Wesley Britton's Blog - Posts Tagged "the-hostage-of-zir"

As you can see from the “Analysis” section below,L. Sprague De Camp’s Viagens/Krishna SERIES was intended to be entertaining, full of action and humor. After all these years, I still hesitate to describe the books as classic or indispensable reading. Still, there’s a readership for these old-fashioned adventures, and that audience might include you.

THE VIAGENS/KRISHNA SERIES
Cultural clashes between Earthmen and Krishnans result in heroes' battles against Smugglers, searches for lost humans, and rescues of women in jeopardy
Authors: L. Sprague De Camp (1907-2000) and Catherine Crook De Camp (1907-2000)

Location: Planets Earth, Krishna, travels between
Time of plot: Twenty-second century
First published: The Rogue Queen (1951), The Continent Makers and Other Tales of the Viagens (1953), Cosmic Manhunt (1954), The Tower of Zanid (1958), The Search for Zei (1962), The Virgin and the Wheels (1962, 1940), The Hand of Zei (1963), The Hostage of Zir (1977), The Bones of Zora (1983), The Swords of Zinjaban (1991)

The Plot: The Rogue Queen takes place on the planet Niond where female worker Iroedh meets an Earth scientist who is visiting her caste-bound society. Iroedh is a social outcast and falls in love with a male drone named Antis. Iroedth and the Earthman rescue Antis from a scheduled execution, and they wander as outcast rogues. They learn their community's diet inhibits sex hormones, so Iroedth eats meat and becomes fully functional. She brings this news home, and her community realizes their old caste system must crumble.
The Continent Makers is a collection of short stories and the novelette, "The Continent Makers" which is centered on Gordon Graham, a geophysicists helping design a new continent. He meets Jeru-Bhetiru, a beautiful Oirian, and falls in love. Alien agents capture the two, seeking information from Graham. He escapes and traces the gang to Ascension Island. He frees Jeru, destroys the gang, stops an alien invasion, but looses the girl.
In The Cosmic Manhunt Victor Hasselborg goes to Krishna to find a merchant's eloping daughter. Adventurer Anthony Fallon, her betrothed, becomes the corrupt king of Zamba attempting to smuggle guns against the embargo. Hasselborg kidnaps the girl, returns to Earth, and Fallon is imprisoned.
In The Tower of Zanid, Earth archeologist Julian Fredro hires Fallon after his prison term to guide him to an ancient Tower guarded by the Yeshites. Fallon also accepts a contract to spy on the Yeshites. Disguised as Yeshite priests, Fallon and Fredro enter the Tower, discovering an armament factory. The spies are caught, escape, and join an invasion of the Tower. The Yeshites lose and sign a treaty.
The Virgin and The Wheels are two novels, The Virgin related to this series. On Krishna, Brian Kirwan and Gottried Bahr rescue American missionary Althea Merrick from Gorchakov who has forced marriage on her and bungles raping her. The three escape to a primitive island. Gorchakov pursues them, a battle ensues, and Yuruzh, a native prince, kills Gorchakow and rescues Alethea. The two leave as lovers.
The Wheels tells of lawyer Alister Park who discovers he is shifting between identities and an alternate reality called Vinland. His primary other-self is a powerful Bishop Scoglund of Vinland. In these two roles, Park becomes Vinland's Secretary of War and orchestrates political maneuvers until his lawyer-self is killed. As Bishop Scoglund, he presides over his own funeral.
In The Search for Zei, Earthman Dirk Barnevelt goes to Krishna to find missing scientist Igor Shtain. He learns Shtain is a hostage of the Sunqar pirates. Barnevelt disguises himself as a Krishna warrior and travels to Qiriv, a royal matriarchal kingdom. The Sunqar pirates raid the palace and kidnap the princess Zei. The queen commissions Barnevelt to ransom Zei, and he enters the Sunqar stronghold where he finds Shtain. A fight breaks out, and Barnevelt and Zei escape, pursued by the pirates. Barnevelt and Zei are mutually attracted, but are of different species, and Zei's royal status precludes permanent relationships.
In The Hand of Zei, Barnevelt and Zei hike inland and find her homeland. The Queen rewards Barnevelt and makes him commander of an allied assault on the Sunqar. Barnevelt rescues Shtain and defeats the pirates. He learns Zei too is human, a child adopted so her mother could retain her throne. The two marry and overturn the social order.
The Hostage of Zir is Fergus Reith, a tour guide assigned a group of boorish Earthers on Krishna. A rebel leader kidnaps them to bargain for arms. Reith escapes, frees his group, and learns his quarreling tourists will be deported.
In The Bones of Zora, Morat and Foltz, two quarreling paleontologists, dig for specimens of Krishna's past. Fergus Reith, Morat's guide, finds his ex-wife, Alicia, held captive by Foltz. He rescues her, and the three escape an attack by the enraged Foltz. A priest cult captures Reith and Morat, Alicia rescues them, but pirates capture the three. They escape, Morat and Alicia leave for Earth, and Reith prepares for his next tour. Twenty-two years later, the three meet again in The Swords of Zinjaban. Alicia is an executive for a visiting movie crew, and contracts Reith and Monat to assist them. Reith and Alicia help the movie crew find locations and bail them out of misadventures with Krishnans, wild beasts, and misplaced sexual advances on both Reith and Alicia. They meet the reformed Anthony Fallon while attempting to reconcile. A Krishnan leader kidnaps Alicia, and Reith and Fallon rescue her. Reith and Alicia decide to re-marry. The movie crew battles angry Krishnans, the movie director cheats Reith out of his pay, but the wedded couple establishes a new life.

