Tuf Voyaging: Difference between revisions

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''Tuf Voyaging'' is an early work by ~[[George R. R. Martin~]] of ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'' fame, described by [[That Other Wiki]] as 'a darkly comic meditation on environmentalism and absolute power', which sounds about right. It stars the eponymous Haviland Tuf, a reclusive, phlegmatic, ''very'' eccentric chap with a great love of [[Spock Speak]] and a great distaste for his fellow man. He wants nothing more than to fly around the universe in his [[Cool Starship]], The Ark, with his beloved cats and to make an honest living plying his trade.

There's a problem. A couple, actually. The Ark is a thirty-kilometer long seedship of the ancient Ecological Engineering Corps, with the power to clone and genetically engineer everything from plants to animals to bacteria. Tuf's trade is in ecological engineering, reshaping the ecologies of entire planets as his clients ask (for a [[Blatant Lies|modest]] fee). And the universe is [[Crapsack World|not a nice place]].

The seven stories in ''Tuf Voyaging'' chart Haviland Tuf's [[Character Development|growth]] from a bumbling [[Spanner in Thethe Works]] to a fully-fledged [[The Chessmaster|chessmaster]] with a burgeoning [[A God Am I|god complex]]. The stories are as follows:

* [[Bond One -Liner]]: From ''The Plague Star'': "I had a [[BFG|gun]], too."

* [[The Chessmaster]] / [[Magnificent Bastard]]: Tuf starts off as a ''very'' clever man who others constatly underestimate. He plays off this advantage brilliantly, and by the end of the book evolves into a MagnificentbastardMagnificent Bastard, holding sway over the lives of billions by controlling whether or not a massive interstellar war will erupt.

* [[Crapsack World|Crapsack Universe]]: The setting is shared with another Martin novel, ''The Dying of the Light'', and the Universe is a pretty chaotic place. Ever since the Human-Hrangan war and the devastation that followed the Hrangan's desperate [[Last Stand]], Earth has been a closed-off planet, along with its most prosperous and advanced colonies, like Prometheus. There is no centralized government, leaving individual colonies to degenerate into near-barbaric feudal-like societies, and the technologies behind genetic/ecological engineering and time manipulation are all but lost to everyone else, which makes the Ark a very sought-after treasure trove. Oh, and there were a bunch of [[AIA.I. Is a Crapshoot|AI rebellions]] at some point.

* [[EverythingsEverything's Better Withwith Dinosaurs]]: Cloned T-Rex.

* [[Karmic Death]]: After killing Tuf's cat, Mushroom, Celise Waan bumps into a bunch of "[[Killer Rabbit|hellkittens]]" - felines from a [[Death World]]. Who spit acid.

* [[Kick the Dog]]: Celise Waan, the professor who hires Tuf, never got on with his cats. But ''cycling one out of the airlock into the Ark's disease-ridden air''? Tuf later has to [[Mercy Kill]] the poor animal, [[Tear Jerker|prompting one of the only shows of emotion we ever get from him]].

* [[Look Behind You!]]: Played with in "The Plague Star". When Tuf attempts to warn Rica Dawnstar that there's a ravenous ''T. rex'' sneaking up behind her, she tells him sternly that she's not going to fall for "the old there's-a-dinosaur-behind-you gambit" -- even though it's making enough noise that she must know it's there. It turns out she's perfectly aware that it's there, and also that she's in no danger from it.

* [[Mini -Mecha]]: The Unquin battlesuit.

* [[Right -Hand -Cat]]: A succession of cats take this role for Tuf over the course of the series. The later ones, as Tuf becomes more adept with the seedship's tools, have a variety of useful abilities built in.

* [[Shout -Out]]: As noted in Single Biome Planet below, the water world in "Guardians." Also, Tuf mentions a large, dark flying creature: "a Claremontine wind-rider, also called the ''[[X-Men|ororo]]''."