The Lay of Road-Storm from the ancient Chronicles

Synopsis

A complete overview of the novel's plot—ten equivalent years compressed into eight chapters of comic-epic adventure.

I. Lotophage

The ten-year war is over. Six hornet captains and their crews are mustered out with optional travel orders. A sixth captain (who shall be nameless forever) takes his crew directly home, but the other five—led by Roadstrum and Puckett—detour to Lotophage, the legendary pleasure planet where it is always afternoon.

The world is seductive beyond imagining: every pleasure available, every desire fulfilled. But there is a price. The Lotophagians process visitors into "Ecstasy Chips"—rendered down for their psychic residue and consumed as delicacies. Crewmen Birdsong and Fairfeather, deemed too ugly for the pleasures, are thrown into a dungeon. The others sink into narcotic bliss.

Roadstrum, "one man in a million," rouses himself at the last possible moment. With the help of Margaret the houri (who has been trapped on Lotophage for millennia) and Deep John the Vagabond (an ancient hobo who cannot find his way home), he kicks the men awake and loads them into two hornets. They escape with perhaps forty men—the rest have already been processed into chips and eaten.

II. Lamos

Both hornets are damaged from their time on Lotophage. They limp to Lamos, a heavy-gravity world inhabited by Groll's Trolls—giants who speak something between Old Norse and Icelandic. The giants call their world Valhal.

The giants are hospitable in their terrible way: they feed the men an enormous breakfast and then hunt them down and kill them in glorious battle. But this is Valhalla—heroes who die in battle are reborn each morning to fight again. Crewmen Birdsong and Fairfeather, throwing themselves into combat with wholehearted joy, become giants themselves.

The boy Hondstarfer, a young giant who is "mechanically inclined," repairs the hornets using stone hammers. When Roadstrum and the surviving men attempt to leave, the giants exact a price: they cut out every man's tongue to ensure they never reveal how much fun Valhalla really is. The men escape, bleeding and green, and craft false tongues to replace what they have lost.

III. The Clashing Rocks

Lost in space, the hornets enter "the rocks wandering"—a thick asteroid belt that proves to be something stranger than asteroids. The rocks multiply, snort, and stampede. They are the sacred cattle of the sun, and the men—seized by ancestral compulsion—rope a calf-rock, kill it, and roast it over space-primus fires.

For this sacrilege, a black sun begins to age them rapidly. Deep John dies at extended old age. The crewmen wither. Roadstrum himself turns a hundred, then a hundred and twenty. Only Margaret, who is not quite human, remains unaffected.

At the last moment, Roadstrum pushes the "Dong button"—a device Hondstarfer installed during the repairs—which reverses time itself. The men regurgitate the sacred beef, reassemble the calf-rock, and back out of the entire episode. They emerge at the exact moment they entered, having lost no time at all.

IV. Roulettenwelt and the Siren-Zo

On Roulettenwelt, the gamblers' world, Roadstrum discovers that the Dong button lets him replay any bet until he wins. He takes on the greatest gamblers in the universe—Johnny Greeneyes, Pyotr Igrokovitch, Sammy the Snake—and wins a thousand worlds. Then he visits the men's room, leaving the Dong button in the hornet. A crafty attendant challenges him to double-or-nothing. Roadstrum loses everything, including the thousand worlds and twenty-four more he must somehow acquire.

On Kentron-Kosmon, the exact center of the universe (according to its own plaque), the men encounter Atlas—a big, good-natured fellow who literally keeps everything going by observing it. On a nearby world, they find the Siren-Zo: a singing mountain that lures men to their deaths with an incomplete melody. The men climb into its maw and kill it from within, finally hearing the missing note as the creature dies.

V. Polyphemia

Puckett's hornet breaks down (as Hondstarfer had warned it would), and both craft land on Polyphemia—a pastoral world of simple shepherds. But the sheep are not sheep: they are men who have been transformed and fattened for slaughter. The "shepherds" are the Polyphemians, cyclopean monsters who keep their human livestock docile and well-fed.

The hornet men are thrown into a dungeon and fattened with rage-inducing mushrooms. One by one, they are taken out and eaten at nightly banquets. But they have an ace: Esolog-9-Ex, a "build-it-yourself pseudanthropus kit" they have assembled into the most succulent-looking man imaginable. When the Polyphemians finally eat him at a great feast, he explodes within them, swelling them to a thousand times their size and destroying them utterly. The men escape—though Margaret, who ate "just a sliver," begins to swell alarmingly as they flee.

VI. Aeaea

Lost in illusion-space, the hornet rams what appears to be a fake world—and finds it half-real. This is Aeaea, the contingent planet of the witch who shares its name. Aeaea is a scientist of total subjectivity: she makes things real by perceiving them as real, and she perceives the hornet men as animals.

Captain Puckett becomes a raccoon. Crewman Humphrey becomes a camel. Crewman Eseldon becomes an ass. Only Roadstrum, who has become an ape, retains enough of his nature to understand what has happened. He rallies the transformed crewmen: if they must be animals, let them be real animals, not Aeaea's toy versions.

What follows is described as "horrifying, animal, human slaughter"—the men tear Aeaea apart, Margaret leading the assault in tiger form. The witch dies (though she insists she is unhurt), and the men flee as the contingent world fades around them. They are now outlaws, wanted throughout space for the Songstress Murder.

VII. Guimbarde Town and Hell

Hunted by sky-police, the men take refuge in the High Liars Club—the most exclusive club in the universe, located a hundred-odd stories up a rickety wooden building in Guimbarde Town on Yellow Dog, a proscribed world. To gain entry, one must tell lies of surpassing quality; to fail is to have one's throat slit.

The men qualify brilliantly, but a sherlocker (the finest tracker in the universe) has followed them. He blows his whistle, and three hundred coppers drag them away to Hellpepper Planet—the place from which there is no returning.

But Hell is a disappointment. It has all the traditional tortures, but everything is too small, too crowded, too mean. The Roadstrum who had expected towering flames finds only high-frequency cookers. Worse, they intend to miniaturize the men to fit them in. Outraged at this second-rate Hell, Roadstrum leads a breakout—the first ever—and the men escape into the boiling swamps beyond.

VIII. World

Roadstrum comes home alone, broke and bewhiskered, to Big Tulsa on World. His wife Penny has been entertaining suitors for twenty years. His son Tele-Max is still small (a runt, apparently). The artificial trees have replaced the real ones, which died from the noise of Penny's parties.

He kills the suitors—more than a hundred of them—as seems to be expected. He has everything now: his wife, his fortune (there were accounts Penny didn't know about), honor, respect, peace.

Peace. The word explodes inside him. He is Roadstrum! Peace is not for such as he. He erupts out of his house, gives great voice, and summons a new crew: Trochanter (addled but game), Margaret (abandoning her arty affectations), Clamdigger (living in a junk hornet shell), and Hondstarfer (who can fix anything with his stone hammers).

The coded chatter reports his ship destroyed beyond the orb of Di Carissimus, become a novanissimus. He's gone, he's dead, he's dirt. But make no mistake—this only seems the end of it.

Odyssey Parallels

Mapping Lafferty's space epic to Homer's original—and noting where he diverges, inverts, and improvises.

The Framework

Lafferty follows the Odyssey loosely rather than slavishly, treating Homer's epic as a jazz standard to be improvised upon. Some parallels are exact; others are inverted or combined; a few episodes are Lafferty's own inventions with no Homeric source. The ordering differs from Homer's: Lafferty presents events largely in chronological sequence rather than using the Odyssey's elaborate flashback structure.

Three Heroes Compared

Roadstrum stands in relation not only to Homer's Odysseus but also to Jason of the Argonautica. Lafferty draws on both heroic models—and parodies both.

Episode-by-Episode Parallels

Chapter I: Lotophage — The Lotus Eaters

Homeric Source: Odyssey IX.82–104

In Homer, the Lotus Eaters offer a plant that makes men forget their homeland and desire only to stay. In Lafferty, Lotophage is a pleasure planet where it is always afternoon—visitors sink into narcotic bliss until they are processed into "Ecstasy Chips" and eaten. The danger is not the lotus plant but the planet itself, which seduces men into forgetting their desire to leave.

Lafferty's Twist: The Lotus Eaters are not passive hosts but active consumers—they eat the visitors rather than merely drugging them. The "last possible moment" becomes a recurring phrase.

Chapter II: Lamos — The Laestrygonians

Homeric Source: Odyssey X.80–132

Homer's Laestrygonians are cannibal giants who destroy eleven of Odysseus's twelve ships by hurling boulders. In Lafferty, the giants of Lamos (also called Valhal) are Groll's Trolls who speak Old Norse. They are Valhalla's warriors—they kill visitors in glorious daily combat, but the dead are reborn each morning to fight again.

Lafferty's Twist: The violence becomes cyclical and even companionable. The tongue-cutting is Lafferty's invention—a dark joke ensuring the men cannot tell anyone how much fun Valhalla really is.

Chapter III: The Clashing Rocks — Symplegades + Cattle of the Sun

Homeric Sources: Odyssey XII.55–72 (Wandering Rocks, mentioned but not encountered) and XII.127–141, 260–419 (Cattle of Helios)

Lafferty combines two separate Homeric episodes. The "rocks wandering" become an asteroid belt that is actually a herd of sacred space-cattle. When the men kill and eat one (as Odysseus's crew ate the cattle of Helios), they are cursed—but here the curse is rapid aging rather than death by shipwreck.

Lafferty's Twist: The Dong button allows time reversal, enabling the men to undo their sacrilege entirely. This is pure Lafferty—no Homeric parallel exists for escaping divine punishment through temporal manipulation.

Chapter IV: Roulettenwelt — No Direct Parallel

Homeric Source: None (Lafferty's invention)

The gamblers' world has no Homeric counterpart. It represents Lafferty's interest in chance, fortune, and the reversal of fortune. The episode where Roadstrum wins a thousand worlds and loses them to a bathroom attendant is comic hubris—the mighty brought low not by gods but by luck.

Chapter IV (continued): Kentron-Kosmon — Atlas

Homeric Source: Odyssey I.52–54 (Atlas mentioned as Calypso's father)

Atlas appears in the Odyssey only as a reference. Lafferty makes him a character who keeps the universe running by constantly observing it—a comic application of Berkeley's idealism.

Chapter IV (continued): The Siren-Zo — The Sirens

Homeric Source: Odyssey XII.36–54, 153–200

Homer's Sirens sing from an island; Odysseus has his men plug their ears with wax while he listens bound to the mast. Lafferty's Siren-Zo is a singing mountain-spider creature whose song is missing its final note. Men are drawn to hear the completion and die in the attempt.

Lafferty's Twist: Rather than resisting the song, the men climb into the creature and kill it from within, finally hearing the missing note as it dies in agony. They defeat the Sirens by violence rather than cunning.

Chapter V: Polyphemia — The Cyclops

Homeric Source: Odyssey IX.105–542

This is Lafferty's most elaborate Homeric parallel. Homer's Polyphemus is a one-eyed giant who traps Odysseus's men in his cave and eats them two by two. Odysseus escapes by blinding the Cyclops and hiding under sheep.

Lafferty inverts the imagery: the Polyphemians are cyclopean shepherds, but their "sheep" are transformed humans. The men are not hidden under sheep—they become sheep, fattened for slaughter. The escape comes not through blinding but through Esolog-9-Ex, the booby-trapped automaton.

Lafferty's Twist: The "Nobody" trick (Odysseus's famous deception) is replaced by something more visceral—the enemy is destroyed by exploding from within after consuming the disguised weapon.

Chapter VI: Aeaea — Circe

Homeric Source: Odyssey X.133–574

Homer's Circe is a witch who turns men into pigs. Odysseus, protected by the herb moly given by Hermes, resists her magic and becomes her lover for a year. She eventually helps him on his way.

Lafferty's Aeaea turns men into various animals through "total subjectivity"—if she sees them as animals, they become animals. There is no moly, no divine protection. Instead, Roadstrum realizes that to escape they must become real animals rather than Aeaea's toy versions.

Lafferty's Twist: The men kill Circe. In Homer, she is a helper who gives Odysseus crucial advice; in Lafferty, she is torn apart by the men she has transformed. This is the "Songstress Murder" that makes them outlaws.

Chapter VII: Guimbarde Town — No Direct Parallel

Homeric Source: None (Lafferty's invention)

The High Liars Club has no Homeric counterpart. It represents Lafferty's meditation on storytelling itself—the epic as a club where only the best tall tales qualify for membership.

Chapter VII (continued): Hellpepper Planet — The Underworld

Homeric Source: Odyssey XI (the Nekuia)

In Homer, Odysseus visits the underworld to consult the prophet Tiresias. He meets the shades of the dead, including his mother and fallen comrades. It is a solemn, melancholy episode.

Lafferty's Hell is a disappointment—cramped, bureaucratic, and second-rate. Tiresias ("Blinky") is a petty judge. The tortures exist but are miniaturized to fit. The men break out, the first ever to do so, simply because their expectations were too high for such a mean establishment.

Lafferty's Twist: Hell fails to meet heroic standards. The underworld is not awesome but inadequate.

Chapter VIII: World — The Homecoming

Homeric Source: Odyssey XIII–XXIV

Homer devotes nearly half his epic to the homecoming: Odysseus's disguised return, the recognition scenes, the slaughter of the suitors, the reunion with Penelope. Lafferty compresses this to a few pages.

Roadstrum comes home, finds suitors, kills them. But where Homer ends with the hero restored to his kingdom, Lafferty's Roadstrum cannot accept peace. He erupts out of his house and summons a new crew. The epic refuses to end.

Lafferty's Twist: The final inversion. Odysseus's goal throughout is to reach home; having reached it, Roadstrum rejects it. Peace is not for such as he. The voyage is the meaning, not the destination.

Episodes Omitted or Transformed

Several major Homeric episodes are absent or barely referenced in Space Chantey:

Calypso: The nymph who keeps Odysseus for seven years has no direct counterpart. Margaret the houri may be a faint echo—an immortal woman who joins the voyage—but she is a companion rather than a captor.

Nausicaa and the Phaeacians: The civilized hosts who help Odysseus home are absent. There is no equivalent to Odysseus's telling of his tale at Alcinous's court.

Scylla and Charybdis: The famous choice between monsters is not present, though the Clashing Rocks chapter gestures toward maritime hazards.

The Bow Contest: Odysseus proves himself by stringing his great bow and shooting through twelve axe-heads. Roadstrum's son mentions this as family legend ("You impressed them by shooting an arrow through twelve holes"), but Roadstrum doesn't remember what an arrow is.

Epic Terms Glossary

Classical epic conventions employed in Space Chantey and their Homeric precedents.

Chapter I

Lotophage

The Lotus Eaters—where it is always afternoon, and visitors are rendered into Ecstasy Chips.

Summary

The ten-year war is finished—"neither of long duration nor of serious attrition," having taken only ten million lives. Six hornet captains and their crews are mustered out. Five of them, led by Captains Roadstrum and Puckett, decide to detour to Lotophage, the legendary pleasure planet. A sixth captain (who shall be nameless forever) takes his "craven" crew directly home.

Lotophage is "beautiful at planetfall, subdued gold, afternoon color." It is impossible to approach from the morning side—the planet exists in perpetual afternoon. The men discover paradise: every pleasure is available, every desire anticipated. The Sleepy Sailor tavern becomes their headquarters.

But paradise has teeth. Crewmen Birdsong and Fairfeather, judged too ugly for the pleasures, are thrown into a dungeon. The others sink into narcotic bliss while the Lotophagians process earlier visitors into "Ecstasy Chips"—psychic residue rendered from men who have "spread themselves" too thin in pursuit of pleasure. "Lazy Man Ecstasy Chips" have a particularly fine flavor.

