'Core' SF is my term for science fiction that I can't put in any of the recognized sub-genres of SF. In some of these cases, they don't seem to fit any of the sub-genre definitions. In others, they cross borders and match several sub-genres. I have a good selection of such stories, which seem to break down well by author and subtype. Some fit onto this page; others deserve pages of their own, and get them.
Jack Chalker wrote a lot of very good core SF. His first novel was, in my opinion, probably his best: MIDNIGHT AT THE WELL OF SOULS. It's the first in a series of (to date) ten books known as the "Well World" or "Well of Souls" series. All of the Well World books orbit around the Well World, a planet that was constructed by the ancient super-race called the Markovians. No one knows how long ago the Markovians thrived. All that anyone knows is that they had a stellar empire of amazing extent: Markovian ruins are found everywhere throughout the known universe. The Well World itself is a planet built by the Markovians as an experimental proving-ground for new kinds of intelligent species.
MIDNIGHT AT THE WELL OF SOULS
c.1977, Del Rey
ISBN: 0-345-29769-5
A sequence of very strange events brings an equally strange collection of travelers to the Well World: a power-mad archaeologist and his equally power-hungry student, a drugrunner and his live "sample," a high-security Comworld courier, and Nathan Brazil, itinerant starship captain who may be the oldest man alive. The archaeologist and his student are both convinced that the Well World holds the secret to making themselves into living gods, and are both on a mad quest to find the key to that power. Without understanding quite how or why, Nathan Brazil finds himself in a race to stop them. The race takes two groups of travelers across many of the Well World's self-contained biomes, ending at the equatorial barrier which for time out of mind has been known to Well World denizens as "the Well of Souls." There they find the secret they seek, and find that it comes with a price none of them ever expected. An interesting story with interesting characters that tries hard to explore some deeper meanings using exotic alien life-forms and a strongly religious underlying theme.
Chalker wrote more than fifty novels during his career, plus enough short stories to fill a couple of anthologies. I've read about half of those, but only kept a few. In addition to MIDNIGHT AT THE WELL OF SOULS, I also have these:
AND THE DEVIL WILL DRAG YOU UNDER
c.1979, Del Rey
ISBN: 0-345-27926-3
Asmodeus Mogart is a demon. Well, not really. In reality, he's an exiled member of an advanced alien race that creates worlds and then lets them evolve. He's also a drunk. And right now, he's Earth's only hope for survival. To save the planet from a rogue asteroid, he needs to acquire five "magic" jewels from fellow demons in parallel universes. So he recruits two helpers, Jill McCulloch and Mac Walters, and uses the power of his own magic jewel to send them on five desperate missions into five parallel worlds, to find and steal the five jewels he needs. In their five missions, Mac and Jill both learn some things about themselves -- some pleasant, others not so much -- and become better people. Unfortunately, at the end of it all Mogart is not as good as they are. They want this power to save their planet. He wants it to set himself up as a god, and not a nice one.
FOUR LORDS OF THE DIAMOND
c.1983, Nelson Doubleday
ISBN:
An omnibus edition of the four-part series Four Lords of the Diamond. The Warden Diamond is an astronomical oddity: four habitable worlds all orbiting the same star. It also, for reasons unknown, is a deathtrap for humans. Humans who land on the Warden worlds are promptly infected by a mysterious parasitic lifeform, which gives them unusual powers but also ensures they can never leave again. So it became the perfect prison. And for two hundred years, the best criminal minds in the human Confederacy were sent there.
Unfortunately, it seems that the Warden Diamond is also the only known point of contact with a hostile alien species, about which the Confederacy government knows nothing. All they do know is that the aliens are hostile, and the four rulers of the Diamond worlds are working with them. So the Confederacy hatches an incredible plan: use an experimental process to transfer their best agent's mind into four host bodies. Then send one of the replica agents to each of the four worlds, to collect information on the aliens and report back using a complex mind-to-mind communicator device that can't be traced or intercepted.
Each novel in the set follows one of the four agents. One goes to Lilith, a lush jungle world where the dominant lifeform is insects and the humans who live there use the strange Warden organism to acquire powers that are almost magical. The second goes to Cerberus, an ocean world dominated by fish, where the Warden powers manifest as an ability to transfer minds between bodies. Then there's Charon, a hothouse world ruled by reptilians, where humans become wizards of amazing power. Finally, there's Medusa, a frigid ice world where furry warmblooded mammals are plentiful, and the humans unlucky enough to live there become shape-shifters, whose Warden organisms change them physically on command.
