Viagens Interplanetarias
The early works established the setting of a cosmopolitan future interstellar civilization comprising both Terrans and a handful of other space-faring races who trade and squabble with each other while attempting to maintain a benign stewardship of the more primitive planetary societies with which they come into contact.
The Viagens universe is not a picturesque backdrop for heroics, like those of de Camp's predecessors Edgar Rice Burroughs and E. E. "Doc" Smith, nor is it a carefully constructed and recounted future history like those of contemporaries Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Poul Anderson.
Most of the stories take place in the 22nd century, after an initial period of exploration and diplomacy establishing the ground rules for interstellar commerce and contact, but before the higher civilization of the space-faring cultures has completely transformed those of the more primitive, planet-bound races.
"[1] Thus he discarded such impossible but commonplace notions such as interfertility of human beings with humanoid alien races, civilizations possessing flying machines but no ground transport, bladed weapons and advanced gunnery coexisting in the same society, and faster than light travel.
Nonetheless, the effect is that space travel primarily attracts marginal and unattached members of society such as adventurers, entrepreneurs, con-men, utopian idealists, emigrants, and various admixtures thereof – or official representatives such as explorers, diplomats, and bureaucrats.
The main planets hosting intelligent life and their stars are Earth and Mars (Sol), Osiris, Isis and Thoth (Procyon), Krishna and Vishnu (Tau Ceti), Ormazd (Lalande 21185), and Kukulkan (Epsilon Eridani).
In the region of the Triple Seas, the planet's largest drainage area and the setting of all but one of the Krishna stories, the most recent disaster occurred over a thousand years prior to the contact era, when the Kalwmian Empire was destroyed and partially overrun by the Varastou people.
Osiris is an arid world whose dinosauroid inhabitants are characterized as both sentimental and rapaciously capitalistic; they are also possessed of mind-controlling powers, generally referred to as "telepathic pseudohypnosis," against which other intelligent species must take special precautions.
They establish the background, provide some hints of his future's back history, and give glimpses of the routine of interstellar space travel, typical characters engaging in it, and some of the intelligent alien races, and the worlds they inhabit.
The seven novels and four short stories of the Krishna sequence follow various Earthmen and occasional other aliens in their encounters with the pretechnical local culture, in which their pursuit of their own often petty ends tend to have ramifications ranging from minor to history-changing on a society struggling to adapt to the more advanced civilization.
The earlier series features different protagonists, and are unified primarily by their common setting and a number of recurring secondary characters, generally Viagens officials based at the Terran spaceport of Novorecife, but also a few important native Krishans.
They concentrate primarily on two recurring protagonists, Terran tour guide Fergus Reith and his on-again, off-again lover, anthropologist Alicia Dyckman, usually relegating both major and minor returning characters from the previous sequence to secondary roles.
Like the Krishna tales, the two books of the late Kukulkan sequence focus on the adventures of Terrans on a relatively primitive alien world, in this instance a somewhat more advanced planet ruled by a species of dinosaur-like creatures superficially similar to the Osirians.
It also leavened the hero-worship, sexism, prudery, ethnocentricity and nationalism then characteristic of the genre with a more skeptical view of human nature, strong characters of both genders (and of both same-sex and opposite-sex inclinations, though the latter predominate), for whom sex was a normal aspect of life, and an ethnically varied, international cast.
"[3] Additionally, Colleen Power has pointed out that "the overwhelming concern ... to prevent modern technological humans from influencing or interfering with the normal development of native cultures" in the Viagens novels "predat[es] 'Star Trek's' 'prime directive' by nearly twenty years.
'"[5] In other reviews of the same collection, Mark Reinsberg wrote that "De Camp's style is adroit and witty as he develops science-fiction take-offs on themes like sea piracy, head hunters, the wild west, and jousting knight-hood," and noted that "[t]he tales are spiced with glamorous other worldly women.
"[6] He also rated it "[p]robably the most entertaining collection of 'tomorrow tales' by an individual author" published in 1953, whose "yarns kept the reader laughing over space pioneering in the 22d century and a marvelous pair of interstellar swindlers named Koshay and Borel.
"[9] On the other hand, Boucher and McComas felt "the stories of the Viagens Interplanetarias have usually struck us as pretty routine work unworthy of L. Sprague de Camp, but devotees of the series will welcome the collected volume.
"[10] Groff Conklin assessed it as a "cream-puff-light book of space opera ... [f]ine stuff for bedtime, but I do feel that the stories were written with the left hind paw of an immensely brilliant fellow who just wasn't trying hard.
J. Francis McComas called it "a tedious account of a private eye's quest through space for a runaway heiress," with "[t]he chase ... a pretty drab affair, without the wit and charm usually found in this author's work.
"[16] Later he and J. Francis McComas rated Rogue Queen as "[t]he most interesting recent fictional extrapolation," noting that "[l]ively and unusual thinking, a vigorous plot, and a most appealing non-human heroine make [it] the best de Camp novel in many years.".
"[18] P. Schuyler Miller also called the novel the series's "most handsome dividend," finding it "by long odds the best of the Viagens stories, worked out with the de Campian flair for meticulously ridiculous logic.
And like de Camp's other popular Krishna novels, it's a wry and wacky story of a human forced to contend with the semicivilized and semihuman cultures of an alien world where Murphy's law always holds good, and nothing ever goes according to plan.
