Millions of years in the future, Old Earth is in its penultimate age, quietly and unspectacularly moving towards the closing stages of its existence under the light of a tired orange sun. In a history that is so old it is almost forgotten, most of mankind had left the planet during The First Effloration, using wormholes to leapfrog through The Spray, Earth’s galactic arm, and then settling the one thousand Foundational Domains, which would become the first of the Ten Thousand Worlds. Earth was eventually left virtually deserted for hundreds of thousands of years until the Twelfth Eon when descendants of the original spacegoers returned to the home world, found the habitable parts of it to be immensely pleasing, and began to repopulate the planet, adding the appellation “Old” to its name.
Old Earth remains lightly settled, and its people now share the surface with alien colonists who terraformed wastelands to their requirements and who live in peace with humanity. The last metropolis is coastal Olkney, the capital city, and the adjacent spaceport is located on an island in the tideless Mornedy Sound, tideless because the Moon has long been absent from the sky, obliterated in a catastrophe only vaguely remembered. From the spaceport, travelers can access not only the Ten Thousand Worlds but the whole of The Spray from the galactic center at one end to the Beyond at the other and even further out than that, the sparsely starred dark spaces of the Back of Beyond.
All of the humans on Old Earth fall under the control of the Archonate, the supreme government, at the head of which is the Archon, whose palace atop the crags of the Devenish mountain range overlooks the Olkney peninsula. The Archon’s rule is absolute and unquestioned, steeped in the tradition of many millennia of rule, and although social and scientific advances mean that most of the population live at ease and without privation, there remains the need for law enforcement. This is the responsibility of the Bureau of Scrutiny, or “scroots” as they are known, whose black and green uniforms automatically command respect and obedience from all but the criminal halfworld.
Magic works rarely and then in only a rudimentary fashion, but its relationship to Rationality is cyclical. The time is approaching when the Supernatural will gain complete ascendancy over Reason for the last time, leading to the loss of science and technology and the consequent shifting of the world into what will ultimately become the strangeness of the final cycle of life when Old Earth will become the Dying Earth. Still far away, this will be the realm of wizardry and spellcasting that Jack Vance so enjoyably detailed in his books The Dying Earth, The Eyes of the Overworld, Rhialto the Marvellous, and Cugel’s Saga. Much of Matthew Hughes’s fantasy fiction is set in this pre–Dying Earth age, and he successfully replicates the smoothly elegant prose at which Vance so excelled without slavishly copying it. He writes interesting stories in an engaging way but in very much his own voice with a skillfully affectionate tip of the hat to his predecessor’s matchless style.
On Old Earth, it is not only the sun that is tired but much of humanity itself. So many hundreds of thousands of years of civilization have passed that there is an attitude on the part of many that there is nothing innovative left to be done: all discoveries have been made, all achievements accomplished, every permutation of events already seen, and there is now nothing left to aspire to. Such spiritual malaise diminishes enthusiasm for anything new—for it surely cannot possibly be new and must have been done before—but this attitude fails to color the thinking or the activities of those various individuals of note that Hughes has introduced in the world of the Archonate.
These include Filidor Vesh, who was eventually to become the Archon; Guth Bandar, who maps and explores the realities of racial memory; Hengis Hapthorn, who is the finest discriminator of the day; Conn Labro, the gaming duelist; and more recently the investigator, Erm Kaslo. But of all these well-drawn characters, it is the rotund master criminal Luff Imbry who most stands out, a man very much on the wrong side of the law, a distinct and charismatic presence, a likeable rogue with quick wits, a glib tongue, and a pronounced instinct for survival, and someone who finds great appeal in the acquisition of goods that are not his own.
Although he is undeniably a felon whose chief attributes are his abilities for theft and forgery, Imbry claims that he only takes advantage of those who deserve such attention: “I pride myself that my prey has been those who thought themselves predators. You may see me as the human equivalent of an eight-legged web-spinner, but I have hunted only other spiders.” He is “a figure of pronounced corpulence,” but beneath his exterior is “a well-concealed musculature and a practiced mobility,” and he is “capable of sudden and conclusive acts of violence.” This means his appearance is deceptive as is “the guileless gaze that he had spent years perfecting,” and this can lead to his being underestimated by adversaries; when they do, they do so at their peril. Imbry does not have a forgiving nature and can sometimes “take a revenge that would be prolonged and inventive, as he had been known to do when grievously disappointed.”
