Randall Garrett and Vicki Ann Heydron, ‘The Gandalara Cycle' (1981-86)

 

The ‘Gandalara Cycle’ novels were co-authored, according to the books' title pages, by Randall Garrett and Vicki Ann Heydron. In fact they were written by Heydron, from a series of notes provided by Garrett, her husband (he having at that time a higher profile amongst SF fandom). The first novel in the series, The Steel of Raithskar (1981), sets-up the premise: first-person narrator Ricardo Emilio Carillo, an elderly and infirm university professor in ‘our’ world, is taking a cruise in the Mediterranean when a giant fireball crashes into the ship, as is typical of these sorts of cruises. Ricardo passes through ‘heat, pain and blinding light’ to awaken in the body of a young and vigorous man called Markasset, in the orientalised cod-Arabian fantasy-land of Gandalaran (a map is provided). Markasset embarks without excessive delay upon a series of adventures, alongside his companions: the beautiful female illusionist Tarani (she ‘speaks in a low and vibrant voice that set my spine tingling’) and a giant intelligent cat named Keeshah with whom Ricardo shares a telepathic bond. Seven novels.

In The Steel of Raithskar Ricardo is suspected of stealing a sacred jewel called the ‘Ra’ira’ and must prove his innocence via the expedient of questing-about, fighting people with swords and generally getting to know his new land, all the time riding his cat-friend like a horse. The Gandalarans are not surprised at Markasset’s consciousness being supplanted by a mind from another world: ‘it happens,’ an old man called Thanasset tells him, if ‘rarely’ (‘maybe once a generation ... I have read the accounts of most, if not all, of the Visitations’). To begin with, Ricardo/Markasset is often distracted by memories from his previous life (‘there was no way to say coronary thrombosis in Gandaresh’ [69]) but as the series goes on he increasingly immerses himself in his fantasy idiom and forgets his former life: adventure, fighting, sex (discretely rendered) and all the satisfactions of youth in a magical realm. There are giant white apes, beautiful princesses, a desert land, mysterious magicians, an ‘All-Mind’ overpower: all very John Carter of Mars in flavour. One thing that Burroughs doesn’t give us that Garrett-Heydron does is a strange (or at least, strange to me: I daresay this only indexes how square and sexually-repressed I am) tooth fetish: ‘I kissed her, tantalizing my tongue on the rounded tips of her large canine teeth. All thought was swept away’ [230]; ‘Her canine teeth were as well-developed as mine. Somehow, they looked even better on her’ [50]; ‘Her large canine tusks looked eager’ [207]. Phwoar, and so on.

There is rather a lot of bourgeois comfortableness in what is, notionally at least, a feudal bronze-age Arabian world:

The room we had first entered was merely a wide hallway with chairs. It led into a large, private sitting room which connected with several other rooms, including a tiled balcony where meals were served. We were in the private sitting room now, and Tarani was adjusting a fold of the gown while Zefra admired herself in a polished-brass mirror. [The Bronze of Eddarta (1983), 130]

They may not have discovered how to smelt iron, but these are people who appreciate the benefits of a private sitting room and comfortable chairs. Priorities in cultural/social evolution.

In the later volumes, Ricardo travels to the land where the giant intelligent cats come from, and also meets the draida, ‘dog-like in the same sense that the sha'um were cat-like’ [The Well of Darkness, 19]. So all your pet-needs are catered for. Eventually Tarani becomes new High Lord of Eddarta, announcing her intention to end its corrupt traditions of slavery, though this doesn't go smoothly to plan. Still, there are consolations:

Her lips were soft, responsive, eager. With a thrill of joy I slipped my hand under the fabric of her tunic and caressed her breast, full and firm. She moved and made a sound—and we took the time, then, to be free of all our clothing. [Well of Darkness (1983), 96]

Hot!

Gandalara is always hot, but the reflective quality of the sand in the desert made it seem suffocatingly, blisteringly hot. [The Search for Ka (1984), 260]

Hot!