Traveller novels?

Can you all recommend novels set in the Traveller universe? If not, how about novels that remind
you of Traveller.
10 comments
86% Upvoted
User avatar
u/IntelGaming
·promoted
Przygotujcie się na Festiwal Ofert
click.channelsight.com

User avatar
level 1
grauenwolf
·
6 yr. ago

Good timing. I was just about to post about how I thought "The Adventures of Hobart Floyt and
Alacrity Fitzhugh" would make a great setting for Traveller.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Brian_Daley#The_Adventures_of_Hobart_Floyt_and_Alacrity_Fitzhugh

The heroes have many of the problems hinted at in the Traveller source books. For example, they
often have to deal with different law levels, forcing them to leave some or all of their weapons
behind.

There is an in-depth look at what the shanty towns around a space port are like.

The technology levels vary from planet to planet, sometimes making it hard to get needed medical
attention. There is even one planet that's high-tech in parts, while others are explicitly low tech for
the amusement of the tourists.
4
User avatar
level 1
juvation
·
6 yr. ago

Traveller inventor Marc W Miller recently released his novel "Agent of the Imperium" --

https://www.amazon.com/Agent-Imperium-Story-Traveller-Universe-ebook/dp/B019Y37LC8
3
User avatar
level 1
fareven
·
6 yr. ago

Here's some books that spoke "Traveller* to me:

A lot by Andre Norton, especially her Dark Piper. It's a story of a Long Night beginning and some
people on a frontier world trying to survive it.

Poul Anderson's Ensign Flandry books - A Stone in Heaven, Agent of the Terran Empire and
others. A secret agent handling interstellar conspiracies. His Polesotechnic League stories, such as
Trader to the Stars and The Trouble Twisters, the adventures of interstellar free traders.

Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy - an epic plan to save interstellar civilization from destruction.

C.J. Cherryh's Company Wars series, especially Downbelow Station and Merchanter's Luck. Her
Chanur series, starting with Pride of Chanur.

Robert Heinlein's The Past Through Tomorrow, including such short stories as The Green Hills of
Earth. His Starship Troopers and Double Star.

Mike McQuay's Matthew Swain novels, especially When Trouble Beckons - a film noir series in a
science fiction setting.

Alan Dean Fosters Humanx Commonwealth stories, starting with For Love of Mother Not. His
Icerigger trilogy. Cachelot.

H. Beam Piper's Uller Uprising and Space Viking.

3
User avatar
level 1
nobby-w
·
6 yr. ago

I'd also add Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga as a series with a space-opera feel that would
go nicely with Traveller.

There are a few other golden age ones that are either known to have influenced Traveller, or would
not be out of place if used in conjunction with it:

E.C. Tubb's Dumarest Saga is often cited as inspiring some of the tropes in Traveller, for
example air/rafts and low berths. There are about 30 books in the series, although I've only read a
couple of them.

Another one that gets cited as inspiration for Traveller is the Demon Prince series by (IIRC) Jack
Vance.

Pournelle's Falkenberg's Legion series, and some of his collaborative works with Larry Niven
(King David's Spaceship, The Mote In God's Eye) aren't necessarily directly influential on early
Traveller, but contain loads of tropes that wouldn't be out of place.

Schmitz's Telzey Amberdon series is probably a bit dated now, but has one of the better
treatments of psionic talents in Sci-fi. For a couple of different takes, Blish's Jack of Eagles or
Harry Harrison's Deathworld series (which is fairly good anyway) feature protagonists with psi
talents.

Another one from Harry Harrison is the Stainless Steel Rat, a series featuring a master criminal
called James DiGriz. It doesn't take itself 100% seriously (like a lot of Harrison's work) and was
pretty good.

Having said all that, it's pushing 30 years since I read most of these, and I dare say that some of
them are quite dated.
3
User avatar
level 1
Endiny
·
6 yr. ago

My friends and I started playing Traveller after reading the Privateer Tales series of books.

I've also read Spinward Fringe, which feels very Traveller as well.

