Lallia

Dumarest of Terra #6

by E.C. Tubb

Lallia (Dumarest Series) Tubb, E. C.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Space Opera, Science Fiction Fantasy

116 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Edwin Charles Tubb was a writer of science fiction, fantasy and western novels. He published over 140 novels and 230 short stories and novellas, and is best known for The Dumarest Saga (US collective title: Dumarest of Terra) an epic science-fiction saga set in the far future.

Much of Tubb's work has been written under pseudonyms including Gregory Kern, Carl Maddox, Alan Guthrie, Eric Storm and George Holt. He has used 58 pen names over five decades of writing although some of these were publishers' house names also used by other writers: Volsted Gridban (along with John Russell Fearn), Gill Hunt (with John Brunner and Dennis Hughes), King Lang (with George Hay and John W Jennison), Roy Sheldon (with H. J. Campbell) and Brian Shaw. Tubb's Charles Grey alias was solely his own and acquired a big following in the early 1950s.

An avid reader of pulp science-fiction and fantasy in his youth, Tubb found that he had a particular talent as a writer of stories in that genre when his short story 'No Short Cuts' was published in New Worlds magazine in 1951. He opted for a full-time career as a writer and soon became renowned for the speed and diversity of his output.

Tubb contributed to many of the science fiction magazines of the 1950s including Futuristic Science Stories, Science Fantasy, Nebula and Galaxy Science Fiction. He contributed heavily to Authentic Science Fiction editing the magazine for nearly two years, from February 1956 until it folded in October 1957. During this time, he found it so difficult to find good writers to contribute to the magazine, that he often wrote most of the stories himself under a variety of pseudonyms: one issue of Authentic was written entirely by Tubb, including the letters column.

His main work in the science fiction genre, the Dumarest series, appeared from 1967 to 1985, with two final volumes in 1997 and 2008. His second major series, the Cap Kennedy series, was written from 1973 to 1983.

In recent years Tubb updated many of his 1950s science fiction novels for 21st century readers.

Tubb was one of the co-founders of the British Science Fiction Association.

Reviews

[Karl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dumarest is burgled and the robber found murdered. Dumarest escapes on a ship, getting the job of a handler, into the Web.
The Web is a tight cluster of suns where trading ship, rather like merchant vessels of old, travel from world to world, bartering their cargo for other costly produce.
On a primitive religious world the crew save the life of a woman condemned as a witch and take her on board. Lallia, for so she is called, picks up vibrations from objects and having touched Dumarest’s ring, is haunted by the pain and sadness of Kalin’s life.
Yulang, a fellow-traveller and trader in jewels, offers to buy the ring, but Dumarest consistently refuses.
The ship’s engineer, Claude, has a serious drink problem and the Captain has to deal with his phobia of looking at the stars by an addiction to an alien symbiote which sends him to a dream world while the ship is between worlds.
The ship travels to a few worlds and in most places there is human exploitation, misery and a preponderance of archaic feudal systems.
Just when it seems that Lallia and Dumarest are about to sail off out of the Web together, Dumarest gets involved in a fight with a caged mutant and wakes up back on the old ship. Claude, however, has been at the bottle and the generators are out of phase. The captain has to be awakened from his drugged sleep and they crash-land on the planet Shrine.
In most of these books there is a formulaic inevitability in that a plot or scheme (mostly, but not always involving the Cyclan) is revealed, someone close to Dumarest dies and Dumarest gets another clue as to the location of Earth.
Here, the steward from the ship, who was a bit of a mystic, tells Dumarest about the Dog Star and the Plow (sic) and to look for The Original People. Additionally, the remnant of an alien intelligence which crashed on Shrine shows Dumarest an overview of the galaxy and a brief glow of light where Earth is located.

Ace Double "Lallia" by E C Tubb & "Recoil" by Claude & Rhoda Nunes

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Another rousing Earl Dumarest tale. I admit that I am cherry picking the best of these, and so far each short novel I've selected in this long running series (33 books from 1976-2008) has been quite good and not nearly as cheesy as the covers might suggest. The overarching premise is an intriguing one, i.e. the search for Earth, Dumarest's long lost home planet, and provides a fantastic context for Tubb to explore new alien worlds in each story. The stories have a sword and planet type theme, with world building that is best described as Vancean. Each world is richly imagined, typically primitive and fraught with deadly oddities and often oppressed in some manner by indifferent or cruel rulers.

