I've been cleaning up old content on the Xenite network and this article, written many years ago, won't fit into the current structure of the domain without a lot of reworking. I may come back to the topic and write a WorldFAQ or feature article some day, but for now I'll just repost the article here because the old URL is going away.
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I don't know if Arthur Landis ever had a heyday. If he did I missed it. I came across the first of his
Camelot books in a used bookstore in Atlanta. The book is a paperback with a pretty nice picture by Thomas Barber, Jr. of a man in armor holding a great sword overlooking a castle and a band of warriors. A somewhat attractive and slightly fur-covered woman is holding onto his left arm. I'm not sure you can tell she is covered with fur unless you know to look for it.
I like fantasy but do not like the King Arthur books that seem to have been flooding the market ever since Mary Stewart proved that T.H. White wasn't the only person who could do the job better than Mallory. So, the title threw me off a bit. "A world called camelot," thought I. "Not for me." But then I noticed the floating teddy bear. "This cannot be about King Arthur."
And it's not about King Arthur. It's a fantasy novel disguised as science fiction. Kyrie Fern, Adjuster for the Foundation, comes down to Camelot (whose inhabitants call it Fregis) to check things out. The Foundation is a mysterious benevolent agency that watches over primitive worlds, ensuring that Mankind doesn't destroy his brothers across the stars or some such thing like that. The story is less about how the Foundation intervenes when a world is in trouble than it is about how Kyrie finds the world of his dreams and the love of his life. It's a Fantasy.
Landis uses all sorts of cute little words and names that probably are meant as inside jokes. I'm not sure who the "in" crowd are, mind you.
A World Called Camelot was published in 1976, but it was based on an earlier story Landis had published as
Let There Be Magick under the pseudonym James R. Keaveny. JRK, AHL, JFK. I'm sure there is a connection in there somewhere.
Oddly, the original book was published by...The Camelot Publishing Company. Weird, huh? It's going to get weirder.
Fern tells us in fairly simple, plain English that he was travelling through a Vermont-style countryside. I've never been to Vermont, and when I think of Vermont I usually confuse it with New Hampshire and remember Ethan Allen's Green Mountain Boys (where were they from, anyway?). Well, at least I don't think of Maine and those awful accents from
Murder, She Wrote (except Jessica didn't have an accent, did you notice?).
So, Kyrie is trundling down a road in Vermont-style countryside that I'm picturing as New Hampshire-style landscape (even though I've never been there, either) and I'm waiting for Ethan Allen and the boys to jump out of the trees and demand that Kyrie give up the cart for the sake of the colonies. You see, Kyrie decides that the world is not really like "Vermont-land" but rather is more like "England-isle". How could the ghost of Allen let that one go by?
You know this story is going to be interesting, however, once you get past the Vermont-land and England-isle stuff. Fern decides that the people who have converted Vermont-land to a faux-Medieval paradise with all their castles would envy the real thing he sees twenty miles ahead of him (through his purple contact lenses which give him telescopic and microscopic vision). By the way, did I mention that Fern has more gadgets than James Bond and Maxwell Smart combined? It's still a fantasy, story, believe me.
"Anyone looking...would see...green ski pants tucked into soft leather boots with golden spurs" Kyrie tells us as he describes himself. He obviously knows he has a reading audience, so we must be reading his memoirs. He finishes this stylistic knightly outfit with "a heavy green shirt opened to the waist in the purported style of the country, and a green jacket and green cap with a contrasting bright red feather." So, one quickly gets the impression that Kyrie is dressed from head to toe in
green. I'm not sure, after all the times I've read the story, what the significance is.
Kyrie gives us a little bit of Galactic history. About all I can say is that it doesn't much impact on Camelot-Fregis, except that Fern soon finds out he is on his own (except for a comm-link to an orbiting spaceship). The important thing is that we learn Kyrie was sent to "adjust" the situation because two of the Foundation's spies (called "Watchers") were shown a horrific future in a crystal ball. Magic (or, Magick) works on Camelot, and the Foundation has through two Galactic Centuries not managed to figure out how or why.
Prophesies are never fully explained in the Camelot books, but the Magick is (sort of) finally explained. It works on a molecular level (shades of Arthur C. Clarke). By this time I've been impressed by the remote resemblance of Landis' space-faring Foundation to that of Isaac Asimov's Time-spanning Eternity. I don't see any connection to Asimov's Foundation, except Fern has all these micro-gizmos that would make an Asimovian Foundation Trader's heart flutter.
Landis invents some interesting politics as these stories unfold. There are two continents, one in the north and one in the south, which seem to be divided into Good Guys (the north) and Bad Guys (the south). The Bad Guys are led by a creature called the Kaleen and the Good Guys are aided by little furry creatures called Pug-Boos. But once Kyrie sails to the southern continent, things no longer seem so cut and dried.
I like these stories and have read them time and again. I don't know how well or poorly they sold but if you can find them in a used bookstore somewhere, scoop them up. They are well worth the purchase price. Landis' story is bit bizarre in places, but Fern is an unusual hero who seems to just be having fun in the old-fashioned sense. There's nothing wrong with that.
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