Quote:

Looking into the mirror, he saw a face familiar only from the photographs he had studied dark, feral and harsh: the face, literally, of a savage. His hair, which he had allowed to grow long, had been oiled, stranded with gold tinsel, braided and coiled; his teeth had been replaced with stainless-steel dentures; from his ears dangled a pair of ivory amulets. In each case, adornment was the secondary function. The tinsel strands in his head-dress were multi-laminated accumulators, their charge maintained by thermo-electric action. The dentures scrambled, condensed, transmitted, received, expanded and unscrambled radio waves of energies almost too low to be detected. The seeming ivory amulets were stereophonic radar units, which not only could guide Keith through the dark, but also provided a fractional second’s warning of a bullet, an arrow, a bludgeon. His fingernails were copper-silver alloy, internally connected to the accumulators in his hair. Another circuit served as a ground, to protect him against electrocution one of his own potent weapons. These were the more obvious augmentations; others more subtle had been fabricated into his flesh.

Forverness writes: “Written at editor’s request to fit an illustration.” [1]

The wordpress blog site gaping blackbird (carries adds) has a review on “The Augmented Agent”. Internet Archive: [snapshot].

Republished in Chateau d’If and Other Stories, Spatterlight, 2012

Comments:

According to Foreverness the version that was published by Satellite Science Fiction was shorter than the one published next year 1958 by Avalon (as intended by the author). (ref)

This is easily one of my favorite Vance novels. Wikipedia writes that Frederik Pohl:

... reported that Vance had “pretty carefully” worked out his extrapolation, but that “it isn’t terribly convincing as presented”. Pohl also noted that “Vance writes well—sometimes even brilliantly”, but that his prose sometimes seemed uneven and artificial.

When I first read the novel I was little and didn’t even know about the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. However, even then I understood from the text that the transformation involved more that simply using another language. (I’m looking forward to rereading the book.)

Also from Wikipedia:

David Langford cited Vance’s “engaging speculation”, but concluded that the protagonist “seems too weak a character for his leading role”, while “the culture and landscape of Pao are grey and ill-defined, in strong contrast to the exotically colourful societies and ecologies which became Vance’s trademark”

I remember the protagonist being weak, but accepted that simply as a fact in the story. Often he was manipulated, sometimes he managed to score a point. I don’t remember the novel ending in a jubilant victory, but that was all right. As for Pao being ill-defined—perhaps a bit, but in my recollection Pao being a somewhat blend and static society of mostly simple farmers was also exactly part of the problem that had to solved.

(Wikipedia accessed 15 March 2019)

Quote:

  The guards subjected Palafox to a most minute scrutiny. Every stitch of his clothes was examined; he was patted and prodded with complete lack of regard for dignity.
  Nothing was discovered; no tool, weapon or instrument of any kind. Bustamonte watched the search in unashamed fascination, and seemed disappointed at the negative result.

Republished by Spatterlight, 2012, The languages of Pao

Quote:

Emerson and Cope walked around the ship. Crossing the clearing in leisurely fashion were a young man and woman, a girl and the boy they had seen before. They were the most handsome beings the Earthmen had ever seen. The young man wore a skin-tight garment of emerald-green sequins, a complicated head-dress of silver spines; the boy wore red trousers, a dark blue jacket and a long-billed blue cap. The young woman and the girl wore simple sheaths of white and blue, stretching with easy elasticity as they walked. They were bare-headed; their pale hair fell flowing to their shoulders.

Republished in The World-Thinker and Other Stories, Spatterlight, 2012.

Quote:

Banks made few blunders. Twelve years he had ridden the tiger, and in the process had developed a head for his job which amounted to second-sight; by now he was able to relax, enjoy his work, and indulge himself in his hobby, which was the collecting of freakish inventions.

Republished in The World-Thinker and Other Stories, Spatterlight, 2012.

Quotes:

Fair was immensely stimulated. The notes assured him that he was on the right track and further indicated a number of blind alleys from which Fair profited by avoiding. He applied himself so successfully that before the week was out he had evoked a sprite of the green cycle. It appeared in the semblance of a man with green glass eyes and a thatch of young eucalyptus leaves in the place of hair. It greeted Fair with cool courtesy, would not seat itself, and ignored Fair’s proffer of coffee. After wandering around the apartment inspecting Fair’s books and curios with an air of negligent amusement, it agreed to respond to Fair’s questions.

He found Gerald McIntyre at a wayside service station in the heart of the South Dakota prairie. McIntyre was sitting in an old wooden chair, tilted back against the peeling yellow paint of the service station, a straw hat shading his eyes from the sun. He was a magnetically handsome man, blond of hair, brown of skin, with blue eyes whose gaze stung like the touch of an icicle.

Republised in The Moon Moth and Other Stories, Spatterlight, 2012