Marune: Alastor 933

Marune: Alastor 933
First edition
Author	Jack Vance
Cover artist	Darrell Sweet
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	Gaean Reach
Genre	Science fiction novel
Publisher	Ballantine Books
Publication date	1975
Pages	169
OCLC	1502552
Preceded by	Trullion: Alastor 2262
Followed by	Wyst: Alastor 1716

Marune: Alastor 933 (1975) is a science fiction novel by Jack Vance, the second of three books set in the Alastor Cluster, ruled with a loose hand by the mysterious Connatic.

It is one of three books set in the Alastor Cluster, ‘a whorl of thirty thousand stars in an irregular volume twenty to thirty light-years in diameter’. Three thousand of the star systems are inhabited by five trillion humans, ruled by the mostly hands-off, laissez-faire Connatic, who occasionally, in the manner of Harun al-Rashid of The Thousand and One Nights, goes among his people in disguise.

Marune: Alastor 933 first appeared in serialized format in the July and September 1973 issues of Amazing Science Fiction magazine. It was issued in paperback book format on September 1975 by Ballantine Books.^[1]

Plot

A young man has lost his memory. Acting on good advice, he earns enough money by menial labor to travel to the Connatic's free hospital on the capital planet Numenes. There, medical technicians are able to deduce from his reactions to various stimuli that he is a Rhune from the sparsely populated planet Marune. The Rhunes are a somewhat peculiar people who, among other traits, have a strong aversion to killing (unless it be in combat). From this and other clues, the man is certain some enemy has caused his amnesia. He journeys home to find he is the ruler of a small domain. He has to tread carefully, unsure of whom he can trust, in his quest to unmask his foe.