Analysis: De Camp's purpose is simple entertainment, each story a plot-driven adventure described in imaginative, carefully researched detail. Humor adds a level of satire, especially in the twist-ending short stories in the Continent Makers collection which contains the 1949 "The Animal-Cracker Plot," the first story of what some call the "Viagens Interplanatarians" series. Other humorous stories in the volume include "The Inspector's Teeth," "Summer Wear," "Finished," "The Galon Whistle," " Git Along!," and "Perpetual Motion." In The Swords of Zinjaban, the best developed novel in the series, situational comedy adds much interest to an otherwise episodic, repetitive adventure. In most volumes, usually novels combining two previously published short stories, however, there is little more than wry commentary on either human or Krishnan culture except regarding inter-species sex and other conflicts between differing cultures.
Critics frequently cite Rogue Queen, the one Viagens novel not taking place on Krishna, alongside his 1939 Let Darkness Fall as being his best work, establishing the mythos, tone, and techniques he would follow in later books. Krishna, Earth, and the other planets in the series provide De Camp a wide range of settings and conflict situations that allowed him to use the elements of his previous fantasy work in a science-fiction environment. This is particularly noticeable on the barbaric Krishna with its medieval civilization of priests and priestesses, secretive cults, mysterious towers, and primitively-armed kingdoms. But most books tend to repeat familiar patterns of structure, plot, and character development. Most stories are a combination of Earth detectives seeking missing colleagues who encounter Krishnans attempting to circumvent the arms embargo on Krishna. Often, women are placed in sexual jeopardy and are rescued by the hero, giving the stories and erotic undercurrent.
While lead characters have their own idiosyncrasies, most are interchangeable with virtually identical personalities. Frequently, introverted Earthers travel to Krishna, disguise themselves as Krishnans, become heroes, and begin new lives on Krishna. De Camps's characters are often either independent detectives who are fast-thinking and physically adept or greedy con-artists who are clever and often escape justice. With the exception of Fergus Reith, the lead character in the final three adventures, heroes typically appear in two novels, minor supporting players appear throughout the series providing the loose linkage between the books. Many books with recurring characters can be considered a series-within-a-series, or, like the Zei books, combined into one volume as in the 1978 illustrated Hands of Zei which fused The Search for Zei and The Hands of Zei. In The Swords of Zinjaban, De Camp brings together all his favorite characters and plotlines, providing, if not the series final culmination, at least a volume tying up all loose ends leaving the setting open for totally new adventures.
Critics tend to discuss De Camp's detailed, sensory, and realistic environments in his over ninety books, particularly his adherence to real-time vs. subjective time space travel. As his friend Isaac Asimov noted, De Camp does not believe in the idea of hyperspace intergalactic spaceships. As his purpose since the 1930's was to create escapist fiction, his long career is noted more for his descriptive style than for thoughtful substance except in his non-fiction works on history, science, and biography. His considerable interest in the development of technology, detailed in his Ancient Engineers: Technology, and Invention from the Earliest Times to the Renaissance (1987) and his studies in ancient myth, developed in his Great Cities of the Ancient World: From Thebes to Constantinople (1990) provide much of the detail, ambiance, and sense of authenticity in his Krishna books.