The Legion of Space by Jack Williamson
"The Legion of Space" is a series of science fiction stories that features a unique blend of space opera and adventurous escapades, centered around a diverse group of characters who navigate various challenges across the cosmos. The prominent character, Corporal Giles Habibula, is reminiscent of Shakespeare's Sir John Falstaff, providing humor and relatability through his witty complaints, voracious appetite, and lock-picking skills, which prove crucial in dire situations. The narrative revolves around a mysterious weapon known as AKKA, capable of ejecting anything from normal space, with its secrets passed down through a chosen Keeper of the Peace.
Key storylines include the quest to protect Aladoree Anthar, a descendant of AKKA’s inventor, from conspiracies involving her own family and an alien race called the Medusae. The tales explore themes of loyalty, love, and bravery as characters face formidable foes and treacherous alliances. As the series progresses, new characters like Jil Gyrel and her allies confront existential threats and uncover the secrets of the Legion's past. The stories weave together a rich tapestry of interstellar conflict, personal growth, and the enduring struggle against malevolent forces, all while maintaining a lighthearted tone through Giles's antics.
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The Legion of Space
First published:Three from the Legion (1979, as trilogy; previously published as The Legion of Space, 1947, serial form, Astounding Stories, 1934; The Cometeers, 1950, serial form, Astounding Stories, 1936; and One Against the Legion, 1950, serial form, Astounding Science Fiction, 1939, collected with addition of the novella “Nowhere Near,” 1967) and The Queen of the Legion (1983)
Type of work: Novels
Type of plot: Science fiction—interplanetary romance
Time of work: The thirtieth century
Locale: The solar system and several settings in interstellar space
The Plot
The link in all the Legion of Space stories and the major reason for their enduring popularity is the unlikely space opera character Corporal Giles Habibula, who is based largely on William Shakespeare’s Sir John Falstaff from the Henry IV plays. Never the hero or romantic lead, Giles still manages to steal each story with his all-too-human complaining, wheedling, self-pitying, never-satisfied appetite for food and wine, and talent for picking locks, which, despite the advanced technology of the stories, is required to save the day in all of them. The other constant is a never-explained weapon known only by its abbreviation, AKKA, its secret usually entrusted to one Keeper of the Peace at a time. AKKA can eject anything, from a human to a planet or an entire enemy species, out of normal space.
In The Legion of Space, the Keeper is Aladoree Anthar, a descendant of the man who invented AKKA while imprisoned and who forced the abdication of the despotic Ulnar family, space exploration leaders who came to rule the system. Legionnaire John Ulnar is assigned to protect Aladoree. He is assisted by Giles, the more traditionally heroic Jay Kalam, and physical giant Hal Samdu. Unknown to John, other members of his famous family have conspired with an alien race called the Medusae to kidnap Aladoree and force the secret from her. The four Legionnaires pursue her through a series of ever-increasing perils to the home world of the Medusae, manage to rescue her, and race back to where the invaders have occupied Earth’s moon preparatory to launching their final attack. Using AKKA, Aladoree makes the moon vanish and the alien force with it. She and John Ulnar, now known as John Star, have fallen in love, and he becomes her permanent protector.
In The Cometeers, immaterial beings who are approaching the system inside a giant comet ally themselves with renegade Legionnaire Steven Orco. Jay, now commander of the Legion, delays using AKKA on the chance that the comet folk might be friendly. By the time he learns otherwise, John and Aladoree are prisoners. Their son, Bob Star, who wants to prove himself worthy of the Legion, along with Jay, Hal, Giles, and a beautiful escapee from the comet named Kay Nymidee, overcome numerous obstacles before they discover a Cometeer weapon, which Bob uses to wipe out Orco and his allies.
One Against the Legion is ex-Legionnaire Chan Derron, who escapes from prison to prove that he did not kill a scientist who invented yet another secret weapon and that he is not the supercriminal, called the Basilisk, now using it. The stolen geofractor can move people and objects anywhere between two points, allowing the Basilisk to steal, kill, and kidnap at will. Chan, disguised to conceal his identity from Jay, Hal, and Giles, traces the Basilisk to the New Moon, an artificial satellite dominated by gambling enterprises. He is both aided and sidetracked by a beautiful woman he believes to be a fugitive android but who turns out to be Stella Eleroid, daughter of the murdered scientist.
Giles tracks down the pair but becomes convinced of Chan’s innocence after learning that Chan is his own grandson, the offspring of a daughter resulting from Giles’s long-ago affair with a singer on Venus. The Basilisk has used his geofractor to move all the story’s other characters to a doomed sector of a planet and plans to whisk himself away at the moment of destruction. Chan identifies him by an allergy that had afflicted the killer years earlier, and Stella uses a second geofractor to remove Chan and everyone else to safety while leaving the Basilisk to his fate.
“Nowhere Near” brings Giles and nurse Lilith Adams to a research station on the edge of a space anomaly. Station commander Lars Ulnar, from a distant branch of the family, gradually learns that Giles has volunteered to test a serum for prolonging life and that the “nurse” is the new Keeper of the Peace. When she tries to use AKKA against a huge invading mechanism emerging from the anomaly, however, it fails, apparently counteracted by the nature of the anomaly itself. Giles and Ken Star, Bob’s younger brother and now commander of the Legion, enter the anomaly, destroy the firing mechanism of a robot ship older than time itself, and escape before the anomaly shuts down.
The Queen of the Legion is set generations later. Its plot centers on Jil Gyrel, who hopes to follow her spacefaring forebears into the nebula near her world. The nebula, it is discovered, is home to beings who occupy humans as hosts and use them as incubators to reproduce their kind. They have murdered the current Keeper, but the AKKA secret had been divided among three survivors: a ball-shaped robot called Lord Archy, a tiny hairball of an alien kidnapped by the murderers, and an elderly space pilot who is revealed to be Giles, still alive as a result of taking the immortality serum. Members of Jil’s own family have fallen victim to the alien “shadowflashers,” and she manages to alert Legionnaire Kynan Star to the situation. With Giles and the robot, they locate the little alien, and the three parts of AKKA are given to Jil, who destroys the shadowflashers and becomes the new Keeper.