Hope it helps.
2
User avatar
level 1
RexCelestis
·
6 yr. ago

Let me offer up a vote for the Harrington series by Weber. A great military campaign in the making
with a pretty limited amount of handwavium.
1
User avatar
level 1
NightGatherz
·
6 yr. ago
Imperium

Just finished Shadow of the Storm from MJ Dougherty, set in the Traveller universe in the
Solomani Confederation. A good scifi novel, great for Traveller fans looking to get some feel for
the Solomani side of things.

Not too long ago I read Slices of Life, also by Dougherty; a seriesof short stories, vignettes, and
flash pieces set in the Third Imperium.

I've read Agent of the Imperium a couple times, also a very solid novel set in the Third Imperium.
1
User avatar
level 1
rosswinn
·
6 yr. ago

My answer center around have you read the text foundations of Traveller. The game very much
comes from the work of H. Beam Piper, EC Tubb, Jerry Pournelle, and others. There really isn't a
lot of fiction based in the Traveller Universe because honestly there is a tiny market for it. If you
don't understand where we've been in many cases I don't think you can understand where we're
going. The other thing about traveler is in many ways it is an anachronistic future. There are no tiny
computers and PDAs in Traveller and that's not necessarily A Bad Thing, but there aren't a lot of
authors interested in writing within those parameters. There is an excellent article on the text
foundations of traveler and I'll link to it at the bottom of this reply.
http://www.irosf.com/q/zine/article/10119
1
User avatar
level 1
xnet445
·
6 yr. ago

David Drake has several series/alternate universes that set the mood well. His Hammers Slammers
novels, as well as his others set in that universe such as Cross the Stars and The Voyage, explore the
lives of starmercs. His RCN series is set in a different universe but has a nice Traveller feel to it,
with the RCN being (very) loosely based on the Royal Navy at the time of Nelson. His Reaches
trilogy is set in a post-apoc star faring civilization and uses the life of Sir Francis Drake for
inspiration.

Edit: words
1
User avatar
level 1
MHaroldPage
·
6 yr. ago

Nobody mentioned the Dumarest novels! Major inspirations for Traveller, including Low and High
Passage, Slow and Fast drugs, and also that John Steinbeck vibe! Article here.

James Maliszewski, who used to run the Grognard blog, wrote up an Appendix T for Traveller here.

Appendix T
Tuesday, October 8, 2013 James Maliszewski Comments 6 comments

aljUnless one considers charts, tables, and mathematical formulas to be “illustrations,” the original
edition of GDW’s science fiction roleplaying game Traveller (1977) contains only one piece of
genuine artwork: namely, the portrait to the right. That portrait, by an uncredited artist, depicts
Alexander Lascelles Jamison, the example character whose career is detailed in the first volume of
the classic SF RPG. Like all Traveller characters, before he starts seeking his fortune among the
stars, Jamison has already had a career, in this case in the merchant service, where he mustered out
with his own ship and the rank of captain.

Looking at that portrait, I found myself remembering a quote from “Margin of Profit,” a story by
the late Poul Anderson, first published in the September 1956 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.
That story, too, depicts an interstellar merchant captain:

He was a huge man, two meters in height and broad enough to match. A triple chin and swag
belly did not make him appear soft. Rings glittered on hairy fingers and bracelets on tawny wrists,
under snuff-soiled lace. Small black eyes, set close to a great hook nose under a sloping forehead,
peered with laser intensity.

Anderson’s merchant is, of course, Nicholas Van Rijn, president of the Solar Spice & Liquors
Company, and one of the more famous characters from the period between the end of the Golden
Age of Science Fiction and the rise of the New Wave.

[Click on the images in this article for larger versions.]

The Man Who Counts-smallUnlike D&D and RuneQuest, which explicitly include appendices
where their designers talk about the books and authors that inspired them as they created their
respective games, Traveller includes no such appendix. I suspect that’s because Traveller, like the
1974 edition of Dungeons & Dragons, is very spare in its presentation. It consists of three 44-page
volumes that paint the universe of “science fiction adventure in the far future” in very broad strokes,
providing just enough rules and ideas to inspire. Also like D&D (but unlike RuneQuest), there is no
setting “baked in,” leaving it to individual referees to create their own.

