Science fiction writing loves its ongoing series, but E.C. Tubb’s Dumarest saga is truly something else. Debuting in 1967 and with the final completed part published in 2008, 2 years before Tubb’s death, the Dumarest series took in some 33 novels covering a single epic journey across the galaxy.
The first story, The Winds of Gath, introduces us to the basic premises of the series. Earl Dumarest is a wandering space traveller who survives on a narrow margin, often only able to afford Low Passage between star systems: instead of enjoying the luxuries of warmth and food and light and air during space voyages, Low Passengers literally travel with the cargo, cryogenically frozen for the trip in a process with a 15% mortality rate.
In short, almost every single trip Dumarest takes is a risk – but a risk he is willing to take, for Dumarest originated on Earth, birthplace of humanity, and is determined to get home. Earth is a blasted wasteland, you see, and when Dumarest got a chance to stow away on one of the few ships to visit the place to get offworld and away, he jumped at it – only to find that in the wider galaxy Earth is considered to be a myth, and nobody will admit to knowing where it is or believe him when he tells them he comes from there. Consequently, Dumarest travels the length and breadth of the colonised universe, desperate to track down any clue – no matter how minor – which could help him find Earth again and solve this grand mystery.
The Winds of Gath
We join Dumarest’s adventures just as he arrives at Gath – a dead-end world for space travellers who lack the funds for a return ticket, since there isn’t really enough of a functional economy there to let poverty-stricken space bums scrimp and save enough cash to buy a low passage out of there. Dumarest didn’t intend to go there at all, except the ship he was travelling on changed course to accommodate the wishes of the Matriarch of Kund, the ruler of a powerful realm of female-dominated planets.
The Matriarch, her ward Seena Thoth, and their entourage are not the only tourists – a swathe of wealthy individuals have come to Gath, including the sadistic and cruel Prince of Emmened, because they have all heard of its sole attraction. This is the massive mountain range a few days’ walk north of the spaceport, where every so often the curious weather patterns of this planet (arising because one hemisphere always faces the local star whilst the other hemisphere is in eternal night) cause a massive storm to erupt – a storm in which, it is said, the voices of the dead can be heard.
Dumarest is sceptical, as well he should be, but he has other concerns – like keeping his right-hand man Megan alive in one of the toughest seasons yet for the travellers stuck in the shanty-town surrounding the spaceport, earning his way off-world, and foiling a conspiracy against the Matriarch’s party. Meanwhile, Dyne, the matriarch’s hyper-logical Cyber advisor, is playing his own game in the aid of the Cyclan, the Cyber guild, and the vast Cyclan hive-mind – a colossal complex of living brains extracted from the most exceptional Cybers, in regular telepathic contact with Cybers across the galaxy thanks to the powers of the Homochon implant. And what, exactly, does a huge ever-growing pulsating brain that rules from the centre of the Ultraworld want in this situation?
Jumbled Thoughts of a Fake Geek Boy 