The Prisoner of Zhamanak

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Like many older science-fiction readers and writers, I was trapped in the genre in the 1920s by the Martian tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs. When, after the Second World War, I was getting back into science fiction (after three and a half years in the armed services) the idea struck me: why not write some pure entertainment in the form of light, swashbuckling interplanetary adventure-romances—stories of the Barsoomian type, but more sophisticated and logically thought out? There would be no flagrant incongruities like people who have "radium rifles," which shoot a hundred kilometers by radar sights, but who still fight with swords and spears; or who have marvelous flying machines but can travel on the surface only on the backs of eight-legged throats or in chariots drawn by zitidars.

This idea led to the stories of the Viagens Interplanetarias series, beginning with the novel The Queen of Zamba, published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1949, and continuing to the present The Prisoner of Zhamanak. There have been eighteen stories of various lengths with a Viagens background, of which ten have been laid on my imaginary planet Krishna and the rest on other planets, including our own Terra. Alas! The march of science has eliminated Mars and Venus as plausible sites for such highjinks.

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