades, the Rat would appear in a total of twelve novels, the most recent of which was published in 2010.

In the future world in which Slippery Jim diGriz exists, crime is practically non-existent thanks to a combination of genetic screening and social control. The few malcontents who do exist are therefore aberrations, the most talented of which make life extremely interesting for law enforcement officers, who spend most of their time dealing with petty crimes like burglary and shoplifting. DiGriz himself explains the situation -- and himself -- in this way:

That is almost the full extent of crime in our organized, dandified society. Ninety-nine per cent of it, let's say. It is that last and vital one per cent that keeps the police departments in business. That one per cent is me, and a few others like me, a handful of men scattered around the galaxy. Theoretically we can't exist, and if we do exist we can't operate - but we do. We are the rats in the wainscoting of society - we operate outside of their barriers and outside of their rules. Society had more rats when the rules were looser, just as the old wooden buildings had more rats than the concrete buildings that came later. But they still had rats. Now that society is all ferroconcrete and stainless steel there are fewer gaps between the joints, and it takes a smart rat to find them. A stainless steel rat is right at home in this environment.

It is a proud and lonely thing to be a stainless steel rat - and it is the greatest experience in the galaxy if you can get away with it. The sociological experts can't seem to agree why we exist, some even doubt that we do. The most widely accepted theory says that we are victims of delayed psychological disturbance that shows no evidence in child-hood when it can be detected and corrected and only appears later in life. I have naturally given a lot of thought to the topic and I don't hold with that idea at all.

A few years back I wrote a small book on the subject - under a nom de plume of course - that was rather well received. My theory is that the aberration is a philosophical one, not a psychological one. At a certain stage the realisation striked through that one must either live outside of society's bonds or die of absolute boredom. There is no future or freedom in the circumscribed life and the only other life is complete rejection of the rules. There is no longer room for the soldier of fortune or the gentleman adventurer who can live both within and outside of society. Today it is all or nothing. To save my own sanity I chose the nothing.

The Rat is thus a professional criminal in a world where such people are practically non-existent -- but not completely so. As he soon finds out, there are other people like him and the role they play in society is quite different than the one he chose for himself. I won't spoil the story by saying any more, except that Harrison creates a terrific vehicle by which the Rat can continue to have exciting adventures that are more than just endless con games and bank robberies. He also provides himself with plenty of opportunities for satire, social criticism, and philosophy in the best traditions of classic science fiction. I quite often disagree with the points of view Harrison advances in the Stainless Steel Rat stories, but I can't deny that he spins a good tale. Likewise, Jim diGriz makes for a great protagonist, as charming and self-rationalizing as any a lovable rogue in pulp literature. Plus, he's a native speaker of Esperanto, so what's not to love?

The Travellers

In general, I'm not a fan of "gaming comics." With the exception of Wormy, which, in my opinion, isn't really a gaming comic anyway, I find most of them decidedly un-funny, primarily, I think, because their creators don't really get the fine distinctions between humor, satire, and irony that are necessary to make comics of this sort work.

Mark Harrison's The Travellers, which appeared in the pages of White Dwarf between 1983 and 1986, is a rare example to the contrary. Based, as its name would suggest, on GDW's classic SF RPG, Traveller, The Travellers tells the story of the five-man crew of the trading vessel Osprey, as they go from world to world in search of easy credits. What I really like about the comic, though, is the way that Harrison manages to capture the feel of what it was like to play Traveller in the early 80s without being self-conscious about it. The Osprey's adventures are comedies of errors, fueled by equal parts greed and violence, and filled with characters, places, and situations ripped bleeding from every SF novel, TV show, and movie within easy reach. That's how I remember actually playing the game, even if my aspirations were often much higher.

I'd never make the claim that The Travellers is high art, but it's a gaming comic, so I take that as given. It is, however, a fascinating window on the past, one that reveals a lot about the culture surrounding one of my favorite RPGs. And, besides, "Gavin's Swan Song" is a joy to behold.