Of course, no act of human creation is truly ex nihilo; there are always traces of one’s own
influences – and so it is with Traveller, as Alexander Lascelles Jamison makes plain. If nothing
else, Marc Miller and the crew at Game Designers Workshop had read and were inspired by Poul
Anderson, whose “Technic History” encompassed many short stories, novellas, and novels,
spanning several thousand fictional years and providing a backdrop against which characters like
Van Rijn, David Falkayn, and Dominic Flandry had their own science fiction adventures in the far
future.

Looking further into those three little black books, you can find brief hints of other inspirational
works. For example, “high,” “middle,” and “low passages” – three grades of starship travel tickets –
have their origins in E.C. Tubb’s Dumarest Saga.

The real tip-offs are found elsewhere, though, in a pair of supplements produced in the first couple
of years after Traveller was released. Supplement 1: 1001 Characters was released in 1978 and, as
its title suggests, includes 1001 pre-generated characters. (You must remember this book was
published in an era before widespread personal computer use made random generation of hundreds
of characters relatively easy.)

Among those 1001 characters, nine are “drawn from the pages of science fiction” that have been
“expressed in terms of Traveller characteristics.” The identities of these characters, along with eight
more, are revealed in Supplement 4: Citizens of the Imperium (1979). Looking over these seventeen
characters reveals a lot about the books and other media that influenced Marc Miller and others at
GDW as they developed Traveller.

The characters are:

Toyman EC Tubb-small

John Carter of Mars, from E.R. Burroughs’s Barsoom series.

Kimball Kinnison, from E.E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensmen series
Jason dinAlt, from Harry Harrison’s Deathworld series
Earl Dumarest, from E.C. Tubb’s aforementioned Dumarest Saga
Beowulf Shaeffer, from Larry Niven’s Known Space series
Anthony Villiers, from Alexei Panshin’s Star Well and The Thurb Revolution
Dominic Flandry, from Poul Anderson’s Flandry series
Kirth Girsen, from Jack Vance’s Demon Prince series
 Gully Foyle, from Alfred Bester’s The Stars, My Destination
Luke Skywalker, from Star Wars
James di Griz, from Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat series
Sergeant Major Calvin, from Jerry Pournelle’s “The Mercenary” and “Sword and Scepter”
Senior Physician Conway, from James White’s Sector General series
Jame Retief, from Keith Laumer’s Retief series
Simok Aratap, from Isaac Asimov’s The Stars, Like Dust
Darth Vader, from Star Wars
Harry Mudd, from Star Trek

Space Viking-smallAlso worth noting are references in Supplement 3: The Spinward Marches
(1979) to “the Long Night” (another borrowing from Anderson) and “the Sword Worlds” (from H.
Beam Piper’s Space Viking).

Looking over the list above, it’s worth noting that, for the most part, all of the characters come from
literature or media from the 1960s or earlier. This only makes sense, given that Marc Miller was
born in 1947, and thus would have been a child and teenager during the 1950s and much of the
1960s, when these works were written.

Though released in 1977, the kind of science fiction that influenced Traveller from an earlier time,
just as Dungeons & Dragons reflects sensibilities born of the younger days of its creators rather than
what was contemporary at the time of its release.

In a similar fashion, I would contend that Star Wars occupies a similar place in relation to Traveller
than The Lord of the Rings does in relation to D&D, which is to say, a minimal and largely ex post
facto influence intended to ride the coattails of a fad rather than anything more foundational.
(Remember that Traveller was published just weeks after Star Wars had been released and thus it
could not have exerted much influence over its design).

As a bookish kid growing up in the early 80s, when I first discovered Traveller, I found these
references in the game’s supplements to be godsend. They introduced me to science fiction authors
and novels I might otherwise not have encountered, just as Appendix N did for fantasy. Indeed, I
fell in love with many of these authors, so much so that they have colored my own conceptions of
science fiction for the last three decades – yet another positive benefit roleplaying games have had
on my life and, I have little doubt, on the lives of so many others.
Blog Entry, Books, Games, Vintage Treasures
Post navigation
PREVIOUS
Sword & Sorcery for the Girl Who Wants to be Conan: Gaie Sebold’s Babylon Steel
NEXT
Ancient Worlds: Waking the Dead
Subscribe
Connect with
guest
Name*
Email*
Website
6 Comments
Oldest
Fletcher Vredenburgh
Fletcher Vredenburgh
8 years ago
What great list. I was never a fan of Traveller but I liked its reference points. I was just thinking of
rereading some of Anderson’s Technic League books and I’ll take this as a serendipitous prompting
to dig them out.
0
Reply
John ONeill
John ONeill
Admin
8 years ago