Roadstrum, warned by Margaret the houri and Deep John the Vagabond, rouses himself at "the last possible moment." He kicks the men awake—some cling to grass-handles, refusing to leave—and loads them into two hornets. They escape with perhaps forty men; the rest have already been eaten.

Key Events

The Six Captains: Roadstrum, Puckett, Dempster, Silkey, Kitterman, and the Nameless One assemble after the war. Five vote to detour to Lotophage; the sixth goes directly home and is erased from the epic.

First Skin Shed: Roadstrum announces that he has "shucked a skin like a yearly snake"—the first shedding of the "onion self" motif that will recur throughout the novel. This is "Young Soldier the First Time."

Planetfall: The hornets arrive at Lotophage. Roadstrum tries to approach from the morning side but fails—the planet exists only in afternoon.

The Dungeon: Birdsong and Fairfeather are imprisoned for ugliness. Only beautiful persons are allowed Lotophage's pleasures.

The Sleepy Sailor: The men sink into pleasure at this tavern. Roadstrum has a plaque made: "Great Roadstrum loused around here."

Ecstasy Chips: The Lotophagians serve the men chips rendered from earlier visitors. Crewman Oldfellow remarks that they remind him of Crewman Bigbender—because they are Crewman Bigbender.

Margaret's Warnings: The houri repeatedly gives the lobster parable: "To boil a lobster, one takes first a lobster... one puts it in cold water... one very very slowly brings it to a boil..."

The Awakening: Roadstrum, "one man in a million," rears up "like a great bear coming out of hibernation on Saint Casimir's Day" and begins kicking men awake.

The Escape: Birdsong and Fairfeather are released from the dungeon when two even uglier men arrive. The survivors pile into two hornets and escape. On Lotophage, it is still afternoon of the same day.

Characters Introduced

Captain Roadstrum: "As plain a man as ever lived," commander of the lead hornet and protagonist of the epic. First appears saying he wants to go home—but could be talked into something else.

Captain Puckett: Roadstrum's fellow captain from World, who suggests the Lotophage detour. Commands the second hornet.

Captains Dempster, Silkey, Kitterman: Other hornet captains. Silkey "knew how to put the needle" into Dempster.

The Nameless Captain: The sixth captain who goes directly home. "He shall be nameless, he shall be nameless forever."

Crewman Birdsong: One of the ugliest men in the crews. Sent to the dungeon on Lotophage but released when uglier men arrive.

Crewman Fairfeather: Fellow ugly. Shares Birdsong's dungeon sentence.

Margaret the houri: A being who has been trapped on Lotophage "for several thousand years," waiting for a man able to leave. She joins Roadstrum's crew. "I used to have a lot of fun on World."

Deep John the Vagabond: "John Profundus Vagabundus," the original old-time hobo. Has been wandering for thousands of years and cannot find his way home. Sings "Show Me The Way To Go Home."

Crewman Bramble: First appears reciting doggerel verse about the "golden worm that gnaws and gnaws."

Crewmen Crabgrass, Oldfellow: Crew members who voice discontent with the "sleepy gooney" atmosphere.

Homeric Parallels

The episode draws on Odyssey IX.82–104, where Odysseus's scouts eat the lotus plant and lose all desire to return home. Lafferty elaborates considerably: the lotus effect is not a plant but the entire planet's nature, and the Lotophagians do not merely drug visitors but process them into food.

The "last possible moment" motif has no direct Homeric source but captures the essence of Odysseus's perpetual escapes from seductive traps (Calypso, Circe, the Sirens).

Notable Passages

The novel's opening meditation on whether mythology can survive the space age.

The introduction of the hornet crews.

Roadstrum's first articulation of the "onion self" theme.

Margaret's despair—before Roadstrum proves himself.

Thematic Notes

The Mythology Filter: The chapter opens with Lafferty's manifesto on epic and mythology. "The deeds were too bright to be viewed direct. They could only be sung by a bard gone blind from viewing suns that were suns." This frames the entire novel as filtered through the epic tradition.

The Onion Self: Roadstrum introduces the image of himself as an onion shedding layers. This first skin is "Young Soldier the First Time"—the naive warrior identity he leaves behind on Lotophage.

Pleasure vs. Motion: Lotophage represents the temptation of stasis—perfect pleasure without effort or risk. The men who stay become literally consumed by it. Roadstrum's ability to leave marks him as exceptional.

The Nameless: The captain who goes directly home is denied a name in the epic. Lafferty suggests that choosing safety over adventure erases one from the heroic record.

Chapter II

Lamos

The Laestrygonians—giants who cut out tongues for souvenirs, where heroes die gloriously every day.

Summary

Both hornets are "near inoperative"—sluggish since Lotophage. Puckett's craft is failing; Roadstrum's is nearly as bad. The only world they can reach is Lamos, a heavy-gravity primitive world inhabited by "Groll's Trolls"—giants speaking something between Old Norse and Icelandic. The men psyche-learn the language during their fifteen-minute descent and crash-land hard.

The giants, led by Bjorn, are hospitable in their terrifying way. They invite the men to "the big breakfast"—whole roasted bulls—and then to "the big fight" where all must die before sundown. Stone slabs fly through the air on the "static-repulsion principle" (the giants' science, far beyond electromagnetic technology). The men fight gloriously and are slaughtered.

But this is Valhal—Valhalla. Heroes who die in battle are reborn each morning. The cycle repeats: breakfast, battle, death, rebirth. Crewmen Birdsong and Fairfeather, throwing themselves into combat wholeheartedly, become giants. Roadstrum and Puckett, who held mental reservations, remain human-sized.

Margaret the houri reforms the daily schedule, demanding "one hour for the women." The boy Hondstarfer repairs the hornets with stone hammers. When the men attempt to leave, the giants exact their price: they cut out every man's tongue to ensure the secret of Valhalla's pleasures is never told. Bleeding and speechless, the men escape to craft false tongues and fly on.

Key Events

The Crash: Both hornets make a brutal landing on high-gravity Lamos. "It knocked everybody out, cracked ribs and clavicles, ruptured lungs and diaphragms, and filled everybody with blood in mouth, nose, and ear."

Meeting the Giants: Bjorn and his fellows surround the crash site. The men do not reach to the giants' navels. Margaret speaks to them in Old Norse.

The Flying Stone Slabs: The giants' transportation—stone slabs that fly on the "static-repulsion principle," steered by rubbing felt-booted feet on them. Crewman Bramble declares it impossible; the boy Hondstarfer explains the supreme scientific law: "Like charges repel."

The Big Breakfast: The giants feast on whole roast bulls, skinned bare-handed and speared on pikes held up to the "little sun" (a captured asteroid that serves as an interior light source). The men cannot eat a whole bull each.

The Daily Battle: All fight to the death before sundown. This is Valhalla's eternal combat. The battles are described in detail—Roadstrum afflicted with "the heroes' disease" (a fever that strikes every third day at sundown) fights Bjorn in aerial combat on stone slabs. Both die, transfixed on each other's spears.

Resurrection: "Come to the breakfast!" The dead awaken. The cycle continues. Birdsong and Fairfeather have become giants; others remain human.

Margaret's Reform: She smashes the sundial and demands time for women. "There has to be time for the women."

Hondstarfer's Repairs: The giants' mechanically-inclined boy fixes both hornets with stone hammers—one of them has buckskin for "the fine work." He removes the main drives ("I couldn't see any use for a lot of that stuff") but claims the ships will fly. One will work perfectly; one will break down again later.

The Tongue-Cutting: The giants will not let the men leave without insurance: every tongue is cut out, "roots and all." The men write in their own blood that they will never tell anyone how much fun Valhalla is. They escape, gagging and green.

The Battle: Phase by Phase

The daily combat on Lamos unfolds in distinct tactical phases as the crew adapts to fighting giants on flying stone slabs.

Characters Introduced

Bjorn: Leader of the Laestrygonian giants. "A voice that sounded as though he had great boulders grinding around in his gizzard." Fights Roadstrum in the climactic aerial duel and laughs as he dies.

Hondstarfer: Bjorn's "little boy" (a meter taller than Roadstrum). "Mechanically inclined"—repairs the hornets with stone hammers. Later travels to World via time machine to become an old-time railroad hobo. A "seminal genius" who will reappear in Chapter VIII.

Hross, Hjortun, Fjall, Kubbur, Blath, Hrekkur: Other Laestrygonian giants with appropriately Norse names.

The Laestrygonian Women: "Dame elephants rather"—large, almost shapeless, "smiling and mysterious and ineffably wild." Crewmen Birdsong and Fairfeather are attracted to them.

Characters Developed

Crewman Birdsong: Reveals his capacity for transformation—throws himself into battle wholeheartedly and becomes a giant.

Crewman Fairfeather: Follows Birdsong's path to gianthood. Both remain on Lamos.

Roadstrum: First mention of "the heroes' disease"—an infection caught during the war that produces heroic fever every third day at sundown. It makes him do rash things.

Margaret: Shows her assertiveness, demanding reform of the Valhalla schedule. "You are going to have to find one hour every day for [the women]."

Homeric Parallels

The episode draws on Odyssey X.80–132, where the Laestrygonians are cannibal giants who destroy eleven of Odysseus's twelve ships. In Homer, they throw boulders; in Lafferty, they fight with spears in honorable (if fatal) combat.

Lafferty transforms the episode by combining the Laestrygonians with Valhalla—the Norse afterlife where warriors feast and fight eternally. This is a distinctly non-Homeric addition, grafting Germanic mythology onto the Greek framework.

The tongue-cutting has no Homeric source but serves as Lafferty's grotesque variation on the "oath of silence" motif—the men cannot reveal what they have experienced because they literally cannot speak.

Notable Passages

Roadstrum's post-crash recovery, reduced to heroism at its most basic level.

Hondstarfer's explanation of how stone slabs fly.

Crewman Birdsong explaining the situation to Roadstrum.

Roadstrum's epitaph after his duel with Bjorn.

Roadstrum's reflection as he prepares to leave.

Thematic Notes

The Heroes' Disease: Roadstrum's heroic fever is presented as an actual infection—something he "caught" during the war. It suggests that heroism is not a choice but a compulsion, a sickness that takes over at predictable intervals.

Transformation Through Commitment: Birdsong and Fairfeather become giants by throwing themselves into battle "with a happy howling heart." Roadstrum and the others, who held "mental reservations," remain human. Full commitment to the heroic life transforms one literally.

The Price of Experience: The tongue-cutting is Lafferty's darkest image of the cost of adventure. The men have seen Valhalla; they can never speak of it. Their false tongues will trigger "False tongue" warnings on their communicators for the rest of the novel.

Second Skin Shed: The chapter ends with another layer sloughed: "One gives up giantizing most regretfully." Roadstrum could have stayed and become a giant; he chose motion over transformation.

Technical Notes

The Static-Repulsion Principle: Lamos is a dry, metal-free world of pure flint. Stone slabs fly by repelling the planet's surface—a science "so far beyond" electromagnetic technology that it seems like magic.

The Little Sun: A small captured asteroid that glows and roasts food. It responds to voice commands ("The sun, come you in") for reasons no one can explain.

Hondstarfer's Repairs: The boy removes the main drives from both hornets, calling them primitive. One hornet will work perfectly; the other will break down. This prophecy will be fulfilled in Chapter V.

Chapter III

The Clashing Rocks

The wandering rocks that stampede—and the sacred cattle of the sun whose slaughter brings the aging curse.

Summary

Lost in space, the hornets enter "the rocks wandering"—a thick asteroid belt moving at respectable speed. The rocks are rounded, gray, about the size of hornets, and "thickly clustered, one every thousand meters or so." The men ride on them, but something is wrong: the rocks have eyes "like a buffalo calf," and they multiply when no one is looking.

The communicators now constantly warn "False tongue" whenever the men speak—their manufactured tongues trigger the security sensor. Only Deep John, who escaped the Laestrygonians' knife, has a "civil tongue" in his head. Margaret's tongue also triggers the warning; the machine reads her as "something not quite human."

The rocks begin to snort, bawl, and trample. They are stampeding. The men, seized by ancestral compulsion, find themselves making running loops in ropes. At a fork in the path—Dobie's Hole or the Vortex—they take the Vortex. They rope a "calf-rock," break its neck, and roast it over space-primus fires. The meat smells like buffalo.

For this sacrilege against the sacred cattle of the sun, a black sun begins to age them. Deep John dies of old age. Crewman Oldfellow turns ancient. Roadstrum himself reaches one hundred, then one hundred and twenty. Margaret, unaffected, bakes him a birthday cake.

At the last moment, Roadstrum pushes the "Dong button"—a device Hondstarfer installed. It reverses time. The men regurgitate the sacred beef (unpleasant in reverse), reassemble the calf-rock, and back out of the entire episode. They emerge at the exact moment they entered, having lost no time.

Key Events

The Asteroid Belt: The hornets enter "the rocks wandering." The rocks seem to multiply, spawning when unobserved. They have calf-like eyes that disappear when looked at directly.

The False Tongue Warnings: First explicit mention that the communicators now constantly warn "False tongue" for all the crewmen. Deep John is the exception—"I was the only one able to keep a civil tongue in my head."

The Stampede: The rocks begin snorting, bawling, trampling—a cosmic cattle stampede. The men instinctively make lasso loops. "The name of it is stampede," Deep John says.

The Fork: Two possible exits from the rock-belt: Dobie's Hole (safe) or the Vortex (deadly). They take the Vortex.

Roping the Calf: Crewmen Crabgrass and Clamdigger go for a small rock's horns. They rope it, drag it aside, kill it, and roast it. "The horns and the hooves to Captain Roadstrum, and the fat of the hump to Captain Puckett."

The Curse: Puckett, possessed by the black sun, tells Roadstrum they must fly into the sun and be consumed for their sacrilege. The aging begins—rapidly. Deep John dies at extended old age. Roadstrum reaches one hundred.

Margaret's Birthday Cake: "Happy birthday, Captain Roadstrum... You just turned a hundred."

The Dong Button: Roadstrum pushes the button Hondstarfer installed. "Wrong prong, bong gong," says its instruction plate. Time reverses. The equivalent-day recorder runs backwards.

The Reversal: The men come back to life, regurgitate the meat, reassemble the calf. "Certain bodily functions are unusual and almost unpleasant when done in reverse." They exit through Dobie's Hole instead of the Vortex.

Characters Developed

Deep John: Confirmed as the only crewman with his original tongue. Dies of old age during the curse but is restored by the time reversal. His status as ancient wanderer is emphasized—he has been homeless for thousands of years.

Margaret: Shows her inhuman nature—unaffected by the aging curse, she cheerfully bakes birthday cakes while the men die around her. The communicator reads her tongue as false though it was never cut.

Crewman Oldfellow: Ironic name—"They called me Oldfellow because I was the youngest man in the crews." He becomes genuinely old during the curse.

Homeric Parallels

The chapter combines two Homeric episodes: the Wandering Rocks (Odyssey XII.55–72, mentioned but not encountered by Odysseus) and the Cattle of the Sun (Odyssey XII.127–141, 260–419). In Homer, Odysseus's crew slaughter the sacred cattle of Helios despite warnings; Zeus destroys their ship in punishment, and only Odysseus survives.

Lafferty merges the two: the "rocks wandering" become the sacred cattle themselves, disguised as asteroids. The curse is aging rather than shipwreck. Most significantly, Lafferty provides an escape mechanism—the Dong button—that Homer never offered. The men can undo their sacrilege entirely.

Fusing Two Episodes

Notable Passages

Crewman Oldfellow's first observation of the rocks' true nature.

Deep John's identification of what is happening.

Margaret's cheerful announcement during the aging curse.

Margaret using the word "peace" to rouse Roadstrum from his death-sleep—foreshadowing Chapter VIII.

Thematic Notes

Ancestral Compulsion: The men act out cowboy behaviors—making lassos, roping cattle—without understanding why. The "cowboy lexicon" of the epigraph suggests buried racial or species memory surfacing in crisis.