He can make substantial profits, the major part of which he uses to indulge a lavish lifestyle, generally preferring short-term hedonism to long-term investment. A gastronome who delights in the exclusive and expensive menus at such select Olkney dining places as Xanthoulian’s Restaurant and Quirks Club, Imbry pampers himself whenever he can, thinking only of the present, reflecting that “the past is sand already dribbled from my hands.... the future has no more substance than a gnat’s opinion. All I have is now, so let me make the most of it before it, too, dribbles away.” Self-centered but not vain, he sees no need to impress people unless it is a necessary part of whatever unlawful endeavor he happens to be engaged in, and he seems to have little need of friendship. In any event “it takes a certain span of time for my better qualities to be appreciated,” as he says. He lays his plans with care and diligence, usually operating independently unless there is a definite need for an accomplice, and he prefers to eschew such organized criminal syndicates as the Green Circle.
The author has indicated that Imbry’s closest counterparts are the characters Kasper Gutman and Signor Ferrari, as portrayed so well by the English actor Sydney Greenstreet in the films The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Casablanca (1942) respectively. There might perhaps also be an element of George R.R. Martin’s overweight space trader Haviland Tuf from Tuf Voyaging (1986), and we should not discount Mycroft Holmes, a man of the same build and someone who frequents the Diogenes Club, a place which has the same rigid conventions of privacy as does one of Luff’s favorite haunts, Quirks Club in Olkney. The similarities do admittedly falter at this stage as both Tuf and Mycroft are far less active than Imbry and of course considerably more lawful.
Luff Imbry’s first appearance was in Black Brillion in 2004. Old Earth and the Archonate itself had been introduced in Fool’s Errant in 1994, to which a sequel, Fool Me Twice, appeared in 2001. These novels relate the exploits of a young wastrel, Filidor Vesh, the nephew of the Archon and his possible successor, although Filidor is reluctant to abandon the attractions of high living and a carefree existence. The two books entertainingly show how Filidor discovers his own potential while fulfilling the Archon’s requirement of “the progress of esteeming the balance,” as well as providing a fascinating journey through lands with bizarre customs and rigidly structured societies.
Black Brillion is an inventive tale in which Imbry plays a relatively minor part, his character well defined but not as fully fledged as it was to become. Master criminal he may be, but he is quickly captured by the inexperienced Baro Harkless of the Archonate Bureau of Security and then finds himself coerced into the Bureau to assist in bringing an ex-colleague, Horslan Gebbling, to justice. The case is far more complicated than it seems at first sight and involves the attempted invasion of Old Earth by an inimical alien species called the Dree, long extinct but reanimated in the noösphere, the world of the collective unconscious of humanity, a place which is “the distillation of all human experiences, everything that had ever been important to humankind, individually or collectively, since the dawntime. It was the composite memory of the species, the realm of the archetypes.”
This intriguing concept was the subject of a separate series of short stories revolving around Guth Bandar, a character in Black Brillion and one of a select band of noönauts who explore the boundaries of the noösphere. One of those items, later included in the fix-up novel The Commons, was “The Helper and His Hero.” This is a retelling of much of Black Brillion with the same plot developments and resolution but related from Guth Bandar’s perspective instead of Baro Harkless. It does provide a coda resolving the futures of both Harkless and Bandar with the possibility that further adventures of the twosome may be forthcoming at some point in the future.
Imbry’s career was originally intended to last no longer than the events narrated in Black Brillion. Hughes says in his Introduction to the 2013 compilation, The Meaning of Luff, that
in the original draft of Black Brillion that I submitted to Tor, I killed [Imbry] off in a rather messy fashion near the end of the novel. But my editor, David G. Hartwell, was wise in the ways of science fiction readers and he advised me that it was a mistake to murder the only likeable character in the book. So I rewrote that segment and Luff lived on.
Even so, this initial appearance was as far as Hughes had intended to go with the character, but he then decided to bring him back on stage and develop him further, and several short pieces appeared in 2006, starting with “The Farouche Assemblage.” In this tale, Imbry decides that the legendary and virtually unseen art collection of the retired magnate Paddachau Chin should be liberated for the benefit of those wishing to see it (and those willing to pay Luff Imbry for that privilege). He evolves a complicated plan which sees him indulging a previously unknown artistic bent to gain access to Chin’s presence and his treasure room. What he finds there is surprising to say the least, but Luff turns what appears to be an unproductive situation to his advantage.
