Today, we come back from our excursion into the realm of Space Opera to our home territory of Sword & Planet fiction. One of the most unique S&P series I’ve ever encountered is the four-book series by Jack Vance (1916 – 2013) generally called the Planet of Adventure series. The stories take place on a planet called Tschai, and feature an earthman named Adam Reith.

In a future in which Earth has starships, a distress signal comes from Tschai, which orbits the “dim and aging” star Carina. An Earth ship is sent to investigate and is destroyed in orbit by a missile from the planet. Adam Reith and a companion escape on a scout ship and manage to make a hard landing. The companion is soon killed by the natives and Reith is left alone. The books chronicle his efforts to survive and return to Earth.

[Click the images for planet-sized versions.]

Planet of Adventure omnibus edition (Orb, October 1993). Cover uncredited

Both DAW and Ace published the series, and I have a mixture of the two. My books are:

#1. City of the Chasch, DAW, 1968, H.R. Van Dongen cover
#2. Servants of the Wankh, Ace books, 1969, Jeff Jones cover
#3. The Dirdir, DAW, 1969, Van Dongen cover
#4. The Pnume, DAW, 1970, Van Dongen Cover

Tschai is populated by one native species and some humans, and by three other alien species: The books are named after the four different non-human groups, which are the Pnume (insect-like and native), the Chasch (basically reptilian), the Dirdir (bird-like), and the unfortunately named Wankh (amphibians). The humans were brought to the planet and are generally servants and slaves of the four primary races. They have been altered dramatically by their circumstances or through selective breeding.

Big Planet by Jack Vance (Ace, 1967). Cover by Ed Emshwiller

Jack Vance is a fine writer but he’s not one of my favorite storytellers or prose stylists. His style is unique but the word that comes to mind for his writing — to me — is ethereal. His prose and his tales do not project the concrete imagery, physical vigor, and emotional intensity that writers such as Robert E. Howard and David Gemmell do. There’s always a little more mental distance between the reader and the story — at least to me. And this is why I haven’t read a whole lot of Vance.

I did enjoy the Taschai stories, though. They are sprawling and full of exotica and decadence. One of Vance’s strengths was his world-building, and Tschai is fully realized and beautiful. It was the most complex S&P world up to that point. In fact, I wonder if the complexity of Kregen, the world Ken Bulmer created for the Dray Prescot series, might not have been modeled a little after Tschai. The Prescot books started being published only a couple of years after Vance’s series saw print, and they also feature a world with multiple non-native races.

When I first came upon the Tschai series, I assumed the star around which Tschai circles was in the real-life Carina constellation, which includes Canopus, the second brightest star in our night sky. However, the Carina constellation is mostly young, hot stars, and Carina as Vance describes it is neither young nor hot. I suspect that he named his star Carina because the term is Latin for the keel and/or hull of a ship, and Vance was a sailor.

The Five Gold Bands (DAW, February 1980). Cover by Gino D’Achille

Vance’s first published novel was Vandals of the Void, which I read from a library copy as a teenager. It had space pirates and I loved it. I eventually picked up a copy from a library book sale.

Vance is also famous for his Dying Earth series, which is not S&P and which I haven’t read — although I catch grief for it from other SF fans. I have some of those books and will eventually get to them. If I live long enough.

Vandals of the Void (Winston Science Fiction #20, 1953). Cover by Alex Schomburg

If you’re into S&P fiction, though, you should definitely give the Tschai books a go.

I’ve posted a couple of other book covers I have from Vance above. Five Gold Bands is SF/Space Opera and this great cover is by Gino D’Achille, who did many Barsoom book covers (see the original art here).

Big Planet is also a space opera with some swords. Cover by Ed Emshwiller.

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Charles Gramlich administers The Swords & Planet League group on Facebook, where this post first appeared. See all of his recent posts for Black Gate here.