Durdane by Jack Vance
Durdane is depicted as a highly organized yet complex continent, characterized by its division into sixty-two cantons, each with distinct laws and customs. The continent's governance is notably enforced by the Anome, an enigmatic figure known as the Faceless Man, who utilizes a system of torcs—neck devices with explosive charges—as a means of punishment for crimes. This system of justice exists within a backdrop of diminished advanced technology, with guided balloons serving as the primary mode of long-distance transport.
The narrative follows Gastel Etzwane, who grows up in the canton of Bashon, governed by the Chilites, a strict religious sect that views women as unclean. Etzwane’s journey involves rebellion against this oppressive regime, a struggle against the violent Roguskhoi invaders, and efforts to rally the cantons of Shant for a unified defense. As he seeks to mobilize the people and dismantle the torc system for those willing to fight, he proposes a new centralized government structure focused on the separation of powers.
The story further unfolds with the revelation of alien influences complicating the power dynamics within Durdane, leading to conflicts that span beyond the continent itself. Throughout his journey, Etzwane embodies the themes of resistance, leadership, and the quest for deeper truths amidst chaos, ultimately returning to his roots in music after navigating the complexities of war and governance.
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Subject Terms
Durdane
First published:Durdane (1989, as trilogy); previously published as The Anome (1973; serial form, “The Faceless Man,” The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February-March, 1971; also published as The Faceless Man, 1978), The Brave Free Men (1973; serial form, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July-August, 1972), and The Asutra (1974; serial form, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May-June, 1973)
Type of work: Novels
Type of plot: Science fiction—planetary romance
Time of work: At least nine thousand years in the future
Locale: Durdane and Kahei
The Plot
Shant, the most civilized continent on the planet Durdane, is divided into sixty-two cantons, each with its own laws and customs. Enforcing these rules is the Anome, the Faceless Man, the anonymous arbiter of retributive justice. Every inhabitant of Shant must wear a torc around the neck, in which is an explosive charge that can be detonated by the Anome whenever he wishes, usually, but not always, as punishment for a crime. These torcs are the only remnants of any kind of advanced technology, which has fallen into general disuse because of Durdane’s metal-poor crust. Long-distance transportation, for example, is conducted primarily using guided balloons.
Gastel Etzwane, the main character in the series, grows up in the canton of Bashon, ruled by the Chilites, an all-male religious sect that believes that anything having to do with women is unclean. Ironically, or perhaps consequently, its members’ devotions involve the use of a hallucinogenic plant that induces erotic reveries. Etzwane, the son of a ritual prostitute and a wandering musician, rebels against the Chilites’ coercive regime and escapes to become a wandering musician. After accumulating enough money to rescue his mother from her indentured bondage, he returns to Bashon only to find it devastated by the Roguskhoi, a fierce race of humanoid warriors who loot human settlements of their female inhabitants, whom they consequently impregnate. Incensed that the Anome will do nothing to avert the Roguskhoi threat, Etzwane and Ifness, a secret representative from the Historical Institute on Earth, search for the Anome. After discovering his identity, they force him to issue edicts mobilizing all of Shant against the invaders.
In The Brave Free Men, Etzwane leads the whole of Shant against the Roguskhoi. He is assisted by his father, the wandering musician Dystar, and by Jerd Finnerack, who has been forced to work in a slave-labor camp ever since he helped Etzwane evade indentured slavery. Etzwane reorganizes Shant’s society and proposes a new system of centralized government based upon separation of powers. He offers to remove the torcs of those who volunteer to fight the Roguskhoi, and he also streamlines scientific and technical research. Soon the Brave Free Men, as the soldiers are known, have the weaponry to defeat the otherwise unstoppable Roguskhoi, who ultimately are cornered in a remote wasteland between Shant and its hereditary enemy, Palasedra. Before war can break out again, Etzwane meets with the Palasedran leaders, and they learn that the Roguskhoi are the biological weapons of a parasitic alien life-form, the asutra, who have also invaded the bodies of key humans in Shant to promote not only the defeatist attitude of the last Anome but also the belligerent actions of Finnerack, whose attacks on Palasedra threatened a two-thousand-year-old peace.
In The Asutra, Etzwane investigates reports of further Roguskhoi activity on Durdane’s other main land mass, the continent of Caraz. Accompanied there by Ifness, Etzwane learns that the Roguskhoi have been utterly defeated by unknown humans wielding advanced weaponry. They further learn that humans are being abducted by an asutra-bearing alien race, the Ka. In order to rescue four girls who have been thus kidnapped, Etzwane and a group of nomadic warriors allow themselves to be abducted. They eventually arrive on Kahei, the Ka home world, where they are trained to combat the unknown humans.
Etzwane characteristically leads a rebellion of the humans against the Ka, and they force the Ka to return them to Durdane. Etzwane finally learns from Ifness that the Ka had actually enslaved the asutra and that the humans Etzwane was trained to fight were working for the Ka, who wished to reinstate their supremacy on Kahei. The humans from Earth had meanwhile imposed a peace between the Ka and the asutra, and the ship that Etzwane had imagined they had commandeered back to Durdane was taking them there anyway. Ifness leaves Durdane, and Etzwane, it appears, must finally return to his music.