Next came “The Meaning of Luff,” in which Imbry comes across a device that can show an individual what his effect on the world is going to be or has been. Although his own prospects seem to be mundane and very much those of a supporting background player, he comes to the pragmatic conclusion that it is best to live for the day and to do what he does best with an enthusiastic panache—for “if fate denies one substance, one can yet do a lot with style.” “Nature Tale” is a short piece relating Luff’s revenge on someone who had wronged him decades earlier, giving some information about Luff’s upbringing and education, underscoring that he is not a man with a forgiving nature. In “Passion Ploy,” a mysterious object that has a mesmerizing effect on all who see it comes into Luff’s hands, and it proves to be a seed with a very clever means of ensuring its parent plant’s propagation.
“The Eye of Vann” (2008) is the millennia-old icon of a religious sect, an object of considerable if unknown power, and when it is stolen, Luff is employed by the First Enunciant of Vann to recover it. Although it is guarded by what seem to be inviolable walls in the mansion of the collector, Baltazo Meagh, Luff obtains the Eye after events which seem to be getting out of control, but it is an object of darkness beyond understanding which he decides has no place in the Archonate. The following year saw the appearance of “Enemy of the Good”: en route from the scene of his latest larceny—the theft of Filhentian Depro’s valuable collection of griffhorns—Imbry’s aircar is brought down in the Old Earth barrens. He finds himself captured by Frater Czenzible of the Eclectic Fraternity and compelled to investigate the newly discovered caverns of the reclusive Idiosyncrant sect, which flourished tens of thousands of years earlier. He makes some interesting discoveries before escaping the caverns and the vengeance of Filhentian Depro. “Another Day in Fibbery” from 2009 tells how, after a significant financial reverse involving the faking of wind-tambos from the dead world of Iqbal, Imbry finds himself in the power of the Olkney moneylender Titus Gullick, who decides to make an example of him to alert others to the dangers of default. Quick thinking and consummate timing enable Luff to escape Gullick’s clutches and to cancel the indebtedness fully and permanently.
Quartet & Triptych (2010) is a fine novella in which Imbry learns of a way in which he may be able to procure a certain artifact—the Bone Triptych—that is close to being priceless. It is located in a deadly maze beneath the Summer Pavilion at Grand Minthereyon, guarded by inescapable traps that have been active for the four thousand years that have passed since the destruction of the estate. Using the animated essence of Waltraut Voillute, he finds his way in but is then confronted by another essence, that of the deranged and deadly Lord Syce Voillute. Salvation comes from an unexpected source, indicating something extremely disturbing, something that he has no knowledge of, a development that will presumably be addressed in future stories. The ending sees Imbry reveal a previously unseen streak of sentimentality in his dealings with the essences of the thwarted lovers, although he tells himself that the real reason is to build up his karma as insurance for the future.
2011’s The Other is the longest Imbry offering to date, a novel in which he is kidnapped and finds himself marooned on the isolated planet Fulda with no apparent way offworld. The structure of Fuldan society is repressive and inflexible with the Ideals in control and the Irregulars despised and tolerated only for their role in arcane divination. Luff is considered to be an Irregular and treated accordingly, but between two vicious murders for which he is blamed, he fortuitously discovers a long-sought object called the First Eye, fulfilling a prophecy that it will “be found by an Irregular, a figure of mystery and one who was well acquainted with death.”
For much of its length The Other is frankly not as forceful as Hughes’s other books—there are a few too many pauses for reflection and deliberation and little to drive the plot past its slow-moving tempo—but this does change. As Imbry begins to discover the truth behind the paradoxes of the Fuldan environment and its strange culture, the book gathers momentum and moves smoothly towards an impressive climax and an ending that calls for a sequel, one which the author has indicated may well be forthcoming “one of these days.”
In the meantime, The Yellow Cabochon was published in 2012. This is a superior piece, a well-paced and compelling novelette in which Luff is maneuvered into a position where his life is endangered, something that he really does not appreciate. In the dubious and untrustworthy company of the aristocrat Frons Elphrane, and despite the ineffective attentions of the Green Circle, he follows a trail of deaths to unravel an intriguing mystery. His adversary, Ulferim Boz, is not at all as anticipated, and indeed Boz utilizes something that Luff can hardly bring himself to accept—magic. But after tracking him to the planet Sesserine and resolving matters in the most final of ways, Imbry accepts the evidence of what he has seen. The story ends with him considering how best to take advantage of this newfound knowledge and utilize it for his own less than honest endeavors.