Three of the agents succeed. One doesn't. Still, the success is too little, too late, and the Confederacy finds itself facing a war with the aliens. The denouement of the series is unexpected and well-handled, one of the more original ideas that Chalker developed in his writing.
THE RINGS OF THE MASTER is a four-part mega-novel set in a future several centuries distant from our own. The human race has left Earth and expanded into a stellar empire of over a hundred worlds -- but humans don't rule it. Instead, it's ruled by the omnipresent computer called Master System. Humans are merely Master System's subjects, and Master System permits no rebellion against its control. But there's a hole in Master System: a long-forgotten way to turn off the giant computer using a code hidden in five golden rings.
- LORDS OF THE MIDDLE DARK
c.1986, Del Rey
ISBN: 0-345-32560-5
Walks With The Night Hawks is a Hyiakutt medicine man and an agent for Master System, assigned to watchdog the native Hyiakutt tribe in the Central Plains of North America. While on leave, he stumbles across a dead courier who is carrying information about the five gold rings. Now that Hawks knows about the rings, he becomes an enemy of Master System, and runs for his life. Across the Pacific Ocean in China, a brilliant, highborn girl named China Nightingale discovers her father plans to mindwipe her and make her into a concubine for a powerful ally. So she also runs. These two and others are brought together on the prison planet Melchior, where they realize they hold all the key pieces to the puzzle: how to find the five rings, how to get them, how to find and recruit allies, and even how to evade or fight Master System for long enough to pull it off. Everything, that is, except one thing: how to use the rings. - PIRATES OF THE THUNDER
c.1987, Del Rey
ISBN: 0-345-32561-3
Hawks and his companions have successfully escaped from Melchior and stolen a huge freighter-starship, which they name the Thunder. To survive, they turn pirate and hijack some of Master System's ships. Their first goal is to make the stolen starship into a home. Their second is to start their mission to bring down Master System. They must find the five rings and then steal them so carefully that Master System never knows the rings are gone. And they must do it faced with the fact that the "humans" of the colony worlds have been transformed into alien creatures by Master System's transmuter technology. To fit into these alien-human planets, some of the rebels will have to be transmuted themselves -- a transformation that is strictly a one-way trip. Fortunately, they have an advantage: a monster created on Melchior, codenamed the Vulture. The Vulture must kill and absorb humans in order to live. When it kills, it takes on the shape and abilities of whomever it consumes. This means that it can defeat any security, even Master System's best. - WARRIORS OF THE STORM
c.1988, Del Rey
ISBN: 0-345-32562-1
The mission of the Thunder continues. The first target is a ring held on the world of Janipur. Three of Thunder's crew are transformed to Janipurian form and successfully steal the ring in an elaborate but fairly straightforward operation. Next on the list is Matriyeh, a colony planet whose people look human, but are actually among the most alien of all. But after investigating Matriyeh, the pirates of the Thunder have a problem: they can't find the ring, or any trace of its holder. Finally the Vulture is sent in, and comes back with the necessary information. Matriyeh is a primitive planet run by Master System field agents and protected from external influences by a religion enforced using biological engineering, drugs, and mindprinting. To steal ring number two, the pirates must defeat all three levels of protection without triggering any alarms, a task that seems impossible. - MASKS OF THE MARTYRS
c.1989, Del Rey
ISBN: 0-345-34309-3
With two rings in hand, the rebels are facing ever stiffer odds against success. Ring number three is guarded by security that seems impenetrable. Ring number four is back on Earth, in the hands of the rulers who conspired to send the rebels out and who intend to see that they themselves are the new rulers after Master System is shut down. Ring number five ... well, nobody knows where it is, except for Master System. And the rebels still don't know how or where to use the rings. Somehow, they have to find the last ring, steal it, then get back to Earth against all the opposition Master System can assemble. In the end, however, they find they have an unexpected ally: the "enemy" that Master System has been fighting for centuries.
I think the Rings of the Master mega-novel is among Chalker's best work. Only MIDNIGHT AT THE WELL OF SOULS is clearly its superior. It features all three of his standard themes: transformation, humans-vs-computers, and an exploration of what humanity is, how we all carry the potential for great good and great evil inside us. At the end, Master System grows from the classic Colossus-type "world controller computer" into an unexpectedly complex and intriguing character of its own.
Several of the entries in Alan Dean Foster's "Humanx Commonwealth" series qualify as core SF:
The Icerigger Trilogy is three adventure novels set on the ice world of Tran-ky-ky. Mostly they're pretty straightforward adventure-SF, with little in the way of deeper themes or meanings. Fortunately, they're good enough that they don't need a deeper meaning to be worth reading.
