Welcome to this guided tour of Tchai, the insane planet. Your tour guide will be Adam Reith, formerly of the spaceship Explorator IV, which was unfortunately shot down. Reith is an all American macho, covertly racist, overtly sexist. He knows exactly two ways to deal with problems: throw money at it (and haggle, my goodness, this book had pages and pages of haggling), or use violence and preferably kill people. His talents are many: he learns an alien language in a matter of weeks, can handle any weapon and any means of transport, he is strong, attractive, resourceful, untiring and altogether emotionless (except of course for a healthy dose of anger and vindictiveness). Most of his friends who we will meet on the way equally lack emotions, although they are always less talented, knowledgeable, optimistic, clever and dexterous as our Reith. They are men, all of them. And a few women, but Reith really doesn’t know what to do with them, finding them both attractive, especially prepubescent girls, and fickle, unfathomable, impossible to understand.
On our tour Reith will have many adventures. Some minor, mere random encounters, to use TTRPG-parlance, some major, spanning most of one of the four books in this volume. We will meet in turn the four alien races inhabiting Tchai and the humans that work for them. Wherever he goes, Reith blatantly disrespects local culture, but, starting from superior, white, male, earth values, unleashes revolutions, topples societal structures, swindles, steals, kills with gusto, forcefully imparting freedom, honesty and equality wherever he goes. And as soon as he’s undermined yet another age old civilisation, he travels on to find the next set of misguided aliens, living their life the wrong way, in dire need of Reith to set things straight. And when there’s no more change to be wrought, he builds a spaceship and leaves.
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This book feels more like the thorough description of a TTRPG setting (and would serve brilliantly as one) than a story. Vance’s world-building is excellent. He creates intricate societies, biologies, technologies, linguistics, histories and mythologies that all connect with each other and make sense. The characters that inhabit this world are highly individual, interesting and fun.
It’s just too bad that Adam Reith storms through all of this like a raging bull in a China shop. Within the first fifty pages the man looses his ship and all his earth friends and doesn’t bat an eye. No tears, no regrets, no emotions. He then finds himself in an alien group of nomads, learns their language, customs and technology, is critical of each, tries to kiss a girl who didn’t want to be kissed, deposes and then inexplicably befriends their leader and runs off with him. The following five hundred pages are one adventure after another, with as the only coherent (and cliche) plot point that Reith wants to get home to earth. Other than that the adventures are largely unconnected. The writing is extremely straightforward and not very intelligent. One craves a metaphor or some second layer of meaning, maybe some social criticism, a witticism, anything to make you think a little.
This is not a good book. I know it’s scifi-pulp from the late sixties, but even then the blatant sexism (bordering on pedophilia) and the racist overtones should have been noticed and dealt with. And even pulp can have a more coherent, interconnected, a more clever story.
So why the three stars?
The separate adventures are often thrilling and exciting. But it’s the couleur locale that makes this book enjoyable. All the intricately constructed alien races, the landscapes, clothes, foods, modes of transport, customs, etcetera, etcetera.
This phenomenal setting deserved a much better story and a much better main character. As it stands, this book hasn’t aged well. I’m not a SJW, I’m against all forms of cancel-culture, but please, let’s simply forget about this book or use it only as a great starting point for wonderful roleplaying game adventures.