The latest tale of Luff Imbry is Of Whimsies & Noubles (2014). It tells of how Imbry is arrested on New Gargano, having been caught attempting to smuggle noubles, rare and very valuable jewels, to Old Earth. He is incarcerated on the prison world, Nestranko, where ironically he finds himself forced to mine the very noubles that brought him there. These, he discovers, derive from an extra-dimensional source within the same wormholes (“whimsies”) that are utilized by spacecraft to travel the Ten Thousand Worlds, although on Nestranko the whimsies are located on the planet’s surface as opposed to being in space. Imbry cleverly makes his escape, avenging himself on those who have wronged him. He accumulates much wealth in the process, reflecting that he could now live at considerable ease for the rest of his days. But he realizes that he does enjoy what he does, and as the story ends, he finds himself tempted by the possibility of a major fraud that would increase his already considerable riches.
Interestingly, this was the fraud that led him to the County of Sherit and which was then interrupted by Baro Harkless before it could be completed. Thus, Of Whimsies & Noubles is the direct forerunner to the events of Black Brillion, emphasizing that Imbry’s adventures are not appearing in order; indeed there are several which must predate Of Whimsies & Noubles and Black Brillion, resolving such anomalies as why Imbry would have had to resort to a moneylender to finance his schemes in “Another Day in Fibbery” if he was so wealthy. One would also have expected him to be capable of utilizing some form of magic after The Yellow Cabochon, but this is not even hinted at, strongly implying that the latter is the latest in the overall ongoing narrative arc. With Of Whimsies & Noubles, Hughes is making a clear statement that his stories are not in from a chronological sequence and that he does not necessarily intend Imbry to become involved with magic unless it suits the author’s plot; in the meantime, he retains the freedom to write of earlier periods of the Archonate before the encroachment of magic became a significant issue.
All of the tales that constitute the Luff Imbry saga have been of high quality, displaying originality and verve, and Imbry himself is a character who dominates the plots with his personality and his resourcefulness. Hughes confesses to being “a crime writer at heart,” and this is apparent in the skill with which he reveals the mysteries that often lie at their heart.
As already mentioned, the influence of Jack Vance is apparent throughout the Archonate stories. The refined prose and subtly droll wit that characterized Vance’s books is omnipresent as is the graceful irony of the language in which people converse. In The Commons, for instance, Guth Bandar responds to the possible result of bringing bad news to a senior Institute member by saying, “The Eminence holds a vast anger that strains a thin leash. I doubt he responds well to disappointment.”
Vance’s concept of the Earth of an unimaginably far future living beneath a fading old sun in the last era of its existence is a fascinating idea which he captured in stories winning and memorable. Hughes has achieved the same, although his Old Earth is not, of course, the Dying Earth. Cugel the Clever never had the opportunity to travel by spacecraft or flyer nor was there any controlled technology to relieve or aid the rigors of living in Azenomei; such things were long gone by the time Cugel appeared on the scene, so long gone that their very existence was not even remembered.
However, the cyclical switch to magic is starting to happen in a minor way on Old Earth as is seen not only by Imbry in The Yellow Cabochon but also by Hengis Hapthorn and Erm Kaslo in their respective series. Those spells which Luff Imbry comes across have very Vancean names such as “Thaddeuz’s Dwindling,” “Bracchanto’s Corrosive Miasma,” and “Trefeil’s Comprehensive Redactor” and could have come straight out of the Dying Earth books. Hughes has contributed directly to that foundational milieu with the excellent “Grolion of Almery,” which appeared in the Jack Vance tribute anthology Songs of the Dying Earth in 2009.
Matthew Hughes has consistently produced well-written fiction that diverts and pleases. His creation, the world of the Archonate, is a well-crafted and evocative background for storylines that are consistently readable and which display much originality. It is also a setting which is evolving as magic resurges across the Ten Thousand Worlds, and it will be interesting to see the impact that this will have on the lives of the major series characters. We will hopefully find out in the fullness of time; Hughes shows no signs of easing up, and there should be much more of his work to be enjoyed in the future.
Mike Barrett lives in Wilmington, Kent.
A Luff Imbry Chronology
Black Brillion. Tor Books, November 2004
“The Farouche Assemblage.” Postscripts, Spring 2006
“The Meaning of Luff.” F&SF, July 2006
“Nature Tale.” Postscripts, autumn 2006
“Passion Ploy.” Forbidden Planets, November 2006
“The Helper and His Hero.” F&SF, February & March 2007
“The Eye of Vann.” Postscripts, Summer 2008
“Enemy of the Good.” Postscripts, September 2009
“Another Day in Fibbery.” Postscripts, December 2009
Quartet & Triptych. PS Publishing, August 2010
The Other. Underland, September 2011
The Yellow Cabochon. PS Publishing, January 2012
Of Whimsies & Noubles. PS Publishing, August 2014
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