Magnus Ridolph (The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph. New York: Ace, 1996. The book is one half of an Ace Double, and is a compilation of six stories originally published in Startling Wonder Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1948, 1949, and 1952.) is an urbane, intelligent hero, but not averse to getting into ticklish situations. In "The Kokod Warriors," he gets revenge on two businessmen who swindled him by inducing the Kokod, who are sort of intelligent army ants, to see their hotel as a legitimate opponent in ritualized combat, thus ruining their business. He has also influenced some of the combats, and won wagers on them, thus getting his money back. In "The Howling Bounders," he again takes revenge on a man who has swindled him in a business deal, and, again, the revenge is roughly commensurate with the damage. This time it is accomplished by clever deduction and planning, not by manipulating combats. Again, in "The King of Thieves," the same pattern is played out. Ridolph uses his intelligence to take revenge on a man who mined Ridolph's claim without compensating him. The other three stories display Ridolph's intelligence in dealing with situations on other planets, and with non-human intelligent life, but do not have significant revenge in them. There is also no significant revenge in The Brains of Earth, the second half of the Ace Double. The same is true of The Five Gold Bands (Better Publications, Inc., 1950, and part of an Ace Double with The Dragon Masters, no date given.)

The Dragon Masters (Galaxy Publications, 1962, from which references are made. Also published as an Ace Double with The Five Gold Bands, no date given.) won a Hugo for Vance. It is mostly about retribution, or symmetry, although there are certainly other interesting themes in the work. The grephs, intelligent lizard-like beings, attack Aerlith and carry off humans. They return years later, having produced several castes of modified humans designed for various tasks of warfare. Kergan Banbeck succeeds in driving them off, and in capturing 23 of the grephs. When the grephs return, they, unmodified (Basics), and their modified humans, confront modified grephs--Dragons. "The Basics stare at our Juggers; we ponder their Giants." (p. 94) Symmetry, or just retribution. Maybe vengeance.

There is another act of vengeance, or at least punishment, in the book, and the hero is reluctant to perform it. Joaz Banbeck has defeated the grephs, or Basics, and their human slaves, but Ervis Carcolo has acted treacherously.

Joaz took a deep breath. Why could it not come easier for him? Carcolo had twice sought his life, and, had positions been reversed, would have shown him no mercy. He forced himself to act. His duty to himself, to his people, to his ultimate goal was clear.
He called to those of his knights who carried the captured heat guns. They approached.
Joaz said, "Take Carcolo into Clybourne Crevasse. Execute him. Do this at once." (p. 136)

Vance can, indeed, deal with other themes. In The Dragon Masters, he raises the question, "Is it possible to withdraw from the world around you?" The sacerdotes are a religious group who tries to do so. Vance's fictional answer is "No." The sacerdotes are curious about the affairs of other humans, so they do involve themselves, of their own volition. Part of Joaz' defeat of the grephs involves tricking the sacerdotes into attacking them.

Another of Vance's award-winning short novels is The Last Castle (Galaxy Publishing Corp, 1966. Published by Ace). In this, he fictionally asks if humans can isolate themselves from all meaningful employment. The answer is no. The meks, a large ant-like race, were imported to earth when it was re-colonized after a disaster. The immigrants who came back have founded a society where they live a life where they don't work to feed, clothe and otherwise care for themselves, served by the meks and other non-human races. (The matter of medical care is not raised, but if Vance had thought of it, most likely it would have been cared for by some non-human race.) They live to be artisans, pursuing various types of arts. The meks revolt, in an act of massive revenge, and, in the process, increase the rifts between human ideologies. Some humans want to go back to working for their own needs, and others would rather die than soil their hands. One of the latter group attempts to kill Xanten, one of the former, in a petty act of revenge.

The book closes with the mek rebellion put down, but the meks returned to their home planet, and humans back working to survive.

