Anarchaos By Curt Clark (1967)

“Anarchaos was a planet where anarchy was the only law, where each man protected himself as best he could, and the weak were soon dead. Malone's brother had died that way, and Malone had come to Anarchaos to find the man who had killed him. He knew that he was facing an entire planet of enemies. Or as the guide tells Rolf Malone:  "72% of off-world visitors to Anarchaos in the last ten years disappeared without trace and are presumed to have been murdered. Customs reports you are carrying a surprising assortment of weapons, for which you had no believable explanation. Don't try to beat these people, Malone - you're on their ground, playing by their rules."

"No," Malone said. "There are no rules here.”

Anarchaos is really a revenge or (less so) a crime novel than a science fiction tale, which makes sense once you know that Curt Clark is just another in a long line of pseudonyms for Donald E. Westlake, an author known for his crime novels and various pen names. What makes this tale somewhat interesting is it takes some of the tropes of the sci-fi genre, but dismisses any type of the libertarianism baggage that comes with it; instead, it roundly embraces an anarchist ideology. And for 1967, when this was published, this makes it a surprising and very experimental rarity in the genre. It is also very mean and nasty, resembling the work of Westlake’s other pen name of that era, Richard Stark and the character of Parker.

I enjoyed the beginning of the book, and the rather pat ending, but the middle part, especially his time as a slave, is uneventful and easily glossed over. It’s a revenge novel soaked in blood and death, because its what to expect from Westlake when he allowed those darker, noir aspects out. It’s always striking for to me to realize even by the mid-1960s, when he was starting to write those comic capers he was well known for, he let the dark half of his ID out and went to town.