The English author Edwin Charles Tubb began
writing science fiction in the early 1950s and
within the next 10 years had produced an astonishingly large amount of fiction, both novels and
short stories, under his own name and many
pseudonyms, some of which are still unknown, and
most of which appeared exclusively in Great
Britain. His novels from this period were invariably
adventure stories, usually set in outer space, sometimes in dystopian futures or other standard settings. The best of these were Enterprise 2215
(1954) and The Extra Man (1954), both published
under the name Charles Grey, and The Space Born
(1956)—his first novel to appear in the United
States—under his own name. It anticipated
LOGAN’S RUN (1967) by William F. Nolan and
George Clayton Johnson by suggesting that population control might be implemented by an age
limit aboard a generation starship, enforced by an
elite corps of assassins, one of whom has second
thoughts.
Tubb began to sell to American markets in the
late 1950s, but never as successfully as in his home
country, and only one further novel appeared during the next several years. The Mechanical Monarch
(1958) is a fairly standard dystopian tale. The
British market contracted during that same period,
and Tubb’s output dropped off sharply—perhaps to
his benefit, because his next novel, Moonbase
(1964), was a much more mature work. An investigator sent to the Moon to look into a series of
odd incidents immediately finds his life in danger.
Tubb’s novels would continue to be light adventure
stories throughout his career, but from the 1960s
onward they were much more smoothly written
than his early work.
The Winds of Gath (1967, also published as
Gath) was the first novel in the Dumarest series,
which would prove to be Tubb’s most famous work.
Dumarest is a typical taciturn hero, a traveler
among the stars who stowed away as a child on
Earth and became lost in a galaxy that now believes Earth to be a legend with no basis in reality.
Although Dumarest is determined to return to his
home world, his efforts are complicated by the fact
that no one knows where it is, by the immediate
dangers he faces on the various worlds he visits,
and in later volumes by an organization of fanatics
who are determined to capture him. In The Return
(1997), the 32nd and final volume in the series,
Dumarest finally outwits his enemies and reaches
home. The wide-open space adventure format
used throughout the series has become less popular
in recent years and the final volume has appeared
only from a small press, which has also reprinted
several of his earliest novels in limited softcover
editions.
S.T.A.R. Flight (1969) suggests that immortality
might not be a blessing after all. Aliens have
brought the secret to Earth, but in exchange they
keep most of the human race narrowly confined
and impoverished. Tubb would later examine the
same theme from a different viewpoint in Death
Wears a White Face (1979). Many of Tubb’s plots involve apparent paradoxes, as in Century of the
Manikin (1972), in which a famous proponent of
world peace and centralized government is a awakened from suspended animation in a future world
in which her goals have been reached, imposed by
force, and finds herself opposed to the very institution she formerly advocated. The Primitive (1977) is
an extended coming-of-age story, with its protagonist escaping a barbaric world to become an interstellar magnate. Pawn of the Omphalos (1980) is a
wide-ranging space opera that never quite lives up
to its ambitious plot. Tubb’s most original novel is
The Luck Machine (1980), in which a scientist develops a device that can alter the laws of chance,
concentrating good luck in one area. Unfortunately, there is a law of conservation of chance, and
good fortune in one place is offset by pockets of bad
luck elsewhere. His best novel, Stardeath (1983), is
a complex scientific mystery involving disappearing
starships and physically transformed space travelers.
Between 1973 and 1975, under the name Gregory Kern, Tubb wrote 16 adventures of Cap
Kennedy, a space ranger patterned after Captain
Future, though updated slightly for modern audiences. The series opened with Galaxy of the Lost
and closed with Beyond the Galactic Lens. Although
these were extremely lightweight space operas in a
tradition that largely has lost its audience, they
were briefly popular, and the last two in the series
were considerably more complex and interesting,
although they came too late to matter. Tubb also
wrote tie-in novels set in the world of the Space
1999 television series, and published two collections of short stories, A Scatter of Stardust (1972)
and Murder in Space (1998).