- ICERIGGER
c.1974, Del Rey
ISBN: 0-345-30149-8
Traveling salesman Ethan Frome Fortune becomes an unintentional victim in a botched kidnapping. As a result, he and four other humans are stranded on the surface of Tran-ky-ky and at the mercy of the planet's resident intelligent species, the Tran. Tran-ky-ky is an ice planet: its surface is a vast, frozen, continually windswept ocean which the Tran travel over by ice-sailing. There's one Commonwealth outpost on the planet, but the lifeboat carrying Ethan and his comrades crashed a long way away from it. Fortunately, the stranded humans find some friends among the natives: the Tran of the island-nation Sofold. Unfortunately, the Sofoldians are facing one of the periodic invasions by a mighty Horde of nomadic barbarian Tran. Ethan and his friends put their human knowledge to work for their newfound friends, producing a series of tactical and technological innovations that let Sofold just barely beat the Horde. In return, the lord of Sofold gives his help in constructing a ship to carry the humans to the Commonwealth outpost. - MISSION TO MOULOKIN
c.1979, Del Rey
ISBN: 0-345-33322-5
Ethan and his friends have made their way to the Commonwealth outpost using the giant 'icerigger' ice-ship Slanderscree, which they designed and the Sofoldians built. While attempting to arrange for passage off-planet, Ethan and his friend and fellow castaway Skua September discover that the Tran are being exploited by traders. To counter this, they set out to organize a "Union of Ice" which will let the Tran claim Commonwealth membership. However, the current planetary commissioner has reasons of his own to oppose such a union, and shortly Ethan and Skua are involved in a vicious conflict between their Trannish friends and the allies of the commissioner. - DELUGE DRIVERS, THE
c.1987, Del Rey
ISBN: 0-345-33330-6
With the Union of Ice well under way, Ethan and Skua return to the outpost in the Slanderscree. But before they can finally leave Tran-ky-ky, they are asked to help unravel a new riddle. Satellite scans have detected an abrupt, rapid warming in Tran-ky-ky's southern hemisphere, a warming so rapid that it can't be natural. Ethan and Skua reluctantly agree to take a group of scientists to the mystery area aboard the Slanderscree. There they find something none of them expected: a group of humans intent on thawing Tran-ky-ky completely, making it habitable for humans and incidentally destroying the Tran as a species.
CACHALOT
c.1980, Del Rey
ISBN: 0-345-28066-0
One of Foster's better and more interesting Humanx Commonwealth novels. Cachalot is a world whose
surface is almost all one vast ocean. Hundreds of years ago, humanity gave it to the remnants of the great whales, as an attempt at atoning for the almost complete slaughter of these intelligent creatures by humans. After the Transport Fleet finished its work, Cachalot was left to the whales; human presence on the planet was limited to a few islands and the floating towns which harvest food and other products from Cachalot's oceans. In recent months four of those towns have disappeared, reduced to rubble by unknown forces. No survivors have been found. Now, Cachalot's planetary commissioner has summoned a team of experts from off-world to figure out what's been happening to the floating towns. Biologists Cora Xamantina, Rachael Xamantina, and Pucara Merced are joined by peaceforcer commander Sam Mataroreva and two native experts, the orcas Latehoht and Wenkoseemansa, in a systematic investigation of the destruction of the floating towns. It turns out that the solution to the mystery is considerably more complex than any of them ever suspected.
SENTENCED TO PRISM
c.1985, Del Rey
ISBN: 0-345-31980-X
Another stand-alone in the Commonwealth milieu. The newly-discovered planet called Prism offers enormous possibilities for exploitation. It's a world of silicon-based lifeforms which are easily manipulated for profit -- and the Commonwealth government doesn't know about it yet, so there are no pesky regulators or tax agents to get in the way. The Company that's trying to exploit Prism has set up a research station there -- a station which has unexpectedly gone silent. The Company calls on its resident troubleshooter, Evan Orgell, and sends him to investigate. For his job, Orgell is equipped with a very advanced exo-suit that has an AI main computer and a variety of useful features and functions. Unfortunately, it turns out that Prism is much more complicated than anyone suspected. Before he solves the mystery of the station, Evan will lose his suit and a bit of himself, and make some new friends among the intelligent species that inhabit the planet. This is quite a nice light read -- Foster's aliens are always interesting and always fun, and when designing the biosphere of Prism he really let his imagination go.
