The Dragonmasters by Jack Vance

This book is really a novella, about 100 pages, that won the Hugo for novella in 1963 and was originally published as one half of an Ace Double (with The Five Gold Bands).

I read the copy pictured above (an Ace reprint from 1980 with just this story).

This is an interesting book with many moving parts. It centers on two valleys on the planet Aerlith, both inhabited by humans who have bred lizard-like aliens to be war machines of various sizes and capabilities. There is a third group of humans who are mystical ascetics. The two valleys are essentially separate kingdoms who are engaged in a periodic war that is heating up during the story with the Carcolo attacking the Banbeck.

However, the aliens, the grephs, return. They are a mirror of the humans with the lizard-like grephs breeding humans to be war machines of various sizes and capabilities. In the battle that follows, the humans are near defeat but a stratagem by the leader of the Banbecks, causes the grephs to find the ascetic sacerdotes secret workshop where they are working on a spaceship.

The sacedotes use the engine of their spaceship to disable the greph ship and Banbeck seals the victory. The sacerdote spaceship is destroyed.

I will leave to the reader deeper symbolisms of the mirrored societies and the role of the advanced engineering mystics. I do recommend this as a science fiction story that is just as readable now as it was in 1963, and just as enjoyable.

Today's poem... following on the science fiction theme:

Alien Night

Over an alien landscape

Of blood-red sands

And blue-green trees

With yellow-orange flowers

Rises a deep green moon.

A puff of wind stirs

Tiny sand dervishes

Which vanish as quickly

As they were formed

Under the deep green moon.

A mik-mok tosses

Its gray-blue head

And darts from shed

To tree and back again

As the moon passes overhead.

Stately  ee-taus graze

On the highest flowers

In the coolest time

Of the early morning

While the moon curves to ground.

The fiery white sun chases

The blue-green shadows

To their hiding places

As it rises above

And the moon sinks below

The alien planet’s horizon.

From Observations, by Greg Schroeder