New Prime, The-Jack Vance novelette

New Prime, The-Jack Vance novelette

AKA: Brain of the Galaxy (author’s preferred title)

The New Prime was first published under the title “Brain of the Galaxy” in the February, 1951 issue of the magazine Worlds Beyond and is a 23/25/29 page novelette. It consists of five vignettes with different characters and settings.

In the first vignette a man from the twentieth century finds himself naked at a 19th century Boston social coming out party where he is surrounded by 300 guests in formal evening wear.  His memory is fogged so he has no idea how he got there but he must now cope with his situation. In the second setting a different character is in the midst of a losing battle with insect like creatures called Brands.  He has only thirteen soldiers left and must decide what to do.  One option is for him to order his men to attack the main hive of the Brands. In the third setting a man is in an ancient city of ruins seeking a Crown and Shield Parchment that can save his lord’s life.  Otherwise the authorities will nail his lord to an air-sled and send it off to the west.  The parchment could be in “the town’s Legalic, or the Mosque, or in the Hall of Relicts, or possibly in the Sumptuar.  He has eight hours to search before his lord is executed. In the fourth setting a person finds himself in competition to mentally project imaginative images on to a screen using an imagicon but he does not understand his situation or the process. In the fifth and final scene our main character, a soldier is captured and tortured by his enemy, The Racs.  He insists he is not a soldier but is Ervard, “an honest trader in pearls.”  When he is left alone momentarily, he tries to eat straw to choke himself to death.  Later the Racs offer to let him live if he will cooperate with them.

It is unclear how these five vignettes are related until toward the end, in the last six pages of the novelette, where it all comes together. I’ve read this novelette five times so far and rated it a 3 “Liked it.”

Included in the Jack Vance collection titled The World Between and Other Stories (1965)

Included in the Jack Vance collection titled Eight Fantasms and Magics (1969)

Included in the Jack Vance collection titled The Worlds of Jack Vance (1973)

Included in the Jack Vance collection titled Moon Moth and Other Stories (1976, British)

Included in the Jack Vance collection titled Fantasms and Magics (1978)

Included in the Jack Vance collection titled When the Five Moons Rise (1992)

Included in the Jack Vance collection titled Jack Vance Treasury (2007)

Included in the Jack Vance collection Moon Moth and Other Stories (2017, Spatterlight)