Rigel in Fiction - Literature

Literature

• The Lensman Series (1934–48), novels by E. E. "Doc" Smith. The Lensman series takes place on many different worlds over a vast sweep of space. The ancient supercivilization of the Arisians, originators of the "lens," initiates a breeding program for potential godlike heroes, the Lensmen, on four worlds of high potential, including the Earth and Rigel IV—the latter a hot, high-gravity world. "L2" (Second-Stage Lensman) Kimball Kinnison is the product of the program on Earth, and L2 Tregonsee is the Rigellian. Smith's work is strongly identified with the beginnings of US pulp science fiction as a separate marketing genre, and did much to define its essential territory, galactic space, featuring many planets such as those orbiting Rigel. The Lensman series is considered far superior to Smith's Skylark series.
• Empire series (1945–1952), short story and three novels by Isaac Asimov set early in the history of the Galactic Empire that later dominated his overarching Foundation Series of novels. Rigel, the name of the star, is assumed by one of its planets in the Empire series. In the first millennium of the Galactic Era, this world's inhabitants developed a robot-based civilization that became so decadent and lazy that the effete Rigellians fell easy victim to the depredations of the warlord Moray.
• The Stars My Destination (1956), classic science fiction novel (titled Tiger! Tiger! in the UK) written by Alfred Bester, and doubly inspired by Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo and William Blake's poem "The Tyger" (see graphic). After his apotheosis in the burning cathedral, the legendary Gully Foyle teleports stark naked to the vicinity of several stars, including Rigel: "burning blue-white, five hundred and forty light years from earth, ten thousand times more luminous than the sun, a cauldron of energy circled by thirty-seven massive planets..." The interstellar "jaunting" sequence is typical of Bester's signature pyrotechnics, his quick successions of hard, bright images, and mingled images of decay and new life.
• Next of Kin (1959), novel by Eric Frank Russell. Private Leeming is every sergeant's worst nightmare: immune to military discipline and punishment, and given to random acts of insubordination. Thus when a mission to fly a prototype spaceship behind enemy lines comes up, he is the natural candidate to pilot the dangerous but potentially strategic spy mission—one from which he is unlikely to return alive. Once on the job, racks up visits to 72 planets before finally approaching Rigel, the home system of a humanoid, rubber-limbed, pop-eyed, and consistently "friendly" alien race who speak a language eerily similar to English... (Compare "Hungry are the Damned" below.)
• Adaptation (1960), novelette by Mack Reynolds appearing in Astounding Science Fiction. Humanity is obsessed with the goal of colonizing every single one of the galaxy's millions of earthlike worlds, and they know how to do it: On each even semi-habitable new planet, a colony of a mere few hundred brave souls is seeded; inevitably they quickly revert to barbarism; more often than not, after a standard thousand years, they somehow adapt and develop a civilization peculiarly suited to their strange new home. Such is the case for Rigel, whose planets Genoa and Texcoco are "all but unbelievably Earthlike. Almost all flora and fauna have been adaptable. Certainly race has been." After the requisite millennium, protagonist Amschel Mayer is sent in to take charge as a godlike interloper, to mold the young societies as he sees fit ... Reynolds' Adaptation, like "most of his later works, is unashamedly didactic, although not doctrinaire." (Reynolds was a lifelong socialist.)
• Demon Princes (1964–1981), series of five novels written by Jack Vance. In Vance's Oikumene universe, Rigel is one of the three principal centers of human civilization (together with the Earth and Vega), the Rigel Concourse consisting of "twenty-six magnificent planets, most of them not only habitable but salubrious." The system was discovered by interstellar explorer Sir Julian Hove, who provided its worlds with a stuffy and bombastic list of names culled from a pantheon of Victorian notables. The compendium was intercepted by one Roger Pilgham, a bored transmission clerk who substituted a far more fanciful schedule of names, which gained wide acceptance:

Notable locations in the Concourse include:

• The Esplanade, facing the Thaumaturge Ocean at Avente on Alphanor, and Kirth Gersen's base of operations.

• The Patch Engineering and Construction Company of Patris on Krokinole, where Gersen builds a faux monster, the dnazd, to the specifications and for the use of the Demon Prince Kokor Hekkus on the fantasy planet Thamber.

• The Feritse Precision Instruments Company, at Sansontiana on Olliphane, where Gersen takes up the trail of the descrambling strip to Lugo Teehalt's locator monitor—a decoder that will reveal the whereabouts of a secret paradise world.

"The first full-fleged modern planetary romance is therefore probably Jack Vance's ... supplied sf writers with a model to exploit." Vancian worlds of the Oikumene provide a rich environment together with off-world protagonists (In the case of the above locations: Kirth Gersen) whose need to travel across the planet provides a quest plot and a rationale for the lessons in anthropology and sociology so common to the form.

• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979), novel by Douglas Adams. Orion Beta is a star system noted for its madranite mining belts. At a hyperspace port catering to the belts, Ford Prefect is taught by the local miners to play a telepathic drinking game similar to Earth's indian wrestling, except that the players imbibe Ol' Janx Spirit, a main ingredient in the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. Judging by the star's name, the location of all this is likely to be in the Rigel (Beta Orionis) system.
• Night Train to Rigel (2005), the first novel in the Quadrail series written by Timothy Zahn. Government agent Frank Compton is enlisted by the arachnoid operators of the eponymous intra-galactic rail system to investigate the possibility of a certain WMD being able to slip past their security barriers. To aid in his inquiries, he is provided with an unlimited travel pass enabling him to travel, along with a female companion Bayta, to the ends of the galaxy—and in particular to the Rigel star system.
• Out Around Rigel by Robert H. Wilson, downloadable from http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20553