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Title:
Mayenne
Series: Dumarest #9
Author:
EC Tubb
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre:
SF
Pages: 182
Words: 52K
Publish:
1973
When
we last left Dumarest, he was safely ensconced on a world where he
could be happy. So what happened? I’m not exactly sure to be
honest. The following is all we, the readers, get from the author:
“He leaned back against the wall and allowed the hypnotic cadences to wash over his conscious mind, dulling reality and triggering sequences of unrelated imagery. A wide ocean beneath an emerald sky. A slender girl seated on a rock, her hair a ripple of purest silver as it streamed in the wind, the lines of her body the epitome of grace. A fire and a ring of intent faces, leaping flames and the distant keening of mourning women. Ice glittering as it fell in splintered shards, ringing in crystal destruction. Goblets shattering and spilling blood-red wine, the chime of chandeliers, the hiss of meeting blades, harsh, feral, the turgid chill of riding Low.”
Not much to go on, now is it? It feels like Tubb wasn’t sure HOW to explain Earl leaving a place that could have been a new home to him, so he didn’t. For that reason alone I docked this a precious half-star.
The book, by itself, was fun. It ends up being about a planetary mind (much like the Star Trek Episode Firewater recently reviewed) that falls in love with Earl. Of course it does. Everybody falls in love with Earl. He’s worse than Captain Kirk in that regards. I did check out the date and this book was published in ‘73 while the Star Trek episode was back in ‘68, so it is quite possible Tubb just lifted the idea wholesale. Of course, the idea of a planetary intelligence was bouncing around a lot, so Tubb might have just lifted it from the generalized zeitgeist of his generation. Either way, he wasn’t being original at all. But if you tell an exciting story, does it really matter?
Make no mistake, this was exciting. Tormyle (the planetary intelligence), puts the group through quite a few tests that are life and death.
The reveal at the end that Mayenne was a cyclan agent was not one I saw coming. I probably should have, but it was just too preposterous to consider, so I didn’t. The very end, with Tormyle sending Earl to some random world was more on par with how Earl gets separated from his various lady loves and didn’t bother me at all.
Thus the Eye Rolling Adventures of Earl Dumarest, Male Gigolo, Continues!
Sadly, the cover art changed. There are no more bubble spacesuits. Awwwwww….
★★★☆☆
From Jeffbuser.com
This one has very little to do with the arc story, and is almost a stand-alone SF piece. An accident strands the ship on which Dumarest is traveling in deep space. The eerie songs of Mayenne, a Ghenka singer also on board, are accidentally transmitted over ultraradio, and are received by a mysterious entity that eventually transports the whole ship to an unknown planet at the very edge of the galaxy. It is quickly revealed that the planet itself is the entity Tormyle, which proceeds to eliminate passengers and crew in “10 Little Indians” fashion while performing a series of experiments to understand the nature of human emotion. Tormyle notices and tests the love between several sets of passengers, including the budding romance between Dumarest and Mayenne. By the time the cast is down to five, Tormyle is desperate to make Dumarest love it, and reveals that Mayenne and another passenger are actually agents of the Cyclan. Dumarest kills the man and Mayenne kills herself before Tormyle allows the other two to escape in the repaired ship. Finally alone with Tormyle, Dumarest convinces it that a human (at least Dumarest) simply cannot fall in love with a planet, and Tormlye releases him.
