The Prisoner of Zhamanak

THE KRISHNA STORIES

Like many older science-fiction readers and writers, I was trapped in the genre in the 1920s by the Martian tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs. When, after the Second World War, I was getting back into science fiction (after three and a half years in the armed services) the idea struck me: why not write some pure entertainment in the form of light, swashbuckling interplanetary adventure-romances—stories of the Barsoomian type, but more sophisticated and logically thought out? There would be no flagrant incongruities like people who have "radium rifles," which shoot a hundred kilometers by radar sights, but who still fight with swords and spears; or who have marvelous flying machines but can travel on the surface only on the backs of eight-legged throats or in chariots drawn by zitidars.

This idea led to the stories of the Viagens Interplanetarias series, beginning with the novel The Queen of Zamba, published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1949, and continuing to the present The Prisoner of Zhamanak. There have been eighteen stories of various lengths with a Viagens background, of which ten have been laid on my imaginary planet Krishna and the rest on other planets, including our own Terra. Alas! The march of science has eliminated Mars and Venus as plausible sites for such highjinks.

All the novels laid on Krishna have a name beginning with "Z" in the title. This is a matter of personal convenience. When one has written as much as I (my opus-card file contains over 800 entries) one must use such dodges to keep track of things.

Other writers, too, have written stories of this kind, from Burroughs's predecessor Edwin Lester Arnold down to the present. Tales of this sort have come to be known as sword-and-planet stories, the essential feature being the invention of a planet inhabited by hominoid peoples in a preindustrial, pre-gunpowder stage of culture.

Although my early Krishna stories went well, I stopped writing them in 1952 (the last was published in 1953), partly because I was involved in other projects but also because I saw I was bucking the tide of literary fashion. Taste among science-fiction editors and, one must suppose, among their readers ran towards subjective, sentimental, anti-scientific, psychological, and sociological approaches to storytelling, which then also affected realistic fiction. In the last decade or two, taste has again veered more towards pure entertainment; hence the present story, which may not be the last of its kind.

The stories of this series take place between AD 2088 and 2168, Earth time. I assume that Brazil has become the world's leading power; not that I think this probable, but it is a defensible assumption. Vishnu, Krishna, and Ganesha are planets of the star Tau Ceti, called Roqir in the Varasto languages. Krishna has an atmosphere like Earth's. It is a trifle larger but of lower density, so that surface gravity is a small fraction less. It has less surface water; no oceans, but many landlocked seas and vast deserts.

The main events of Krishna's recent historical past are the downfall of the Kalwmian Empire, the following brilliant city-state period around the Triple Seas, and the rise of the ; Varasto nation-states, especially the empires of Balhib, Gozashtand, and Dur. The Battle of Zur, which started the downfall of the Kalwm Empire, .was about AD 1000, Earth time.

The Kalwm Empire was overthrown by barbarians whose - common name for themselves was Varastuma and for their language, Varastou. These Varastuma overran most of the lands around the Triple Sea, save the Khaldoni nations (successor-states to the Kalwm Empire in the South); the republic of Katai-Jhogorai; and enclaves of the primitive tailed men, Krishna's "missing link."

Earthmen landed on Krishna in the late twenty-first century of the Christian Era, followed by the reptilian Osirians. Terrans found an intelligent species of hominoids enough like themselves so that, with cosmetics and artificial aids, a person of either species could disguise himself as one of the other.

An Interplanetary Council was formed to control intercourse among planets bearing intelligent life. The most advanced Krishnan nations had a culture like that of medieval Europe and Asia. The Council decided that, because of the adverse effects of a sudden influx of advanced technology on people of a much lower technological level, giving advanced technologies to native Krishnans should be forbidden, save in small amounts after careful consideration. Krishnans interpret this prohibition as a plot to keep them ignorant in order to conquer and exploit them; so they try to evade this ban.

About pronunciations: Portuguese, like French, has nasal vowels. If I represent them by a line over the letter, the name of the Brazilian-dominated space-travel organization, the Viagens Interplanetarias, comes out vee-AH-zhaysh ee-ter-pla-neh-TAH-re-ush. The Brazilian officials, Cristôvāo Abreu and Herculeu Castanhoso, are kreesh-too-VOW. uh-BREH-oo and air-koo-LEH-oo kush-TAH-nyew-soo. Since only a few Varasto names occur, it is enough to say that a and á stand for the vowels of "add" and "wad" respectively; ' is a glottal plosive or cough; gh like French r; kh like ch in German ach; k andg as in "key" and "quote"; otherwise consonants as in English, vowels as in Spanish. Stress is usually on the last syllable ending in a consonant or a diphthong; hence "Balhib" is bal-HEEB.

In Khaldoni words, w stands for a sound resembling the vowels of English "put" and "but"; so "Kalwm" may be pronounced "column" and "Mutabwk" to rhyme with "shoot a book." In the Setswana language of Africa, the digraph kg in Kgama, kgolo stands for a k followed by the sound of ch in German ach. The combination could be spelled kkh, but kg is the official spelling.

L. Sprague de Camp