Tuf Voyaging is a 1986 science fiction fix-up novel by American writer George R. R. Martin, first published in hardcover by Baen Books. It is a darkly comic meditation on environmentalism and absolute power.
This novel is a collection of related short fiction works, originally published over several years, beginning with 1976's "A Beast for Norn". The book includes a prologue and Martin's S'uthlam storyline (published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact), adding them as bridging material, and gathering them with other Tuf stories into one episodic novel.ISFDB GRR Martin
The novel concerns the (mis)adventures of Haviland Tuf, an exceptionally tall, bald, very pale, overweight, phlegmatic, vegetarian, cat-loving-but-otherwise solitary space trader. Tuf inadvertently becomes the master of the Ark, an ancient, "seedship" – a very powerful warship with advanced ecological engineering capabilities – after a deal between several of his venal and cutthroat passengers goes awry. Tuf travels the galaxy, offering his services to worlds with environmental problems, and sometimes imposing solutions of his own.
The stories in Tuf Voyaging are set in the same fictional "Thousand Worlds" universe as several of Martin's other works, including Dying of the Light, Sandkings, Nightflyers, A Song for Lya and "The Way of Cross and Dragon".
Martin cited fantasy fiction and science fiction Grand Master Jack Vance as having a large influence on his Tuf stories, and he emulated Vance's writing style in most of them. Sunsets of High Renown: An Interview with George R. R. Martin, by Nick Gevers, at Infinity Plus; published February 3, 2001; retrieved June 5, 2018
In 2006, Tuf Voyaging was nominated for a Seiun Award in Japan for translated long form novel. Several of the individual stories have also been honored. In 1982, "Guardians" won the Locus Award for Best Novelette and was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novelette. In the 1986 Analog Readers Poll in the novella/novelette category, "Loaves and Fishes" won and "Manna from Heaven" took second place.
Contents "The Plague Star" (Analog Science Fiction and Fact, January/February 1985) "Loaves and Fishes" (Analog Science Fiction and Fact, October 1985) "Guardians" (Analog Science Fiction and Fact, October 1981) "Second Helpings" (Analog Science Fiction and Fact, November 1985) "A Beast for Norn" (Andromeda I, 1976) "Call Him Moses" (Analog Science Fiction and Fact, February 1978) "Manna from Heaven" (Analog Science Fiction and Fact, December 1985)
"The Plague Star" The story begins with four people requiring interstellar transport: Celise Waan, a scholar of anthropology; Jefri Lion, a scholar and retired soldier; Anittas, a cybertech; and Kaj Nevis, the leader of the expedition. They hire Rica Dawnstar, a mercenary bodyguard, and acquire the services of Haviland Tuf, a not-very-successful trader.
Their destination is a so-called "plague star," known to inflict disease and pestilence on every third generation of a small, remote world. It turns out to be an enormous, abandoned seedship of the long-defunct Federal Empire's Ecological Engineering Corps, developed by the Corps to rewrite genetic coding for entire planets, for good or for ill. Tuf's ship, the Cornucopia of Excellent Goods at Low Prices, is damaged by the seedship's automated defenses, and three of the occupants, Nevis, Anittas, and Dawnstar, board the seedship by means of pressure suits, betraying and leaving the others to await eventual death through asphyxiation. However, Tuf locates a microchip allowing him, Waan, and Lion to land the Cornucopia safely on the seedship.
Nevis, who has stolen a bulky but extremely powerful alien exoskeleton from Tuf's ship, violently forces Anittas, a cyborg, to invade the ship's circuits. In the process, Anittas's suit is torn, and he contracts a plague from the air. Alarmed by this brutality and worried Nevis will use his suit's power to subjugate her as well, Dawnstar runs away from Nevis, ultimately finding the vast seedship's control room. Anittas, meanwhile, betrays Nevis, releasing several of the ship's macroscopic bioweapons, including acid-spitting "hellkittens"; hyper-aggressive, carnivorous, bat-like creatures; spider-like, unimaginably sharp-edged organisms known as "walking webs"; and a T. rex. Furious at his treachery, Nevis kills the dying Anittas.
Meanwhile, Waan, Lion, and Tuf have found the armory, but have split up due to disagreements on leadership. They quickly discover that the air is poisoned with various plagues, which Waan determines using one of Tuf's cats, Mushroom. Tuf recognizes that Mushroom is infected by the plagues and is dying, and kills him gently, preventing Mushroom's further suffering. He discovers the cloning room of the seedship, and clones Mushroom using the ship's equipment, naming the new cat Chaos.
Waan is found by the hellkittens, which spray her with acid and corrode her helmet, impairing her vision. Disbelieving Tuf's warning, she takes her helmet off and contracts a plague. When the hellkittens return to eat her, she is not only weakened by illness but unprotected by her helmet. Though mostly paralyzed and dying, she manages to activate a grenade, destroying herself along with the hellkittens.
Lion, meanwhile, sets a trap for Nevis in a corridor by rigging a plasma cannon to go off only when objects of certain dimensions, such as Nevis's battle-suit, pass in front of it. While luring Nevis toward the trap, however, he is killed and partly eaten by the bat-like creature.
