Back in 1967, E. C. Tubb’s Winds of Gath introduced an adventurer who was looking for his home planet. The adventurer was Earl Dumarest and his homeworld is Earth. The problem was that mysteriously almost all evidence of Earth had been expunged. For 33 books, Tubb described Dumarest’s search for his home across a galaxy of planets. Here and there, Dumarest would find clues that pointed the way to Earth’s secret location. Of course, there has to be a bunch of Bad Guys trying to stop Dumarest. Tubb chose the cyborgs called the Cyclan who hunt Dumarest to prevent him from finding Earth. In addition, Dumarest also possesses the affinity twin, a way to control the mind of anyone he comes in contact with. The Cyclan want the affinity twin to help them achieve galactic domination.
Yes, the writing is formulaic. Yes, some of the middle volumes don’t advance Dumarest’s search very much. But, all in all, the Dumarest series is satisfying space opera.
I felt sorry to see the series end. DAW Books dropped the Dumarest series in 1985. Volume 32, The Return, was published by a small press in 1997. Since then, I’ve dreamed about completing the series. But now Tubb has done that for me. I have mixed feelings about Child of Earth. It concludes the series, but leaves plenty unexplained. At 89, I’m guessing E. C. Tubb isn’t going to do much more writing so this final volume will have to suffice.
I have to admit that while I hoped for a 34th book I really have no idea how the series would have gone forward, and only Mr Tubb would have had a proper idea.
Now that the Cyclan know where Dumarest is it might actually be too dangerous to stay on Earth! However directly fighting the Cyclan has never been part of the format, while Dumarest has fought Cybers he does so only when cornered and tends to run from them. The organisation is simply too large for any one man, or band of men, to fight. I thought that the biggest threat to the Cyclan would only come from within, namely the spread of the diseased brains and then possibly the collapse of it’s mental based communication system.
Now that Earth has been reached I think it would be very difficult for another writer to continue the series with the added complication of changing the whole direction of the concept.
There’s no doubt that continuing the Dumarest series is fraught with problems, David. But, Tubb left enough clues to point the way to possible plots. Finding the right writer to write more novels is the biggest hurdle.
i love the dumarest saga. it has enriched my life. i have read some of them 10 times or more. i am saddened by Ted’s passing. i hope to see him in heaven. mant authors leave notes and outlines, for future projects. maybe someone will find them and write book 34 similar to the way Mr. Tubb would have wanted it.
We fans of E. C. Tubb feel the same as you do, Doug. The Dumarest series is underrated.
I have a series of links for reviews of each of the 33 books in the Dumarest series. The reviews are 900 words long, briefly describe the broad plot outlines, planets visited, ships ridden, damsels rescued, moral issue grappled with and clues to earth found or just missed plus the odd comment or analysis when there is still space for it. I won’t say the writing is fantastic but then the point is, after all, to read Tubb’s books themselves. These reviews are mainly intended for someone looking for a particular story, character or plot situatiion in the 33 books of the series. The links can be found at
http://loy.lawyers-office.jp/1068.html
Since they are intended primarily as reference, corrections and comments welcome. Best Regards
Grady Loy
Interesting reviews, Grady! I’m hoping to reread the Dumarest Saga this summer while I’m recovering from knee replacement surgery.
I am very sorry to hear about your surgery. I hope you mend quickly and derive every possible benefit from it.
Dear George,
You and your readers may be interested to know that I am very close to finalizing a deal that will see more than a hundred of Tubb’s SF novels appearing as E-Books–including the entire Dunmarest series. Of his final two novels, “To Dream Again” (also to appear as an E-Book) will be published by Ulverscroft in August 2011. Fires of Satan is still under consideration. I’ll let you have more news when I have it.
This is wonderful news, Philip! I’m planning on buying an iPad in the Spring so E.C. Tubb ebooks will be at the top of my want list! Keep us in the loop!
Dear George,
The deal I mentioned, for 103 books (all of Tubb’s original SF novels) to be done as E-Books has now been contracted for (with Orion Books, here in the UK). They are to appear over the next 18 months. There’s also an option for a 3-novel regular paperback omnibus, but the 3 novels have yet to be chosen. I’m hoping they might include his final novel “Fires od Satan.”
Great news, Phil! Now I have to spring for that iPad so I can download those 103 books!
I just posted a response to a post by Randy Johnson on his post regarding Mayenne without realizing he had posted here. My apologies to Randy for relating to him anything he already knew.
Also I was wondering if I could ask Mr. Harbottle, wasn’t he instrumental in getting Mr. Tubb to extend the series back when it was at 10 books in the early 1970′s. I have that idea in mind somehow but do not actually know where I may ahve heard it or if it is accurate or not.
