Trullion: Alastor 2262

The Alastor Cluster consists of around 30 thousand stars with 3000 inhabited planets. It is the setting for a trilogy of novels by Jack Vance, each named after the planet on which it takes place.

Trullion is a largely aquatic planet with only one landmass. After years of wars, the settlers on the planet have divided into four peaceful prefectures and a social system headed by an aristocratic class, followed by landowning, professional, and working classes. Peace seems to have resulted from the Trills, as they are known, realizing that their planet is so outrageously abundant in both the necessities and most of the pleasures of life, that fighting among themselves was absurd. They are now a hedonistic race, working when they must, drinking great quantities of the excellent local wines, taking out their hostilities with the violent spectator sport of hussade or on occasion enjoying the public execution of criminals in vats of boiling oil. They are also casually promiscuous, and yet set a high standard on virginity. They need virgins to serve as shierls, the beauties who find themselves stripped naked before a crowd of thousands should their team lose at hussade. Yes, Trullion is a 20th century, men's magazine vision of the good life.

Not too far into Trullion, I realized that it could work as a Western, a too-spicy-for-tv episode of The Big Valley or Bonanza. The story centers on a family of landowners, a son returning from military service to find the situation at home changed for the worse, and his efforts to regain his rightful inheritance. The rich folk are shifty, the son must prove himself (in this case by playing hussade), and instead of Apaches we get the merlings, an indigenous aquatic race that drag incautious Trills to underwater caverns and carve them up for dinner.

Although Vance wrote a great deal of fantasy, Trullion is clearly a far future SF novel. It simply doesn't make much use of science. Space travel is a given, but the boats Trills use to get from island to island range from rowboats to motorboats and yachts as they would today. The communication system includes video screens, but people still dial the telephone when they want to reach some one. Vance spent much time traveling internationally with his wife and son, at times island hopping in the South Pacific or the Mediterranean. While on these extended trips he wrote much of his fiction, turning over his handwritten pages to his wife for typing. I can imagine the life on Trullion coming from this nomadic strain in Vance's life.

Trullion has little structure but it is an enjoyable read, Several chapters involve such detailed descriptions of hussade tournaments that I thought I was reading a SF version of a Matt Christopher sports book for boys. But I like hussade. As a child my favorite group sport was Smear the Man with the Ball, which is not unlike hussade, except hussade has done away with the ball. Also, we never ended our games by stripping a female classmate naked.

There is a subplot involving an ascetic movement called Fanscherade but not much comes of it. There are also the Trevanyi, a gypsy-like race who can be trusted only to steal from you but still command a level of respect among Trills. I don't think Vance ever shied away from stereotyping.

All the Alastor novels fit my criteria for the perfect SF book. I like them to be mass market paperbacks published in the 1970s or '80s, and between 188 and 235 pages long. My 1973 Ballantine edition wrapped up in 247 pages.