What Fletcher said. This is a great post. An excellent bit of scholarship, James. That is both a very
credible list of Traveller influences, and an attractive survey of pre-1970 SF.
0
Reply
M Harold Page
M Harold Page
8 years ago

Ooo. Reading list!

0
Reply
trackback
Black Gate » Blog Archive » Margaret St. Clair, Andrew Offutt, and Appendix N: Advanced
Readings in D&D
8 years ago

[…] 1978 edition of RuneQuest, and — one of my favorite gaming articles of the past year —
Appendix T, in which he uses diligent detective work to brilliantly retro-fit an Appendix N for the
original […]
0
Reply
RdGkA
RdGkA
5 years ago

That was a great source of information!

Any idea what Books inspired the Traveler Aliens? Aslan, K’Kree, Vargr ..?
0
Reply
chartmapcounter
chartmapcounter
1 year ago

Edmond Hamilton’s Starwolf series should be on this list.

Varnan Starwolves: Vargr

Mercenary guilds: Why was Mercenary Book 4?
Kharali/Vhollans: Humaniti seeded throughout the galaxy
Krii aliens: sounds very similar to K’kree even though different in appearance

*
Series Architecture: The Same But Different in EC Tubb’s Dumarest
Thursday, September 29, 2016 M Harold Page Comments 17 comments
Toyman EC Tubb-small
Oddly compelling…

EC Tubb’s Dumarest serial is oddly compelling… so oddly compelling that, if you like the first
book, you end up slowly chugging through the series.

For those who’ve just tuned in, this is an incredibly long mid-20th century low Space Opera serial
that influenced the roleplaying game Traveller. Note, series not serial: though there is forward
momentum, each book is standalone — it’s more Deep Space Nine than Babylon 5. Also note the
low. This isn’t exactly Conan in Space, but the Cimmerian would not be out of place.

So, Dumarest wanders a Grapes of Wrath galaxy — think how we met Rey in The Force Awakens
— in search of Earth while pursued by the fanatical Cyclan, cyborg monks with no emotions other
than the hunger for power and pride in their intellect.

It’s very much The Fugitive does Space Western. There are exceptions, and Tubb often kicks off
with a short story before settling down the real meat. However, in almost every episode, Dumarest
is the archetypal Drifter who becomes involved in gothic goings on in one of the local great houses,
usually because that house faces some external threat.

(The houses are usually Gormenghast-style piles crammed with extended family and fuelled by
dwindling fortunes. However, from time to time he swaps in military unit, spaceship, expedition,
clan or band, with similar effect.)

This happens so consistently, that the books should be too formulaic to keep coming back to.

But we do. Each novel is the same but different.

How did — does — he do it?

dumarest-6
So oddly compelling that, if you like the first book, you end up slowly chugging through the series.

First, Tubb is incredibly economic with the… backbone of the story. Just three elements — FATE
RPG would call them “Aspects” — generate most of the underlying conflict.

(1) Dumarest is a veteran traveler on a quest staying just ahead of his enemies. He is lonely, but
cannot stay. His skills tempt him to help the unfortunate, but does not want to get involved. Though
he does not want to get involved, his search for clues pointing to Earth forces him to stay long
enough that he does get involved.

These internal conflicts echo his impact on the people around him. He’s attractive to women
(because rugged bad boy) but they know they can’t keep him and their family disapprove. He’s a
potential ally in local conflicts (because skillset), but — since he has no local network — politically
and socially weak when he takes sides.

(2) The great houses are old. This makes them proud but decaying, durable but unadaptable, in
need of new blood/ideas but too conservative to accept them, and loyal but untrusting.
(3) The Galaxy is so soul-suckingly big that you can lose a planet in it! So it offers novelty but
rootlessness, diversity but isolation, and hope but peril.