I think I read in an interview that Phil Harbottle had influenced the Dumarest series, Grady.
hi all, i am looking for book number 32 in the dumarest saga- the return/return to terra, my step dad has all the other books and the last one, but this one is proving impossible to find….. please help!!!!
I’ve seen THE RETURN listed on ABE.COM from time to time, Tanya. A number of E. C. Tubb titles are going to be available as ebooks later this year. Maybe THE RETURN will be available in that format.
Dear George,
E.C.Tubb’s last completed novel, FIRES OF SATAN ( a major novel of asteroid Armageddon) has now been accepted by Orion Publishing (Gollancz). It will appear as part of a FOUR book paperback pmnibus (other three reprint titles yet to be chosen). These novels–along with ALL of Tubb’s 100-plus other sf novels (except Space 1999 series) will be appearing as E-Books from Orion in 2011. That includes ALL the Dumarest novels. I just sold French Rights to Child of Earth, and the Italians are continuing their four novelsd hardcover Dumarest omnibus books–fourth one out recently. His new short story collection THE WAGER has been out in US from Borgo for some time, and will appear in UK later. Further Borgo Tubb collections will follow, as I can find time. They will include some new unpublished short stories found in Tubb’s effects by his granddaughter anbd passed to me.
I’ve been sorry tp note that none of your correspondents has bothered to get Tubb’s many vintage novels now out in UK, including unpublished new ones like STARSLAVE (a fantastic novel), and that your site seems to have withered and died because of apathy to anything not involving Dumarest. Their privilege, of course, but all your “Dumarest only” fans are missing out on great reading experiences. Not to worry–I shall continue to preserve Ted’s liteary legacy–there are plenty others who DO appreciate it.
Best Regards,
Phil
This is great news, Phil! I’m sure the ebook market for E.C. Tubb’s work will grow as all this non-SPACE 1999 work becomes available. I appreciate your efforts to keep Tubb’s work in-print. I, for one, enjoy Tubb’s non-Dumarest work. The man was a consummate pro.
Phil – What Tubb needs is a website and forum of his own. It’s difficult to find
out what is going on unless you stumble over this excellent site. If you
had your own site for him, you could post regular updates and information
would be far easier to find.
I must get hold of ‘Starslave’. I’m sure that many folk appreciate your efforts.
I suspect that as most (or all) of E. C. Tubb’s work is available in ebook formats, there will be enough fan momentum to support a dedicated E. C. Tubb web site, David.
I’ve today agreed that omnibus pb edition of Ted’s novels with Orion. In the event it will contain just three novels: An early work, THE EXTRA MAN (aka The Mechanical Monarch), THE SPACE BORN, and his last and finest work, FIRES OF SATAN (at 71,000 words his longest novel). David–the idea of a website is nice, but I certainly don’t have time to set it uo! Ted is not my only client–I have to look after many other veteran names, which keeps me mighty busy. The the idea would have my full support though–and I’d gladly supply news of upcoming new books–such as his latest collection THE MING VASE and other stories, upcomming from Borgo Books this Fall.
Regards,
Phil Harbottle
Hello Phil. I’m not very technical, but I could set up a limited website to contain Tubb news from you,and a forum etc. How can I contact you?
I’ll be buying that Orion omnibus edition, Phil! I have the ACE DOUBLE versions of THE MECHANICAL MONARCH and THE SPACE BORN, but I really want to read FIRES OF SATAN!
I have registered a web address – http://www.ectubb.org.uk
Now I have to build it!
Great, David! I can’t wait to see the result.
Dear David,
If you are able to create an ECT website, feel free to contact me at pjhar@globalnet.co.uk when you’ve set it up, and I’ll try and supply you with some content that may interest Ted’s fans.
FIRES OF SATAN is set “the day after tomorrow” when an asteroid is on a collision course with the Earth. The story unfolds through the eyes of the astronomer who discovers the impending danger, a somewhat flawed and very human individual. It’s gripping and poignant and the ending is one you won’t have seen coming. I think you’ll love it. George!
I can’t wait to tread FIRES OF SATAN, Phil! Sounds great!
I have read the Dumarest series twice now and somewhere I missed reading why or how Earl got so fast. Was it ever explained?
I think it was genetic, Len.
Dave’s site is up and running at http://www.ectubb.org.uk I hope everyone will take a look and participate.
Dave’s site is up and running at http://www.ectubb.org.uk I hope everyone will take a look and participate.
Sorry, “David’s” site (concerning E.C.Tubb). I apologize for the careless misspell.
