The Janissaries series of military and political-based science fiction novels are set in an interstellar confederation of races, in which humans are a slave race entrusted with military affairs and law enforcement, written by Jerry Pournelle.
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The theme of this series is that a small force of principally United States troops, acting as faux mercenaries under a secret CIA contract in Africa during the Cold War, is "rescued" from annihilation by a Cuban military force by extraterrestrial beings (part of an interstellar Confederation) who offer them their lives in exchange for service on a primitive planet in raising a crop of plants that are used in the manufacture of a recreational drug. The primitive planet, called Tran, is populated by other Earth-origin humans who have been periodically and secretly brought there over the past several thousand years of earth history for the same purpose. In the Confederation, humans are used as a soldier/slave class vaguely similar to the Janissary soldiers of the old Ottoman Turkish empire, thus the name of the first novel and the series.
The series of novels describe how these 20th-Century soldiers proceed to both integrate with the existing human cultures and use them to establish a base of operations for the growing and harvesting of the plant, which only becomes sufficiently potent for use as a drug for a few years out of every 600 earth years. The first book shows how the soldiers use a combination of modern weaponry, knowledge of technology, and advanced military tactics to carve out a political enclave that will enable them to fulfill the rest of their mission, to actually plant and raise the crop they are expected to provide to the extraterrestrials that brought them to this place. The subsequent books illustrate the further adventures of the human soldiers as they perform their mission, but also begin to raise the standard of civilization among the disparate cultures of the humans of Tran. As they learn more of the history of this world, it also becomes clear to them that they will eventually be betrayed by their benefactors, as this has been the fate of each generation of new immigrants in turn. They begin to plan for that betrayal, and other forces outside of Tran begin to plan for what appears to a possible uprising of all humans in the Confederation.
The immediate saviors of the doomed human soldiers are representatives of a race of beings called the Shalnuksi's. These particular Shalnuksis are looking to continue to profit from the trafficking of a recreational drug that is obtained only from the planet Tran. The planet is generally unknown amongst the other races of the Confederation, a secret the Shalnuksis are intent upon maintaining. While their drug trafficking is not illegal, per se, the use of "wild" humans to produce the drug is something that would be curtailed if it were known; thus the need for secrecy.
Confederation technology includes the all-important "phase drive", a kind of faster-than-light travel. Pournelle never explains what the drive is, or suggests a mechanism for how it works. Ships using it, however, vanish from "normal" space while under way. And while Confederation technology appears quite advanced, curiously enough it doesn't seem quite as advanced as one might expect from a civilization that had had space travel for over 5,000 years. Pournelle has Gwen talking about how the Confederation has become stagnant in its stability, however, so it might very well be a deliberate technological stagnancy. One reason why an independent space-going humanity might be a threat could be the unregulated and destabilizing effect an ever-advancing technology could pose.
The Confederation is an interstellar, and interspecies civilization that is rank with politics, intrigue, and corruption. The enslaved humans, bred for loyalty and obedience, comprise the primary armed force of the Confederation. They keep the peace between the various species. Earth is left untouched, primarily as a source of "wild" human genes for when the Confederation masters feel they need to breed initiative into their "tame" humans to keep them capable of their important tasks.
However, with Earth civilization becoming more and more capable of the beginnings of space travel, there is debate in the Confederation about what to do about it. Leave the "wild" humans alone? Bomb them back to the stone age to prevent them from upsetting the status quo? Or bring them forcibly into the Confederation and stifle their progress?
The Shalnuksi's use of Tran is secret from the Confederation (officially), and is also illegal. Some of the humans who are aware of Tran also want to keep it secret so that if the Confederation decides to bomb Earth or bring it into the Confederation, there would at least still be a place where there are free humans.
Rick Galloway's troops carry a number of different 20th century weapons.
In "Clan and Crown"[1], Ben Murphy finds himself in a tight situation and says to himself "But what the hell, you knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred..." a direct reference to the theme song from cartoon series Super Chicken.
The ending of this third book in the Janissaries series clearly intends that there will be at least a fourth book. Unfortunately, from 1987 to the present (2010) no such sequel has materialized, and there are numerous complaints about this in the book reviews on Amazon and Pournelle's own web site. Pournelle has chosen to leave his faithful readers and publisher in limbo, although from time to time he has made encouraging remarks in his blog or in answer to mail about progress on the book (the working title is Janissaries IV: Mamelukes). He mentions on the 26 January 2010 entry of his blog that he has turned down an invitation to attend the Apple event that occurred the next day, partly because he has curtailed his travel lately and partly because he is "still hard at work on Mamelukes."[1] His Works in Progress web page, dated September 17, 2004, stated that Mamelukes was then 65,000 words into an ultimate length of 80,000.[2] Burning Tower came out in 2005 and Mamelukes is still not out, although he claims in his blog to be continuing to work on it [3].
From his Works in Progress page, and a statement in mail archives, he is not collaborating with anyone on the fourth book. [4]
In response to fan email, Pournelle has posted the first three chapters of Mamelukes on his website.