Wyst: Alastor 1716 (New York: DAW, 1978) and Trullion: Alastor 2262 (New York: DAW, 1981) involve justice, as well as vengeance, through the agency of Ryl Shermatz. Shermatz masquerades as a journalist, but is actually an agent of the Connatic, who rules the Alastor Cluster, or, more probably, is himself the Connatic. In Wyst, Jantiff Ravensroke, who is visiting Wyst in an attempt to find himself, becomes the victim of a group of unscrupulous persons who plot to kill the leaders of the government and replace them. They steal his belongings, and attempt to have him killed. In the process of trying to secure their hold on the government, they invite everyone they can think of who might recognize that they are not actually the governors to a public ceremony to be killed. Another unrelated group steals his money and his ticket home, and chases the girl he loves off into the woods. They also ruin Jantiff's eyesight. By appealing to the local office of the Connatic, Jantiff has made the Connatic's forces aware of the plot against the government, which brings Shermatz to the scene. Jantiff warns Shermatz of the impending mass murder, which was meant to include the Connatic. Shermatz has Jantiff's eyes and his intended restored, and all those who have acted wrongfully against him are also punished, although there is difficulty in finding a proper retribution for the plotters. This conversation between Shermatz and Jantiff takes place:
Jantiff shook his head in perplexity. "They have committed awful deeds. No penalty seems appropriate. Merely to kill them is an anticlimax."
"Exactly!   The drama of retribution should at least equal that of the crime: in this case an impossible undertaking." (Wyst, 212)

In Trullion: Alastor 2262, Glinnes Hulden has most of his inheritance taken from him. The plot is too involved to relate here, but suffice it to say that by the end of the book, those who have done the deed, and several other criminals, are punished by Shermatz and Glinnes. Glinnes takes a more active role than Jantiff, and, in fact, ends up with a fortune far in excess of his material losses.

Marune: Alastor 933, (New York: Ballantine, 1975) is similar in plan. Efraim of Benbuphar Castle has been deprived of his memory, and sent off-world, in hopes that he will be unable to trace his origins, and thus claim his inheritance. An agency of the Connatic helps him locate his planet of origin, and return to it. He is recognized, and takes up rule of his castle. In the end, with the help of nonhuman primitives, who are themselves threatened by the the plotters, he regains his memory, and, using it, is able to identify those who have deprived him of it, and see that they are punished appropriately.

In some of Vance's writing, society itself is the criminal, and vengeance is taken on it. To Live Forever (New York: Ballentine, 1976) is an example of such a situation. The society is set in a culture where striving to achieve sufficient "slope" to be made virtually immortal is the central feature. The "immortals" are cloned, and regularly impress their clones with their personalities and experiences through advanced neurological techniques. Thus, if there is an accident, the original is replaced by a person with an almost identical personality. Failure to achieve this status within a limited number of years, however, results in death. The result is to deprive most of the people of an existence equal to the immortals, if only because the society cannot support but so many. It also tends to suppression of real creativity, as any truly unorthodox achievement will probably not result in gaining "slope." Space travel is dangerous, so few will undertake it. Immortals won't, because they want to impress their personalities on their surrogates frequently, so that their personalities are not lost.

Garvin Warlock is a new immortal who kills another immortal before his own surrogates are established. He is to be executed, but escapes. In the process of trying to reestablish himself in immortal society, he kills several people. He finally precipitates the complete overthrow of the society by releasing 1762 surrogates. As these are each given immortal status, this means that a corresponding number of those who are in the caste below immortal are deprived of immortality, and so on down the strata of the society. The resulting unrest causes a riot which leads to the destruction of the agency which keeps the records of each person's status. People are outraged, and demand Warlock's death, not knowing that a reincarnation of one of Warlock's victims has killed him. The immortals know. One of them says: "It is not enough that this man has been executed, he should be executed and destemporized Nomad-style; then again; and again!" (To Live Forever, 171)   However, the justice finally done on Warlock's surrogate is not that he is killed, but that, in recognition of the real service he has done by destroying the system, he is allowed to become a space explorer, finding new homes for the society to expand to.

Unlike Warlock, the hero of Emphyrio (New York: Dell, 1969) has not committed murder. He upsets forever the structure of Halma, where an alien race has kept humans in economic servitude for two millenia. In the end, the aliens are made to begin restitution. The whole society is punished for a gross injustice. (Leon J. Janzen's longer restatement of the novel mentions vengeance.)

The Durdane trilogy (The Anome, The Brave Free Men, and The Asutra, all published by Dell of New York, in 1971, 1972 and 1973, respectively) tells another story of injustices against humanity. The Ka and the Asutra, two alien races, have engaged in various attacks on Durdane. At the end, both are repulsed, and the slaves they have taken are repatriated, through the agency of off-planet humans.

