The Winds of Gath

In a case of déjà vu relating to my recent post on The Tower at the Edge of Time, reading this book was kind of guilty pleasure. Way back in the seventies it was cool to discover that my dad was also a science fiction reader, though I never really saw him reading. I did discover a cache of SF paperbacks which I blog about frequently. A strange book about a character named Dumarest was among them.

I tried getting into the book a couple of times. I think I may have even had it in my possession well into my twenties or thirties; not sure, this is a bit hazy. But the point is I never could get past the first chapter or two. Not sure why, but something made me want to keep reading it. I forget the name, but it was about a planet where every night the dead come back to life. That’s an awesome concept – and probably why I wanted to read it.

Anyway, that book is lost to me. One day this past fall I found this book:


Hey! That’s E. C. Tubb, the author of that infamous book from my youth, the one-that-got-away, and what’s more – it’s a twofer! Two novels in one. First, you read The Winds of Gath, then you turn the book upside down and over, and you read Derai. I’m serious. Two 150-page novels in a manageably-thick paperback. Not bad. I wonder why publishers don’t do this more often. Seems like they could save money this way. Or maybe it’s just a fad or a promotion gimmick.

Anyway, I read The Winds of Gath in four days, about four hours of reading. My first Dumarest book. Was it worth it? Sure. The same way reading Lin Carter is. It ain’t Dostoevsky, it ain’t even Heinlein or Pohl or Anderson or Silverberg. But it’s not time wasted. Like I mentioned in the Carter review a few days back, it’s like watching a really good 22-minute teevee sitcom. You laugh, you forget your troubles, and then you move on.

The whole set-up in a sentence is this: Earl Dumarest is this futuristic hitchhiker who’s trying to get back to the ol’ mythical fabled lost planet of Earth. That’s it. Tubb’s written 33 books so far in this series, and, at the wizened age of 90, he’s hard at work on the 34th! Man, that’s impressive. The framework for each novel seems to be the same: Dumarest winds up on a strange new world, gets involved with local intrigue, then moves on. Kinda like a Murder, She Wrote in space.

What surprised me was how well it’s written. Tubb is prolific as all hell, but he’s not a hack. The planet of Gath comes to life in all its rugged alienness. The “winds” are what happens during periodic brutal thunderstorms, famed throughout the galaxy. Due to some strangeness of the terrain, or the atmosphere, or something else, perhaps, the winds whisper distant memories of forgotten love and regret and guilt to those fortunate or unfortunate who willingly travel to the mountains to listen to them. Dumarest, looking to earn cash to get off-world, is among them. Along with a Matriarch and her retinue from another planetary system and her rival. And there’s an assassin among the large group of pilgrims, with Dumarest and a princess in its sights ...

He’s not a bad writer at all. Technically, everything was perfect in the story. Nothing extraneous, nothing excessive. Every event spurred the plot onward. Vibrant images called forth from colorful word choice. The science fiction was notably good: cybernetic beings, futuristic temporal drugs, hibernation on long space voyages, an intriguing and lethal alien biosphere. And a cage fight, just like in Lin Carter!

And the best thing of all is that the book goes back in to the on-deck circle. Turned upside-down and over, of course.