Lallia is a bit of a departure from the usual formula, with Dumarest spending most of the time on board a small cargo ship after hiring on as crew in order to continue his journey. The ship visits several strange worlds, offering a glimpse of the wider Dumarest universe. After daringly saving her life he inevitably gets involved with a beautiful woman who, together with an ancient shipwrecked alien, helps him discover ancient clues to Earth's long lost location. But of course nothing comes easy for Dumarest, getting shipwrecked himself and mixed up with a Cyber with plans of his own for Dumarest's future.

[mark monday · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is an interestingly gray-toned, even rather drab entry in the series. Earl spends most of his time on a rickety trader ship crewed by a youthful steward, a spiritual navigator, a sad but often violently drunk engineer and captained by a depressed addict. Earl himself is in a ruminative, melancholy mood; he fits right in. and so the book is mainly the ins and outs of ship life with brief stops at various drab and gray-toned planets. the enervated state of the characters and the reduced drama of the narrative made for an unusually contemplative entry in the Dumarest Saga. eventually the title character enters the story, and per usual for serial monogamist Earl Dumarest, they fall quickly in love. it's a sweet little romance with the sad ending typical for all of his loving relationships. no matter how kind, brave, and careful he tries to be, falling in love with him appears to be the last thing most women in his life will ever do in their lives. the characters all meet their various sad fates above and on the eerie planet Shrine, which comes complete with deadly trees, enigmatic aliens, and a stranded spaceship from another galaxy that heals many who touch it. but, sadly, not all.

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure why I have such a soft spot for the Dumarest of Terra series. The books are generally very loosely plotted and not a lot happens in many cases. That was true of this book and yet it held my attention. I kept reading even though much of what happened involved Dumarest fulfilling the rathe mundane duties of a cargo handler on a spaceship. The first Dumarest book I read was Spectrum of a Forgotten Sun, and the idea of Dumarest searching for the planet of his birth, a planet thought of only as a myth to most, engaged me. Tubb's writing is also good in these books and Dumarest is an interesting character, combining action with toughness with sensitivity in an unusual way. I will definitely read more, although I tend to do no more than one a year or so of these.

[Deb Omnivorous Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lallia occurs early in the saga of Earl Dumarest, which is an ongoing saga of the archetypal male hero; men want to be like him, (all) women just want him, amazingly proficient at all aspects of survival, apparently lacking nothing but the way back to his planet of origin.

What makes the reading fun in the long term is that the saga of roving the galaxy has an ongoing story arc as Earl is determinedly searching for Earth. Earth is a mythological planet, it is on no star charts, few have heard of it, none believe in it's existence, except that Earl Dumarest was born there and he wants to go back.

Most of the books tend to be named after either the woman Dumarest hooks up with in that installment or the planet on which it occurs and this one is no different. Lallia is the female in this book and I didn't like her. Tubb's women are pretty much always as stereotypical as his men and Lallia is a composite of beautiful young sexpot, trouble maker and generally annoying wench. Nevertheless the story is good and she serves well enough for it. I enjoyed reading one this early in the series, it is number six and I have already read up into the twenties, but I think the series is forgiving enough for that to work.

A total old classic of early sci-fi, I think they are brilliant, but maybe not all younger readers will like it. Be warned, it is sexist and socially outdated.

[Matthew J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this is my favorite Dumarest book yet. Our hero signs on to a nasty little ship full of deeply troubled characters and they all head off into The Web, a cluster of poor and desperate worlds. The supporting characters are some of the best in the series so far. The titular Lallia is probably the weakest part, though she's still interesting in her way. The end is a bit wonky. There's a bit of 'episodic TV' about it. Even though Earl grows and learns stuff and moves closer to finding Earth as the books go on, it's almost like E.C. Tubb still wanted to hit that end of episode reset button so that Earl can start the next novel fresh and without any pesky side characters hanging around.
I like these books a lot.

