SJAMBAK by Jack Vance was originally published in the July 1953 issue of IF WORLDS OF SCIENCE FICTION. What I have here is a chapbook published by WILD SIDE PRESS.
KNOW YOUR UNIVERSE! is a science TV series that has two hundred million screens turned on for each episode, an estimated five hundred million participants. An interactive show, the producers are worried that the shows are beginning to be boring and looking for something to juice them up. They hear the tale of the Horseman in Space, a figure that supposedly rises up to greet spaceships coming into orbit around the planet Sirgamesk, without spacesuit. And the planet has no horses. Settled in the past by Javanese, Arabs, and Malay, it’s an airless world with it’s people living in the valleys, airtight roofs built over them. Travel between the valleys is by train completely enclosed. There are vast ruins, unexplored, of the original inhabitants when there was an atmosphere.
Wilbur Murphy is sent there with camera people to investigate, not really believing the Horseman tale, but hoping for footage. On his way to visit the Sultan of Singhalut, the particular valley of the landing, Wilbur sees a naked man in a cage. A Sjambak, a criminal, this particular one had broke the seal on a train, killing all the unprepared to rob them. No one wants to speak of these people, but Wilbur learns they live on the surface, surviving with their oxygen stills.
But Wilbur has stepped into something more than a superstition. Singhalut is overcrowded, fifteen hundred to a square mile. The Sultan wants to expand, opening new valleys for colonization. His son, the Prince, thinks it cost too much. Why pay the cost of building airtight roofs when there are already working valleys?
Interesting story. It is available at Project Gutenberg, but this slim edition is only $2.99. It has a partial bibliography of Vance’s work and a couple of pages about the author.
How does it compare to his other works?
What I found interesting, Joachim, was that it foreshadowed a lot of television today. Remember, this appeared in 1953. Reality TV, science TV I don’t believe had been thought of that far back.
It’s a Jack Vance work. I’ve not read anything by him that wasn’t good. Admittedly, I’m no expert on his work though. The odds of anything bad, expect possibly some of his earliest stuff(young writer learning his trade kind of thing)…
1953 is still quite early in his career, right? I’ll definitely check this out. I’ve enjoyed virtually everything of his I’ve read (The Blue World, which I wrote a review a while back, was unspectacular but still fun).
Yeah, that’s quite early for sci-fi related to Reality TV. I know Compton’s The Unsleeping Eye is from the late 60s… Sounds like another sci-fi theme worth exploring.
Vance wrote for TV in the ’50s, didn’t he? Can’t recall exactly. Everything I’ve read by him is terrific.
Thanks for the post –I need to dig out the old Galaxy anthos for the weekend and see if there’s a short story or two by him.
He wrote two episodes of Captain Video and His Video Rangers according to imdb.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041014/