Love David’s E. C. TUBB web site, Grady! And, I enjoyed reading your reviews of the Dumarest series. I’ll certainly be dropping in to check out the new material on a regular basis.
Tubb explains (or perhaps better implies) part of the speed in Child of Earth. A mix of necessity as a kid, some training later and perhaps genetics. But he also seems to be keeping us in suspense about other possibilities – as was he was wont to do
I’ve been rereading some of the FATE books and although they don’t have the quintessential Dumarest it’s certainly superb Golden Age SF
Exactly, Craig. Tubb was great about implying and hinting. I had hoped for a climatic clash with the Cyclan in CHILD OF EARTH, but that seems to have been deferred for a future (now never to be written) novel.
I’m glad I finally got the chance to read the final Dumarest book here in the States. It’s an acceptable ending to the series, and I was glad to finally get it. (from Amazon, as a Kindle book, as the UK ePub booksellers won’t sell to US customers). I can’t help but wonder if E.C. Tubb had left any notes for the future direction of the series; definitely the final book changed the nature of the series; it seemed to me that Dumarest had finally decided to go to war with the Cyclan, now that he knew exactly (at long last) what was going on.
I agree with you, Andy. The final Dumarest volume definitely sets up a war with the Cyclan. Maybe some book outlines will surface about those novels all Dumarest fans would love to read!
The writing is way too formulaic. Virtually every book repetitively discusses the Cyclan and the secret of the affinity twin. The dialogues with women are enough to make one cringe. The planets all seem to be the same — presumably same gravitational field, same atmosphere and similar biospheres. Each planet has its own identical Lowtown. The interstellar travel is entirely unconvincing. The plot lines are broadly the same. This really is pulp science fiction. The Dumarest series can’t hold a candle to the Dune series or the Conan series
There’s no doubt Tubb followed a template with the Dumarest series, Ali. But following a character searching for his home planet holds an irresistible appeal for some readers.
I haven’t contributed to anything like this, but I must say I loved the Dumarest books and have them all. I also have to say I agree there was an element of formula, I mean how old was the character after all those adventures? (although he did worry about his age in one of the later books). But I think E.C. Tubb worked some great ideas out of the template and I for one saw many aspects of Dumarest’s quest as a metaphor for my own life as I travelled. I bought Veruchia in a bargain sale at a Woolworths when I was a teenager and hunted the other books down after that. I read Earthfall (a giant Space 1999 novel) many years ago too and in that Tubb hinted at strange things that had hapenned to a post apocalyptic Earth that he could have explored, and I am sure he had similar ideas for the Post Quest Dumarest Saga on Earth.
What would these have been? Human resistance to the Cyclan of course. Myriad factions to explore. The Universal Church on Earth – or if not, why not? What really did drive humans away? Was Dumarest unique in being so fast? The Cyclan are there of course and the likelihood is their crest was actually a representation of the Earth – hinted at in book one. The potential is limitless; has Dumarest any family back home could be an idea to explore. Its a real pity E.C. Tubb didn’t get to write them, but what we have is good to have. I know that effort to re-boot Tarzan by other writers never worked well, but I think a ‘new’ Dumarest saga could be done. I don’t think it was ever as popular as some cult figures, but in this day and age people don’t need to worry about costs of publishing, kindle has shown that. However I treasure my yellowing Dumarest books!
The real skill to a reboot would be to copy E.C. Tubbs witing style (look at the masses of badly written Conan books compared to R.E. Howard’s colourful and darkly sinister style). For without a doubt Mr Tubb was master of English – even if a ‘pulp’ writer (which I would dispute).
You would need a writer with ideas (lots and lots) and maybe even do what they did when they re-booted a bloke called Bond and had a panel to vet stories (after all thats how blockbuster movies get done). Most of all to recognbose less is more in the hnads of a good writer (as Mr Tubb proved effortlessly it seems, and probably wasn’t)
Wow, I even feel I’d like to give it a go myself! But E.C. Tubb is a hard act to follow, but if someone like Eric van Lustbader can take on Bourne, maybe one or several writers could take on the mantle of Dumarest. The trick would be to say ‘no’ to anything that doesn’t match up. Otherwise you end up with piles of dross (like what hapenned to the Destroyer series or even Sherlock Holmes where you have him meeting Dracula!).
Anyway, I for one will maintain my enthusaism for these books until I sign off myself, and who knows, maybe I’ll get the chance to meet Mr Tubb in Valhalla and ask him to tell me more about the adventures of Earl Dumarest.
