Light-Years from the Vatican

George R. R. Martin wrote some excellent science fiction stories back in the late 70’s and early 80’s. “Sandkings” is one of the most popular of those. It won the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Locus Award for Best Novelette.

The story is collected in Dreamsongs, Volume 1, which contains a bunch of Martin’s most popular stories. Both volumes of Dreamsongs serve as a retrospective on the author’s career, from fan through science fiction/fantasy author to his successful stints of TV work.

Dreamsongs is also available on audio, where nearly all of the stories are presented in 51 hours of audio. “Sandkings” is read by Mark Bramhall in that collection.

I so thoroughly enjoyed A Game of Thrones, the first volume of George R.R. Martin’s epic fantasy series, that I eagerly read “Sandkings” the first time I came across it. I found the novelette to have the same clear, readable prose style as his novel. It also showcased Martin’s ability to build suspense. Another time through (my third?), I still think it’s excellent.

In the story, a man named Simon Kress lives on a planet somewhere (I’m fairly certain it’s not Earth, but I don’t recall it ever being specifically stated). He’s a rich man that is fond of exotic pets. He’s also a powerful man that is fond of his power. On a shopping trip to replace some of his pets that died after being neglected during an extended business trip, he purchases some sandkings – intelligent ant creatures that work with a collective hive mind. He puts them in a large terrarium, and he observes with delight as the creatures war with each other over resources.

Even more fascinating? The sandkings worship. Kress projects a hologram of his own face over the terrarium, and the creatures build shrines to him, etching his likeness on their small castles. When Kress gets bored, he shakes things up a bit by not feeding them. He manipulates them into fighting in every way he can think of. And things go badly.

The story is as much a commentary on the dangers of playing God (or the need some people have to do so) as it is a horror story about uncontrollable dangerous creatures. In fact, it completely succeeds at being both of those things, which is why I enjoy re-reading it so much. It’s a rich story that leaves me both unsettled and contemplative.

“Sandkings” was an episode of The Outer Limits in 1995. More info on that can be found at Wikipedia.

This book has four stories in it:

“Induction” (1957) – a one-page story, and the first.

“The Snow Women” (1970) – about an 18 year-old Conan-esque Fafhrd, who lives in the wild and cold north but longs for civilization

“The Unholy Grail” (1963) – about a similarly aged Gray Mouser, who has been trained by a wizard who gives him that name.

“Ill Met in Lankhmar” (1970) – the story of the meeting of the two, in a city called Lankhmar.

There are lots of editions of this book out there. I was lucky to read it in a beautiful illustrated Centipede Press edition. The book is available on audio at Audible, read by Jonathan Davis, who is one of the best narrators out there. The audiobook as a whole there is $16, but as of this writing, you can buy “The Snow Women”, “The Unholy Grail”, and “Ill Met in Lankhmar” individually for $1.99 each.

I had read “Ill Met in Lankhmar” before, and felt lukewarm about it. “The Snow Women” was recommended to me, so I read that and was captured by it, just loved it. So I kept reading all the way through. Turns out that the stories before “Ill Met” provide a context that I didn’t know I was missing. I thoroughly enjoyed re-reading “Ill Met in Lankhmar” too.

The stories are in the Sword and Sorcery subgenre. Leiber may have coined that term. I’m learning some about the subgenre from Brian Murphy’s Flame and Crimson: A History of Sword and Sorcery. Murphy wrote a good section in that book which discusses Leiber’s influences and gives an overview of the whole series. He also shows the place the series holds in the history of the genre.

“The Snow Women” recalled Gilgamesh to me. Gilgamesh was from civilization, his friend Enkidu was wild. Fafhrd, 18 years old, is a kid very comfortable in the wild. He climbs a tree to get to the place where he stashes his stuff. He runs on the snow without difficulty. Yet he longs for civilization. Is this frozen tundra all there is? This strong feeling makes him fall for Vlana, a person he sees as civilized, despite his pregnant girlfriend. Ironic that in the pursuit of civilization, he rejects the civilized choice to stay with his family.

The Gray Mouser is introduced in “The Unholy Grail”. We meet him having already been trained as a wizard by Glavas Rho. He was called a mouse because of his stature, and gray because he didn’t embrace the light or the dark, but used each as needed. He changed “mouse” to “mouser” because due to events in this story, he no longer wanted to be the hunted – he became the hunter. There’s an extraordinary scene in this story of the Gray Mouser captured and on the torture rack.

And then “Ill Met in Lankhmar”. This tells the story of the two men’s first meeting. They individually attack a pair of thieves at the same moment, then, recognizing something deep inside the other, decide to split the loot “sixty-sixty” rather than fight it out between them. Again this brings the deep friendship of Gilgamesh and Enkidu to my mind. Then comes excessive drink, some questionable decision making, and tragedy.

There are seven books in this Sword and Sorcery series. I haven’t read any of the others yet. It appears that these stories, written in 1963 and 1970, are a prequel. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser have stories that were written from 1939 through the early 1980’s.