A Thousand Worlds: Dying of the Light (1977) and Tuf Voyaging (1986) by George R.R. Martin

A look at the only two full-length works in the Thousand Worlds science fiction setting by the author of A Game of Thrones.

Few science fiction and fantasy writers can really be thought of as household names, but George R.R. Martin definitely qualifies. His as-yet unfinished epic fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire, has sold over 90 million copies and its TV adaptation was an international phenomenon in its own right. Martin has been called “the American Tolkien”, and is almost synonymous with the fantasy genre. What even some of his fans may not realise, though, is that Martin was originally successful in the field of science fiction.

Between 1971 and 1986, Martin published 26 shorter works of SF which all formed a part of a single setting, which he called the “Thousand Worlds”. In this loose future history, humans have achieved interstellar travel and have colonised numerous planets. However, due to the vast distances involved and the impact of conflict, humanity has splintered into various disparate cultures. Many of the stories explore the differences between these societies, as well as with other forms of life. They range quite widely in style, from the military SF of “The Hero” (1971) to the horror of the novella Nightflyers (1980).

Here, we explore the only two full-length works in the Thousand Worlds setting. The first is the novel Dying of the Light (1977), Martin’s debut novel set on the declining rogue world of Worlorn. The second is Tuf Voyaging (1986), a collection of stories featuring the eccentric trader Haviland Tuf. Together, they are an interesting insight into the neglected SF works of an author who would become a dominant force in fantasy.

The cover of the 1977 issue of Analog (in which "After the Festival" began), the first edition of Dying of the Light, and the 1990 Baen edition

After the festival: Dying of the Light (1977)

By 1977, Martin had already published a number of stories in his Thousand Worlds setting and it made sense that his first full-length novel would also form a part of it. Originally, it was serialised in Analog Science Fiction and Fact between April and July 1977. In the SF Masterworks edition of Dying of the Light, Martin’s friend and collaborator Lisa Tuttle provides a useful introduction which explores its place in his career. She describes the novel as “an apprentice work”, and as the last gasp of the author’s youthful, romantic period. Certainly, there is a pervasive theme of endings and change in this book.

Dying of the Light opens with a lyrical description of the planet Worlorn, which for hundreds of years existed on the edges of human awareness. A rogue planet hurtling through space without a star of its own, it was a useless rock. Only when it came into the orbit of the red star “Fat Satan” and its “hellcrown” of orbiting smaller stars did Worlorn become of real interest. For ten years, it hosted a massive festival organised by representatives from fourteen human worlds. But when the novel begins, the festival is long over, the planet is leaving the stars behind, and it has become a dying world.

The main character is Dirk t’Larien, a resident of the advanced and civilised planet of Avalon. He travels to Worlorn at the behest of an old flame, ecologist Gwen Delvano. Since their time on Avalon, Gwen has become the betheyn or “heldwife” of Jaan Vikary, a member of the ritualised, backwards culture of High Kavalaar. Jaan, in turn, is bound by tradition to another man, Garse Janacek - his blood brother or teyn. These and other complex Kavalar relationships play out against the backdrop of a doomed planet.

Dying of the Light is a rather gloomy, mournful novel. It is the elegy for the planet Worlorn, for the abandoned cities built for the long-ended festival, for the love between Dirk and Gwen, and for the cruel, ossified culture of the Kavalar. All of these disintegrating elements are lit by the receding stars of the hellcrown, which shine more dimly on the planet with each passing day. The story has a fairly tight focus, revolving as it does around four characters closely bound by love, tradition, and obligation. They live a lonely life, surrounded by fourteen abandoned and mostly decaying cities.

Martin spends much of the first half of the novel outlining the unique astronomical conditions of Worlorn, the relationship between Dirk and Gwen, and the intricacies of the Kavalar culture in which women are essentially regarded as property. During this phase, Dirk solidifies his view of the situation, which is strongly challenged by the faster-paced and more engaging events of the second half. This results in a real change in the way both Dirk and the reader views the status quo on Worlorn, which is perhaps the novel’s major strength.

Dying of the Light rarely approaches the excitement and economy of Martin’s short fiction from this era. This first half, certainly, feels overly drawn out. Tuttle is right to identify the book as an “apprentice work”, but it has a uniquely elegiac feel which gives it a distinctive identity both within Martin’s bibliography and in the context of 1970s American SF.

Martin's Haviland Tuf stories often made the cover of Analog magazine.

The power of the Ark: Tuf Voyaging (1986)

Released by Baen Books in February 1986, Tuf Voyaging is a collection of seven stories which were originally published between 1976 and 1985. Six of them were published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact; the exception is the earliest story “A Beast for Norn” which was published in the anthology Andromeda I. Often, Tuf Voyaging is referred to as a “fix-up novel”, but really it is better thought of as a set of linked stories. At no point does it coalesce into anything as coherent as a novel.

While the style of the stories varies, the series as a whole was intended by Martin as a kind of homage to Jack Vance - this is particularly evident in the dialogue of the distinctive main character. Haviland Tuf is a peculiar kind of space trader operating between the far-flung planets of the Thousand Worlds. He is extremely tall, overweight, verbose, and self-regarding. He views himself as an honest dealer, frequently disappointed by the unreliability and rudeness of those he encounters. He also has a passionate love of cats.

The book opens with “The Plague Star”, which was the first of four Tuf stories Martin published in Analog over the course of 1985. The story has some similarities with Nightflyers, in that it is about the struggle to control a starship. Here, the ship in question is the Ark, the last remaining “seedship” of the Ecological Engineering Corps and a relic of a vanished empire. 

Ultimately, Tuf ends up in possession of the vast vessel, which has technology that makes possible almost godlike feats of eco-engineering. Using its stores of exotic DNA and its huge synthesis tanks, the Ark can be used to produce and propagate any number of plants and animals sourced from many of the Thousand Worlds. This elevates Haviland Tuf from being a mere space trader to a freelance eco-engineer, who plies his trade with various planets that request his formidable services. To do this, though, they must grapple with his often infuriating personality.

The stories are a mixed bag, with the strongest ones generally having been written later. The second story to be written, “Call Him Moses” (1978) is a rather clunky transposition of the Plagues of Egypt from the Book of Exodus into an SF setting. “Guardians” (1981) is much stronger, a tale of monstrous sea creatures battling in the waters of the ocean world Namor. In three stories, Tuf has a recurring engagement with the planet S’uthlam, which is in an existential struggle with overpopulation and religious strictures. 

Haviland Tuf is the binding agent of Tuf Voyaging, and arguably its strongest aspect. His dialogue is frequently humorous, as are the responses of those who are forced to deal with him. The strange creatures concocted on board the Ark are another highlight of this varied and inventive collection, a fairly slight but always entertaining body of work.

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• In the UK, Gollancz has made much of Martin’s early SF work available. Dying of the Light is a part of the SF Masterworks, and Tuf Voyaging is also available from the same publisher along with Windhaven (written with Lisa Tuttle, 1981), Fevre Dream (1982), and The Armageddon Rag (1983).
  
• Dying of the Light was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1978; this was the first of Martin’s four nominations to date. He is yet to win the award.
  
• Originally, Dying of the Light was meant to be titled After the Festival. While descriptive, this title was presumably not felt to be enticing - the current title is taken from the famous poem by Welsh writer Dylan Thomas.