Tuf Voyaging by George R. R. Martin
"Tuf Voyaging" is a science fiction series by George R. R. Martin that follows the adventures of Haviland Tuf, an ecological engineer who operates a massive seedship known as the Ark. The narrative begins with the story "A Beast for Norn," where Tuf is tasked with creating a beast for combat in a game-pit, illustrating the complexities of ecological balance and the unintended consequences of quick-fix solutions. Throughout the series, Tuf navigates various challenges, including dealing with a religious zealot replicating biblical plagues and a water world threatened by misunderstood monsters. Each tale emphasizes the tension between immediate desires of Tuf’s employers and his commitment to long-term ecological solutions. The series consists of interconnected stories published between 1976 and 1985, culminating in Tuf's interactions with the planet S'uthlam, where he helps address its population issues despite resistance from its inhabitants. The overarching themes reflect a critique of simplistic problem-solving approaches and highlight the intricate interdependencies within ecosystems. Tuf’s character embodies a unique blend of intelligence and moral integrity, making the series a thought-provoking exploration of ecological engineering in a speculative future.
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Subject Terms
Tuf Voyaging
First published: 1986
Type of work: Stories
Type of plot: Science fiction—cultural exploration
Time of work: The distant future
Locale: Interstellar space and various planets, primarily S’uthlam
The Plot
The first story in what was to become the Tuf Voyaging sequence, “A Beast for Norn,” appeared in the 1976 anthology edited by Peter Weston, Andromeda 1. The remaining six stories were published in Analog between 1978 and 1985. In the first story, Haviland Tuf is already the owner of a thirty-kilometer-long “seedship” of the extinct Ecological Engineering Corps, designed by the long-dead Federal Empire of Earth to win a war now a thousand years in the past. The seedship, known as the Ark, gives Tuf the power to create life-forms almost at will, by cloning from its enormous cell library.
“A Beast for Norn” sets the standard story pattern for this sequence. Tuf is set a limited task by his employer, in this case to produce a beast to win combats in the gaming-pits of Norn. The employer, however, fails to understand the basic point of ecological engineering, which is that no single new factor can be introduced to a situation without radically altering all other factors. To put the same point more briefly, “quick fix” solutions will not work. Tuf sells the beast as requested but then sells other fighting beasts to competing houses. The contests escalate, the prey animals supplied with the fighting beasts destroy the local habitat, and the gaming-pits are forced to close.
In two further stories, appearing in Analog in 1978 and 1981, Tuf deals with a world where a religious bigot is duplicating the biblical plagues of Moses and with a water world threatened by monsters. In the first case, he “out-plagues” the plaguer; in the second, he points out that the monsters are a defensive reaction from an inoffensive telepathic race whose intelligence humans have not recognized.
All these stories leave unanswered the question of how Tuf acquired the seedship. George R. R. Martin explains this in “Plague Star” (1985), a short novel published as a two-part serial in Analog. He finishes the sequence with three separate but connected stories detailing Tuf’s repeated visits to the planet of S’uthlam, to have his ship refitted and to repay his debt for the work by solving (against the inhabitants’ wishes) their underlying population problem. The book version reorganizes these stories in chronological order, beginning with “Plague Star,” going on to the first S’uthlam story, and then placing the three original stories as adventures taking place between the dates when Tuf returns to pay installments on his S’uthlamese debt.
All but one of the seven items above rely on tension between the short-term wishes of Tuf’s planet-based employers—destroy the monsters, feed our excess population—and his own longer-term ecological solutions to the real problems—find out why the monsters are attacking, curb the excess population. The exception is “Plague Star,” a relatively simple story in which Tuf’s employers, the discoverers of the seedship, attempt to kill him and each other to gain control of it, only to find that his biological approach is more deadly than their guns and cyborgs.