Phil
Excellent posting, Phil! Clearly you have the enthusiasm for the Dumarest series that most of us here share. In wild moments of fantasy, I’ve considered writing a Dumarest novel based on the many speculations you list. After all, there’s plenty of fan writing for the Harry Potter series online. But the stumbling block, which you also mention, is that E.C. Tubb was a crafty writer. I’m not sure many writers could duplicate his deceptively crisp style. But, as you also point out, we have 30+ Dumarest novels to enjoy and fellow readers with whom to share our thoughts and feelings.
Agree with Phil and that is also why I said a couple of years ago I saw something kind of Greek and poetic in Dumarest’s search. The Odyssey expresses great beauty in an intentionally formulaic poetic format. Interestingly, and I think this is where I saw something deeper in the Dumarest series. Tubb was in good company of course, James Joyce and others have relied on that as a template, but I increasingly feel that Tubb wrote the Dumarest series that way intentionally. At Mr. Harbottle’s suggestion I have started ordering and reading other Tubb titles. Notably, Omphalos, the Ming Vase, his best science fiction collection (these latter from his earlier efforts) and a western (The Gold Seekers) and I am waiting for a mystery novel of his to arrive. What was extraordinary was that even from a very early period he was capable of managing diversity not only of genres but of writing styles. The Gold Seekers was a lot silkier in its writing than the Dumarest series. It was not an entirely typical western in that the character’s 19th century frontier brogue, though faithfully recreated to a degree was not as intense either as among American pulp author’s novels or indeed the people who actually inhabited the west prior to building the Interstate. One reason is that his fans were initially British and he wanted the book to be accessible enough to be pleasant and another was that his dialogue was, I realized later, rather nicely keyed to the cinematic westerns of that period (1955). There was a Dumarest like character (Mark – another of Tubb’s favorite character names – I have noted the same tendency in the prolific Dean Koontz to have favored character names) but he was a former confederate captain who had lost family and lands in Sherman’s march to the sea. He must get a wagon train of mixed gold seekers and farmers across the Arizona/Nevada deserts, past the Apache and over the Sierras and live up to the expectations of the young wagon train boy who looks up to him. Tubb acquitted himself honorably. The science fiction stories were varied but all were based on the idea of a technically advanced yet dystopic future. He varied in style succesfully – the stories were all very readable -between sensitive first person narratives and hard boiled third person accounts more reminiscent of Dumamarest. He even used the name Dumarest in a story about an old man who waited at the spaceport on the moon for a son who would never return. He was the shipmate of the man who regretfully narrated the story and who had years before killed the old man’s son and taken his money to get off planet. There was a great variety in the stories, time travel, industrial espionage, a cold war thriller with ESP, aliens breeding humans to become superior beings and culling the unfit. There was even a very beautifu story about a man who threw away his own future and chance of regeneration and long life to travel back in time to live as a stranger and to care for the father he had abandoned so that he would not die alone. One thing I learned that I had not intuited from Dumarest. Tubb pointed out that these vendetta soaked, disorganized dazzlingly diverse dispotpias that form the back drop of earth (Renaissance Italy or the 12 century BC Aegean come to mind) actually were sort of an optimal state for mankind. It was this sort of world that produced Dumarest and made him the magnificent character that he was. He would never have reached th
the heights he attained had he never set foot in the ring or had to fight to survive as he did just as the world of the Torjan war with its uncertainties and challenges forged Oddyseus. It seems to me Tubb was more interested in people than societies and in character than culture. There was indeed one story from the Ming Vase collection that gives a little insight into Dumarest – The name of the story was “Trojan Horse” and it came out in 1963. At the end the hero, a sort of Dumaresty character as all Tubb’s heros tended to be, destroyed an invention that would allow vast social control and restore order and stability to a scoeity that had thrown it off in a revolution. His words: The villain “They had respect in those days, respect for authority.” and the hero Marlo “And why the hell should they have had. What did authority ever do for them? It lkept them poor. It kept them under. To hell with authority. This is a free world and I want it kept that way.” the villain “So you can go around killing? A man with a gun and no brain? Someone who shoots down others for pay? For that what you call living in a free world?” Marlo kills the villain who had had the drop in him and the story ends “To bury forever a bad old world” Now I do not think Mr. Tubb was countenancing carrying on assassination as a trade but his theme at least in literature was that almost anything was more endurable than being deprived of ones freedom to find and then choose to live in one’s own way.
Excellent post, Grady! I’ve read some non-Dumarest novels by E. C. Tubb and enjoyed them. The intriguing difference between Dumarest’s quest to find Earth and Ullysses’ quest to arrive home is that the Universe seemingly has forgotten where Earth is! Hopefully, in this digital age, all writers will have their works available as ebooks. I can’t imagine a finer tribute to the writers of the past than to have ALL their works available to future generations of readers.