Sun 6 Oct 2024
SF Diary Review: E. C. TUBB – Derai.
Posted by Steve under Diary Reviews , Science Fiction & Fantasy[5] Comments
E. C. TUBB – Derai. Dumarest #2, Ace Double H-77; paperback original. 1st printing, September 1968. Cover artist: Jeff Jones. Published back-to-back with The Singing Stones, by Juanita Coulson (reviewed here).
Dumarest is a wanderer, looking for legends of lost Earth. [This is the second in a series of his adventures.] In this one he takes on the job of returning the strange young girl named Derai to her home planet of Hive, not knowing she has telepathic powers that will involve him in a struggle for control of the planet,
More importantly, however, is the the interest that the cybernetic brain Cyclan has in the girl, leading to a deadly competition in the mazes of Folgone, and to Derai’s death.
These are interesting worlds, well described, with all the perversions, customs, and other necessities of life these worlds entail. Tubb displays an ability to write between the lines: or is he just unable to explain everything well? It does come off quite effectively.
Rating: ***½
October 6th, 2024 at 10:53 pm
Certainly some heavenly bodies gracing the covers of these sy-fi romps
October 7th, 2024 at 8:40 am
Excellent review of DERAI! I’ve read all the Dumarest books and it’s an entertaining SF series. E. C. Tubb is an underrated writer.
October 7th, 2024 at 10:47 am
The series is a long and tangled one. Here are the first two paragraphs from the books’ Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumarest_saga
“Dumarest of Terra is a 33-volume series of science fiction novels by Edwin Charles Tubb. Each story is a self-contained adventure, but throughout the series, Earl Dumarest, the protagonist, searches for clues to the location of his home world, Earth.
“The stories are set in a far future galactic culture that is fragmented and without any central government. Dumarest was born on Earth, but had stowed away on a spaceship when he was a young boy and was caught. Although a stowaway discovered on a spaceship was typically ejected to space, the captain took pity on the boy and allowed him to work and travel on the ship. When the story opens in The Winds of Gath, Dumarest has traveled so long and so far that he does not know how to return to his home planet and no-one has ever heard of it, other than as a myth or legend.”
I’ve read many but far from all of them, including none of the last two or three, alas!
October 8th, 2024 at 6:22 pm
Dumarest is a sort of hardboiled space farer in the Northwest Smith tradition. Usually fun, and often interesting reads. Popcorn, but sometimes of the gourmet variety.
October 9th, 2024 at 9:14 am
I agree with David’s assessment of the Dumarest series. And, like pop corn and potato chips…you just can’t stop at one!