Ports of Call-Jack Vance novel, book review

Ports of Call-Jack Vance novel

Ports of Call was first published in January, 1998 by Underwood-Miller Books near the end of Vance's writing career.  It is still in print by Spatterlight Press in a high quality trade paperback.  My hardcover copy is 225 pages long.  Ports of Call was nominated in 1999 for the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction novel.

Ports of Call begins in the Gaean Reach on the planet Vermazen with our main character, Myron Tany. As a boy Myron was obsessed with stories of space exploration while growing up in a country village where everything was tranquil and soporific.  His parents wanted him to become a financial analyst like his father and take a post at the Exchange.  When Myron enrolled in the College of Definable Excellences he tried to compromise by taking some math and economic courses but also some classes in cosmology, space propulsion and Gaean anthropology. 

Myron's path to becoming a financial analyst is disrupted by his great aunt Dame Hester Lajoie, who is a wealthy widow with an eccentric, independent and flamboyant personality.  Dame Hester wins a legal judgment for slander and is awarded a space-yacht called Glodwyn.  She has no interest in the Glodwyn and plans to sell it saying she has "neither time nor inclination to go hurtling through space in an oversized coffin."  One morning Dame Hester decides to at least visit the ship to see what it looks like and brings Myron along with her.  After inspecting the space-yacht Dame Hester at least considers the idea of visiting another planet to watch some festivals.

When reading the journal Innovative Salubrity, Dame Hester finds an article by a person using a pseudonym describing advance research that the author encountered on a planet called Kodaira at a clinic named Place of Resurgent Youth.  A second article in the same issue by a Dr. Maximus discusses his research and the Exxil Waters that he discovered while doing research as a biologist on newt like creatures that seemed extremely long lived.  He claims that after trying the water himself and on some volunteers, he found that it had regenerative powers so he opened a clinic.  When Dame Hester has Myron investigate the planet they find there is no such place.  Dame Hester decides to try to contact the publisher to find out the real name of the author of the article.  After considerable effort and much cunning she tracks down the author and cleverly determines the real name of the planet.  She, of course, wants to visit the planet in her new space-yacht and partake of the treatment that this clinic offers to the few persons who can find it and afford it.  Naturally Myron is extremely enthusiastic and, after providing so much help in locating the planet, he hopes his great aunt will invite him to join her.

Much to his disappointment, Myron is not invited on the trip and the captain his great aunt appoints will not hire him as a hand.  But Myron does not give up easily, and after he is able to expose the new captain as a fraud, Myron himself is given the position as ship's captain.  They quickly hire a crew and begin their trip to visit this planet that is reported to have a fountain of youth clinic.  But it is a long, tedious journey and Dame Hester becomes bored and decides she wants to land on another planet on the way.  She is use to being entertained and wants to see some sites and visit some exotic markets to relive the boredom.  Ideally she would like to visit "a world that is amusing, with beautiful people, appetizing cuisine, interesting entertainment, and very good shopping opportunities."  Myron has no choice except to try to please his aunt.  When visiting one of the nearby planets they encounter in a restaurant a friendly outgoing space traveler named Marko Fassig.  Dame Hester finds him charming and entertaining so hires him as a purser even though they do not need one.

Myron soon finds that Fassig is more interested in talking and charming his aunt than in working so upon arrival at Port Tanjee on the planet Taubry he tells Fassig he is fired.  Fassig goes to get his things but does not return.  When Dame Hester learns about Fassig being fired, she decides to fire Myron instead and to keep Fassig because he is the more entertaining of the two.  Myron finds himself suddenly standing alone at a terminal on a planet to which he is a stranger.  Fifty one pages into the novel the storyline begins to follow Myron without Dame Hester.  But Dame Hester is the more interesting of the two characters and much of the humor and lively, witty dialog was related to her interactions with her nephew and others.  The beginning of the novel might even remind some readers of the comic writings of P. G. Woodhouse.  But the rest of the novel is not without humor; it just does not have the type that Dame Hester provided.

Port Tanjee, the town Myron was left in, is noted for its Museum of Non-motile Amphibian Carapaces and its hanging cages where prisoners who violate local rules are displayed for public ridicule.  After a brief conversation with a man in a hanging cage, Myron visits the Owlswyck Inn he where meets the crew of the cargo ship Glicca.  When one of their crew members is arrested and jailed after a comical dance scene, Captain Maloff of the Glicca finds he is short a person and hires Myron as their Supercargo.