Reversibility: The Dong button introduces a new element to the epic: the ability to undo mistakes. This technological grace allows Lafferty's heroes to escape divine punishment in ways Homer's never could.

The False Tongue: The chapter establishes that the men's artificial tongues mark them as suspect—their own technology warns against them. This becomes a running element through the rest of the novel.

Technical Notes

The Dong Button: A device Hondstarfer installed during his repairs on Lamos. When activated, it reverses time by coupling with "something in the black sun." The equivalent-day recorder runs backwards. The men retain memory of the reversed events, but the universe does not.

Space-Primus Fires: Fires that can burn in space, used to roast the sacred beef. "A space-primus fire really has no odor, so how should it smell to me like sage-brush and buffalo-chips?"

Chapter IV

Roulettenwelt

The gamblers' world, the philosopher who holds reality together, and the singing mountain whose missing note drives men mad.

Summary

This longest chapter contains three distinct episodes: the gambling on Roulettenwelt, the encounter with Atlas on Kentron-Kosmon, and the battle against the Siren-Zo on Sireneca.

Part One: Roulettenwelt

On the gamblers' world, Roadstrum discovers that the Dong button lets him replay any bet until he wins. He takes on the greatest gamblers in the universe: Johnny Greeneyes (who can see invisible card markings), Pyotr Igrokovitch (who shoots himself through the head after heavy losses—through a permanent hole), the Asteroid Midas (with his card-manipulating talons), Sammy the Snake, and Willy Wuerfelsohn Jr. All have had their thumbs broken multiple times for cheating.

Roadstrum wins and wins. He sometimes has to replay a hand fifty times to beat Johnny Greeneyes, but he wins. He becomes "King Roadstrum," then "High Emperor Roadstrum" with a thousand worlds. Then he visits the men's room, leaving the Dong button in the hornet.

A crafty attendant challenges him to double-or-nothing. Without the Dong button, Roadstrum's natural luck (which is terrible) takes over. He loses everything—the thousand worlds plus twenty-four more he must somehow acquire. The attendant still rules those worlds today; "He is a man of talent."

Part Two: Kentron-Kosmon

On this tiny world at the exact center of the universe (according to its own plaque), where it is always Saturday night, the men find a carnival—and a big, good-natured man in a booth surrounded by telescopes and instruments. His signs read: "I'm the guy who keeps it all going. If I weren't here, you wouldn't be here either."

Crewman Trochanter challenges him to country-style wrestling. The big man throws Trochanter, then Clamdigger, then every crewman in succession—always craning to peer through his telescopes between holds. When the stars dim during his match with Puckett, he becomes alarmed. Roadstrum finally defeats him using the "coon-cat crotch-hold," but only because the big man lets him win in exchange for a favor: "Mind the booth for me while I go to the john."

Roadstrum takes over the booth—the telescopes, the earphones, the cosmic tones—and discovers the terrible truth: everything in the universe exists only because this man perceives it. Roses on some worlds have no scent because he forgot to smell them for one instant. Some animals are bobtailed because he forgot the ends of their tails. For six equivalent months, Roadstrum maintains reality while the big man is away.

The big man returns. His name is Atlas. "It is not my great shoulders, it is the amazing head on my great shoulders that maintains it all."

The Wrestling Match

Part Three: The Siren-Zo

After conquering Nine Worlds (pleasant business—Roadstrum gives eight to the men's-room attendant to reduce his debt), the hornets come to Sireneca, world of the Siren-Zo. A singing mountain-creature lures men with an incomplete melody—a wonderful tune that rises to its climax and then... nothing. The missing note drives men mad.

Golden-haired women on the mountain's outcroppings are not women but "tentacles" of the creature. Crewman Nonvalevole climbs to one and is electrocuted—"twelve thousand amps, nine million volts"—when he sits on her lap. Crewman Stumble follows with a ground wire; he too is crisped. The creature kills any who approach from outside.

Roadstrum realizes they must attack from within. The men dive underwater, surface in a black cavity, and climb up through the creature's maw. It is a giant spider-form inside, singing "Da luan, da mort" (Monday and Tuesday, the Irish treadmill song). They reach its glowing interior eye—its mortal center—and dive into it, rending and killing.

The missing note sounds. "It was worth it. It was fulfillment." The mountain shrinks and dies. All load into the hornets for further adventures. "It was early Wednesday morning."

Literary Influences on the Siren-Zo

The episode draws on multiple traditions beyond Homer.

The Siren-Zo Encounter: Step by Step

Key Events

The Thousand Worlds: Roadstrum uses the Dong button to win a thousand worlds from the great gamblers, replaying hands until he wins.

The Men's Room Disaster: Without the Dong button, Roadstrum loses to a bathroom attendant: first his cash, then his worlds, then twenty-four more he doesn't have.

Atlas's Booth: Roadstrum wrestles Atlas and wins—but only because Atlas lets him, in exchange for minding the booth. Roadstrum maintains reality for six months.

Berkeley's Philosophy: Atlas explains: "Nothing exists—unless it is perceived. If perception fails for a moment, then that thing fails forever." Berkeley gave it philosophical basis but wouldn't shoulder the actual work.

The Nine Worlds: Between Kentron and Sireneca, the men conquer Nine Worlds in "pleasant easy business." Crewman Snow asks for one (revealing himself as "a grasping greedy man"); Roadstrum sends the rest to the attendant on Roulettenwelt.

Roadstrum's Forked Tongue: When the men made new tongues after Lamos, Roadstrum made himself a forked one. He is now "as polished and pleasant a liar as you would ever want to meet."

The Siren-Zo: A singing mountain-spider-creature with electric blonde tentacles. The incomplete melody must be completed; the creature must be killed.

Crewmen Electrocuted: Nonvalevole, Stumble, and others die approaching the sirens from outside. "The mountain itself is the creature."

The Interior Climb: The men dive underwater, climb through the creature's maw past web-threads thick as hawsers, and reach the glowing interior eye.

The Missing Note: When they kill the creature by diving into its eye, it sounds the final note in its death agony. "All the crewmen felt deep satisfaction."

Characters Introduced

Johnny Greeneyes: Gambler who can see invisible markings on cards with his "odd optics."

Pyotr Igrokovitch: Gambler with "the hole in his head"—shot himself after early losses, leaving a permanent passage. Now shoots himself through it theatrically after losses.

Sammy the Snake: Gambler who holds cards in his mouth with his forked tongue. His cousin Horace appears in Chapter VII.

The Asteroid Midas: "A big-beaked bird of a gambler" with card-manipulating talons.

Willy Wuerfelsohn Jr.: Son of the gambler who died of starvation during a nineteen-day session; won a posthumous poker hand at his own funeral.

The Men's Room Attendant: Wins Roadstrum's thousand worlds plus twenty-four more. "He is High Emperor and he administers his worlds competently."

Atlas: The big fellow who maintains reality by perceiving it. Based on Berkeley's idealism: existence requires perception. Has been doing it for hundreds of years.

Crewman Snow: Revealed as "a grasping greedy man" who wants to own a world. Gets one.

Crewman Nonvalevole: "The most useless man"—first to climb to the Siren and be electrocuted.

Crewman Stumble: Second most worthless. Also crisped.

Homeric Parallels

Roulettenwelt: No direct Homeric source. Represents Lafferty's interest in fortune and the reversal of fortune—the mighty brought low not by gods but by luck in a bathroom.

Atlas: In the Odyssey (I.52–54), Atlas is mentioned only as Calypso's father who "knows the depths of the whole sea, and keeps the tall pillars which hold heaven and earth asunder." Lafferty transforms him into a Berkeleyan perceiver who maintains existence by attention.

The Siren-Zo: Based on Odyssey XII.36–54, 153–200. Homer's Sirens sing from an island; Odysseus has his men plug their ears while he listens bound to the mast. Lafferty's Sirens are a single mountain-creature, and the men defeat it not by resistance but by interior assault—climbing into its maw and killing its mortal center.

Notable Passages

Roadstrum mocking the great gamblers.

Atlas explaining his burden.

The consequences of Atlas's momentary inattention.

Atlas correcting the traditional image.

The Siren-Zo's death note.

Thematic Notes

Fortune's Wheel: The Roulettenwelt episode dramatizes the instability of fortune. Roadstrum rises to High Emperor, then falls to debtor—all because he left his advantage behind when he visited the men's room. The technology that lets him cheat fate works only when he has it on him.

Berkeleyan Reality: The Atlas episode is Lafferty's comic treatment of philosophical idealism. If existence requires perception, someone must do the perceiving—and it turns out to be tedious, demanding work. Berkeley "talked his way out of it" after a year.

Completion and Killing: The Siren-Zo represents unfulfilled desire—a song without its climax. The only way to hear the missing note is to kill the creature. Fulfillment requires destruction.

The Forked Tongue: Roadstrum's choice to make himself a forked tongue (rather than a regular replacement) marks his embrace of lying as a tool. He is now "as polished and pleasant a liar as you would ever want to meet."

Technical Notes

The Dong Button's Limits: The button only works when Roadstrum has it. Left in the hornet, it cannot save him from the bathroom attendant. Technology is not omnipotent.

The Siren's Electricity: Crewman Bramble records the specifications: "Twelve thousand amps, nine million volts, a little over one million cycles." The women are electric chairs in beautiful form.

The Irish Treadmill Song: The Siren-Zo sings "Da luan, da mort"—Monday and Tuesday, over and over. This is from Irish folklore, where slaves sang the treadmill song until a savior said "And Wednesday too" and broke the charm. Roadstrum breaks it by killing the creature on early Wednesday morning.

Chapter V

Polyphemia

The sheep-men and their cannibal masters—where crewmen are fatted for the feast and eaten one by one.

Summary

Captain Puckett's hornet has finally broken down—as Hondstarfer predicted. Only Roadstrum's craft remains functional. The survivors crowd into one hornet and make for Polyphemia, ruled by the Cacique and his race of handsome, golden giants.

The world is listed in the Gazetteer as "pastoral, given over almost entirely to the raising of sheep." The sheep have human eyes, human hands beneath their wool, and were once men—but the documentation says they are sheep, and so they are sheep. The Polyphemians eat them. At a welcoming banquet, the crewmen are served spicy goulash. Crewman Oldfellow remarks that it reminds him of Crewman Bigbender. Roadstrum realizes what they are eating and overturns the bowl.

Too late. The men are trapped in their chairs—manacled. They are dragged to a dungeon to be fatted for slaughter. "Rage, and grow fat in your rage," the Cacique tells them. The men are fed "rank leeks and ramps" and habit-forming mushrooms that compel them to eat more, to rage more, to fatten. Margaret consorts with the Polyphemians and is not imprisoned.

One by one, the crewmen are taken and eaten: Di Prima first (the fattest), then Fracas, Snow, Bramble, Crabgrass, Bangtree, Oldfellow, Lawrence. Margaret attends the banquets and reports back. She ate Di Prima herself and found him delicious.

The men's secret weapon is Esolog-9-Ex—a "build-it-yourself pseudanthropus kit" assembled from parts each crewman carried. They have built him as the fattest, most rampant man of all, and he is booby-trapped. To eat him is to suffer "the swelling death, the exploding death." But the Polyphemians keep saving him for a special occasion.

Finally, visiting cousins arrive. Esolog-9 is taken for the crown of the feast. The Polyphemians devour him, begin to swell, and explode—destroying themselves and their hall. Margaret brings the keys. The survivors escape, leaving behind Crewman Starkhead (dead of starvation, refusing to eat) and Crewman Burpy (too fat to move, too placid to be eaten).

Key Events

Puckett's Hornet Fails: The ship Hondstarfer said would break down finally does. The survivors crowd into Roadstrum's craft.

The Sheep-Men: Polyphemia's "sheep" have human eyes, human hands, and were once men. But the Gazetteer says they are sheep, and documentation trumps reality.

The Banquet Trap: The men eat spicy goulash that is actually human flesh. Roadstrum overturns the bowl but the trap springs—all are manacled in their chairs.

The Fattening: Fed rank food and habit-forming mushrooms, the men rage and eat and grow fat. "Rage, and grow fat in your rage."

Margaret's Betrayal: She consorts with the Polyphemians, attends the banquets, eats Di Prima. "He was good good good!" But Roadstrum uses his forked tongue to persuade her to spy for them.

The Daily Deaths: Di Prima, Fracas, Snow, Bramble, Crabgrass, Bangtree, Oldfellow, Lawrence—taken one by one to be eaten. "Each went a little less gallantly than had his predecessor."

Esolog-9-Ex: The assembled pseudanthropus kit, booby-trapped to cause "the swelling death." Built as the fattest, most rampant man to tempt the Polyphemians.

The Explosion: When the Polyphemians finally eat Esolog, they swell to a thousand times their size and explode, destroying everything.

The Survivors: Those who escape: Roadstrum, Puckett, Deep John, Margaret, and the remaining crewmen. Those who don't: Starkhead (dead of starvation), Burpy (too fat to move).

Margaret's Swelling: She admits she may have eaten "a little bit" of Esolog despite Roadstrum's warning. Her fate is left ominous.

Characters Introduced

The Cacique: Ruler of Polyphemia, leader of the handsome golden giants. "We told you that there was a finer food... Yourselves, woolly Roadstrum, rampant ram!"

The Polyphemians: A race of beautiful cannibals who have reduced men to sheep and eat them daily. They prefer "rampant" men to placid sheep.

Esolog-9-Ex: The build-it-yourself pseudanthropus kit. Has been assembled into cardshark, hillbilly, crackpot general (whose orders killed ten thousand men), and ruler of Bandicoot. Now assembled as a fat, rampant man—and a booby trap.

Esolog-9-Ex: Prior Deployments

The pseudanthropus kit has been assembled into many forms before its use on Polyphemia.

Characters Lost

Crewman Di Prima: First eaten. "He went with a joke on his lips about his name and he being the first of them taken."

Crewmen Fracas, Snow, Bramble, Crabgrass, Bangtree, Oldfellow, Lawrence: Eaten one by one on successive days.

Crewman Starkhead: Refused to eat any of the Polyphemians' food. Died of starvation. "One never admits that a hornet-man is dead, it is against the code, but they buried him there."

Crewman Burpy: "Grown grosser and fatter than any of them"—but too placid to interest the Polyphemians. Left behind, too heavy to stand.

Homeric Parallels

The episode inverts Odyssey IX.105–542, the Cyclops episode. Homer's Polyphemus is a one-eyed giant who traps Odysseus's men in his cave and eats them two by two. Odysseus escapes by blinding the Cyclops and hiding under his sheep.

Lafferty inverts nearly everything: the Polyphemians are many, not one; they are handsome, not monstrous; their victims are transformed into sheep rather than hiding among them. The "Nobody" trick becomes the Esolog-9 booby trap—Odysseus's verbal cleverness replaced by technological cunning.

The name "Polyphemia" evokes Polyphemus while suggesting "many-voiced"—appropriate for a society rather than a solitary monster.

Notable Passages

The Cacique's repeated taunt—the men's fury only makes them better eating.

The Cacique's defense of their practices—bureaucratic reality trumps actual reality.

Margaret explaining why she consorts with the Polyphemians.

Margaret's inability to promise she won't eat Esolog—foreshadowing her possible doom.

Thematic Notes

Documentation vs. Reality: The sheep-men are men by every observable measure, but the Gazetteer says they are sheep, so sheep they legally are. Bureaucratic classification determines identity.

The Rage-Fat Cycle: The Polyphemians have engineered a perfect trap: the more the men resist, the angrier they become; the angrier they become, the more they eat; the more they eat, the fatter (and tastier) they grow.

Faithlessness: Margaret's open admission that houris have no loyalty is both horrifying and refreshing. She eats her friend and reports it cheerfully. Yet Roadstrum's forked tongue can still persuade her to help.

