Help with literary foundation for CT

[Sci-Fi Neophyte]

That is fundamentally more like asking "which episodes of Star Trek were influential" than "which of the Star Trek movies were influential" - these are old scifi novels and by modern standards are incredibly short (barely beyond a novella) - which also establishes the nature of the series. While there was certainly an overarching narrative thread I'd hate to even call it a metaplot, more like a fictive conceit to provide some basic cohesion between essentially unconnected novels with the same character (which is how a lot of old scifi series worked 'back in the day').

Tubb's Dumarest, Norton's Free Traders, Bradley is probably work mentioning but it's hard to pick specific novels because the Darkover series is so omnipresent, Heinlein, Herbert (not just Dune, he wrote other things as well), Dickson's Dorsai books, Le Guin, Cherryh, Anderson, Niven, Pohl,... Honestly, just goodle "classic scifi novels of the XX's" decade and you're going to get a good sense of what to read.

D.

Well, Quint, my concern is also finances. Barring being able to find certain of these for free on places like Gutenberg’s, as being squarely in the public domain, I may be left with e-reader-accessible versions. Taking the Dumarest Saga as an example, each of the 30+ books can be purchased for $3 each on Kindle. That would be about $100 just to get through Tubb’s series in its entirety (not to mention the other excellent works you listed). So, I will have to ponder some more...

Nevertheless, I sincerely appreciate you sharing your thoughts on the subject in this thread.

Cheers!

 

[Sci-Fi Neophyte]

As many of you have suggested S. Appelcline’s book (see above), I did get a copy for free ($0.00) from DTRPG and gave it a read-through. I thought the book was put together well and executed its function, as stated in its intro. Unfortunately, I didn’t find it very helpful for this project (see OP). Most of his book focuses on all (read many) of the literary influences on the Traveller RPG as the game progresses through its various iterations over time.

Therefore, while a tremendous resource with that in mind (covering Traveller RPG spanning close to 50 years’ worth of literary influences), it may not be the best choice for someone like me who has a very narrowly focused interest in just classic sci-fi influences that would have been available up to the printing of the 1977 edition of Classic Traveller (as stated in OP).

Nevertheless, Appendix 2: Inspirational & Educational Reading was helpful, so I want to thank everyone who recommended this work.

 

[Sci-Fi Neophyte]

As I believe this thread and its contributions are winding to a close, I wanted to wrap up with my observations and share where I think I’ll be going moving forward, looking at the literary influences that inspired Classic Traveller in its original form. I offer the following list consolidating what interested me from contributors' suggestions here and elsewhere in no particular order:

Poul Anderson’s Dominic Flandry and Polesotechnic League Series

E.C. Tubb’s Dumarest Series

Jack Vance’s Demon Prince Series

H.B. Piper’s Terro-Human Future Histories (almost completed)

Larry Niven’s Known Space Series

Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Series

Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles

Andre Norton’s Free Traders and Solar Queen Series

E.R. Burroughs’ Barsoom Series

Jerry Pournelle’s CoDominium Series

Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination

My thanks to all who cared to weigh in. Cheers!

 

[Quint]

Well, Quint, my concern is also finances. Barring being able to find certain of these for free on places like Gutenberg’s, as being squarely in the public domain, I may be left with e-reader-accessible versions. Taking the Dumarest Saga as an example, each of the 30+ books can be purchased for $3 each on Kindle. That would be about $100 just to get through Tubb’s series in its entirety (not to mention the other excellent works you listed). So, I will have to ponder some more...

Well, that certainly is an issue. Some of us just had the luck of being able to read what was on our parents books shelves when we grew up, lol! Just to add to the bill, I also will say that it might be worth reading a Swycaffer's Concordat books despite them being written in the 80s.

D.

 

[Ekofisk]

Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination

There's a graphic novelization of this. Not sure if your tastes run that way, but it's an option. I'm uncertain of the copyright status on this so I won't post a link.

[MOD EDIT: I confirmed that it is on Internet Archive, so it is available without Copyright violation at LINK TO GRAPHIC NOVEL]

 

[whartung]

Taking the Dumarest Saga as an example, each of the 30+ books can be purchased for $3 each on Kindle. That would be about $100 just to get through Tubb’s series in its entirety (not to mention the other excellent works you listed). So, I will have to ponder some more...

I haven't read any of those. But it would not surprise if up 90% of the world building and core tenets were introduced in the first 2 or 3 books.

 

[Quint]

I haven't read any of those. But it would not surprise if up 90% of the world building and core tenets were introduced in the first 2 or 3 books.

Amusingly, the big McGuffin doesn't even appear until the 4th or 5th book and become an actual "thing" for a couple of books after that. Interestingly, up until AOI, I'd have said that it was the perhaps the least Traveller-like portion of the setting. I think it's hard to overstate how much the explosion of scifi post-Star Wars influenced the ongoing development of both Traveller but also how people interpreted the rules and setting overall. The connection of "Library Data" (the inspirational material) to Traveller is much more opaque than Appendix N is to, say, D&D, just due to timing and the cultural context. I mean, you might also want to be reading Forrester's Hornblower, Ceasar's Commentaries on the Gallic War, and Gibbons Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - the game came out of wargaming company that had lots of history buffs, lol...

 

[RossWinn]

The articles you are looking for are: "Deciphering the Text Foundations of Traveller" by Michael Andre-Driussi which is available on Amazon for USD$0.99

 

[Ekofisk]

And then there's this ...
Including Gibbon's Decline and Fall ...
ah, well.