[Rory · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.25

The book essentially takes place on a spaceship - the scattering of planets between are mere stops and not specifically interesting. The final planet is odd and the introduction of aliens feels sudden to the reader and yet entirely normal from Earls perspective.

I keep forgetting these books come with twists yet this one seemed a tad forced. It builds the notion of the big bad and their aim however for the universe so it's useful in that perspective.

The cast are quite two dimensional in this book and none are particularly interesting. It reads more akin to chapters that would be read every week in a newspaper which impacts on the quality of the story.

Lallia as a character is probably the worst female side character of the series.

[Peter Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

My Amazon review - http://www.amazon.com/review/R96M6BVG...

Please give me a helpful vote.

It seems that the cliches and tropes that define the Dumarest cycle are coming together in this book. We have Earl Dumarest on his quest for Earth and getting a scant clue that might propel him forward. We have the one-dimensional characters acting as a foil for Dumarest's quest. We have the greed and stupidity that kill people through indifference and oversight. We have Dumarest knowing on first inspection who is the fool and who he should ally with. We have Dumarest's speed and ruthlessness. But, now, for the first time, we have Dumarest learning the significance of the ring he received two books back, which, if you've read the latter books, you know, holds the secret of the affinity twin, which the Cyclan want ever so desperately.

The book starts with the normal Hobbesianism of the Dumarestiverse - life being particularly nasty, bitter and short there - with a spacer being brained in a bar on Aarn. Dumarest doesn't hesitate to intuit that this means a job has opened up somewhere. He uses the opportunity to sign on with the most-run down ship in the Web - that portion of the galaxy where Dumarest happens to be this time.

The story is set on the ship with some time-off for adventures on various planets. It is stipulated that the ship is run-down and the captain and crew is on the edge.The ship takes passengers and freight as it can. One passenger is a portly gem merchant who seems helpful.

On a religiously backward planet, Dumarest fights for the life of the title character, Lallia. She's clairvoyant, which can happen in the Dumarestiverse. She, of course, immediately falls in love with Dumarest, declares herself married to him for as long as she wants, and casually offers to others challenges that he will fight to the death on a wager.

My distaste with this book comes from this character. Lallia is by turns too weak and submissive, and, then, too conniving and egocentric. Obviously, Lallia is the trope of the femme fatale and that is the role staked out for her by Film Noir potboilers and detective stories. In my first entry in this series of reviewing my way through the Dumarestiverse, I compared Dumarest to Phil Marlow. [See The Winds of Gath: The Dumarest Saga Book 1.] If Dumarest is Marlow, then he has to have his fair share of "dames" who love him but are always looking out for number one.

The final score is Dumarest ends up in a fight to death for Lallia, a fight to the death with some kind of space beast, and a fight to the death with an agent of the Cyclan. He barely survives being shipwrecked. He finds out about the "affinity twin formula" in his ring. He gets a clue from a shipmate that directs him to the "Original People" who fled "terror."

Does he survive? Does the story come to an end.

I won't tell you, but this is book six of thirty-one.

[Rob Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dumarest of Terra is a 33-volume series of science fiction novels by Edwin Charles Tubb. Each story is a self-contained adventure, but throughout the series, Earl Dumarest, the protagonist, searches for clues to the location of his home world, Earth. Production of a television version of the series is set to begin in 2018.

The stories are set in a far future galactic culture that is fragmented and without any central government. Dumarest was born on Earth, but had stowed away on a spaceship when he was a young boy and was caught. Although a stowaway discovered on a spaceship was typically ejected to space, the captain took pity on the boy and allowed him to work and travel on the ship. When the story opens in The Winds of Gath, Dumarest has traveled so long and so far that he does not know how to return to his home planet and no-one has ever heard of it, other than as a myth or legend.

It becomes clear that someone or something has deliberately concealed Earth's location. The Cyclan, an organization of humans surgically altered to be emotionless (known as Cybers), and on occasion able to link with the brains of previously living Cybers (the better to think logically), seem determined to stop him from finding Earth. Additionally, the Cyclan seeks a scientific discovery that Dumarest possesses, stolen from them and passed to him by a dying thief, which would vastly increase their already considerable power.