The Expendable: Starkhead and Burpy represent two failed responses to imprisonment: total resistance (death by starvation) and total surrender (too placid to be interesting, too fat to escape).

Technical Notes

Pseudanthropus Kits: Standard equipment for hornet crews—each man carries a portion. Can be assembled into any human form. Esolog-9-Ex's booby trap causes exponential swelling until explosion.

The Hornet Fleet: Reduced from two ships to one. The survivors are now crowded into a single craft, "so large had they grown."

Chapter VI

Aeaea

The singing witch who turns men to animals—and learns what real animals can do.

Summary

Their navigation scrambled, the hornet drifts into "illusion space"—a realm of warlocks, mandragoras, and witches. Objects seem solid until approached, then fade to mist. Roadstrum orders the data log to ram through them. Most are phantoms. One is not: a gold-and-green world, "too arty to be real." They try to ram it but the log loses its nerve; they must land.

This is Aeaea, the world-and-woman who sang her planet into being. Margaret recognizes and hates her: "I've run into it and her a hundred different times in different parts of the universe." The lady Aeaea freezes Margaret into a statue and takes possession of the men.

Aeaea's philosophy is total subjectivity: "There is no difference between appearing and being, so long as we keep matter subjective." She transforms the men into animals—each according to his nature. Puckett becomes a raccoon, Humphrey a camel, Eseldon an ass, Septimus a rabbit, Swinnert a hog, Ursley a bear, Deep John a polecat. The three tall crewmen—Clamdigger, Threefountains, Trochanter—become great stags. Margaret becomes an alley cat ("that was her true form"). Roadstrum, who believed himself still human while lecturing the animals, discovers he has been "a very small ape" the whole time.

The animals become Aeaea's pets, jealously competing for her attention. Days pass. But Roadstrum plots with Margaret, Deep John, Puckett, and Bramble (who is now a fox—"always too much of a fox to be taken and eaten" by the Polyphemians, despite appearing on that chapter's death list).

At the last possible moment, Roadstrum sees the truth: Aeaea has turned them into toy animals. "We were already pretty salty animals when we came here!" The solution is not to become more human, but more animal—to raise up the "real beast" in themselves.

The animals revolt. Margaret grows from alley cat to bobcat to leopard to tigress. They practice seeing Aeaea as a bird, and she becomes one. What follows is "the Songstress Murder"—described only in fragments: "animal, human slaughter, the brutish murder of a concept and a person." Margaret shreds the songbird. The body is "torn open in throat and breast... rent apart... ground down... trampled and stomped... defaced."

Aeaea's ghost insists she is unhurt ("I see myself as unhurt... Therefore I am unhurt even though, as it happens, I have just died horribly"). But she fades, and her world fades with her. The men, restored to human form, escape before Aeaea dissolves entirely. The "murder howl" goes over the space-ways: they are now outlaws, hunted by decent folk.

Key Events

Illusion Space: The hornet enters a region where solid objects may be phantoms—or not. Ramming through them is the only test.

Landing on Aeaea: The navigation log "loses its nerve" and cannot ram the planet. They land on a world that "hadn't been made very thoroughly"—full of nothing-holes that solidify as they're observed.

Margaret Frozen: Aeaea freezes Margaret into "an angry crouching statue. Fire in her eyes and slaver on her mouth, but she could not move or speak."

The Transformations: One by one, the men are transformed into animals reflecting their natures. Roadstrum is the last to realize he too has changed—into a small ape.

Aeaea's Pets: The animals become her creatures, competing for her affection. "She maintained their jealousies, fondling one and then the other."

Bramble Lives: Crewman Bramble, apparently eaten by the Polyphemians, reappears as a fox. "He was always too much of a fox to be taken and eaten, but the trick by which he evaded it will not be given here."

The Revelation: Roadstrum realizes Aeaea has made them toy animals. The solution: "Be real animals! Raise it up in you! Show the witch what real animals are."

The Songstress Murder: The animals, now truly bestial, attack. Margaret grows to tigress size and takes Aeaea's face off with a final sweep of claws. The murder is too horrific to describe fully.

Aeaea's Philosophy: Even dead, she insists: "I am as I have always been... I see myself as unhurt." But she fades anyway.

Outlaws: The "murder howl" goes out. "Decent people would no more give them haven."

Characters Developed

Aeaea: The singing witch, identical with her planet. A solipsist whose philosophy is "there is no difference between appearing and being." Makes toy animals of men. Murdered by those toys when they become real animals.

Margaret: Her transformation to alley cat is "not a metamorphosis... that was her true form." Grows larger by the same subjective principle Aeaea uses. Takes Aeaea's face off. "Margaret was a little cruel."

Roadstrum: Sheds another skin—"came down near the tough essential hide of him." Leads the revolt by recognizing the semantic trick.

Crewman Bramble: Revealed to have survived Polyphemia by a trick "not given here." Now a fox—"always the smartest of them."

Animal Transformations

Homeric Parallels

The episode draws on Odyssey X.133–574, where Circe transforms Odysseus's men into swine. In Homer, Odysseus resists Circe's magic with the herb moly (given by Hermes) and threatens her with his sword until she restores his men. Circe then becomes a helper, hosting them for a year and advising their journey to the underworld.

Lafferty inverts the resolution completely: instead of negotiating with the witch, the men murder her. Instead of protection from a god, their salvation comes from becoming more bestial than Aeaea imagined. And Aeaea provides no guidance—she dies insisting she is unhurt, philosophically consistent to the end.

The transformation to animals is expanded: Homer's swine become a menagerie matched to each man's nature.

Notable Passages

Aeaea's philosophy—which proves fatal when the men turn it against her.

Roadstrum's revelation.

Roadstrum's call to revolt.

Aeaea's ghost, consistent to the end.

The narrator refusing to describe the murder in full.

Thematic Notes

Toy vs. Real: Aeaea's animals are toys—pets kept jealous and docile. Real animals are dangerous. The men's salvation lies in embracing genuine bestiality rather than aspiring to false humanity.

Solipsism's Limits: Aeaea's philosophy works until it encounters genuine resistance. She can control appearance, but when appearance becomes tooth and claw, her control fails.

The Murder Howl: The men become outlaws—not because they escaped a witch, but because they murdered a songstress. "Decent people" will not harbor them. They have crossed a line that cannot be uncrossed.

Another Skin Shed: "Roadstrum cast a youngish pelt aside of him, / And came down near the tough essential hide of him." Each chapter strips away more of Roadstrum's civilized self.

Technical Notes

Illusion Space: A region where objects may or may not be real. The only test is collision. The navigation log can detect nothing useful.

Subjective Reality: Aeaea's world operates on Berkeleyan principles (like Atlas's booth), but weaponized. What is seen becomes real; what is believed becomes fact.

Chapter VII

Guimbarde Town & Hellpepper Planet

The High Liars Club and the disappointing Hell—where the heroes break out of damnation itself.

Summary

This chapter divides into two episodes: the High Liars Club on Yellow Dog, and Hell itself on Hellpepper Planet.

Part One: The High Liars Club

Yellow Dog is a "proscribed world... inhabited mostly by shiftless and shifty persons." Its capital, Guimbarde Town, consists of thousand-story wooden buildings that lean together and occasionally collapse. The Megagaster birds that infest the sky can swallow any craft in a single gobble.

Crewman Bramble's solution: coat the hornet in Mumuckey mustard—nineteen cases they've carried for years. They are gobbled by a Megagaster, which spits them out in disgust. They crash through the top floors of a building and land directly in the High Liars Club (Club Menitros), "the most exclusive club in the world, in all the worlds."

The Club's rule: each topper must be topped. Tell a lie; if no one can top it, you've earned membership. Fail, and your throat is slit. The hornet-men meet Horace the Snake (cousin of Sammy from Roulettenwelt), who tells tales of "Thousand-Foot Baseball." A florid colonel tells a story of warfare and cunning—Roadstrum is entranced, not realizing it is his own story, with himself as the hero "Alley-Sally."

But a sherlocker—a "sky-dick, a snuffling hound"—has tracked them for the Songstress Murder. The Club gives no asylum for killing a songbird. Captain Puckett tells a tale of becoming pregnant on Demetrio Four; it buys them moments. Then the sherlocker blows his whistle, three hundred coppers boil in, and the men are dragged to Hell.

Part Two: Hellpepper Planet

They face Tiresias, "the blind Theban prophet" (actually "Blinky" with weak eyes and blue glasses), who sentences them for the rape and murder of Aeaea. But Roadstrum is not impressed. "This silly place cannot be Hell itself?"

Puckett and Trochanter explore and return with bad news: Hell is "not a hundred meters across." The tortures are "repetitious. No real imagination in them." Millions suffer, but they're all miniaturized to fit. "This isn't the Hell I believed in," Puckett says with deep disappointment.

When Tiresias orders them miniaturized, Roadstrum erupts: "Nobody will ever miniaturize me!" They break out—the first beings ever to do so. But they are still on Hellpepper Planet, "mired in the boiling swamps a little to the south of Hell."

Key Events

The Mumuckey Mustard: Nineteen cases carried since the war find their purpose—the Megagaster bird spits out the mustard-coated hornet in disgust.

The Crash Landing: They crash through twelve flimsy floors and land directly in the Club.

Club Menitros: The High Liars Club. "We have no living ex-members." Each lie must be topped; failure means death.

Horace the Snake: Tells of "Thousand-Foot Baseball" with hundred-foot players stealing bases by stretching themselves thin.

Roadstrum's Story: A colonel tells Roadstrum's own epic back to him, so improved that Roadstrum doesn't recognize himself. "He tells it so much better than it happened!"

Puckett's Lie: The tale of becoming pregnant on Demetrio Four and failing to lactate. Good enough to earn membership—barely.

The Sherlocker: A "ratter"—a tracking creature with pipe and deerstalker cap as body parts. Tracks them for the Songstress Murder.

The Arrest: Three hundred coppers drag them to Hell. The Club slits the sherlocker's throat afterward, but too late.

Tiresias/Blinky: The judge of Hell. Weak-eyed, wears blue glasses. "I assure you all that a shudder ran through Hell itself here at the news of your crime."

Hell's Inadequacy: Too small, too crowded, tortures without imagination. High-frequency cookers instead of flames. "That, you see, is the hell of it."

The Breakout: When threatened with miniaturization, Roadstrum leads "an inexcusable display of shouting and bad manners." They break out—the first ever to do so.

Characters Introduced

The President-Emeritus: Leader of the High Liars Club. "Hardly human, but... a genial person, in a hard-eyed sort of way."

Horace the Snake: Cousin of Sammy the Snake from Roulettenwelt. Former center fielder for the All-Star All Stars in Thousand-Foot Baseball.

The Sherlocker: A tracking creature—pipe and deerstalker cap are body parts, not accessories. Tracks the men for the Songstress Murder.

Tiresias: The blind Theban prophet, now judge of Hell. Called "Blinky" by his underlings. Wears blue glasses for weak eyes.

Homeric Parallels

The chapter draws on Odyssey XI, the Nekyia or journey to the underworld. In Homer, Odysseus sails to the land of the dead to consult the prophet Tiresias about his journey home. Tiresias appears, drinks sacrificial blood, and prophesies.

Lafferty inverts the episode utterly: instead of a solemn consultation, the men are dragged to Hell as prisoners. Instead of gaining wisdom from Tiresias, they find him a petty bureaucrat. Most dramatically, instead of leaving the underworld peacefully, they break out by force—something no Homeric hero could imagine.

The High Liars Club has no direct Homeric source but represents Lafferty's interest in storytelling itself—where Roadstrum's own epic is told back to him, improved beyond recognition.

The Club Story Tradition

The High Liars Club draws on a rich tradition of "club stories"—tales told within exclusive social settings, where the frame of the club shapes the narrative.

Notable Passages

Roadstrum enchanted by his own story, improved by a skilled liar.

The crime for which there is no refuge—anywhere.

Tiresias on Hell's inadequacy.

Roadstrum's rejection of an inadequate damnation.

Thematic Notes

Story Improvement: The High Liars Club suggests that stories improve in the telling—that the "lie" may be more true than the truth. Roadstrum prefers his epic as told by a skilled liar to the reality he lived.

Hell's Failure: Lafferty's Hell is disappointing not because it lacks torment but because it lacks grandeur. It is "crowded," "repetitious," without imagination. The men reject it not because they're too good for it but because it's not good enough for them.

Miniaturization: The threat of being shrunk to fit Hell's overcrowded space triggers Roadstrum's revolt. Better to break out than be diminished.

The Songstress Murder: The crime follows them everywhere. Even the High Liars Club—which harbors every criminal—will not shelter bird-killers.

Technical Notes

Guimbarde Town: Buildings over a hundred stories, wooden, without elevators, leaning on each other. The finest section has cliff-dweller Indians in the mid-sixties "who drink out of the skulls of those who thought it a safe thing to go up that stairway."

The Sherlocker: A biological tracker—the pipe and deerstalker are "parts of the thing," not accessories. It "cut all trails and read the Gypsy patteran."

Hell's Technology: High-frequency cookers instead of flames. Miniaturization to handle overcrowding. "No smoke, no flame, no mess."

Chapter VIII

World

Homecoming, the slaughter of suitors, and the refusal of peace—the epic that refuses to end.

Summary

"Roadstrum always said that he walked home from Mars, the last lap of the journey. This may not have been true. He had fallen into habits of untruth somewhere along the way." Twenty years after departure, Roadstrum returns to Big Tulsa, capital of World—alone, broke, bewhiskered, and "tired to the marrow of his bones."

At the bank, a "transparent young lady" (the newest kind of people—"soon there will be none produced in the old manner") shows him his depleted account. Penny has made "fabulous withdrawals." He blocks the account.

At home, little Tele-Max plays outside—still little after twenty years ("The kid was a runt"). An "hellish racket" comes from the house: Penny and the suitors, playing the same terrible song they've played for twenty years. The trees died from the noise; these are artificial. The neighbors left long ago.

At the Plugged Nickel Bar, Roadstrum finds Margaret (now trying on names: Charisse, Chiara, Melisand—"Everything has become very arty on World"). She dismisses him: "You are a space-ace. Don't you know that they're dead?... The swish boys are all the thing again." But Crewman Trochanter is there—shorter now (burned the bottom half-meter of his legs on Hellpepper Planet), addled in his wits, talking to dead crewmen. Crewman Clamdigger is alive, living in the shell of a junk hornet.

Hondstarfer, Bjorn's mechanically-inclined son from Lamos, has come to World via time travel and now works as a "seminal genius" for a company with unpronounceable initials. He still uses stone hammers for the real work. He could fix Clamdigger's hornet "in about an hour."

"Then he went in and killed the suitors. It seemed to be what was expected of him. It was fun while it lasted." Roadstrum has everything: dear Penny, his means, honor, respect, health. He has "sloughed off all the outer layers of him and become the essential onion." He has peace.

But peace is the wrong word. Roadstrum talks to his eye—his other eye is in his pocket now, a companion he consults. The eye closes in disgust at the word "peace." Penny babbles endlessly about her dead suitors' "permissive-motivation" and "lassitude-conjointment." The artificial locusts chatter in the artificial trees.

"Peace??— For me??— Roadstrum, man, it is yourself you are talking about... I am great Road-Storm! Peace is for those of the other sort!" He erupts from the building, shattering walls. His great voice reaches the Plugged Nickel Bar and Hondstarfer's building. "An epic has already failed if it have an ending. I don't care how it ended the first time— it will not end the same now!"

Hondstarfer works on the junk hornet. The lights turn on in dim-witted crewmen. Margaret drops the Melisand act. "Men! Animals! Rise you up! To come to the end of a journey is to die. We go again!" Roadstrum gets a craft and a crew. He goes away once more.

The final verse reports his apparent death: "Out beyond the orb of Di Carissimus / His sundered ship became a novanissimus." But the Chantey's last words: "Destroyed? His road is run? It's but a bend of it; / Make no mistake, this only seems the end of it."