As an aside, thanks to the mod who checked on "Stars My Destination"

 

[Condottiere]

The thing about is, that a fall doesn't have to be permanent, beyond force majeure.

The Romans rebuilt, the Carthaginians rebuilt (their problem being, at the same time as the Romans), the Germans did three times.

 

[Sci-Fi Neophyte]

The articles you are looking for are: "Deciphering the Text Foundations of Traveller" by Michael Andre-Driussi which is available on Amazon for USD$0.99

Thanks RossWinn,

I looked at this e-book on Amazonia. I wish I had a list of the article titles contained therein. Do you own this? If so, can you share article titles with us, please?

I only saw two reviews for this e-book. The first was 5/5 stars, and the second was 1/5 stars. That's not very compelling…

Perhaps with more information about the e-book content, I’d feel better about making the purchase. The reader who gave it 1/5 stars wasn’t very kind and said the collection of articles wasn’t even worth the dollar they spent to get it. Thoughts, please?

 

[Ekofisk]

Try here.
May need translating from the original French.

 

[Sci-Fi Neophyte]

Try here.
May need translating from the original French.

Ekofisk,

Thank you for the link. Fortunately, my browser translated from French for me.

Super informative article. Very helpful. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.

Several key takeaways from it will help me better understand Classic Traveller's literary influences.

 

[RossWinn]

Thanks RossWinn,

I looked at this e-book on Amazonia. I wish I had a list of the article titles contained therein. Do you own this? If so, can you share article titles with us, please?

I only saw two reviews for this e-book. The first was 5/5 stars, and the second was 1/5 stars. That's not very compelling…

Perhaps with more information about the e-book content, I’d feel better about making the purchase. The reader who gave it 1/5 stars wasn’t very kind and said the collection of articles wasn’t even worth the dollar they spent to get it. Thoughts, please?

It’s literally a dollar. That one article is more than worth the price.

 

[Daidoji Dave]

It's a dead horse, but I'll beat it anyway. I'm a giant fan of Dumarest, and I haven't read even a majority of the thirty three. (Though I do mean to get back into it.) Even a couple will go a long way to answering the thread question, and you'll have a better idea how many more you want to read.

I've also long wondered about an uncredited influence from AE van Vogt's Voyage of the Space Beagle. Whether that's the case or not I recommend it strongly for adventure ideas for Traveller GMs, but for the thread question specifically I wouldn't quite bump it ahead of any other recommendation already made.

I think Jack Vance was an influence. See Planet of Adventure series for a mix of tech levels and the idea that humans are endlessly variegated.
See Demon Princes for classic space opera.

Absent Traveller, you should just read these series as fantastic sci-fi.

Thank you for reminding me. Vance is possibly the best author I like who I haven't done justice to. I found his famous Dying Earth fantasy novels in the library as a kid, but missed his science fiction at the time. Now I've got a used Araminta Station on my bookshelf but still haven't gotten to it; I'll pull it off now and open it over the weekend.

 

[Sci-Fi Neophyte]

It’s literally a dollar. That one article is more than worth the price.

Thanks, again, RossWinn.

Ekofisk (see above) provided me (us) a link to the original article in the original blog of which you speak. It was in French, but my web browser faithfully translated the article into English for me.

You are correct, it was a great read, although, it does extend well beyond the cutoff of CT, going out as far as 2001, but still, I believe the article to be very well written and extremely informative (at least to my sensibilities).

TL;DR: Piper’s Terro-Human and Tubb’s Dumarest Sagas are king among CT influences. This much has been supported numerous times, by numerous people, in numerous places (including Marc Miller himself).

Many thanks, RossWinn.

 

[whulorigan]

Poul Anderson’s Dominic Flandry and Polesotechnic League Series

E.C. Tubb’s Dumarest Series

Larry Niven’s Known Space Series

Dumarest is definitely a primary inspiration (BTW, Burnt City Games has had a license from Marc to do a Dumarest RPG using a modified version of the Classic Traveller Ruleset. They have done playtests of it at TravellerCon/USA for each of the past 3 years and should be close to doing a Kickstarter soon).

I would definitely add that the Poul Anderson material and Larry Niven material are also both must-reads as good sci-fi of the period that gives the right "flavor".

Jack Vance’s Demon Prince Series

Thank you for reminding me. Vance is possibly the best author I like who I haven't done justice to. I found his famous Dying Earth fantasy novels in the library as a kid, but missed his science fiction at the time. Now I've got a used Araminta Station on my bookshelf but still haven't gotten to it; I'll pull it off now and open it over the weekend.

I would also add that Jack Vance's "Planet of Adventure" Series (the 4 "Tschai" Novels) are a good read as an inspiration for the Charted Space Universe "background".

 

[mike wightman]

I backed their kickstarter for Toy, the simplified version of CT is pretty much how everyone I know ran it back in the day.
8+ is the target number for everything
Looking forward to the full game.

 

[Quint]

To tag along to an earlier point of mine, understanding that Classic Traveller has "ProtoTraveller" (Books 1-4, Supplements 1-4, and Adventures 1-4), all of which hangs together rather nicely and is minus much of what we think of today as canon Traveller aka "The Third Imperium" and the Classic Traveller of "everything before MegaTraveller" which is a very different beast. Nobody talks about ProtoTraveller much these days it seems, but it's a term/category with some storied history and discussion.

D.

 

[Bartleby]

I have a proto-Traveller inspired campaign going. We have a one sector Imperium and so far we have played the Kinunir and Shadows adventures.