Technos: The Dumarest Saga Book 7

Dumarest has traced the lost planet of Earth to one remote corner of the galaxy, but he still lacks its precise coordinates.Somewhere on the cyber-dominated police-world of Technos lives the mysterious woman who can help him. And the only way to find her is to become a slave . . .

Like most Earl Dumarest (the protagonist) stories this one is a self-contained adventure, but throughout the series, he picks up clues to the location of his home world, Earth.

The stories are set in a far future galactic culture that is fragmented and without any central government. Dumarest was born on Earth, but had stowed away on a spaceship when he was a young boy and was caught. Although a stowaway discovered on a spaceship was typically ejected to space, the captain took pity on the boy and allowed him to work and travel on the ship. When the story opens in The Winds of Gath, Dumarest has traveled so long and so far that he does not know how to return to his home planet and no-one has ever heard of it, other than as a myth or legend.

It becomes clear that someone or something has deliberately concealed Earth's location. The Cyclan, an organization of humans surgically altered to be emotionless (known as Cybers), and on occasion able to link with the brains of previously living Cybers (the better to think logically), seem determined to stop him from finding Earth. Additionally, the Cyclan seeks a scientific discovery that Dumarest possesses, stolen from them and passed to him by a dying thief, which would vastly increase their already considerable power.

Technos rattles along, following the well trodden Dumarest blueprint. Thoroughly enjoyable.

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This is book 7 of the Dumarest series, and, by this time, Tubb has developed the formula that would enable him to turn out two Dumarest stories each year for fifteen years. Be assured that the fact that these stories are formulaic doesn' stop them from being great fun, in part because Tubb drops a tidbit of information at each step of the way.

As with all of these serial stories during this time period, the conflict of the story is premised around a “push/pull” motivation. The “pull” is that Earl Dumarest is looking for his long-lost birth planet of Earth. The “push” is the fact that he is being pursued by the emotionless, logical, scarlet-clad manipulating quasi-religious order of the Cyclan. The Cyclan are pursuing Dumarest because he was given the formula for the “Affinity Twin” secret in [[ASIN:B00H6SOV1S Kalin: The Dumarest Saga Book 4]] , three books back, and the Cyclan really, really want it, but we won't know why for about another ten to fifteen books.

This book opens on a planet that is there only for the purpose of setting the hook. The hook this time comes from a dying friend who tells Dumarest that someone on his home world may know something about Earth. So, off Dumarest goes to the second world, that is under biological attack by a third world named Technos. Dumarest is stymied on the second world but gets information that what he wants is on Technos, so off he goes, under cover, into what seems like a police state.

There is a crazy world-leader (the “Technarch) and a back-biting conspiring oligarchy and a Cyclan to stir the mix. Dumarest is nearly captured, but for the second time is saved by a rutting minx of a woman. Naturally he's pushed into life or death situations, which he can only survive because of his will to power and his amazing reflexes.

I've made the point in my previous reviews that the Dumarest series is basically Film Noir as science fiction. Dumarest is the man of integrity who never compromises himself in a world without values, where virtually everyone. particularly the comfortable at the top of the heap, are loathsome, self-seeking hypocrites. You get that in spades in this one with the female character of Mada Grist, who is a woman on the ruling council, who saves Dumarest from discovery, heals him when he nearly kills himself, beds him and then offers him the job of assassinating the Technarch, which Dumarest refuses.

The don't get more fatale, then the femmes in Dumarest's universe.

The tidbit this time that moves the series along a micrometer is that Dumarest learns the constellations of the Zodiac.

It is a long road to Book 29, but Dumarest is solidly on it.