MAALSTROM
In the tradition of Robert E Howard’s Conan and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Martian series, Maalstrom is bloody primitive conflict at its best. The ruthless warrior-noble of the ancient City of Ven, Flores of the Turlicum, is plunged into a series of vicious wars on the alien planet Maalstrom. In a series of bloody encounters, Flores penetrates the mysteries that underlie the planet’s weird species which seem engaged in inter-breeding. An environmental tale of balance among separate species? Or the ultimate war between several sexes of a single race that was once human? Stumbling into the forbidden Temple, Flores falls for the beautiful priestess Amina, and unleashes events that threaten to undermine the planet’s inter-species truce. Written in beautiful language, the sound of the words and the rhythm of the sentences contain part of the message.
NEWS: I have recently completed the Prequel to Maalstrom, titled Temple of the Double-Sun, a novella of 34,000 words. This work tells the story of the original colonists from Earth as they land on the virgin uninhabited planet Maalstrom with instructions to colonize the planet. Needless to say, things go very wrong. For readers of Maalstrom and The Selk King who were wondering how it all started and why there are occasional remnants of a prior technical civilization, the story Temple of the Double-Sun will answer all your questions. Temple can be read for fun, like Maalstrom and Selk King, but a quick read will miss the sociological and intellectual background to the story. Like the other books in the series, it is far more than a simple sci-fi tale.
RECENT REVIEWS for Maalstrom:
“Glenn Lazar Roberts is one of the finest writers of unconventional prose in contemporary fiction. His wonderfully inventive plots and mastery of the language place him in the company of Calvino, Burges, Gass… Roberts has created a world of scary prescience and hair-raising adventure… Maalstrom is not only highly imaginative, it’s a splendid work that commands an enthusiastic and committed readership. Highly recommended.” —C. Thorman, author of Holy Orders
“Maalstrom is packed with intrigue, backdoor deals, betrayal, and one heck-of-a fantasy adventure finale. Flores [is] a thinking-man’s-barbarian [in] a classic hero adventure story…a meticulously crafted tale with…an interesting exploration of religion’s impact on culture. If you enjoy…”Game of Thrones”, “John Carter Warlord of Mars”, “Joseph Campbell”, or “Prince of Persia” you’ll enjoy visiting Maalstrom… You may notice that women are strangely out of the picture, but just wait…”—J. Picha
“In Maalstrom, Glenn Lazar Roberts has created an imaginary world filled with exotic creatures and strange customs, and is consistent in its details and at the same time, a reflection of our own world. Maalstrom’s inhabitants are human, with very human strengths and weaknesses, even though the culture is drastically different from anything the reader has ever experienced. The story revolves around Flores, a nobleman of the clan of Turlicum in the city of Vensor. Flores is fighting a political battle to save the city from a corrupt cabal of politicians led by the evil Numsenmur of the Serclasler clan. The intrigue sweeps back and forth as first one side and then the other gain the upper hand. As an invading army lays siege to Ven, Flores is forced to flee the city in the company of a beautiful priestess, a eunuch and an enslaved warrior. Their adventures on the road form the second half of the book. The suspense and the action never let up. There is always a new twist and a mystery that entices the reader to keep going. Even without all of the intrigue and action, the exotic civilization of Maalstrom is in itself enough to warrant reading just to explore it. This is the kind of book that will keep you up all night reading it.” —Mike Kilgore
“In the tradition of Burroughs and Howard, Roberts give us an exciting story that takes place in the city of Ven as Flores, warlord of the Turlicum clan struggles to assume his rightful place. Inventive, absorbs the reader and takes him or her to places never dreamed of.” —Roger Paulding, author of Solomon’s Journey
“A beautifully written fantasy saga.” —Writers Digest
BUY: use the Shop tab above to buy Maalstrom signed by the author, or buy on Amazon…
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
Maalstrom was begun in the autumn of 1975 on a manual typewriter “in a smoke-filled haze” as a twenty-year old college sophomore. This was the first fiction I ever wrote. Most was completed in two months. The Selk King came later and took four years to write.