Also appearing in many of the books is the humanitarian Church of Universal Brotherhood. Its monks are spread throughout many worlds as are the Cyclan, the two being arch-enemies - which does not make the Church Dumarest's ally, but in some instances they support each other.

In Lallia, Dumarest joins the crew of a small space ship. This ship, the Moray, is bad news. The ship's captain tries to make a profit by carrying cargo and passengers between planets, but they are just barely getting by, and don't even have the money to keep the ship clean and properly maintain its systems. Tubb pithily characterizes each member of the doomed Moray's crew; the captain, who is horrified of space and indulges in the use of an alien symbiote that provides him vivid dreams, the dipsomaniac engineer who puts everyone at risk by getting drunk when he should be carefully tending to the sensitive hyperspace drive, the naive young steward who doesn't know what he has gotten himself into by signing up.

Another solid Dumarest adventure; interesting characters, strange creatures and technology, plenty of violence and tragedy.

[Jefferson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Bleak Pilgrimage in the Web, OR
“Each world is a holy place. . . To those who believe it so”

In a bar on a dead-end planet, Earl Dumarest sees a man brutally murdered. He quickly replaces the victim as handler of the Moray (a dirty, dinky spaceship), so as to work his way off this backwater world. Tall, lean, scarred, and laconic, Earl is still obsessively pursuing the impossible quest that gives his life meaning: the search for his homeworld Earth. Unfortunately, no one he asks knows anything about it, at best remarking on Earth being an odd name for a world. The Moray trades in the Web, an assortment of sparsely and idiosyncratically colonized worlds scattered among too many stars too densely and dangerously packed. The captain (Sheyan) neglects to inform Earl that they’ll likely stop at twenty other backwater worlds before ever reaching one of the big termini hubs.

In addition to the new handler Earl tending to the cargo, the motley crew features Lin the steward (a naive youth who believes that spaceship trading is a glamorous career), Nimino the navigator (a disillusioned “weird” who follows every cult he finds and believes “that that there is more to the scheme of things than a man can perceive with his limited senses”), Claude the engineer (an alcoholic pining for a girl he once loved for two weeks on an orgiastic wine making world), and the captain (a small-timer who thinks “A little dirt doesn’t matter as long as the generators aren’t affected” and deals with feeling puny and mortal among the implacable if not inimical stars by drugging himself with a symbiotic parasite). And just before departing with Earl, the Moray takes on a dodgy, pudgy “yellow skinned” Asiatic gambler-jewel-trader (Yalung), who’s booked an expensive High passage, thus raising Earl’s wary antennae.

Interestingly, E. C. Tubb’s Lallia (1971) was published in the same year as Le Guin’s “Vaster than Empires and More Slow,” her story about a ship full of eccentrics with psychological problems and interpersonal challenges: no “normal” person would ever agree to go on a long space journey leaving behind their home world families and friends.

As ever in the Dumarest series, Earl soon gets a lover, here a fierce, voluptuous “girl” called Lallia who’s “all woman” and has “knocked around” and whose life Earl saves in a brutal trial by combat. As ever in the series, we suspect that Earl’s lover and the other members of the crew are not long for the galaxy, for in the previous five novels relating Earl’s search saga, people he gets to know tend to die, and a permanent lover (or wife) might hinder his quest for Earth. As ever in the series, this novel has some sudden and brief moments of brutal violence (Earl is not a superman, but he is faster than almost anyone he fights, and his cool superstrong mesh armor underwear comes in handy.)

More than the previous novels, this one features a large number of worlds (mostly impoverished, “barely colonized,” inhospitable, dour places) visited in a kind of (paltry) Trader to the Stars scenario, Earl trying to force the lame captain into making better deals as they trade this for that and that for this, while keeping an eye out for a chance to abandon the Moray with Lallia (who really seems to love Earl as he does her).