Kirth Gersen is not the only Vancean creation who does not always get personal vengeance. Retribution is not the major theme of The Dragon Masters, (New York: Ace, 1963), but Joaz Banbeck has been wronged aplenty by Ervis Carcolo. He knows that Carcolo must be killed, but finds this difficult:
Joaz took a deep breath. Why could it not come easier for him? Carcolo had twice sought his life, and, had positions been reversed, would have shown him no mercy. He forced himself to act. His duty to himself, to his people, to his ultimate goal was clear.
He called to those of his knights who carried the captured heat guns. They approached.
Joaz said, "Take Carcolo into Clybourne Crevasse. Execute him. Do this at once."
Protesting, bellowing, Carcolo was dragged off. Joaz turned away with a heavy heart…(Dragon Masters, 136)

Vance wrote the "Tschai, Planet of Adventure" series, four books with Adam Reith as their protagonist. Tschai is a planet where humans were brought, apparently as slave labor, thousands of years ago. Many of them are either marginalized tribes or villages, or slaves and mimics of, and subservient to, one of three non-human races who have colonized different parts of Tschai long ago, the Chasch, the Wankh, and the Dirdir, or an indigenous species, the Pnume. In City of the Chasch, (New York: Daw Books, 1968) the first volume, Adam Reith, is the only survivor of a Terran mission of exploration, which was shot down by someone from the surface Tschai. As Reith labors mightily to try to find a way to get back to Earth, he finds himself brining about great change on Tschai, a sort of massive vengeance, by the introduction of a radical idea--the truth. The Chaschmen have become modified so as to somewhat resemble the Chasch, who are reptilian bipeds with prominent foreheads. The Chaschmen wear attachments to their bodies so that they resemble the Chasch even more than they naturally do. The Chasch have not only enslaved these humans, but they have convinced them that they will metamorphose into actual Chasch. At death, they tell their slaves, their heads will split open, and a Chasch imp will emerge. Reith frees the Chaschmen from one city of their masters, by leading a war against them, and freeing them from their delusion.

In Servants of the Wankh (New York: Daw Books, 1969), the revolution that Reith brings about is a change in the relationship between the Wankh and their imitators, the Wankhmen. It seems that the Wankh language is so alien to humans that the only non-Wankh who have learned more than a smattering of it are the Wankhmen, and the Wankh know nothing of the language spoken by all other species on Tschai. The Wankhmen have been systematically deceiving the Wankh, to their own advantage, and Reith finds a way to communicate this to the Wankh.

In The Dirdir (New York: Daw Books, 1969), Reith and his companions carry out vengeance on the Dirdir. The Dirdir are a hunting race--they hunt and kill humans with cold-blooded efficiency, then eat them. The main arena for this is the Carabas, a large area where the geology is such that sequins, the currency of Tschai, are formed naturally. Humans come seeking wealth. Some achieve this, but many are hunted and eaten. Reith wants funds to build a spaceship, and goes to the Carabas. His scheme for obtaining sequins is simple but revolutionary--capture hunting parties of Dirdir who have killed humans, and take the sequins from them. In other words, no longer treat the Dirdir as overlords, but as fair game, just as they do humans.

Throughout these books, Reith and the associates who have attached themselves to him occasionally bring about vengeance on individuals. They don't just bring about changes in the structure of the societies of Tschai. Reith states his philosophy of vengeance: "Vengeance is not the most noble activity, but submissiveness is worse." (Servants of the Wankh, p. 45)

In the final Tschai book, The Pnume (New York: Daw Books, 1970) Reith commits non-retaliatory crimes of violence. He ambushes two humans of the Khor stock, and takes sequins and a boat from them. He does have a pang of conscience--"I regret becoming a thief," said Reith, "but my need is greater than yours." (p. 70). He shows, in another way, that he has morals. He and his traveling companion are being trailed by two human spies for the Pnume, who live in tunnels under the ground. She suggests that Reith kill them, but he "refused to waylay the old women in the dark and strangle them." (p. 131.) Not every revenge is taken by Reith. Woudiver, one of Vance's worst villians, is finally punished as a common criminal by the Dirdir.

Reith finds that the Pnume have, like the Chasch, enslaved humans to constricted underground lives for their purposes. One of the constrictions is that they have fed many of them hormones, thus depriving them of the normal change to sexual maturity. Reith happens to find, and take, an object of great importance to the Pnume, a book of charts, showing all their secret tunnels. He makes copies, and threatens to give them to the other races, who do not love the Pnume, unless they agree to revolutionary changes. They must free their slaves, and stop giving them hormone treatments. The Pnume have no choice. They agree.