The story: long ago, colonists from Earth landed on Maalstrom, a newly discovered planet circling a double-sun. For the full story of this colonization, see my recently completed novella ‘Temple of the Double-Sun’.
The colonists were exposed to a species of native wasp and their DNA merged with the wasp DNA. Abandoning the other colonists, some of the ‘infected’ women secluded themselves in brick shelters which they built around water springs and began giving birth insect-fashion, their male offspring living outside the birth-shelters and their female offspring confined inside.
These ‘wasp-queens’ found their lifespans greatly extended. Vensa was one of these original colonists, already thousands of years old when she gave birth to Flores and Amina, her original brick shelter, which Flores stumbled across in the cavern beneath the Temple, then crumbling and long since surmounted by the imposing cloistered Temple.
In the way of all mortals, Flores will die, but Amina will live for millennia, and if adequately protected by the unruly men exiled to the ‘outer slums’ of Her City, give birth to many generations. Amina’s manipulative and selfish behavior is essential to the survival of her quasi-insect species, to which Flores belongs.
The changes in DNA were not confined to the colonist-queens, however, but also created the malkops–or ‘selks,’ resulting in a complex biological interdependence between the queens in their temples, the men in their cities, the malkops flying above, and Atasan.
That is the background–a swashbuckling Conan-style tale of bloody encounters on an alien planet that can be read merely for fun. The symbolism goes further.
Maalstrom is the product of an education in anthropology, archaeology, and the psychology and sociology of religion. Religious myth–or, since that is a redundant phrase, just Myth– organizes all human societies. It is social glue, the common values and thought patterns that hold a people together and enable them to communicate and cooperate. Myth is not only for ‘primitive people over there’–it is everything that you know, and what you think you know. A human without Myth is the ultimate contradiction; there never has been, and never can be, humans without Myth.
Every person with unique values and insights knows well the consequences of straying outside the boundaries of a society’s myths. They become heretics.
Flores is such a heretic. Or rather becomes one through the process of discovering the biological realities of his insect species, and the supra-factual nature of its myths. These myths are enforced by an interplay of custom, religion, economics, ideology, and ultimately raw force. No society for long allows heretics to publicly undermine the social glue that allows its society to function. Thus the City of Ven rejects Flores.
But Flores, by his Will to Power, will not be stopped by convention and searches for a way to transcend his society’s myths and acquire Ultimate Knowledge. The crystal bracelets are the mystical insight that grant this Knowledge. Yezd is the shaman who transmits the technique. The selks are the semi-divine Messengers who guard access to Heaven, and if properly ritually addressed, will transmit the Hero’s questions to the Divine.
Atasan is an anagram for Satan, the Ruler of the physical world. In Maalstrom, I provide an insight into the role of this Ruler, and I like to think, a unique and provocative explanation of the existence of evil (see Macius’ rendition to Flores of Maalstrom’s dominant Creation Myth while in Yezd’s castle). Few have understood the significance of what Macius says.
Maalstrom and its sequel The Selk King are a single story. In The Selk King, in the Chapter titled ‘Revelations’, the reader will find solutions to many of the puzzles underlying Maalstrom’s plot–just before Flores, having acquired mystical insight using his new-found shaman’s technique, storms the ramparts of Heaven. Few also have understood the mythical and philosophical significance of Flores’ invasion of the selks’ city in the clouds.
But don’t expect me to be your Shaman. Whatever you know, or think you know, Myth lies heavy not only on Flores’ perception, but on the reader’s as well. Behind the Veil, Secrets lurk. Such is the nature of Reality, on alien planets like Maalstrom as much as on Earth.
Maalstrom and The Selk King I hope remain as relevant to the Seeker-of-Knowledge’s efforts to break free of Society’s conventions and penetrate the Veil as when written. Dark, insightful and Just Plain Weird.
—Glenn Lazar Roberts
updated
June 25, 2023
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