(The other elements and players contain similar contradictions. The Cyclan, for example, are all
about intellect, which makes them smart but foolishly arrogant.)

There you have it: Dumarest is a questing traveller. The great houses are old. The Galaxy is big.

From a reader point-of-view, these are a starkly powerful trio of archetypes. They’re probably why
we want to buy the next book(s). Together they generate enough complexity to make the story vivid
and intriguing while still easy-to-follow, which probably explains why we find them so
entertaining. And, archetype and complexity themselves combine to make the stories feel strangely
satisfying… a bit more significant than just a throwaway read.

From the writer point-of-view, this is a great way to make the material manageable. In a Science
Fiction universe where potentially anything can happen, it’s good to have a simple backbone to
cling onto.

Tubb is similarly economical when he builds his scenarios. Here’s my diagram of a typical
Dumarest episode (right).
dumarest-serial-how-it-works-small
Jagged boxes are conflicts. Square ones are players. Arrows indicate connections, but not
alignment! (Click to see larger image)

Tubb generally has just two nested arenas in which the three main conflicts play out:

First, the Planet, where there’s a… (1) WAR. Enemy versus Great House, including Dumarest. The
Environment is also a player, though one to be exploited by both sides. (There’s also usually a
subplot to do with the fortunes of the house versus the environment.)

On the planet, there’s the Great House (or spaceship or military unit or whatever) where there’s: a
(2) POWER STRUGGLE between a Waif, on whose side Dumarest intervenes, versus a Pretender
(e.g. an evil uncle); and a (3) ROMANCE that’s really a three-sided conflict between the “Girl”
(mid 20th century terminology, sorry), Dumarest (can she win his love and make him stay?), and
her Suitor (usually a more suitable young man).

These three conflicts — War, Power Struggle and Romance — are themselves archetypal and give
the reader something to hang onto as the story twists and turns.

Because they co-exist and interact, these three conflicts also generate enough story possibilities to
provide variation between books: the suitor may be tempted to side with the rival, or prove himself
in the war… The Pretender may threaten the Girl, or change sides in the War… players may be
close friends or relatives with each other so that the Suitor is the ally of the Waif.. and so on.

Tubb often merges the players in interesting ways. Most obviously, the Waif is the Girl and the
Suitor is the Pretender. But what if the Waif is the Suitor? Or the Girl is the Pretender? Or if
somebody is being duplicitous?
dumarest-24
There are 33 Dumarest novels!

Tubb also varies his arenas. Sometimes the planet doesn’t really figure and everything happens
within the house (or city, clan or ship), or the house and the planet are the same.
Finally, Tubb has two conflicts that Dumarest trails around between books. They not only connect
each episode, they’re also what get him involved and what keep him moving on, and in doing so
add complexity and time constraint to each story:

Dumarest versus whatever stops him finding Earth. It’s one of those Who’s-Afraid-of Virginia-
Wolf-Unhealthy-20th-Century-Style obsessions. It’s integral to his character, affects his
involvement in the three main conflicts, but also creates more standalone conflicts as he battles
against whatever or whoever stands in his way.

Dumarest versus the Cyclan. The Cyclan want to wrest certain knowledge from his brain then
eliminate him. Whether they are already involved in the situation, or whether they insert themselves
specifically for the task, they usually spend some of each book going after Dumarest through either
the Power Struggle or the War.

* **

And that’s it.

Three aspects, two arenas, three main conflicts yields thirty-three Dumarest novels.

Is this the best way to approach writing a series? Unlike Star Trek, it means inventing a new
ensemble cast for each episode. However, because it’s new each time, your ensemble need never
run out of plot, and you need never get tied up with tracking continuity.

I don’t know about you, but I’m tempted to give something like this a go.

