Adventure Calls

Exiles at the Well of Souls (Saga of the Well World, volume 2)

By Jack L. Chalker

14 Jan, 2024

**Because My Tears Are Delicious To You**

13 comments

Support me with a Patreon monthly subscription! — 14 Jan, 2024

**Because My Tears Are Delicious To You**

13 comments

1978’s Exiles at the Well of Souls is the second volume in Jack L. Chalker’s Well World Saga.

The ancient Markovians’ technology gave them the power of gods, able to reshape reality according to their whims. While humans might not be able to duplicate that achievement on their own, access to abandoned Markovian relics allowed brilliant scientist Gilgram Zinder to reverse-engineer Markovian technology. Now he too can alter reality as he sees fit. Too bad Zinder is as naïve as he is smart.

Councillor Antor Trelig has a simple dream: become unquestioned ruler of the three hundred and seventy-four human-colonized worlds belonging to the Council of Worlds. At present, his talent for conniving and skillful use of drug-based blackmail has provided him with de-facto control of one hundred seventy-five worlds. Zinder’s discovery can provide Trelig with the rest.

Zinder has no interest in helping Trelig conquer humanity ‚but Trelig did not get where he is today by caring what other people want.

It’s a simple matter for Trelig’s minions to kidnap Zinder’s beloved daughter Nikki. Nikki is quickly addicted to a deadly drug, sponge. Without regular doses, she will sicken, her mind will dissolve, and she will die unpleasantly. Trelig cannot cure Nikki but he can provide her with the means to remain healthy and alive. Zinder has no choice but to obey Trelig in order to to keep Nikki alive.

A larger and more powerful example of Markovian reality-warping technology is constructed on the asteroid New Pompei. Once it is completed, Trelig announces to the other Council of Worlds councillors that he has a doomsday weapon against which no defense exists. He invites his colleagues to attend the demonstration.

Councillor Alaina has no desire to be Trelig’s subject. Accordingly, she hires Mavra Chang, talented interstellar criminal, to infiltrate the demonstration, locate Nikki, and rescue the girl so that Trelig no longer has his hold over Zinder. It’s a bold plan. Mavra almost carries it off. Another event intervenes.

As it happens, Zinder and his AI Obie have not kept Trelig fully apprised of every peculiarity of Zinder’s creation. Amongst the more notable emergent properties of the New Pompeii facility: sufficiently large-scale uses attract the attention of the Markovian planetary brain that maintains all reality. When the reality-altering system is brought to full power, New Pompeii is suddenly transported to the centre of the universe, into orbit around the Well World.

At this point, life becomes fraught for Trelig. As he is a nasty sadist, he has kept his staff in line by addicting them to sponge, whose supply he controls. Having no local source of sponge¹, all of his resentful, heavily armed staff now face an inevitable, painful death. All of them are eager to express their displeasure to Trelig. A swift exit from New Pompeii, via space shuttle, is clearly mandated.

The Well World is covered in 1560 hexagonal habitats. They are diverse. Some have technology-dampers. Overflying such hexes disables space shuttles. In very short order, Trelig, Zinder, and a minion named Ben have been marooned in one region of the Well World, while Mavra, Nikki, and a turncoat guard, Renard, are marooned in another.

While newcomers are a regular occurrence on the Well World, they have always been the victims of the universe-range teleporters with which the Markovians littered the universe. None have shown up with off-world space craft before. The crashed craft could destabilize the Well World balance of power. A treasure hunt between competing powers begins.

~oOo~

Del Rey’s modus operandi seems to have been to give readers more of what sales suggested they wanted, in forms close to the original without quite being a simple reprint, in as much quantity as the market would bear. Thus, this novel, its immediate sequel (Quest for the Well of Souls) that followed in 1978, not to mention the two (The Return of Nathan Brazil and Twilight at the Well of Souls) that appeared in 1980.

Readers found the same pulp adventures in this volume as in the original Midnight at the Well of Souls. To a fair degree they found the same plot: a handful of humans, drawn in straightforward, bold… two-dimensional… terms, all from relentlessly conformist human worlds, are transported to the Well World, where they inadvertently become the focus of a planetary hunt. Villains indulge their sadistic tendencies. Almost everyone is transformed by the Well World into new forms. Chalker gets to talk about breasts a lot. No, more than that.

What readers didn’t get was more Nathan Brazil. He appears only as the man who helped rescue [2] Mavra at a critical moment. Otherwise, Brazil — who is functionally God — is entirely absent. Omitting the character most capable of a deus ex machina conclusion (particularly a character as unpleasant as Brazil) was probably for the best.

Not that Brazil’s absence proves sufficient defense against deus ex machina plot events. Once sufficient pages have gone by, filled with abundant action and transformation (in the case of Mavra, humiliating transformation), the plot suddenly halts as the McGuffin everyone is hunting is destroyed. The book comes to an end but the plot is not resolved in any satisfactory way. It is almost as though the publisher accepted one long book and ordered it cut in two, with the actual resolution being saved for the sequel that followed some months later.

I am faced with a dilemma. Do I read the third Well World book in hopes of a proper resolution? Or do I let the fact that this volume was very nearly a carbon copy of the first convince me to pursue more productive uses of my time? Perhaps you can advise me in comments.