Key Events

The Return: Roadstrum arrives alone, twenty years after departure, "broke and bewhiskered and tired to the marrow of his bones."

The Transparent Bank Teller: A new kind of person—"the newest thing in people." Penny's withdrawals have nearly exhausted his account.

Tele-Max: Still a little boy after twenty years—"a runt." Knows his father only from pictures. "You have become a legend... There is nothing older than yesterday's legends."

The Hellish Racket: Penny and the suitors play the same song for twenty years. Five hundred tapes worn out. The trees died; these are artificial.

Margaret's New Roles: She's "trying on roles"—Charisse, Chiara, Melisand. "Everything has become very arty on World."

Trochanter Survives: Shorter now (lost half a meter on Hellpepper Planet), addled, but ready to go again "anytime you want."

Clamdigger's Junk Hornet: He bought a shell with his last Chancel. "It hasn't any drive in it, it won't go at all."

Hondstarfer on World: Traveled back in time to become an old-time railroad hobo (the other hoboes rejected him—"They said I was a railroad bull"). Now a design engineer, still using stone hammers for real work.

The Suitor-Slaughter: "Then he went in and killed the suitors. It seemed to be what was expected of him. It was fun while it lasted."

Roadstrum's Eye: He now carries one eye in his pocket, consults it for wisdom. The eye "closes in disgust" at talk of peace.

The Rejection of Peace: "Peace be not the end of my epic! An epic has already failed if it have an ending."

The Final Departure: Hondstarfer fixes the hornet. The crew assembles. They go away once more.

The Seeming Death: The final verses report Roadstrum's ship becoming a "novanissimus"—but "this only seems the end of it."

Characters Developed

Roadstrum: "Become the essential onion, pungent and powerful." Now has one eye in his head, one in his pocket. Rejects peace as unbearable.

Penny: Has spent twenty years with suitors, playing the same terrible song, making "fabulous withdrawals." Babbles about dead suitors' psychological profiles.

Tele-Max: Still small after twenty years. Knows the story of the arrow through twelve holes. "What is an arrow, Papa?"

Margaret: Trying on arty roles, dismissing space-aces as passé. But ready to go again if Roadstrum calls.

Trochanter: Burned half a meter off his legs on Hellpepper Planet. Addled in his wits, talks to dead crewmen. Still "the crewman without peer."

Hondstarfer: The mechanically-inclined giant's boy from Lamos. Traveled through time, became an engineer, still uses stone hammers. "Seminal genius."

Homeric Parallels

The chapter draws on Odyssey XIII–XXIV: Odysseus's return to Ithaca, his reunion with Telemachus, the slaughter of the suitors, and the restoration of peace. In Homer, the suitors are punished for their arrogance, Penelope is reunited with her husband, and the epic ends with peace restored (though it takes Athena's intervention to prevent civil war).

Lafferty inverts the ending utterly. The suitor-slaughter happens in a single dismissive sentence: "It seemed to be what was expected of him. It was fun while it lasted." The reunion with Penny is a disaster—she talks endlessly of her dead suitors' psychological quirks. And peace, the reward Odysseus sought for twenty years, is the very thing Roadstrum cannot endure.

"An epic has already failed if it have an ending." Lafferty refuses Homer's closure, sending Roadstrum out again.

Notable Passages

Tele-Max on his father's obsolescence.

The suitor-slaughter reduced to a single casual sentence.

Roadstrum's conversation with his detached eye.

The rejection of peace.

Roadstrum's refusal of closure.

The call to further adventure.

The Chantey's final words—the epic that refuses to conclude.

Thematic Notes

The Essential Onion: Roadstrum has shed all his outer layers through the journey. What remains is "pungent and powerful and of an immediacy that sometimes brought him close to tears." The onion metaphor introduced in Chapter I reaches its conclusion—but the essential self proves unable to accept rest.

Peace as Death: "To come to the end of a journey is to die." For Roadstrum, peace is not reward but extinction. The word itself triggers his revolt. Margaret foreshadowed this in Chapter III: "Peace is a fine word for the mob, but it will gag the one man in a million."

The Failed Homecoming: Everything Odysseus sought—home, wife, son, honor—Roadstrum has and finds unbearable. Penny is tedious, Tele-Max is stunted, World has become "arty," the neighbors are gone, the trees are artificial. Home is no longer home.

The Eternal Epic: "An epic has already failed if it have an ending." Lafferty makes explicit what the novel has demonstrated: this is not a story with a conclusion but a pattern that repeats. The final verses suggest death—and immediately deny it.

Technical Notes

The Transparent People: A new kind of human—"soon there will be none produced in the old manner." Their legal status is "presently under litigation."

Roadstrum's Eye: Somewhere along the way, Roadstrum lost an eye. He now carries it in his pocket and consults it. The eye can wink, close in disgust, and "come alive."

The Junk Hornet: Clamdigger's shell, bought for his last Chancel. Hondstarfer can make it fly "in about an hour" with stone hammers.

Captains & Core Crew

The salt of the skies—the one out of ten who had determinedly stayed alive through the whole war.

"These men were the salt of the skies, the one out of ten who had determinedly stayed alive through the whole war, very often hurt, absolutely refusing to be killed. Never had there been so many great fine men assembled. They were the tall ones."

The Captains

Captain Roadstrum

Also called: Great Road-Storm, Alley-Sally (in retold legends), Roadsty (by Penny)

Home: Big Tulsa, Capital of World

Family: Wife Penny, son Tele-Max

Homeric parallel: Odysseus

"As plain a man as ever lived"—and yet the protagonist of the epic, "one man in a million" capable of rousing himself from any enchantment at the last possible moment. Commander of the lead hornet and natural leader of all the crews, though "it was sometimes wondered why."

Physical description: Large and powerful. After the journey: one eye in his head, one in his pocket (consulted as a companion). Lost his original tongue on Lamos; made himself a forked replacement, becoming "as polished and pleasant a liar as you would ever want to meet."

The Heroes' Disease: An infection caught during the war that produces "heroic fever" every third day at sundown, compelling him to rash and valorous acts.

The Onion Self: Throughout the journey, Roadstrum sheds layers of himself "like a yearly snake." Chapter I: "Young Soldier the First Time." Chapter II: "One gives up giantizing most regretfully." Chapter VI: "came down near the tough essential hide of him." By Chapter VIII, he has "sloughed off all the outer layers" and become "the essential onion, pungent and powerful."

Key moments:

• Rouses himself from Lotophage at the last possible moment (Ch. I)
• Dies in aerial combat with Bjorn, reborn in Valhalla (Ch. II)
• Pushes the Dong button to reverse time (Ch. III)
• Wins and loses a thousand worlds gambling (Ch. IV)
• Maintains reality for Atlas for six months (Ch. IV)
• Climbs into the Siren-Zo and kills it from within (Ch. IV)
• Leads the revolt against Aeaea's toy-animal transformation (Ch. VI)
• Leads the first-ever breakout from Hell (Ch. VII)
• Kills over a hundred suitors in a single sentence (Ch. VIII)
• Rejects peace and departs again (Ch. VIII)

Final fate: Departs World with a new crew. The final verses report his ship became a "novanissimus" beyond Di Carissimus—but "this only seems the end of it."

Captain Puckett

Home: World

Homeric parallel: None direct; perhaps Odysseus's most trusted companions

Roadstrum's fellow captain, commander of the second hornet. Suggests the Lotophage detour in Chapter I. A powerful wrestler—his match with Atlas made the stars dim. "A strategic man" where Roadstrum is not; "a raconting man" who tells the pregnancy lie at the High Liars Club.

Animal form (Ch. VI): Raccoon—"What other animal but a coon would he look like?"

Key moments:

• Proposes the Lotophage detour (Ch. I)
• Nearly defeats Atlas in wrestling—"the stars in the sky dimmed" (Ch. IV)
• Commands the tactical assault on the Siren-Zo (Ch. IV)
• Tells the Demetrio Four pregnancy tale at the High Liars Club (Ch. VII)
• Explores Hell and reports: "This isn't the Hell I believed in" (Ch. VII)

Final fate: Returns to World; not explicitly mentioned in Chapter VIII reunion.

Captains Dempster, Silkey, and Kitterman

The other three hornet captains who join Roadstrum and Puckett on the Lotophage detour. Mentioned only in Chapter I. Silkey "knew how to put the needle" into Dempster when votes were taken. Their subsequent fates are not recorded—whether they died on Lotophage, on later adventures, or survived to World.

The Nameless Captain

Homeric parallel: The "craven" crew members who want only to go home

The sixth hornet captain who refuses the Lotophage detour and takes his crew directly home. "He shall be nameless, he shall be nameless forever." Lafferty's judgment: choosing safety over adventure erases one from the heroic record entirely.

The Crewmen

Crewman Birdsong

"One of the ugliest men in the crews." Sent to the dungeon on Lotophage for ugliness, released when even uglier men arrive. On Lamos, throws himself into combat "with a happy howling heart" and transforms into a giant. Remains on Lamos with the Laestrygonians. One of the few crewmen to find a permanent home.

Crewman Fairfeather

Fellow ugly to Birdsong. Shares his dungeon sentence on Lotophage and his transformation to gianthood on Lamos. Remains among the Laestrygonians.

Crewman Bramble

"The smartest of them"—the nearest thing to an intelligent man in the party. Makes the dies for numbering the space-cattle. Reads music scores without needing to hear the sound. Invents the Mumuckey mustard solution for landing on Yellow Dog. Identifies the sherlocker tracking them.

Animal form (Ch. VI): Fox—"always too much of a fox to be taken and eaten."

Death and survival: Listed among those eaten by the Polyphemians (Ch. V), but reappears in Chapter VI. "The trick by which he evaded it will not be given here."

Crewman Trochanter

"The crewman without peer." A powerful country-style wrestler who challenges Atlas and is thrown soundly. One of the three tall crewmen who become great stags on Aeaea.

Animal form (Ch. VI): Great horny stag—"learned to balance with all four feet on [Aeaea's] shoulders."

Final fate: Survives to Chapter VIII, though "addled in his wits" and shorter—"burned the bottom half-meter of my feet and legs off on Hellpepper Planet." Still ready to go again: "Anytime you want to go again, I'll be here."

Crewman Clamdigger

One of the tall crewmen. Challenges Atlas to wrestling. Suggests the wax-in-ears joke about the Sirens. One of the three great stags on Aeaea.

Animal form (Ch. VI): Great stag

Final fate: Survives. "Bought the shell of a junk hornet with his last Chancel. It hasn't any drive in it, it won't go at all, it's not worth a thing, but he lives in it and broods." Hondstarfer can fix it in an hour.

Crewman Threefountains

Third of the tall crewmen who become stags. Identifies the cattle stampede: "We spooked them, Captain Roadstrum. Some of these breeds spook easy."

Animal form (Ch. VI): Great stag

Crewman Oldfellow

Ironic name—"They called me Oldfellow because I was the youngest man in the crews." First to notice the space-cattle have eyes "like a buffalo calf." Becomes genuinely ancient during the aging curse (Ch. III) but is restored by the Dong button. Eaten by the Polyphemians (Ch. V).

Crewman Crabgrass

One of the men who ropes the sacred calf-rock. Eaten by the Polyphemians (Ch. V). Trochanter still talks to him in Chapter VIII, though "he's dead."

Crewman Di Prima

"Always the fattest of them." First taken by the Polyphemians—"He went with a joke on his lips about his name and he being the first of them taken." Margaret ate him at the banquet and found him delicious.

Crewman Humphrey

"Humphrey had always looked funny." First to notice Puckett's transformation on Aeaea.

Animal form (Ch. VI): Camel—"That's enough to make anyone look funny."

Crewman Eseldon

Animal form (Ch. VI): Ass—"He had always been one, but now he was one physically." The only animal to remain with Aeaea after the revolt: "An ass is all she deserved."

Crewman Nonvalevole

"The most useless man." First to climb to the Siren-Zo and be electrocuted—"twelve thousand amps, nine million volts." Brushed from the siren's lap as ashes.

Crewman Stumble

"The next most worthless man." Second to climb the Siren-Zo, trailing a ground wire. Also electrocuted. "I am not worthless to me."

Crewman Starkhead

Refuses to eat any of the Polyphemians' food. Dies of starvation in the dungeon. "One never admits that a hornet-man is dead, it is against the code, but they buried him there."

Crewman Burpy

"Ate to excess." Grows so fat in the Polyphemian dungeon that he cannot stand. Too placid to interest the Polyphemians as food—"they had such sheep of their own." Left behind, too heavy to escape.

Other Crewmen

The novel mentions numerous other crewmen, many only in passing or at their deaths:

• Fracas, Snow, Bangtree, Lawrence: Eaten by the Polyphemians
• Septimus: Becomes a rabbit on Aeaea (cleft lip, pink eyes)
• Swinnert: Becomes a hog on Aeaea—"a good solid hog"
• Ursley: Becomes a bear on Aeaea
• Kolonymous, Boniface, Mundmark, Burpy, Fracas, Snow: Thrown by Atlas in wrestling
• Eseldon, Septimus, Swinnery, Ursley: Also thrown by Atlas
• Cutshark: Died in the maw of the Siren-Zo; Trochanter still talks to him

Crew Statistics

Starting complement: Six hornet crews (number unspecified, but substantial)

After Lotophage: "Perhaps forty men" escape in two hornets; the rest "have already been eaten"

After Lamos: Birdsong and Fairfeather remain as giants; all others lose their tongues

After Polyphemia: Reduced to one hornet's worth—Di Prima, Fracas, Snow, Bramble, Crabgrass, Bangtree, Oldfellow, Lawrence eaten; Starkhead dead; Burpy abandoned

Survivors to World: Roadstrum, Trochanter, Clamdigger confirmed; Margaret and others implied

Companions

Those who joined the journey—houris, hobos, and giants' sons.

Margaret the Houri

Also called: Maggy, Charisse, Chiara, Melisand (roles she tries on)

Origin: Lotophage (trapped there "for several thousand years")

Nature: Houri—a being not quite human. The communicator reads her tongue as false though it was never cut.

Homeric parallel: Elements of Circe (as helper), Calypso (as immortal companion), and the Sirens

Margaret has waited on Lotophage "for several thousand years" for a man able to leave. "I used to have a lot of fun on World." When Roadstrum proves himself "one man in a million," she joins the crew—the only being to escape Lotophage with them.

Character: Openly faithless ("But of course I am faithless, great Roadstrum. It is our nature to be"). Consorts with the Polyphemians while the men are imprisoned, attends their banquets, eats Crewman Di Prima and finds him delicious. Yet Roadstrum's forked tongue can persuade her to spy for them.

Powers:

• Speaks Old Norse to the Laestrygonians
• Unaffected by the aging curse of the sacred cattle—bakes Roadstrum a birthday cake while he reaches one hundred
• Transforms into a "brindled wildcat" to fight Atlas, getting "a good piece" of his throat
• On Aeaea, grows from alley cat to bobcat to leopard to tigress by subjective belief
• Takes Aeaea's face off with "a final sweep of her tigress claws"

Animal form (Ch. VI): Alley cat—"that was her true form." Aeaea's "first mistake" was transforming Margaret into what she already was.

Key moments:

• Warns Roadstrum with the lobster parable on Lotophage (Ch. I)
• Demands "one hour for the women" on Lamos, smashing the sundial (Ch. II)
• Uses the word "peace" to rouse Roadstrum from death-sleep during the aging curse (Ch. III)
• Eats Di Prima at the Polyphemian banquet (Ch. V)
• May have eaten "a little bit" of Esolog-9-Ex despite warnings (Ch. V)
• Leads the assault on Aeaea: "I'll shred that lark; I'll shred her yet" (Ch. VI)

Final fate: Returns to World, tries on "arty" roles. Dismisses Roadstrum: "You are a space-ace. Don't you know that they're dead?" But when he calls, she drops the act: "If you really want to go again, I'll forget the Charisse and Chiara and Melisand bit and go along."