M Harold Page is the Scottish author of The Wreck of the Marissa (Book 1 of the Eternal Dome of
the Unknowable Series), an old-school space adventure yarn about a retired mercenary turned
archaeologist. He’s on a quest to find the mythical Dome but keeps getting involved in “local
difficulties”. You can get it on Kindle here.
Blog Entry, Books, Series Fantasy, Vintage Treasures, Writing
Post navigation
PREVIOUS
The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in August
NEXT
Nathan Long Spills the Beans on The Bard’s Tale IV
Subscribe
Connect with
guest
Name*
Email*
Website
17 Comments
Oldest
Thomas Parker
Thomas Parker
5 years ago

You nailed it, Mr. P. I liked the first one, and have indeed been “slowly chugging through the
series” at the rate of one a summer since then. I suppose at some point I’ll have to pick that pace up
a bit if I ever want to finish the series.
Dumarest himself is a very satisfying character – highly competent but not a superman, taciturn but
not an emotional robot, with a master-motive that’s thoroughly believable and that only grows
stronger with frustration.

One more thing – Tubb was a first-rate action writer. I always look forward to the combats that
Dumarest gets involved in; those sequences are invariably top-notch.
0
Reply
Aonghus Fallon
Aonghus Fallon
5 years ago

Does anybody remember the original Early Seventies covers? For some reason the artist decided
Earl looked like a porn star circa the same era (ie, long hair and moustache).

I only discovered a few years back that Tubb wrote westerns prior to switching over to SF.
Certainly the Dumarest series has a lot of Western tropes (although Earl’s specialty was a knife
rather than six-shooter). The plots were fairly formulaic, but Tubb usually introduced something
sufficiently new into the mix with each book to justify it, and there were a couple of variations on a
familiar theme – like when a sentient planet falls in love with Earl in ‘Mayenne’ or when it’s a
young man who is infatuated with Earl rather than a woman.
0
Reply
Aonghus Fallon
Aonghus Fallon
5 years ago

http://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1440110918l/3422555.jpg
0
Reply
M Harold Page
M Harold Page
5 years ago

Aonghus Fallon: MY EYES MY EYES

0
Reply
M Harold Page
M Harold Page
5 years ago

> there were a couple of variations on a familiar theme – like when a sentient planet falls in love
with Earl in ‘Mayenne’ or when it’s a young man who is infatuated with Earl rather than a woman.

Exactly!

Planet merges with Girl.

Girl merges with Waif and is a boy.

One set of archetypes, a zillion possibilities.

0
Reply
Aonghus Fallon
Aonghus Fallon
5 years ago

Classy, huh? The later covers are a big improvement. How could they not be? Although I’m not
sure any of them close to my mental picture of what Dumarest actually looked like.
0
Reply
Thomas Parker
Thomas Parker
5 years ago

It’s my understanding that Tubb didn’t originally intend for the series to go on for nearly as long as
it did – Donald Wollheim encouraged him to keep spinning it out, because sales were good. Then
sales declined and DAW dropped the series, leaving Tubb stranded ten million light-years from
home, as it were.
0
Reply
Adrian Simmons
Adrian Simmons
5 years ago

This article reminds me of a similar work at Internet Review of Science Fiction from back in ’05–
http://www.irosf.com/q/zine/article/10119

Of course, I have the same question then that I have now: does anybody actually PLAY Traveller?
I’ve met people who collect it, are devoted to it, but not who actually play it.
0
Reply
M Harold Page
M Harold Page
5 years ago

@Adrian Simmons – Thanks for the link! Looks like an interesting read.

I think the problems with traveller are twofold:

1. It’s set in a middle aged story world with “real” structures such as companies and government
agencies that are beyond the grasp of most 12-year-olds obsessive enough to learn and handle the
rules.

2. It has this “show your workings” vibe, which militates against replicating the pulp/ noir SF
stories that inspires it.

Personally, I like FATE Diaspora, which is what I GM:

https://www.blackgate.com/2014/04/24/roleplaying-game-review-fate-and-fate-diaspora/
0
Reply
Rich Horton
Rich Horton
Editor
5 years ago

Good article and analysis.

I read all the Dumarest novels (except the last one that was for a while only available in French I
think) a couple of decades ago. And while I didn’t do the detail analysis you did, I certainly noticed
the formula, and the repeated tropes like the knife fights in arenas, and the nearly but not quite
identical paragraph in every novel about the local Cyclan merging with the group mind (and the
Homuchin elements or whatever … I forget the details). (And planet after planet with a name that’s
a pun on Earth or Terra.)