The Glicca travels from port to port on different planets picking up and delivering cargo, packages and sometimes people and they soon take aboard a group of eleven religious pilgrims.  Vance develops humorous, often satirical conversations about religion, philosophy and the meaning of life during the interactions and conversations between the pilgrims, a crew member named Wingo and others.  For example, Wingo, who is interested in "comparative metaphysic," states, "I might well recommend mystics and zealots to caution, lest after decades of fasting and penitence they are allowed Truth, only to find it to be some miserable scrap of information, of no more account than mouse droppings in a sugar bowl."  Later he states, "I have long hoped to synthesize the vagaries of the cosmos into a harmonious unity.  I have traveled a long road, and from time to time I have resolved some of the more flagrant paradoxes--but I am not yet at peace.  A pair of quandaries still hang in my mind."  I won't give away what the two quandaries are but I thought it was quite funny.  There is also the humorous exchange where Upon Baron Bodissey is quoted as having defined Truth as being "a rope with one end."  Again I won't spoil the humor by quoting more, but this gives you some idea.  Those with some understanding of philosophy will probably be more entertained.

The novel also has many fascinating and often humorous descriptions of eating and drinking scenes on different planets where exotic cuisines are presented in detail.  Reader response to such scenes will vary but I sometimes found them to be interesting and creative.  At times they did seem over the top, however.  In one scene, for example, the waiters deliver to the restaurant customers a grilled dinner that is, "an enormous armored sea-worm, a foot in diameter, eight feet long, fringed with twin rows of small jointed arms.  The waiters cut away the forward proboscis and the frontal process, as well as the terminal organs, from which exuded a yellow froth."  The passage continues on in a similar vein with the guests eating "the pungent white flesh as they might devour slices of watermelon..."  Vance clearly had fun with these descriptions.  There is one restaurant, for example, where customers have to pay extra for a clean plate in order to compensate the dishwashers.  Waiters, like shopkeepers and others, are invariably dishonest cheats who insult the customers while trying to fleece them.  These are often amusing encounters.

Myron's travels to different planets is also interesting for the strange customs and odd people he encounters as are the strange people he encounters.  One of the more dramatic scenes was when they visited a planet where human skins are the main export for the planet and are sold to other planets as expensive pelts.  Myron has to literally fight to save his own skin.  Other descriptions were less dramatic or interesting such as behavior at Felker's Landing where on the river Amer the north bank was considered female and the south male.  "When men wished to visit the north bank they must clip small scarlet cockades to their noses.  The women similarly must fix tufts of blue hair to their cheeks when they visited the south bank." 

Additionally the novel has many detailed descriptions of various gambling games.  Some involve Moncrief the Mouse rider and his troop of two large, stern Klute women and three younger acrobatic women called Flook, Pook and Snook.  They entertain for gambling purposes at carnivals, inns and circuses.  In one of the skits the three women perform acrobatic acts on three drums while being protected by the two huge Klute women.  They jump and tumble from drum to drum and members of the audience are then asked to place bets that they can identify one of the women by name.  Each of them look similar but wear different gemstone rings.  Moncrief has many other types of games, all involving bets with the audience and most of the time he wins.  There are also numerous card and other gambling games aboard ship, usually involving the pilgrims and the Chief Engineer Schwatzendale.  When the pilgrims lose most of their money to Schwatzendale the want to gamble for tokens that represent boxes of religious relics they are transporting to the pilgrimage.  They also invent new gambling games such as trying to stack six levels of tokens per a specified pattern while other participants at any time may throw tokens to try to knock over another person's stack.  Some gambling scenes were mildly entertaining but others seemed to go on too long.

The main character, Myron, although likeable enough, was not the most interesting Vance protagonist and his adventures often seemed relatively tame compared to other Vance main characters.  Many readers mention that the plot is quite thin but Vance is a storyteller and his stories and adventures often engage the reader despite their lack of a clearly structured plot.  As mentioned above, the novel also involves many detailed descriptions of different gambling games, exotic cuisines and metaphysical conversations.  These are not without interest, but readers will vary in their reactions and the pace can seem slow at times. 

Ports of Call also does not have a real ending.  Instead the story suddenly stops at one of the ports.  The storyline continues in the subsequent novel Lurulu that was published six years later.  Lurulu is a word from myths and legends that represents a mysterious search for something unknown.  In the follow up novel Lurulu the first two chapters summarize what happened in Ports of Call.  Ports of Call is well written and worth reading but is not one of Vance's better novels and will probably only appeal to Vance fans.  Readers will respond differently to this novel, but those who are unfamiliar with Vance's writings are advised to begin elsewhere.  I’ve read this novel twice so far and rated it a 3 “Liked it” both times.