The Durdane Trilogy by Jack Vance
The Durdane collection is a set of three sci-fi novels authored by Jack Vance in the years 1971-73, which tells the tale of Gastel Etzwane in the world of Durdane. The series begins with his shift from an ordinary boy to become the authoritarianizer The Anome and ends with his role as the savior against the extraterrestrial Asutra in the last book.
Books in the Trilogy
- The Anome
- The Brave Free Men
- The Asutra
Plot Summary
Shant, the province of the planet Durdane is one whereby the overseer, who is not specified, is either The Anome or Faceless Man and the citizens are imprisoned by the torc, an explosive ring put around their necks banning them from any kind of peaceful life.
The Anome is a peculiar, esoteric part of a royal line which is self-sustaining and self-sorting. An Anome when getting to old age, picks as his heir one replacement, a common method which has a long history. This strict governance gets its cause at the fact that the population of Shant is made up of extreme individualists, thus each cantonal community has its own law and custom, yet all of them have a common language. Before the mask’s apocalypse, Shant was overwhelmed by internal struggles and strife. The Anome not only absorbs Shant but also deals underground with the cantonal chiefs, serving strict judgment to those infracting local laws.
Jack Vance “The Brave Free Men”
The second book of Jack Vance’s Durdane trilogy. Young Gastel Etzwane faces a deadly threat to his homeland. Hordes of Red Roguskhoi have attacked, killing men, hurting women, and spreading fear. Under the Anomes’ rule, the people of Shant lost the skills of fighting. Now Gastel must teach them these skills to make an army of free people.
The Durdane trilogy traces the rise, struggles and ultimate triumph of Gastel Etzwane — and through him, of humanity itself — over alien subjugation.
The central figure, Gastel Etzwane, is the lion of a prostitute and an obscure musician. The first two segments of the trilogy reveal his maturing, the unearthing of his father’s real identity, and his ambition to become a musician. Following the painful death of his mother and sister by the alien animals Roguskhoi, who invaded them, near the city of Shant in Etzwane, he decided to take revenge, with the same purpose to unravel the identity of the Anome, which also kept in the background because he was indifferent to attacker groups’ access to Shant. Etzwane has to take the position of Anome through circumstances and revolts against the aliens and as a result gains the abolition of the torc system.
Another surprising issue which emerges in the final book, The Asutra, is that the Roguskhoi were produced by the Asutra, a strange alien race that tried to launch biological warfare against Durdane’s people. Since Roguskhoi are completely male, and the only way of their prolification is through sexual intercourse with human women who will be sterilized and whose genetic material will be totally foreign to the offspring, “imps.”
The task is set by the Valdran Circus to the main character in Jack Vance’s novel – looking for the cultural diversity of the interstellar Gassam Reach, combined with heroic deeds and adventurous romantic escapades.
Publication history
The Durdane trilogy first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine over six issues from 1971 to 1973:
“The Faceless Man” part 1, February 1971 issue
“The Faceless Man” part 2, March 1971 issue
“The Brave Free Men” part 1, July 1972 issue
“The Brave Free Men” part 2, August 1972 issue
“The Asutra” part 1, May 1973 issue
“The Asutra” part 2, June 1973 issue
