Review of The Killing Machine by Jack Vance

It is a maxim of storytelling that if you show a gun at the beginning of a story, at some time it will be fired. In Jack Vance's The Killing Machine (1964), second book in the Demon Prince series, the gun has metal mandibles, fire-breathing eyes, a segmented body, and mechanized centipede legs. With such extravagance, undoubtedly readers will be happy it fires, but perhaps less happy only once.

With Kirth Gersen's raison d'etre established in The Star King, The Killing Machine sees the second demon prince on the hit list, Kokor Hekkus fall under his crosshairs. More overtly evil than the Star King, Hekkus quickly shows Gersen how little existence means to him in an early, down-and-dirty encounter. Gersen manages to escape with his life, but also with a set of plans which seem to show the impossible: a highly unorthodox machine whose purpose could only be one thing, killing. But where, and why?

Published in the same year as the first Demon Princes novel The Star King, The Killing Machine has an extremely similar style and length. Straightforward and steady paced, Vance pushes Gersen along a black and white trajectory of kidnapping, counterfeiting, and planetary adventure toward revenge. And like The Star King, The Killing Machine is technically science fiction, but replace the starships with airplanes, laser pistols with guns, and planets with countries and you've got an Earth-bound thriller. It is a James Bond take on The Count of Monte Cristo.

In the end, the success of The Killing Machine will hinge on the reader's appreciation of the manner in which Vance shows the gun at the beginning of the story, puts tension on the trigger tighter and tighter, then fires. For me the shot is Bond-esque, but without the flair. Style-wise, the 60s were a time that Vance was only beginning to find his distinct voice. As such, the story possesses more of Vance's fast-paced, straightforward diction than it does his trademark panache. I wish the story had been written later in Vance's career at a time when he was capable of injecting more color. Both the story and titular machine would have benefited from a treatment similar to Emphyrio or The Face. As it stands, it is still Vance, and that will almost always be a readable, enjoyable experience.