Will the ship’s new generators hold out? What is the unsettling Yalung’s game? Will Earl find Earth? (Ha!) Will he thrive as handler of the dirty little ship? Will he get the symbiote-drugged captain to make some profitable trades? Will his blatantly large ruby ring attract unwanted attention from his bitter foes the cybernetic Cyclan? Will he help or be helped by the monks of the Universal Church who “were to be found wherever men suffered most”? Will he really marry Lallia? Will he and she find a way to free themselves from the Web? Will Lallia realize that she’s a “sensitive” (a kind of telepath)? Will the odd planet Shrine turn out to be more than an ersatz pilgrimage site for the deformed and diseased and handicapped and broken?

If possible, this novel seems bleaker than the previous ones, featuring lines like these:

“Damn it, boy, grow up! The universe isn’t a place of heroes!”

“If anything could reduce a man’s arrogance it was the cold indifference of the galaxy, the knowledge that in the universe he was less than a minute bacteria crawling on the face of creation.”

It also features some vivid and at times sublime descriptions, like “The sun was small, a ball of flaring orange rimmed with the inevitable corona, hanging low in a bowl of violet,” as well as some neat speculation on holy objects and or places:

“How many ships had dropped from the skies with their loads of misery and hope? The place reeked of sanctity, of devotion and supplication. The trees had absorbed the emotions of the incalculable number of pilgrims who had visited Shrine and followed the guardian into the holy place. Holy because they had made it so? Or holy because here, in this spot, something beyond the physical experience of men had stopped and left its mark?”

Eventually, I’ll be on to the seventh novel in the series! So far, all the books are compact, potent, pulpy space opera with a grim bite.

[Jared Millet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Earl Dumarest may be a top-notch space adventurer, but he's a crap employee. In this chapter of the series, he ships aboard the starship Moray as a mere cargo handler and ends up bossing everyone else around, including the captain, even though he's the most junior crew.

Lallia is a change of pace, as it focuses entirely on Dumarest himself and not any political planetary intrigue that he falls into. The Moray is a ship that traverses a dangerous region of space called the Web, full of poor planets, backwards customs, and navigational hazards. His shipmates are a mixed bag of obsessives, addicts, and generally doomed souls, but they know what they're doing most of the time.

They title character, Lallia, hails from one of the Web's backward worlds and, like every female character in a mid-20th century action novel, she falls in love with the hero. (No real spoilers there, these books have a pattern.) However, Lallia doesn't fit in with the other women in this series. She's definitely a femme fatale, but even though she's Trouble with a capital T, she's the first woman in the series who could seriously contend to be Dumarest's match.

[Hans van der Veeke · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite write is Vance. Especially his stories about space-travelers are enjoyed. But Tubb also has a good knack of writing in this genre. This series is about Dumarest, a space traveler going from planet to planet to find his original home, planet Earth. I like the descriptions of the planets, cultures and habits he encounters. All imaginations of Tubb.
This is #6 in the series of 32 where he travels the web, wins the affection of Lallia, crashes on a planet, learn a bit more about his home planet, loses Lallia and fights the Cyclan. It is not good to be a woman or from the Cyclan near Dumarest. Most of the die.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dumarest takes a sidetrack from his lifelong quest to find Earth to beat a hasty retreat when a few too many nearby people wind up dead. This brief adventure features a bit of world-hopping aboard a trading ship that operates on a shoestring budget. I enjoyed the mechanics of the trading and the "used universe" feeling that is oh-so 70s sci fi. This one also lacked a solid hook like the first two had, but that seems to be the case with a lot of these sequel stories: none of them have grabbed me like Winds of Gath did, but I'm happy enough to read on.

[Ian Massey · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fairly weak entry in the Dumarest Saga that is light on action and heavy on travelling. (I'm compiling a list of planets mentioned in the books and, in its 116 pages, this one adds 28, many of which are visited, however briefly.)

Let down by the character of Lallia herself - I found her too clingy, too whiney, although Earl getting his first real clue in his quest to find Earth was a high point, as was the hint that there's more mystery in Tubb's universe with the ancient galactic traveller.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked this one quite a lot, actually.

[DOUGLAS J BERRY · Rating 5 out of 5]

Travel on

Dumarest loses more lovers than James bond. All of these characters are defined by their focus or interest? A sort of one trick pony theory of character development.

[Roddy Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘Dumarest continues his restless wandering – combing the spaceways for an ancient and almost forgotten planet called Earth.