Yes, it’s formulaic stuff, and pretty routine, and only competently written, but it’s still fun, and like
you say, oddly compelling.

I think TOYMAN was the first I read — the original edition, half of an Ace Double, in my case
bought at a used bookstore as literally just half — the other half torn off.
0
Reply
Sarah Avery
Sarah Avery
Editor
5 years ago

That is a nicely varied formula. I can see how, in the hands of a kickass writer, it would be nigh
irresistible.

Have to resist nonetheless.

Thirty-three novels, leading to no conclusion? That’s an undertaking I might have signed on for as a
younger reader when I felt like I had forever to linger in all the books I could ever want to read. But
at my reading speed, my enormously long TBR list may outlive me.

I knew people in college who played Traveller. My old gaming gaggle tried it for a three-episode
campaign, and it didn’t do much for us, but that was so long ago I don’t remember why not. We
were more into Call of Cthulhu, Shadowrun, and an unholy homebrew of a system that never met a
fiddly detail it didn’t like.
0
Reply
M Harold Page
M Harold Page
5 years ago

@Sarah

As I understand it, book 33 DOES bring the series to a conclusion, but I have not wanted to spoiler
myself to find out what: http://jeffbuser.com/Dumarest/bibliography.html
0
Reply
Vulch
Vulch
5 years ago
The books are short, 130 to 180 pages typically, so the equivalent of 3 Peter F Hamilton or George
R R Martin volumes.
0
Reply
Edwina Nearing
Edwina Nearing
1 year ago

Tubb (and readers) manage to “have it both ways”: the series does and does not have a conclusion.
In the last Dumarest novel, Temple of Truth, Dumarest has found the coordinates of Terra and has
sufficient funds to, in theory, to get there, so he “wins.” On the other hand, the Cyclan is still after
him, and as it seems to be strongly hinted in the first novel or two of the series, the Cyclan is
headquartered on Terra, so Dumarest is still facing a great challenge. (And it is somewhat puzzling
to me that the first books seem to give away the location of the Cyclan, and then the whole subject
is dropped — the highly suspicious and intelligent Dumarest never even speculates about the
location of Cyclan headquarters in the later books, which is something which one would think
would concern him . . . )
0
Reply
M Harold Page
M Harold Page
Author
Reply to Edwina Nearing
7 months ago

The final, previously unpublished, volume in which he actually reaches Terra is now on amazon!
0
Reply
Dutch Uncle
Dutch Uncle
7 months ago

I have been rediscovering boxes of books in my basement. I just found a stack of 23 paperbacks
(some of the oldest being Ace Doubles) with all of the Dumarest novels through the last DAW
edition, most of which I bought as they were published.

“Earth? Who would name a planet Earth? Might as well name it Soil, or Dirt.” But Earl Dumarest is
certain of the name of his homeworld. Yes, after the first four or five, they become episodic in the
old-fashioned TV sense: standalone story, with continuing threads of the ongoing quest to find his
way home, the constant pursuit for the secrets he carries, and the new adventures in each port of
call. One could draw parallels to Westerns where “our hero” passes through one little town after
another, and always – regretfully, almost against his will – finds himself drawn into some local
conflict and some local romance. One could also compare to James Bond, except that Bond falls
short.

There are paragraphs one starts to recognize as they repeat: the description of the Cyclan, the credo
of the Universal Brotherhood, the description of traveling “low” riding “doped, frozen and ninety
percent dead”. But then, an episodic series needs to orient new readers, so it’s forgivable.

People complain about Star Trek TOS or the original Battlestar Galactica being “formulaic” in
comparison to modern shows. Well, sure, they were in keeping with the previous style, and they set
a tone for the future. Same here.
0
Reply
M Harold Page
M Harold Page
Author
Reply to Dutch Uncle
7 months ago

M Harold Page here

I think, TV-wise, Dumarest is The Fugitive but in Space. At various times it does arc, and generally
makes sense when read in the right order.
It’s worth also noting that the previously unpublished finale is now on Amazon.