Rica Dawnstar, in charge of the control room, uses reverse psychology to trick Nevis into meeting the walking web, which kills him. She then offers Tuf the chance to leave peacefully, but on his refusal, attempts to kill him with the psi-controlled T. Rex. But Tuf has discovered Lion's plasma-cannon trap; he lures Dawnstar and the dinosaur into its line of fire, killing them. Tuf then takes control of the seedship as the only surviving claimant.
The novella was adapted into a graphic novel and illustrated by Hugo Award–nominated artist Raya Golden, published by Ten Speed Graphic in Otober 2023.
"Loaves and Fishes" Haviland Tuf takes his newly acquired seedship, which he has named the Ark, to the world of S'uthlam (an anagram for Malthus) for extensive repairs. S'uthlam is a world on the verge of war with all of the nearby inhabited worlds, as it requires a constant flow of resources to the planet. This is due to the world's continuing population explosion, a result of the S'uthlamese religious belief that unfettered and unchecked human reproduction will one day lead to a world of gods. This is in spite of evidence that this population explosion will lead, as it has many times in the past, to famine and S'uthlamese attempts at military conquest of adjoining star systems.
Once the S'uthlamese become aware of the Ark and its capabilities, they want to seize it for themselves to use it as both a resource to wring higher caloric production from their star system's biology, and also as a powerful weapon of war. In an attempt to secure it, Portmaster Tolly Mune kidnaps one of Tuf's cats. She makes a bet with Tuf – if he will solve S'uthlam's impending famine, she will return his cat and give him monetary credits for the ship's repairs. If he loses the bet, S'uthlam will keep the seedship.
Tuf at first reasonably proposes that the S'uthlamese simply restrict their incontinent reproductive practices, but because the S'uthlamese fixation is fanatic, it is impervious to reason. They will not control their population growth, and thus drive obsessively into a suicidal future of starvation and war.
Tuf works on the problem, and manages to find a solution whereby he uses the seedship's capabilities to provide exotic plants and animals which can yield sustenance for the population, thus staving off starvation for a period of time. The authorities, with striking proof of the Ark'''s capabilities, now begin scheming to bring it in their possession. Mune, disgusted with the politics of the situation, assists Tuf in escaping from S'uthlam, despite the fact that this places her in a precarious position. He informs her that he will return to pay off his debt.
"Guardians" Tuf finds himself at Namor, an oceanic world where sea monsters are attacking the local population. As always, he offers to assist for a fee. Before diving into creating the creatures needed to battle the monsters, Tuf begins to study the planet in order to determine why the monsters are attacking the people of Namor. However, during this study, the Namorians grow more desperate and impatient, especially as monsters able to walk on land begin to appear. Tuf's hand is forced, and he unleashes a barrage of other creatures to directly counteract the monsters.
This strategy, initially successful, soon fails as the monsters gain resistance to these otherworldly creatures. Tuf goes back to work, and manages to find a solution. Through his psionically enhanced cat, he discovers a previously unsuspected sapient species native to Namor: the mudpots. Sessile, aquatic bottom-dwellers (which had hitherto been considered dietary delicacies by the Namorian colonists), they are linked telepathically into a kind of hivemind, controlling the lesser species of life on the planet as skilled bio-engineers.
Tuf establishes communications with the mudpots and brokers a peace agreement whereby his human employers agree to cease eating the planet's autochthonous intelligent species. He gives the leaders of Namor psionically enhanced kittens to facilitate their dealings with the mudpots, and departs.
"Second Helpings" Tuf returns to S'uthlam to pay the first part of his debt. He is hailed as a hero due to the advancements in the overcrowded world's food production, now known as "Tuf's Flowering". This is also due to Tuf and Mune, a highly inaccurate, overly-dramatized movie about Tuf's first adventure on S'uthlam, the creation of which Mune encouraged to build public support for Tuf's plan (and save her political skin from the fallout of helping Tuf escape with Ark).
However, paradoxically, the overpopulation crisis has become even worse due to the S'uthlamese people's over-optimistic response to Tuf's Flowering, increasing their reproduction rates. Tuf works on trying to provide even more-efficient crops and animals. He also insists on delivering a planet-wide speech detailing the enhancements he had in mind for S'uthlam and concluding with an explicit admonition:
This is received with predictable religious outrage, and Mune is barely able to extract Tuf from the clutches of an angry S'uthlamese mob.
"A Beast for Norn" Tuf is approached by Herold Norn, senior beastmaster of the Norn House of Lyronica. The House of Norn requests beasts for gladiatorial fighting in Lyronica's Bronze Arena. After seeing an example of the Arena battles (and, it is strongly implied, being appalled by its barbarity), Tuf agrees to provide a breeding stock of cobalcats (and a stock of innocuous-looking prey animals from the cobalcats' homeworld to be released into the cobalcats' new Lyronican habitat) for the House of Norn.
As the House of Norn racks up victories with their cobalcats, Tuf is approached seriatim by the other houses for ever-more-lethally-effective beasts (and compatible prey animals), until the greatest of the Houses, namely House Arneth-in-the-Gilded-Wood at last approaches him for a beast and also with a demand for him to cease all further dealings with the Houses of Lyronica. Tuf graciously accepts the offer.