Deep John the Vagabond

Full name: John Profundus Vagabundus

Origin: Unknown—has been wandering "for thousands of years"

Nature: "The original old-time hobo"

Homeric parallel: Perhaps the wandering spirit of Odysseus himself—or no parallel at all

Deep John is ancient beyond measure, wandering for millennia, unable to find his way home. Sings "Show Me The Way To Go Home." Joins the crew on Lotophage.

The Civil Tongue: Deep John is the only crewman to escape the Laestrygonians' tongue-cutting. "I was the only one able to keep a civil tongue in my head." His communicator does not warn "False tongue" when he speaks.

Animal form (Ch. VI): Polecat—"I always did like folks to treat me with a certain decent reserve."

Key moments:

• Identifies the stampede: "The name of it is stampede" (Ch. III)
• Dies of old age during the aging curse, restored by the Dong button (Ch. III)
• Uses "the double caboose" hold against Atlas, nearly winning (Ch. IV)
• Asserts that "a Polyphemian pokey is much like a pokey anywhere"—he's been in more than all of them together (Ch. V)

Final fate: Not explicitly mentioned in Chapter VIII; presumably survives.

Hondstarfer

Origin: Lamos (son of the giant Bjorn)

Nature: Laestrygonian giant's child—"a meter taller than Roadstrum" but still called Bjorn's "little boy"

Homeric parallel: None—a Lafferty original

"Mechanically inclined." Repairs both hornets on Lamos using stone hammers—one of them with buckskin for "the fine work." Removes the main drives entirely ("I couldn't see any use for a lot of that stuff"). Predicts correctly: one hornet will work perfectly; one will break down later.

The Dong Button: Installs this time-reversal device during his repairs. Its use saves the crew from the aging curse in Chapter III.

Journey to World: Travels via time machine to become "an old-time railroad hobo." The other hoboes rejected him: "They said I was a railroad bull."

On World: Now a "design engineer" for a company with unpronounceable initials (IRSQEVWRKILOPNIXTUR...). Called a "seminal genius" with "the most sophisticated tools ever devised." But the real work happens at night: "Put away those damned sophisticated tools and get out my stone hammers. That's when I build the good stuff."

Key moments:

• Explains the "supreme scientific law": "Like charges repel" (Ch. II)
• Repairs the hornets with stone hammers (Ch. II)
• Installs the Dong button (Ch. II)
• Grabs Roadstrum by the hair and pulls him through a second-story window (Ch. VIII)
• Can fix Clamdigger's junk hornet "in about an hour" (Ch. VIII)

Final fate: Joins Roadstrum's final crew. "The lights turned on in dim-witted crewmen... A hammer-handling kid was already at work on the junk hornet."

Esolog-9-Ex

Nature: "Build-it-yourself pseudanthropus kit"—an automaton assembled from parts each crewman carried

Homeric parallel: The "Nobody" trick inverted—a false identity that destroys rather than saves

Not truly a companion but a tool—assembled in emergencies. Previous incarnations: cardshark, hillbilly, peddler, "crackpot general" (whose asinine orders killed over ten thousand men—"excessive, but it was funny"), and ruler of Bandicoot (where he still rules today).

In the Polyphemian dungeon: Assembled as the fattest, most rampant man possible—irresistible to the cannibals. Built with a "dialagogue that tantalized the men, that set up such a flow of juice in them all that they almost drowned in their own slaver." But booby-trapped: to eat him is to suffer "the swelling death, the exploding death."

Final function: Eaten by the Polyphemians and their visiting cousins at a great banquet. They swell "to a thousand times" their size and explode, destroying themselves and freeing the surviving crewmen.

Atlas

Location: Kentron-Kosmon, "the exact center of the universe"

Nature: The perceiver who maintains reality

Homeric parallel: Atlas (mentioned in Odyssey I.52–54 as Calypso's father)

Not a traveling companion but a crucial encounter. Sits in a booth surrounded by telescopes and instruments, maintaining all existence by perceiving it. "Nothing exists—unless it is perceived. If perception fails for a moment, then that thing fails forever."

Philosophy: Based on Berkeley's idealism, but Atlas does the actual work. Berkeley "gave it a philosophical basis" but "talked his way out of" shouldering the responsibility after a year.

The consequences of inattention: "On several of the worlds there are beautiful roses that have no odor. It is because I forgot to smell them for one brief instant." Bobtailed animals exist because he "forgot to think of the ends of their tails."

Interaction with Roadstrum: Lets Roadstrum win their wrestling match in exchange for minding the booth while he "goes to the john." Roadstrum maintains reality for six equivalent months before Atlas returns.

Key line: "They say that I bear it all on my shoulders, as though I were a stud or a balk. It is not my great shoulders, it is the amazing head on my great shoulders that maintains it all."

Antagonists & Peoples

The giants, witches, monsters, and strange peoples encountered.

The Lotophagians

World: Lotophage

Homeric parallel: The Lotus Eaters (Odyssey IX.82–104)

The inhabitants of the pleasure planet process visitors into "Ecstasy Chips"—psychic residue rendered from men who have "spread themselves" too thin in pursuit of pleasure. "Lazy Man Ecstasy Chips" have a particularly fine flavor. Those too ugly for pleasures (like Birdsong and Fairfeather) are thrown into dungeons instead.

Unlike Homer's passive lotus plant, the Lotophagians actively cultivate and harvest their visitors. The planet itself exists only in perpetual afternoon; it is impossible to approach from the morning side.

The Laestrygonians

World: Lamos

Homeric parallel: The Laestrygonians (Odyssey X.80–132), merged with Norse Valhalla

Language: "Something between Old Norse and Icelandic"

Giants on a high-gravity primitive world—"Groll's Trolls." They speak an ancient Norse tongue, feast on whole roasted bulls, and fight to the death before every sundown. But this is Valhalla: heroes who die in battle are reborn each morning to fight again.

Technology: Stone slabs that fly on the "static-repulsion principle"—steered by rubbing felt-booted feet on them. A captured "little sun" (asteroid) serves as interior light and cooking fire, responding to voice commands.

The tongue-cutting: No visitor may leave without paying the price: every tongue cut out "roots and all." The giants collect tongues as souvenirs, ensuring no one can tell how much fun Valhalla is.

Bjorn

Leader of the Laestrygonians. "A voice that sounded as though he had great boulders grinding around in his gizzard." Fights Roadstrum in the climactic aerial duel on flying stone slabs; both die transfixed on each other's spears. Laughs as he dies. Father of Hondstarfer.

The Laestrygonian Women

"Dame elephants rather"—large, almost shapeless, "smiling and mysterious and ineffably wild." Attractive to Birdsong and Fairfeather, who become giants and remain with them.

The Space-Cattle

Location: The Wandering Rocks (asteroid belt)

Homeric parallel: The Cattle of the Sun (Odyssey XII.127–141) merged with the Wandering Rocks (Odyssey XII.55–72)

Asteroids that are actually sacred cattle in disguise. Gray, rounded, "about the size of hornets," with eyes "like a buffalo calf" that disappear when looked at directly. They multiply when unobserved and can stampede through space. Killing and eating one brings the aging curse—rapid senescence under a black sun. Only the Dong button can reverse the sacrilege.

The Polyphemians

World: Polyphemia

Ruler: The Cacique

Homeric parallel: Polyphemus the Cyclops (Odyssey IX.105–542), inverted

Not one-eyed monsters but handsome, golden giants—a race of beautiful cannibals. They have reduced men to "sheep" through bureaucratic classification: the Gazetteer lists the world as pastoral, so the sheep-men (with their human eyes and human hands beneath the wool) are legally livestock.

The Cacique: Ruler of Polyphemia. Taunts the imprisoned crewmen: "Rage, and grow fat in your rage... In our own way we love you, and we'll waste not a gout of you."

Method: Visitors are trapped in chairs at a welcoming banquet, dragged to a dungeon, fed rank food and habit-forming mushrooms that compel them to eat and rage. The fattened crewmen are taken one by one for banquets. They prefer "rampant" meat to placid sheep.

Destruction: When they eat Esolog-9-Ex, the booby-trapped pseudanthropus, they swell to a thousand times their size and explode.

The Siren-Zo

World: Sireneca

Homeric parallel: The Sirens (Odyssey XII.36–54, 153–200)

"Either a creature or a musical mountain or a manifestation or a group of very peculiar folks." A single entity that appears as a singing mountain with golden-haired women on its outcroppings. The women are "tentacles of the thing."

The incomplete song: A wonderful tune that rises to its climax and then—nothing. The missing note drives men mad. The ocean waves follow the same incomplete harmonic.

Defense: Electric death. Any who approach the women from outside are electrocuted: "twelve thousand amps, nine million volts, a little over one million cycles." The blonde sirens are "electric chairs in the form of beautiful women."

Interior: A giant spider-form inside the mountain, singing "Da luan, da mort" (the Irish treadmill song—Monday and Tuesday, over and over). Web-threads thick as hawsers. A glowing interior eye—the mortal center.

Destruction: The men dive underwater, surface in a black cavity, climb through the maw, and reach the eye. They dive into it, "rending and killing." In its death agony, the creature sounds the missing note. "It was worth it. It was fulfillment."

Aeaea

World: Aeaea (identical with herself)

Homeric parallel: Circe (Odyssey X.133–574)

The singing witch who is her own planet—"the lady who (according to silly myth) is identical with the planet and who sang the planet into being." She "hangs it anywhere" in illusion space, not keeping a regular location.

Philosophy: Total subjectivity. "There is no difference between appearing and being, so long as we keep matter subjective." She transforms men into animals by making them see themselves as animals.

The transformations: Each man becomes an animal reflecting his nature: Puckett a raccoon, Humphrey a camel, Eseldon an ass, Deep John a polecat, Bramble a fox, Roadstrum a small ape. The three tall crewmen become stags. Margaret becomes an alley cat—"her true form."

Her error: She makes them toy animals, not knowing real animals. "She leaves you with the powers of human speech, for an instance, and that is rare in animals." When the men become real animals—bestial, murderous—her control fails.

Death: The "Songstress Murder." Margaret, grown to tigress size, leads the attack. Aeaea is "torn open in throat and breast... rent apart... ground down... trampled and stomped... defaced." Her ghost insists she is unhurt, philosophically consistent to the end: "I see myself as unhurt... Therefore I am unhurt even though, as it happens, I have just died horribly." But she fades, and her world fades with her.

Hell's Administration

World: Hellpepper Planet

Homeric parallel: The Underworld (Odyssey XI)

Tiresias (Blinky)

"The blind Theban prophet"—actually weak-eyed, wearing blue glasses. His underlings call him Blinky. Sentences the men for the Songstress Murder: "I assure you all that a shudder ran through Hell itself here at the news of your crime."

Presides over an inadequate Hell: "not a hundred meters across," overcrowded with millions, tortures "repetitious" and without imagination. Uses high-frequency cookers instead of flames, miniaturization to handle overcrowding. "This petty place cannot be Hell? Ah, but it is, my friend. That, you see, is the hell of it."

Minor Antagonists

The Men's Room Attendant

Location: Roulettenwelt

A "crafty attendant" who challenges Roadstrum to double-or-nothing while Roadstrum has left the Dong button in the hornet. Wins Roadstrum's thousand worlds plus twenty-four more. "He is High Emperor and he administers his worlds competently." Roadstrum still owes him titles at the end.

The Great Gamblers

Location: Roulettenwelt

"The gentry of the broken thumbs"—all have had their thumbs broken multiple times for cheating:

• Johnny Greeneyes: Can see invisible card markings with his "odd optics"
• Pyotr Igrokovitch: Has "the hole in his head"—shot himself through it after early losses, leaving a permanent passage
• Sammy the Snake: Holds cards in his mouth with his forked tongue. Cousin of Horace
• The Asteroid Midas: "A big-beaked bird of a gambler" with card-manipulating talons
• Willy Wuerfelsohn Jr.: Son of the gambler who died of starvation during a nineteen-day session

The Sherlocker

Location: Yellow Dog / High Liars Club

A "sky-dick, a snuffling hound"—a biological tracking creature. The pipe and deerstalker hat are "parts of the thing," not accessories. Tracks the men for the Songstress Murder. "He blew the blast"—and three hundred coppers arrest the crew. The Club slits his throat afterward, but too late.

Horace the Snake

Location: High Liars Club

Cousin of Sammy the Snake. Former center fielder for the All-Star All Stars in "Thousand-Foot Baseball"—where bases are half a mile apart and hundred-foot players stretch themselves thin to steal bases. Tells the tale of Horse-Hoof Harry, who tromped on his tail. "It was the last tail he ever tromped on."

Worlds

From Lotophage to World—a gazetteer of planets visited.

World (Earth)

Also called: Earth, Home

Capital: Big Tulsa

Homeric parallel: Ithaca

Chapters: I (departure), VIII (return)

Home planet of Roadstrum, Puckett, and the hornet crews. The departure point and destination of the epic. By the time of Roadstrum's return (twenty years later), World has become "very arty"—transparent people work in banks, artificial trees replace dead ones, and "the swish boys are all the thing again."

Notable locations:

• Big Tulsa: Capital of World. Roadstrum's home city.
• The Plugged Nickel Bar: "One place where all the important persons of World come at least once a day." Single narrow door.
• The MURFWQENERETC Building: Where Hondstarfer works as a design engineer.

Lotophage

Homeric parallel: Land of the Lotus Eaters (Odyssey IX.82–104)

Chapter: I

The pleasure planet—"beautiful at planetfall, subdued gold, afternoon color." It is impossible to approach from the morning side; the planet exists in perpetual afternoon. Every pleasure is available, every desire anticipated.

The trap: Visitors sink into narcotic bliss while the Lotophagians process earlier arrivals into "Ecstasy Chips"—psychic residue rendered from men who have "spread themselves" too thin. Those too ugly for pleasures are thrown into dungeons.

Notable locations:

• The Sleepy Sailor: Tavern where the men sink into pleasure. Roadstrum has a plaque made: "Great Roadstrum loused around here."
• The Dungeon: Where Birdsong and Fairfeather are imprisoned for ugliness.

Crew losses: Most of the original crews—"perhaps forty men" escape; the rest "have already been eaten."

Lamos

Also called: Valhal, Valhalla

Inhabitants: Laestrygonians ("Groll's Trolls")

Homeric parallel: Laestrygonia (Odyssey X.80–132) merged with Norse Valhalla

Chapter: II

A high-gravity primitive world of pure flint, dry and metal-free. The Laestrygonian giants speak Old Norse/Icelandic. Stone slabs fly on the "static-repulsion principle." A captured asteroid serves as the "little sun" for light and cooking.

The Valhalla cycle: Heroes fight to the death before every sundown and are reborn each morning. "The big breakfast" of whole roast bulls, then "the big fight." Those who throw themselves in wholeheartedly become giants; those with mental reservations remain human-sized.

The price of departure: Every tongue cut out "roots and all." The giants collect tongues as souvenirs.

Crew changes: Birdsong and Fairfeather remain as giants. All others lose their tongues.

The Wandering Rocks

Also called: The Clashing Rocks

Nature: Asteroid belt / Sacred cattle of the sun

Homeric parallel: Wandering Rocks (Odyssey XII.55–72) + Cattle of Helios (Odyssey XII.127–141)

Chapter: III

A thick asteroid belt—gray, rounded rocks "about the size of hornets," moving at respectable speed. They have eyes "like a buffalo calf" that disappear when looked at directly. They multiply when unobserved and can stampede.

The fork: Two exits—Dobie's Hole (safe) or the Vortex (deadly). The men take the Vortex.

