Disposable Lit Reviews

Major Books, 1978
192 pp.
ISBN 0-89041-209-X
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Everyone’s allowed a dud right out of the gate, I suppose; few writers manage to spring full-grown from Zeus’ head. Robert Vardeman has made a living from writing for the last twenty-five years, and people keep buying his books, so I suppose he must be doing something right. But his first novel… Eww.

Let’s ignore the fact that the uncredited cover art is only vaguely relevant (i.e., there are cats, and it is in a desert); I’ve often pitied the paperback cover illustrator, whose job it is to sell the contents to the public, yet who often have no more contact with those contents than a twenty-five-words-or-less description from the publisher. (It could be Vincent diFate, but he’s almost the most-imitated genre illustrator with the exception of Frank Frazetta.)

Our heroes are interstellar soldiers of fortune Roderick Nightwind (snicker), a human with a catlike alien in his family tree, and his diminutive sidekick Heuser, a completely rebuilt cyborg who is more than a little bit reminiscent of Steve Austin. While ferrying a planetary pharmaceutical shipment aboard a spaceliner (the kind of ship that employs an “astrogator”), the two of them assist on the salvage of a radiation-fried derelict, one which happens to contain the charred remains of famous archaeologist Dr. Alfen, and his notes describing, in oblique terms, a discovery “beyond belief” on the desert planet Rhyl. (A side note: It always surprises me, in novels about a star-faring and star-spanning culture of probably hundreds of billions of people, that people like archaeologists or whatever specialist is necessary to the plot can be famous enough for casual conversation.) They “appropriate” the notes as their part of the salvage booty, and set up an expedition.

Of course, they’re not the only pursuers of the unnamed treasure. Alfen’s daughter Steorra, believing that Nightwind and Heuser murdered her father for his notes, sets about to track them and prove them thieves and murderers; unfortunately, she’s a chemist by trade and an idealist by inclination, hires herself some assistance for such a dangerous quest, and naturally hires a couple of real lowlifes: famously savage Outer Rim lawman Lane Slayton (see above comments on fame among the masses) and his burly henchman Dhal.

Most of the action takes place on the desert planet Rhyl, where a small outpost stubbornly resists being buried by the 100kph wind-blown sands. Nightwind and Heuser hire crusty old tourguide Richards, and together they set out in a forcefield-protected aircar for the location mentioned in Alfen’s notes, an inexplicable promontory amid the scouring sands known as Devil’s Fang.

Richards also passes on what he knows about the titular creatures — secretive, almost fabled feline predators who patrol the desert, killing almost anyone who wanders in the direction of Devil’s Fang. Want to know the intelligence level of the inhabitants of Rhylstown? Given that there’s precious little vegetation and no appreciable animal life, Nightwind quite reasonably asks what exactly the Sandcats could subsist on. Richards’ reaction? Gosh, he’d never even thought of that before. Given that Richards is portrayed as the smart cookie of the locals, I think that would be my cue to pack my gear back onto the spaceship and seek my fortune elsewhere. (The question, by the way, is never actually answered.)

The desert proves deadly, what with sandstorms and sandcats and Steorra’s bloodthirty mercenaries, leading to the hinted-at discovery at Devil’s Fang. The sandcats are discovered to be intelligent holdovers from a pre-arid period in Rhyl’s history, with dextrous appendages about as unlikely as those in Heinlein’s The Star Beast. Heuser’s cyborg strength comes in handy, as does Nightwind’s feline ancestry, and of course Steorra realizes that her employees are actually the biggest danger to her father’s discovery.

All of which sounds pretty reasonable in summary, doesn’t it? Nothing stellar, but serviceable paperback SF, right?

Unfortunately, it’s a lot more stilted and creaky than I make it sound here. Vardeman obviously grew up reading golden-age SF and pulp reprints, and the prose here is practically archaic. Just as a taste, here’s how the novel begins:

“ALERT! ALERT! All hands to emergency stations!”

Roderick Nightwind shifted his weight on the narrow bunk. His hands were locked behind his head, jet black hair falling over his slender, almost effeminate fingers. But one look into his coal black eyes quickly disspelled any thought of this being a soft, gentle man. He moved only a fraction of a centimeter, but he was a coiled cobra waiting to see where to strike.

And when you move up from sentence-level to plot-level storytelling, things don’t get any better. Nightwind is the qualmless adventurer-hero; Heuser is the sidekick; Steorra is the starry-eyed female who ends up needing rescuing (and falls in love with Nightwind, obviously); Slayton is the selfish, devious megalomaniac.

When people speak of science fiction expansively as being poor literature, this is the stuff they’re talking about. Vardeman had been a fanzine writer before he turned pro, and this novel pretty much belongs in the mimeographed fan publications of the period. I’m honestly surprised that something this creaky and outmoded merited publication as late as 1978. It’s no mystery why it hasn’t been reprinted since.

Nathan Shumate