Reith's primary vengeance is to change the cultures of Tschai, making them more just and truthful. As one of the characters puts it, "A new feeling is abroad across Tschai: the sense that change is on its way." (p. 104) In the end, he never finds out who shot down the spaceship he came in, but he has taken revenge for humans, freeing some of the Chaschmen from their enslavement, and their delusions about the relationship between Chasch and humans, freeing humans from some of their fears of the Dirdir, freeing humans from enslavement by the Pnume, and freed humans from lies about human origins--they are from earth. He also freed the Wankh from the lies told them by humans. In the end, he and his companions start back to earth.

Galactic Effectuator (New York: Ace Books, 1980) features Miro Hetzel, a cosmic private investigator. Several unsavory characters, and an entire tribe of extraterrestrials, receive their just deserts in the first of two stories in the book, "The Dogtown Tourist Agency." The second, "Frietzke's Turn," offers a particularly bizarre and fitting set of retributions. Faurence Dacre, like Viole Falushe and Howard Alan Treesong, has grown up with unhappy childhood memories, because of his exalted ideas of himself. He becomes a surgeon, and, one day is called to operate on one Sabin Cru, who has been almost completely eaten by a sea creature. Dacre uses this challenge to avenge himself for no less than six fancied slights. He has taken the legs, the arms, (one from each of two men) the nose, the jaw, and the external reproductive organs from six different men and used them in rebuilding Sabin Cru, replacing them with various prostheses. (Each of the organs taken is taken in specific vengeance. For example, the last man married a woman whom Dacre also wanted, so Dacre vowed that this man would never himself have children by her.) In the confrontation which exposes Dacre, Hetzel suggests that, since none of this is Sabin Cru's fault, those wronged (one of which was a medical educator) obtain surgical expertise, and reclaim their organs from Sabin Cru, replacing Cru's removed parts with those of Faurence Dacre. This is done.

Araminta Station (New York: Tor, 1988) is the Book One of the Cadwal Chronicles. Most Vance novels examine a strange culture, or, more likely, many such. There is, indeed, more than one culture in this book, but that isn't really the emphasis. As usual, there is a young man, Glawen Clattuc, beset by many troubles, and by many enemies. The main culture is that of the title--a small colony, about 240, of humans on a world which has been declared a nature preserve by the Charter, a universally recognized document that declares Cadwal to be a nature preserve, off-limits to humans, with exceptions, such as those living at Araminta Station. The Charter grants title to Cadwal to The Naturalist Society, an earth-based organization. The administration of the planet is undertaken by the Conservator, which, during this book, is Egon Tamm, and the bureaus based at Araminta Station, including Bureau B, which handles police and security matters. Bodwyn Wook heads Bureau B. Glawen and his father are part of Bureau B. There is another human enclave, at Stroma, a town built on a steep cliff over a fjord, so that it will have little effect on the ecology of the planet.

Another culture is the Yips, humans of mongrel racial background who serve as servants and temporary help--temporary because the Charter doesn't allow anyone but a fixed number of humans to establish any permanent dwelling on Cadwal. Yips normally are hired for six months, then return to Yipton, an enclave on an island, not one of the three continents, with permanent residences that those who enforce the Charter overlook, because, they think, they need more than the specified number to do the work of Araminta Station. A number of characters are characterized with more depth than Vance usually does. This is one reason for the book's length. The edition indicated runs to 554 pages, which is nearly as much as the four Tschai books together. Many of those living at Stroma hold the views of the Life, Peace and Freedom Party, which argues that the Yips should be allowed to live permanently on one of the continents. Their reasons for desiring this are suspect, as they seem to want to establish estates for themselves on territory now forbidden, with Yips for servants. If the Charter were declared null, or were missing, or were modified, they could do these things.

One vengeance is for murder: Sessily Veder, Glawen's first love, is murdered early on, and the murder isn't exposed until the end of the book, when Glawen fights the murderer and lets the surf take him to a watery death. The murderer, Kirdy Wook, supposedly Glawen's partner in the Araminta Station police, tries to get Glawen killed by informing some other criminals, which Glawen is trying to investigate, of his presence on another planet. Another vengeance, realized, this time by colleagues from the police, is for arranging the death of the brother of Wayness Tamm, the Conservator's daughter, who has become Glawen's love interest, in a seeming tourist accident that could have killed Glawen, Wayness, and Julian Bohost, from Stroma, as well. This killing would not have been possible without a science fiction setting. It is carried out by mount animals, with properties the product of Vance's fertile imagination, and exploited so that they are not controlled, as they are supposed to be, by the four riders, but incited to attack whatever they can.