The sacrilege: Roping and eating a calf-rock brings the aging curse—rapid senescence under a black sun. Only the Dong button can reverse it.

Crew losses: Deep John dies of old age (restored by Dong button). Roadstrum reaches 120 years old before reversal.

Roulettenwelt

Nature: The gamblers' world

Homeric parallel: None (Lafferty original)

Chapter: IV

A world where the greatest gamblers in the universe play for the highest stakes. Roadstrum uses the Dong button to replay hands until he wins, becoming "High Emperor Roadstrum" with a thousand worlds. Then he visits the men's room, leaving the button behind, and loses everything to a crafty attendant.

Notable gamblers: Johnny Greeneyes, Pyotr Igrokovitch, Sammy the Snake, the Asteroid Midas, Willy Wuerfelsohn Jr.—all with broken thumbs from cheating.

The men's room attendant: Wins Roadstrum's thousand worlds plus twenty-four more. "He is High Emperor and he administers his worlds competently."

Kentron-Kosmon

Location: "The exact center of the universe" (according to its own plaque)

Nature: Carnival world where it is always Saturday night

Homeric parallel: None directly; Atlas mentioned in Odyssey I.52–54

Chapter: IV

A tiny world at the center of everything, in perpetual festival. Here Atlas sits in his booth surrounded by telescopes and instruments, maintaining all reality by perceiving it.

The static-repulsion principle: Stone slabs fly here too. "Like charges repel"—the supreme scientific law.

Events: The crew wrestles Atlas. Roadstrum wins (Atlas lets him) and minds the booth for six equivalent months while Atlas "goes to the john."

Nine Worlds

Nature: Conquered territories

Homeric parallel: None

Chapter: IV (mentioned)

"Pleasant easy business"—the hornet men take over Nine Worlds through conspiracy, war, and revolution. Roadstrum gives one world to Crewman Snow ("a grasping greedy man") and sends the titles to the other eight to the men's-room attendant on Roulettenwelt, reducing his debt.

Sireneca

Inhabitants: The Siren-Zo

Homeric parallel: The Sirens (Odyssey XII.36–54, 153–200)

Chapter: IV

Mostly ocean—"mean ocean with steely choppy waves following a strange harmonic." The waves have no free flow, no real crest, no tide; their tune is incomplete. One small continent or island holds the Siren-Zo—a singing mountain-creature with golden-haired women (actually tentacles) on its outcroppings.

The incomplete song: A wonderful tune that rises to its climax and—nothing. The missing note drives men mad.

The interior: A giant spider-form singing "Da luan, da mort" (the Irish treadmill song). Web-threads thick as hawsers. A glowing interior eye.

Crew losses: Crewman Nonvalevole, Crewman Stumble, and others electrocuted. Crewman Cutshark dies in the maw.

Polyphemia

Inhabitants: The Polyphemians (ruled by the Cacique)

Gazetteer listing: "Pastoral, given over almost entirely to the raising of sheep"

Homeric parallel: Polyphemus's cave (Odyssey IX.105–542)

Chapter: V

A world of beautiful cannibal giants who have reduced men to "sheep" through bureaucratic classification. The sheep-men have human eyes and human hands beneath their wool, but the Gazetteer says they are sheep, so sheep they are.

The dungeon: Prisoners are fed rank leeks, ramps, and habit-forming mushrooms that compel them to eat and rage. "Rage, and grow fat in your rage."

Crew losses: Di Prima, Fracas, Snow, Bramble (apparent), Crabgrass, Bangtree, Oldfellow, Lawrence eaten. Starkhead dies of starvation. Burpy abandoned (too fat to move).

Aeaea

Nature: A world identical with its creator—the singing witch Aeaea

Location: Illusion space—"She hangs it anywhere"

Homeric parallel: Aeaea, island of Circe (Odyssey X.133–574)

Chapter: VI

A gold-and-green world "too arty to be real," floating in illusion space where solid objects may be phantoms. Aeaea "hadn't made her world very thoroughly"—the surface is full of nothing-holes that solidify as observed.

Subjective reality: "There is no difference between appearing and being, so long as we keep matter subjective." Men become animals by seeing themselves as animals.

Destruction: When Aeaea dies, her world dies with her. "Get off this thing while there's still something left to get off!"

Aftermath: The "murder howl" goes out. The crew become outlaws.

Yellow Dog

Capital: Guimbarde Town

Status: "Has lost its world license, is now a proscribed world"

Homeric parallel: None

Chapter: VII

A proscribed world "inhabited mostly by shiftless and shifty persons." The sky is infested by Megagaster birds that can swallow any craft. The thousand-story wooden buildings of Guimbarde Town lean together and occasionally collapse; the stairways are missing stories; cliff-dweller Indians in the mid-sixties drink from skulls.

Notable locations:

• The High Liars Club (Club Menitros): "The most exclusive club in the world, in all the worlds." A hundred-plus stories up in a ramshackle building. Each topper must be topped; failure means death.

Hellpepper Planet

Nature: Hell itself

Ruler: Tiresias (Blinky)

Homeric parallel: The Underworld (Odyssey XI)

Chapter: VII

Hell—but inadequate. "Not a hundred meters across." Overcrowded with millions, tortures "repetitious" and without imagination. High-frequency cookers instead of flames. Miniaturization to handle the population.

The breakout: "Nobody will ever miniaturize me!" Roadstrum leads the first-ever escape from Hell. They emerge into "the boiling swamps a little to the south of Hell."

Worlds Mentioned but Not Visited

• Mars: Roadstrum claims to have walked home from there (probably untrue).
• Demetrio Four: Setting of Puckett's tall tale—may not exist ("there isn't any Demetrio Four").
• Bandicoot: Where Esolog-9-Ex was assembled into a ruler and still rules today.
• Womboggle World: Has electric chairs in the form of beautiful women "so the condemned can die happy."
• Camiroi: Has a Natural Arts Museum with fine work.
• Di Carissimus: Beyond this orb, Roadstrum's ship reportedly becomes a "novanissimus."

Vessels & Technology

Hornets, the Dong button, false tongues, and other marvels.

Vessels

Hornets

The standard spacecraft of the hornet crews—war vessels from the ten-year conflict. Six hornet captains muster out after the war; five (minus the Nameless One) take their craft to Lotophage.

Capacity: Unspecified, but substantial. After Lotophage, "perhaps forty men" escape in two hornets.

Attrition:

• Three hornets apparently lost on Lotophage (crews eaten)
• Two hornets escape Lotophage
• One hornet (Puckett's) breaks down after Polyphemia, as Hondstarfer predicted
• One hornet survives to World

Hondstarfer's repairs: On Lamos, the giant's boy fixes both hornets with stone hammers—one has buckskin for "the fine work." He removes the main drives ("I couldn't see any use for a lot of that stuff") but claims they will fly. His prediction: one works perfectly, one breaks down later.

Clamdigger's junk hornet: In Chapter VIII, Crewman Clamdigger has "bought the shell of a junk hornet with his last Chancel. It hasn't any drive in it, it won't go at all." Hondstarfer can fix it "in about an hour" with stone hammers.

Flying Stone Slabs

Location: Lamos, Kentron-Kosmon

Principle: "Static-repulsion"—"Like charges repel"

The Laestrygonians' transportation on their dry, metal-free, pure flint world. Slabs fly by repelling the planet's surface. Steered by rubbing felt-booted feet on them. Roadstrum and Bjorn fight their final duel on flying slabs.

Hondstarfer explains: "Shall I tell you the supreme scientific law of the universes?... It is all scientific laws crushed into one. Like charges repel. Think about it."

Devices

The Dong Button

Creator: Hondstarfer (installed during Lamos repairs)

Function: Reverses time

Instruction plate: "Wrong prong, bong gong"

When activated, the Dong button reverses time by coupling with "something in the black sun." The equivalent-day recorder runs backwards. The men retain memory of the reversed events, but the universe does not.

Uses:

• Sacred cattle curse (Ch. III): Reverses the aging caused by eating the sun's cattle. The men regurgitate the meat ("certain bodily functions are unusual and almost unpleasant when done in reverse"), reassemble the calf, and exit through Dobie's Hole instead of the Vortex.
• Gambling (Ch. IV): Roadstrum replays hands until he wins—sometimes fifty times against Johnny Greeneyes. Becomes High Emperor with a thousand worlds.

Limitation: Only works when Roadstrum has it. Left in the hornet during a bathroom visit on Roulettenwelt, it cannot save him from the men's-room attendant.

The Communicator (False Tongue Sensor)

Standard communication equipment with a "False Tongue" sensor built in from the beginning—"guard against space things that may counterfeit the human voice and so interfere and subvert."

After Lamos: All crewmen now have manufactured tongues, triggering the sensor constantly. "False tongue, false tongue," the communicator warns whenever a man speaks from one hornet to another.

Exceptions:

• Deep John: Escaped the tongue-cutting. "I was the only one able to keep a civil tongue in my head."
• Margaret: Kept her original tongue but triggers the warning anyway—"the machine read her as something not quite human."

The Equivalent-Day Recorder

Time-keeping device on the hornets. Runs backwards when the Dong button is activated.

Space-Primus Fires

Fires that burn in space, used to roast the sacred beef in Chapter III. "A space-primus fire really has no odor, so how should it smell to me like sage-brush and buffalo-chips?"

The Data/Navigation Log

The hornet's AI navigation system. Can "issue" information, scan and land. In illusion space, reports "warlocks and mandragoras and witches"—Roadstrum thinks it's malfunctioning. It "loses its nerve" when trying to ram Aeaea's world, making them land instead.

"He thinks he is men," Crewman Bramble explains. "He has been with men always and does not know other machines."

Biological Technology

Pseudanthropus Kits (Esolog-9-Ex)

"Build-it-yourself" automaton kits. Each crewman carries a portion strapped to his belly; assembled in emergencies. Can be built into any human form.

Previous incarnations:

• Cardshark
• Hillbilly
• Peddler
• Crackpot general (whose asinine orders killed 10,000+ men—"excessive, but it was funny")
• Ruler of Bandicoot (still rules today)

Polyphemian incarnation: Built as the fattest, most rampant man possible, with a "dialagogue that tantalized the men." Booby-trapped: eating him causes "the swelling death, the exploding death"—swelling to a thousand times normal size, then explosion.

False Tongues

Manufactured tongue replacements made by the crewmen after the Laestrygonians cut out their originals "roots and all."

Roadstrum's forked tongue: He deliberately made himself a forked tongue, becoming "as polished and pleasant a liar as you would ever want to meet." Uses it for diplomacy on Nine Worlds and to persuade Margaret on Polyphemia.

Detection: Triggers "False tongue" warnings on communicators.

The Little Sun

Location: Lamos

A small captured asteroid that glows, providing interior light and cooking heat for the Laestrygonians. Responds to voice commands ("The sun, come you in") for reasons no one can explain. The giants roast whole bulls by holding them up on pikes to its heat.

Transparent People

Location: World (Chapter VIII)

"The newest thing in people. Soon there will be none produced in the old manner." Their legal status as people is "presently under litigation." One works as a bank teller in Big Tulsa.

The Sherlocker

A biological tracking creature—"a sky-dick, a snuffling hound." The pipe and deerstalker hat are body parts, not accessories. Tracks the men for the Songstress Murder across space to the High Liars Club.

Alien Technology

The Siren-Zo's Electricity

The golden-haired women (tentacles of the mountain-creature) kill by electric discharge: "twelve thousand amps, nine million volts, a little over one million cycles." Victims are reduced to ashes and cinders, brushed from the siren's lap.

Hell's High-Frequency Cookers

Tiresias's Hell uses modern technology: "It's all high-frequency cookers, Roadstrum. No smoke, no flame, no mess." Also miniaturization to handle overcrowding—the threat that triggers the breakout.

The Static-Repulsion Principle

The Laestrygonians' science, "so far beyond" electromagnetic technology. Stone slabs fly by repelling planet surfaces. Hondstarfer calls it "the supreme scientific law of the universes."

Currency

Chancels

The standard currency. Roadstrum's bank account is measured in them. Nine Worlds generate "billions of billions of Chancels every quarter." Clamdigger spends his "last Chancel" on a junk hornet shell.

Substances

Mumuckey Mustard

Nineteen cases carried since the war, over the objections of crewmen who wanted the space. Bramble always insisted: "Let us keep them; we will find something they are good for." Their purpose: coating the hornet to repel Megagaster birds. The bird swallows them and spits them out in disgust.

Habit-Forming Mushrooms

Fed to prisoners in the Polyphemian dungeon along with "rank leeks and ramps." Compel the men to eat more and more, to rage and rave. "Their moderation became more and more immoderate."

Timeline

A reconstruction of events across twenty equivalent years.

Note: Time in Space Chantey is unstable. The epigraph claims "ten years fill up with ten" adventures, echoing Odysseus's ten-year wandering. But Roadstrum returns to World after twenty years. Time reverses via the Dong button; it runs differently on various worlds; days pass differently in Valhalla than in normal space. This timeline reconstructs the sequence of events, not precise chronology.

Before the Epic

The Ten-Year War: "Neither of long duration nor of serious attrition"—only ten million lives lost. Six hornet captains and their crews serve. Roadstrum catches "the heroes' disease," an infection that produces heroic fever every third day at sundown.

Chapter I: Lotophage

Mustering Out: Six captains assemble after the war. Five vote to detour to Lotophage; the Nameless Captain goes directly home.

Arrival: Planetfall in perpetual afternoon. The men sink into pleasure at the Sleepy Sailor tavern.

Duration: Unspecified, but feels timeless. On departure, "on Lotophage, it was still afternoon of the same day."

Roadstrum's first skin shed: "Young Soldier the First Time."

Crew after: Perhaps forty men in two hornets. Margaret and Deep John join.

Chapter II: Lamos

Arrival: Crash landing on high-gravity world. Both hornets damaged.

Duration: Multiple cycles of the Valhalla pattern—days of feasting and dying, reborn each morning. Long enough for Margaret to demand schedule reform.

Hondstarfer's repairs: Both hornets fixed with stone hammers. The Dong button installed.

Departure: All surviving crewmen lose their tongues. Birdsong and Fairfeather remain as giants.

Chapter III: The Wandering Rocks

Duration: One equivalent day observing the rocks. Then the stampede, the sacrilege, the aging curse.

The aging: Deep John dies of old age. Roadstrum reaches 100, then 120. Margaret bakes him a birthday cake.

Time reversal: The Dong button reverses everything. They exit through Dobie's Hole. Net time: zero.

Chapter IV: Multiple Worlds

Roulettenwelt

Duration: Long enough for epic gambling sessions—sometimes fifty replays of a single hand. Roadstrum rises to High Emperor, then loses everything in a bathroom visit.

Kentron-Kosmon

Duration: Roadstrum minds Atlas's booth for six equivalent months while Atlas is away.

Events: Lightning Lupercal festival, hunting season, field-sports season, social-sports season.

Nine Worlds

Duration: "Pleasant easy business"—time for leagues, conspiracy, war, revolution, crude butchery, and fine weaponry. The men take command of troops on opposite sides (five different sides at one point).

Sireneca

Duration: Brief. The assault on the Siren-Zo ends on "early Wednesday morning."

Chapter V: Polyphemia

Arrival: Puckett's hornet has broken down. All survivors crowd into one craft.

Duration: At least nine days—one crewman eaten per day (Di Prima first, then Fracas, Snow, Bramble, Crabgrass, Bangtree, Oldfellow, Lawrence). Then Esolog-9-Ex on the day of the visiting cousins.

Crew after: Reduced to one hornet's complement. Multiple deaths and abandonments.

Chapter VI: Aeaea

Duration: "A day or two" as Aeaea's toy animals before Roadstrum leads the revolt. Time enough for the animals to become "hooked" on their mistress.

Aftermath: The Songstress Murder. The crew become outlaws, hunted by decent people.

