Seventeen Virgins, The-Jack Vance novelette, later as a chapter in a novel

Seventeen Virgins, The-Jack Vance novelette, later as a chapter in a novel

AKA: Cugel’s Saga or Cugel: the Skybreak Spatterlight, Chapter V, subchapter 1

The Seventeen Virgins was first published as a 23 page novelette in October, 1974 in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  This story won the Jupiter Award for best novelette in 1975 and placed tenth for the 1975 Locus award for best novelette. The Seventeen Virgins is reported to be the last story Vance ever published in a magazine.  It has been reprinted in a few science fiction mixed author collections over the years. There is a rare 1979 limited edition (600 issues), softcover issue by Underwood-Miller that has The Seventeen Virgins the title and is the only piece in the book.  The same year Underwood-Miller released another limited softcover edition with The Seventeen Virgins along with the story A Bagful of Dreams.  A number of each of these issues were autographed by the author.  Most frequently, however, The Seventeen Virgins is encountered in Vance’s 1983 novel Cugel’s Saga also known as Cugel: the Skybreak Spatterlight which is the third book in Tales of the Dying Earth series.  It is Chapter V, subchapter 1 or the ninth story in the novel.

Cugel the Clever arrives at a town called Gundar where the last remaining Solar Emosynary exists.  This is a device that is a "contrivance of lenses above the fire" aimed toward the sun.  The people of the town believe the sun will die out if they do not continue to direct their lenses and mirrors toward the sun to stimulate its vitality.  They believe that a number of other locations around the planet do the same thing under the World Wide Order of Solar Emosynaries.  Cugel makes a few innocent comments about some of these places no longer existing and this is misinterpreted. The local people think he is calling their work useless and challenging a tradition that has been continued for many centuries.  He inadvertently causes social unrest and finds himself in trouble with the local citizens.  It doesn't help that he tried to cheat the proprietor with a money bag that he filled with rocks or that he used his own card deck in a game where he readily won money from the locals.  He also set up a booth and advertised himself as The Eminent Seer Cugel who will answer any question for a fee of three terces.  In order to answer questions for people he does not know, Cugel developed a clever plan. It is another scam to cheat others so he can raise enough money to leave town.  Although Cugel is sometimes blamed or punished for innocently offending local customs or religions, more often he simply behaves like a scoundrel and deserves what he gets.  He is much more Cugel the Troublemaker than Cugel the Clever.

Cugel wants to leave the town of Gundar by joining a caravan but he can't afford the fee even after acquiring money as a so called seer.  So he develops a plan that involves forcibly detaining one of the caravan's new employees so that Cugel can be hired in his place. After doing so Cugel obtains the job as the night armed guard for a caravan transporting young maidens who are called the Seventeen Virgins of Symnathis.  They are being transported to grace the annual Grand Pageant in the city of Lumarth.  Cugel eventually gets into trouble again on two different fronts, one with the employee he detained and secondly over his amorous behavior as a night guard. 

Cugel is taken into custody after having ruined the Grand Pageant for the people of Lumarth.  But they are called Kind Folk and subscribe to the Doctrine of Absolute Altruism so they offer only a mild punishment.  In order to repent and redeem himself Cugel is required to perform the charitable mission of meeting with a giant demon named Phampoun to convince him to change his ways and behave kindly. Cugel is to see that Phampoun "be instructed in kindness, consideration and decency; by making this effort, you will know a surge of happy redemption."

After he is escorted to the demon's temple Cugel inspects the huge demon who is fast asleep.  He has fingers that are three feet long, a head as large as a wheelbarrow and eyes the size of dishpans.  Cugel also sees a small creature peering forth from Phampoun's mouth.  This tiny homunculus is named Pulsifer and he grows on the end of Phampoun's tongue. Pulsifer engages Cugel in conversation while Phampoun sleeps.  Cugel learns that when Phampoun awakes, he will ask Cugel to confess his crimes and will then devour him.  If he is to survive, Cugel will have to live up to his epithet "the Clever" and use his wits to try to outsmart or trick Phampoun and Pulsifer.  This encounter with the Kind Folk, Pulsifer and Phampoun is fascinating and very creative. 

Although this novella is named after the brief section of the story about the caravan transport of some virgin girls to an annual festival, this is actually the least interesting part of this novella.  Cugel's experiences with the people of Gundar and their Solar Emosynary and his later encounter with the Kind Folk, Pulsifer and the demon Phampoun were far more fascinating than the caravan section. (But then I suppose a novelette called “Solar Emosynary” would not have had as catchy a title “The Sixteen Virgins.”)   Throughout the novella Vance exposes the silliness of certain social customs and the hypocrisy of some religious beliefs while lampooning traditions and behaviors that are nonsensical.  All Vance fans will want to read this novella but will likely encounter it in the novel Cugel's Saga which is one of Vance's very finest novels and a fantasy masterpiece.  I’ve read The Seventeen Virgins many times and rated it 5.

Releases as a novelette rather than a chapter in the novel:

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, magazine, October, 1974

The Year’s Best Fantasy Stories, DAW Books, hc collection mixed authors, 1975

The Seventeen Virgins/The Bagful of Dreams, Underwood-Miller, pb, 1979

The Seventeen Virgins, Underwood-Miller, pb, 1979

Masterpieces of Fantasy and Wonder, David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, editors, St. Martin’s Press, hc anthology mixed authors 1989, 1993 and 1994

Listed by ISFDB as being in the collection Wild Thyme, Green Magic, Subterranean Press, hc Vance collection, 2009.  See:  https://isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?50869 But The Seventeen Virgins is not listed in the table of contents by Subterranean Press:  https://subterraneanpress.com/wild-thyme-green-magic/