Exiles at the Well of Souls is available here (Amazon US), here (Amazon Canada), here (Amazon UK), here (Apple Books), here (Barnes & Noble), and here (Kobo). I did not find it at Chapters-Indigo.

1: The Markovian tech can magic up more sponge. The tech can also cure sponge addiction. This is not widely known.

2: Mavra is only temporarily safe. Peril is common in this universe. Saving someone from one crisis only means they survive to encounter the next.

Comments

DemetriosX

The Well World books are probably best read as travelogues. The interesting bit is seeing the different species and societies in the hexes, not whatever adventure story is happening. Mavra does go through an awful lot (and a lot of awful) before the end. Some readers will not find her ultimate reward all that rewarding.

Wiredog

I went through a Chalker phase in my late teens, Well Worlds and the Dancing Gods books. In my defense, I was smoking a lot of weed and dropping lots of acid.

James NicollWiredog

You may like next Sunday's review.

Jeffronicus

I'm always struck by the contrast between the work of Chalker and someone at the far end of the innovation spectrum like Vernor Vinge. Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep is just packed with ideas addressed just in passing service to the core plot, whereas Chalker has just one or two ideas that spawn whole series, scraped over too many pages like Bilbo Baggin's butter.

I can envision a much more interesting series of Well World stories with less explicit toture and body horror, but I can also imagine what an anime sensibility would do to the story, something leaning into the suffering, full of body-morphing and obligatory oozing and gore.

Sophie JaneJeffronicus

I think Chalker’s interest is transformation and mind control kink rather than body horror. At least with hindsight, applying internet-acquired knowledge to what I remember from reading this and the first book as a teenager

Mike SSophie Jane

Having read a lot of Chalker in my teens, and 20s, I agree. I read the last Well World book a couple of years ago (part of the 3rd? series), and it ends with Chang laying into Brazil (and by extension, Chalker) for his various sins and kinks, which he accepted. I barely remember anything else from the novel, but that was an interesting admission and way to end the series.

Mark Pontin

Jeffronicus: I can envision a much more interesting series of Well World stories

I read the first two paragraphs of James's synopsis up top and thought "Pity it wasn't George Alec Effinger who actually wrote this up, I'd read that version."

Eric Berge

I read the first two of these when they came out; not sure I even got all the way through "Exiles", because I remember being both bored and repelled by midway through it. My at-this-point vague memory of the experience is that I came to the conclusion that if everything was possible, then nothing was very interesting, and also that the characters were people that I had developed a strong disinclination to spend any more time with. ...and that's the last time I read any Chalker.

Roy Brander

Consumed them like popcorn scarfed down while watching a Bond flick - themselves not noted for deep characterization or variation in plot. Chalker was allotted a lot of shelf space in the mall Coles I was patronizing at the time, presumably because everybody wanted to read every book of his 3-6 book series, having found one. It wasn't just the books that came tumbling out, it was one series after another, all fast-moving adventures with terrible stakes (death will not release you from the endless body-horror fate, oh, and the whole human race is at stake as well).

I make no apologies; at the time, I was a vigorous teen/20-something adapting to channeling all that youthful energy into a fabric cube in service to my corporate masters. "Escapism" probably makes modern society possible.

Robert Carnegie

It may have been discussed in 1978 but to speak ruthlessly, another way for a third party to suppress the value of a hostage is to kill the hostage. Easier than rescuing them. Much depends, I think, on whether Gilgram Zinder knows how to manufacture sponge or to cure sponge. If he does not, then it might be more logical for Trelig to get Gilgram Zinder addicted instead. But perhaps the society already treats sponge addicts unsympathetically.

Rupert BoleynRobert Carnegie

My recollection is that it kills sponge addicts, because the 'drug' (it's actually an organism that slowly devours the victim's brain, so they're really addicted to the substance derived from that organism that holds it in check) is absolutely banned and any that is found is destroyed. Thus any addict who manages to secure their own supply must continue to conceal their status.

Thus addicts can't even flee their pushers and go to the authorities.

Oh, and dying to sponge is painful both physically and psychologically as you can feel your intellect fading away.

2nd and 3rd books resolve a major plot arc. Next book jumps ahead generations with quite different arc and some imaginative twists.

Jimcat

I see I'm not the only one who enjoyed these books at a certain age.

I met Jack Chalker at a Philcon in the 90's. Actually it was in a men's room, but I had been partaking of the room parties and had no social shyness at the moment. I said, "Jack Chalker! I loved your Well World books when I was in high school."

He said, "Thanks!" and we went our separate ways. I at least had the presence of mind to leave my next sentence, "I've grown up a lot since then", unsaid.

At that con or another in the same timeframe, he shared an anecdote about how even he had begun to find the Well World novels formulaic and repetitive. He said something to the effect of, "My publishers asked me if I would consider doing another Well World series. My heart wasn't in it, but instead of refusing them outright, I told them that I would do it for what I considered a ridiculous amount of money. They replied saying, 'Your offer is accepted. Here is a check for the advance on the first book. Can you have it finished by October?'."