Chapter VII: Yellow Dog & Hellpepper Planet

Yellow Dog

Duration: Brief. Crash through the building, enter the Club, tell lies, get arrested.

Hellpepper Planet

Duration: Brief—time for Puckett and Trochanter to explore Hell and report back, then the breakout.

Aftermath: Stranded in "the boiling swamps a little to the south of Hell."

Unnarrated Adventures

The epigraph to Chapter VIII admits: "More gory episodes omit we ken of them; / The Chantey sings ten years fill up with ten of them." Between the Hell breakout and the return to World, many adventures go untold.

Chapter VIII: World

Elapsed time: Twenty years since departure.

Duration on World: Three days before Roadstrum cannot endure peace any longer. He promised himself a week.

Departure: New crew assembled—Trochanter, Clamdigger, Margaret, Hondstarfer, others. Junk hornet repaired. They go away once more.

After the Epic

The final verses report Roadstrum's ship becoming a "novanissimus" beyond Di Carissimus. But: "Destroyed? His road is run? It's but a bend of it; / Make no mistake, this only seems the end of it."

Death Log

Crew attrition—those who did not make it home.

"These men were the salt of the skies, the one out of ten who had determinedly stayed alive through the whole war, very often hurt, absolutely refusing to be killed." After the war, attrition began in earnest.

Attrition by Location

Lotophage (Chapter I)

Losses: The majority of six hornet crews

Cause: Rendered into Ecstasy Chips—"eaten" in the pleasure-processing sense

Survivors: "Perhaps forty men" escape in two hornets

Named casualties: None specifically named, but Crewman Bigbender is mentioned as having been processed into chips that "remind" Oldfellow of him.

Lamos (Chapter II)

Deaths: All crewmen die daily in Valhalla combat

Resurrections: All are reborn each morning

Permanent losses: Birdsong and Fairfeather—not dead but transformed into giants and remaining on Lamos

Injuries: All lose their tongues (except Deep John)

The Wandering Rocks (Chapter III)

Death: Deep John (old age from the curse)

Status: Reversed by Dong button—restored to life

Permanent casualties: None (time reversal)

Sireneca (Chapter IV)

Polyphemia (Chapter V)

Method: Eaten by Polyphemians, one per day

Hellpepper Planet (Chapter VII)

Injury: Trochanter loses the bottom half-meter of his legs to the hot ground

Deaths: None specified during the breakout

Special Cases

Bramble's Survival

Listed among those eaten by Polyphemians (Chapter V), Bramble reappears in Chapter VI as a fox on Aeaea. "He was always too much of a fox to be taken and eaten, but the trick by which he evaded it will not be given here."

The Dead Who Speak

In Chapter VIII, addled Trochanter "talks to Cutshark and Crabgrass quite a bit." When Roadstrum points out they're dead: "I didn't say they weren't dead, Cap'n. I just said I talked to them quite a bit."

Final Tally

Starting: Six hornet crews (dozens to hundreds of men)

After Lotophage: ~40 men in two hornets

After Polyphemia: One hornet's worth (substantially fewer)

Confirmed survivors to World: Roadstrum, Trochanter, Clamdigger, Margaret, Deep John (implied), Bramble (implied)

Final crew: Roadstrum, Trochanter, Clamdigger, Margaret, Hondstarfer, "others"

The Code

"One never admits that a hornet-man is dead, it is against the code." Nevertheless, Starkhead is buried in the floor of the Polyphemian dungeon.

Themes

Epic as Anti-Epic, Peace vs. Motion, The Onion Self.

The Mythology Filter

The novel opens with a meditation on whether mythology can survive the space age: "Will there be a mythology in the future, they used to ask, after all has become science? Will high deeds be told in epic, or only in computer code?"

Lafferty's answer is that epic persists precisely because reality is too bright to view directly. "The deeds were too bright to be viewed direct. They could only be sung by a bard gone blind from viewing suns that were suns." The novel itself enacts this filtering—telling a space opera through the structures and language of Homeric epic, transforming science fiction into mythology.

This is dramatized in Chapter VII when Roadstrum hears his own story told back to him by a skilled liar at the High Liars Club: "Oh, I know that, Puckett. But he tells it so much better than it happened!" The lie—the epic transformation—is more true than the truth.

The Onion Self

Roadstrum introduces this image in Chapter I: "I have shucked a skin like a yearly snake... I'm an onion and an outer layer is sluffed off me, that of Young Soldier the First Time. But I be bigger and ranker for losing the layer."

Each major adventure strips away another layer:

• Chapter I: "Young Soldier the First Time"
• Chapter II: "One gives up giantizing most regretfully"
• Chapter VI: "came down near the tough essential hide of him"
• Chapter VIII: "sloughed off all the outer layers of him and become the essential onion, pungent and powerful"

The journey is a process of reduction to essence—but the essential self proves unable to rest. The "pungent and powerful" onion core rejects peace and departs again.

Peace vs. Motion

The novel's climax is Roadstrum's rejection of peace itself. Margaret foreshadows this in Chapter III: "Peace is a fine word for the mob, but it will gag the one man in a million."

In Chapter VIII, Roadstrum has everything Odysseus sought: home, wife, son, honor, means. But peace is the wrong word. "Peace??— For me??— Roadstrum, man, it is yourself you are talking about... I am great Road-Storm! Peace is for those of the other sort!"

For Lafferty's hero, "to come to the end of a journey is to die." Motion is life; rest is extinction. The epic must refuse to end because ending would betray its nature.

The One Man in a Million

On Lotophage, Margaret waits for "a man able to leave here after he comes. But he'll have to be a man in a million." Roadstrum proves himself this exceptional figure—the one who can rouse himself "at the last possible moment" from any enchantment.

This capacity defines the epic hero: not strength or cunning alone, but the ability to resist seductive traps. Each world offers a reason to stay—pleasure (Lotophage), glory (Lamos), gambling (Roulettenwelt), pet status (Aeaea), even peace (World). Roadstrum leaves them all.

Documentation vs. Reality

On Polyphemia, the Cacique defends eating men who have been classified as sheep: "I know it, and you know it. But the sheep don't know it, and the documentation does not know it. We are logged as a pastoral planet... Will you argue with the Gazeteer itself?"

Bureaucratic classification trumps observable reality. The sheep-men have human eyes and hands, but the paperwork says they are livestock. This satirizes the power of systems to override truth—a theme that recurs in Lafferty's work.

Subjective Reality

Both Atlas and Aeaea operate on Berkeley's principle: "Nothing exists—unless it is perceived." Atlas maintains all reality by attention; Aeaea transforms men into animals by making them see themselves as such.

But the principle has limits. Atlas's momentary inattention creates roses without scent and bobtailed animals. Aeaea's subjective control fails when the men become real animals rather than toys—when subjective belief turns murderous.

Inadequate Antagonists

Lafferty repeatedly deflates his threats. The Polyphemians are beautiful rather than monstrous. Hell is "not a hundred meters across," overcrowded, with "repetitious" tortures. Even the Siren-Zo's famous song is incomplete—"not very good tune anyhow," the instruments report (though they're wrong).

The heroes are too large for their obstacles. They break out of Hell because it's "inadequate." They reject Aeaea's transformations because she makes them "toy animals" rather than real ones. The epic insists on worthy opponents and finds few.

The Forked Tongue

When the Laestrygonians cut out their tongues, Roadstrum deliberately makes himself a forked replacement, becoming "as polished and pleasant a liar as you would ever want to meet."

This voluntary embrace of untruth parallels the mythology filter. The hero becomes a liar; the lie becomes truer than truth; the epic transforms reality by distorting it. Roadstrum's forked tongue is his tool for diplomacy, persuasion, and survival—and for telling his own story better than it happened.

Transformation and Its Limits

Characters transform throughout: Birdsong and Fairfeather become giants; the crew become animals on Aeaea; Roadstrum sheds layer after layer. But transformation has limits:

• Those who hold "mental reservations" on Lamos remain human-sized
• Toy animals can become real animals and break their chains
• The essential onion, once reached, cannot be further reduced—only sent out again

The Eternal Epic

"An epic has already failed if it have an ending. I don't care how it ended the first time— it will not end the same now!"

Lafferty's novel refuses Homeric closure. The Odyssey ends with restoration and peace; Space Chantey ends with departure and apparent death—followed immediately by denial: "this only seems the end of it."

The epic form demands continuation. Heroes must keep moving or cease to be heroes. The final verses suggest death but refuse to confirm it, leaving the door open for further adventures that will never be written—but could be.

Comedy and Horror

Lafferty maintains comic tone while depicting genuine horror. Crewmen are eaten one by one; Margaret cheerfully reports that Di Prima was delicious. The Songstress Murder is "too horrifying" to describe fully, but the narrator's reticence is itself comic. Hell disappoints because it lacks grandeur.

This tonal mix is characteristically Lafferty: the absurd and the terrible coexist, neither canceling the other. The men are genuinely in danger; they are also genuinely funny. The epic is sincere and parodic simultaneously.

Glossary

Terms, phrases, and concepts from the novel.

A

Aeaea: Both a singing witch and her planet—"identical with the planet and who sang the planet into being." Based on Circe's island in Homer.

Alley-Sally: The name given to Roadstrum in the retold version of his story at the High Liars Club.

B

Blinky: Nickname for Tiresias, judge of Hell. Has weak eyes, wears blue glasses.

C

Cacique: Ruler of Polyphemia. Title means "chief" in Caribbean indigenous languages.

Chancels: The standard currency. Roadstrum's wealth is measured in them; Nine Worlds generate "billions of billions" quarterly.

Club Menitros: The true name of the High Liars Club. Crest visible on the weapons-rack.

D

Da luan, da mort: "Monday, Tuesday" in Irish—the treadmill song sung by the Siren-Zo. From folklore where slaves sang endlessly until a savior said "And Wednesday too" to break the charm.

Dobie's Hole: The safe exit from the wandering rocks (not taken).

Dong button: Time-reversal device installed by Hondstarfer. Instruction plate reads "Wrong prong, bong gong."

E

Ecstasy Chips: Psychic residue rendered from visitors to Lotophage who have "spread themselves" too thin. "Lazy Man Ecstasy Chips" are particularly flavorful.

Equivalent day: Standard time measurement on the hornets. Can run backwards when the Dong button is activated.

Esolog-9-Ex: Build-it-yourself pseudanthropus kit, assembled from parts carried by crewmen.

F

False tongue: Warning issued by communicators when manufactured tongues (or non-human entities like Margaret) speak. "False tongue, false tongue."

Forked tongue: Roadstrum's deliberately forked replacement tongue, making him "as polished and pleasant a liar as you would ever want to meet."

G

Groll's Trolls: Name for the Laestrygonian giants.

Guimbarde Town: Capital of Yellow Dog. Thousand-story wooden buildings leaning together.

H

Heroes' disease: An infection Roadstrum caught during the war—produces heroic fever every third day at sundown.

High Liars Club: See Club Menitros. The most exclusive club in all worlds, where each topper must be topped.

Hornets: Spacecraft used by the crews. War vessels from the ten-year conflict.

Houri: What Margaret is—a supernatural female being, not quite human.

I

Illusion space: The region where Aeaea's world floats—objects seem solid until approached, then fade to mist.

Improbable Club: Another name for the High Liars Club.

K

Kentron-Kosmon: The tiny world at "the exact center of the universe" where Atlas maintains reality.

Kstganglfoofng: A high-Shelta swear word used by skymen. Roadstrum uses it when touching Hell's hot register.

L

Laestrygonians: The giants of Lamos/Valhalla. Speak Old Norse/Icelandic.

Little sun: Captured asteroid on Lamos that provides light and cooking heat. Responds to voice commands.

Lotophage: The pleasure planet—exists only in perpetual afternoon.

M

Megagaster birds: Giant birds over Yellow Dog that can swallow spacecraft in one gobble.

Mithermenic: From the final chapter's epigraph—possibly a Lafferty coinage suggesting mythic interpretation.

Mumuckey mustard: Nineteen cases carried since the war; used to repel Megagaster birds.

N

Novanissimus: What Roadstrum's ship reportedly becomes beyond Di Carissimus—a new star or explosion.

O

Onion self: Roadstrum's metaphor for his layered identity, shed layer by layer through the journey.

P

Plugged Nickel Bar: Bar in Big Tulsa where "all the important persons of World come at least once a day."

Polyphemians: The beautiful cannibal giants of Polyphemia.

Pseudanthropus kit: Build-it-yourself automaton. See Esolog-9-Ex.

R

Rampant: The quality the Polyphemians prefer in their food—angry, raging men taste better than placid sheep.

Road-Storm: Variant of Roadstrum's name, suggesting his nature.

Roulettenwelt: The gamblers' world.

S

Sherlocker: Biological tracking creature—"a sky-dick, a snuffling hound." Pipe and deerstalker are body parts.

Siren-Zo: The Siren-Animal—a singing mountain-creature on Sireneca with electric blonde tentacles.

Sleepy Sailor: Tavern on Lotophage where the men sink into pleasure.

Space-primus fires: Fires that burn in space.

Static-repulsion principle: How stone slabs fly—"Like charges repel."

Swelling death: What happens when you eat Esolog-9-Ex—swelling to a thousand times normal size, then explosion.

T

Tall ones: "Never had there been so many great fine men assembled. They were the tall ones."

Thousand-Foot Baseball: Game described at the High Liars Club—bases half a mile apart, hundred-foot players.

Transparent people: "The newest thing in people" on World—legal status under litigation.

V

Vortex: The dangerous exit from the wandering rocks (taken instead of Dobie's Hole).

W

World: Earth—home of Roadstrum and the crews. Capital: Big Tulsa.

Y

Yellow Dog: Proscribed world where the High Liars Club is located.

Chapter Verses

The collected epigraphs from the "New Space Chanteys."

Each chapter opens with doggerel verse attributed to "New Space Chanteys, Living Tapes, Sykestown, A.A. 301" (Chapter I) or simply "Ibid" (Chapters II–VII). Chapter VIII's source shifts to "Aliunde" (Latin: "from another place").

Chapter I: Lotophage

Chapter II: Lamos

Chapter III: The Clashing Rocks

Chapter IV: Roulettenwelt

Note: A second epigraph appears before the Siren-Zo section:

Chapter V: Polyphemia

Chapter VI: Aeaea

Note: A closing verse appears after the chapter:

Chapter VII: Guimbarde Town & Hell

Note: A second epigraph appears before the Hell section:

Chapter VIII: World

Note: The final verse of the novel:

Notable Quotations

Memorable lines from the novel.

On Epic and Mythology

— Opening meditation, Chapter I

— The mythology filter, Chapter I

— Roadstrum on hearing his own story at the High Liars Club, Chapter VII

— Roadstrum rejecting closure, Chapter VIII

On the Crew

— Introduction of the hornet crews, Chapter I

— On the captain who went directly home, Chapter I

On Roadstrum

— First articulation of the onion self, Chapter I

— Margaret's despair before Roadstrum proves himself, Chapter I

— After the duel with Bjorn, Chapter II

On Science and Philosophy

— Hondstarfer on the static-repulsion principle, Chapter II

— Atlas explaining his burden, Chapter IV

— Atlas on the consequences of inattention, Chapter IV

— Aeaea's philosophy, Chapter VI

On Enemies and Threats

— The Cacique's taunt, Chapter V

— The Cacique on bureaucratic reality, Chapter V

— Tiresias on Hell's inadequacy, Chapter VII

On Margaret

— Margaret on houri nature, Chapter V

— Margaret on whether she'll eat Esolog, Chapter V

On Transformation

— Roadstrum's revelation on Aeaea, Chapter VI

— Roadstrum's call to revolt, Chapter VI

On Peace and Endings

— Margaret foreshadowing Chapter VIII, Chapter III

— The rejection of peace, Chapter VIII

— The final call, Chapter VIII

— The novel's final words