Then, on a primitive world, he fights a giant mutant for the life of the lovely psychic Lallia – and wins a vital clue that lead him to the end of his quest…’

Blurb from the 1977 Arrow paperback edition

An odd bit of meandering on Tubb’s part here. The narrative rambles, unlike Dumarest, without purpose.
Dumarest is burgled and the robber found murdered. Dumarest escapes on a ship, getting the job of a handler, into the Web.
The Web is a tight cluster of suns where trading ship, rather like merchant vessels of old, travel from world to world, bartering their cargo for other costly produce.
On a primitive religious world the crew save the life of a woman condemned as a witch and take her on board. Lallia, for so she is called, picks up vibrations from objects and having touched Dumarest’s ring, is haunted by the pain and sadness of Kalin’s life.
Yulang, a fellow-traveller and trader in jewels, offers to buy the ring, but Dumarest consistently refuses.
The ship’s engineer, Claude, has a serious drink problem and the Captain has to deal with his phobia of looking at the stars by an addiction to an alien symbiote which sends him to a dream world while the ship is between worlds.
The ship travels to a few worlds and in most places there is human exploitation, misery and a preponderance of archaic feudal systems.
Just when it seems that Lallia and Dumarest are about to sail off out of the Web together, Dumarest gets involved in a fight with a caged mutant and wakes up back on the old ship. Claude, however, has been at the bottle and the generators are out of phase. The captain has to be awakened from his drugged sleep and they crash-land on the planet Shrine.
In most of these books there is a formulaic inevitability in that a plot or scheme (mostly, but not always involving the Cyclan) is revealed, someone close to Dumarest dies and Dumarest gets another clue as to the location of Earth.
Here, the steward from the ship, who was a bit of a mystic, tells Dumarest about the Dog Star and the Plow (sic) and to look for The Original People. Additionally, the remnant of an alien intelligence which crashed on Shrine shows Dumarest an overview of the galaxy and a brief glow of light where Earth is located.
It would be interesting to know if Tubb realised at this point that it would take at least another twenty-five books and about thirty years before the final chapter.

[Randy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Earl Dumarest takes a job on a small freighter after a crew member is murdered in a bar. He needs a way to get off planet. The ship is headed into the web, an area of close packed stars and poor planets. At one of religious fanatics, they get roped into a tribunal for a woman, Lallia, declared a witch. They concoct a plan where her champion has to fight their champion to learn the "truth."

Earl is the champion and faces a monster of a man, using his superior seed and agility to win the fight to the death. Lallia becomes his "wife" and Earl learns she's a sensitive.

A miscalculation by the drunk engineer throws the ship's engines out of phase and they crash land on a planet to keep the ship from blowing up. Stranded now, they must win their way through to the space port in hopes of catching a ride out. Unknown to Earl, one of the surviving crew has another agenda.

[David Szondy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Earl Dumarest needs to get off planet fast and when he sees a ship's handler killed in a bar fight he tracks down the man's ship and signs on for the suddenly vacant post. However, the ship in question turns out to be a decrepit tramp freighter with a fatalistic captain that is bound for a treacherous region of space known as the Web. What at first seems like just a bad choice of ships soon turns into a life and death struggle as Dumarest fights for the life of a woman accused of witchcraft on a backwards world and the growing realisation that someone is on his trail for some mysterious reason.

Read more

[Caty Hespel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Earl Dumarest finds himself working as a trader on a spaceship heading for the Web, a dangerous part of space to travel to with numerous poor planets.
The story takes a bit long to start of, but once they reach Candara, a planet inhabited by the followers of a minor sect that turned their back on civilized comfort in search of the Ultimate, and rescue the girl Lallia, the story picks up a quick pace and becomes quite thrilling.

[Carl · Rating 5 out of 5]

reread this episode of the Dumarest Saga and enjoyed it more the second time around
excellent

[SciFiOne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ace Double Novel 441-71082-075
Lallia, EC Tubb, grade B
Recoil, Claude & Rhoda Nunes, not read

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tubb's always smart & interesting writing is derailed here by the rather noticeable lack of a plot.