Two other acts of vengeance are not taken in this book. Glawen's mother drowned under suspicious circumstances. Two Yips were witnesses, but did not try to save her, and Glawen and his father, Scharde Clattuc, believe that she was murdered by these Yips. At the end of the book, Scharde is kidnapped. In a twist like the one in The Face, one of the criminals apprehended by Glawen and his colleagues asks Glawen to finish a project that he has been working on for many years, namely building a new theater for Araminta Station. He realizes that his own associates aren't trustworthy, but believes that Glawen can be trusted with the money, and, before his execution, tells Glawen where his father is kept.

Ecce and Old Earth (New York: Tor, 1991) continues the Cadwal books. It is nearly as long as Araminta Station, and one unusual feature, for a Vance novel, is that most of the book deals with Wayness Tamm's search, on Old Earth, for the original Charter, which has disappeared. At the beginning, Scharde and others are rescued from a prison on the continent Ecce by Glawen. Again, Glawen himself takes vengeance, this time on Benjamie, a Yip who was apparently involved in Scharde's kidnapping, and has been involved in trying to capture the Charter, which would give whoever possessed it control over Cadwal, and, among other things, allow exploitation of the planet's land, regardless of the ecological consequences. Benjamie is killed when he attempts to kill a man that both Wayness and Glawen have been separately searching for, because he might be able to tell them what happened to the Charter. (He has killed others, because they were unable to help him find the Charter.) At the end of the book, Glawen and Wayness return back to earth, and find the Charter, and sell title, for a nominal sum, to the Cadwal Conservancy, in other words, Egon Tamm and the Bureaus of Araminta Station.

The final work in the Cadwal trilogy, Throy (New York: Tor, 1992) is shorter, but ties up almost all of the loose ends. No one dies at the hand of Glawen Clattuc. Instead, either the evil characters kill each other, or the justice system executes them. Indeed, Glawen doesn't revenge himself on anyone in the entire trilogy, except for the two occasions specified above, when his own life is attacked. Vance, therefore, is about more than vengeance, in these books and in his other writings.

In Night Lamp (New York: Tor, 1996) vengeance is the main theme. Jaro Fath's father was separated from him by treachery when he was so young that he can't remember him, and his mother, dying under torture, begged Jaro himself, a six-year old at the time, to kill her, before she gave up the secret that her torturer, and would-be murderer, wants to get from her. Jaro does, and runs away. He is beaten by a group of young toughs, and, in desperate physical and psychical condition, rescued, and then adopted, by the Faths, a couple from another planet. During the medical treatment of Jaro, most of his memory has to be expunged.

After Jaro's parents are killed, as part of a spectacular suicide at a scientific conference called for the purpose of killing all the attendees, and the convener, his father, Maihac, makes himself known. (He has been in contact with the family for several years, but none of them know that he is Jaro's real father.) Jaro, his father, and two other companions, one of them his lover, deduce the name of the planet where Jaro was beaten, and his mother was killed. An interesting dialog ensues between Jaro and the lover:

"These might have been the persons who beat you."
"They are about the right age," said Jaro tonelessly.
"Aren't you angry with them?"
"Very angry. But I don't think I'll do anything about it." (p. 277)

This is a genuine rejection of vengeance, not a common part of Vance's work.

The four go the world where Jaro's mother was born, and his father met her, and was captured and made a slave for three years. Led by the father, the society of this world, on a planet orbiting the remote star Night Lamp, comes to see that they have been swindled by the man who brought about the destruction of Jaro's family, and he is executed for his crimes. Neither Jaro nor Maihac are the final instrument of his death, although both are present at the execution. We are led to believe that Jaro, unlike Kirth Gersen, will have a relatively normal life after the novel.

The above books are science fiction. By that I mean that there is no magic involved. Every device has a rational explanation. In some cases, such as the re-configuring of the moon in The Face, the retribution would have been impossible without the technical devices of science fiction. In others, like the Cadwal trilogy, it is more commonplace. Vance has also written fantastic literature that is not science fiction. In these works, witches, warlocks, demons and other beings abound. These often take vengeance, or seek their opponents, by nontraditional means. Vance has written in that genre, also. See part 3 for my discussion of vengeance through fantastic means.

to part 1 - Introduction and The Demon Princes novels     to part 3 - Vance's Fantasy

To my page on vengeance in Patricia A. McKillip's writing

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