Legion of Space Series

For the fictional military force which is part of the Interplanetary Alliance, see Space Legion

The Legion of Space is a space opera science fiction series by Jack Williamson. The story takes place in an era when humans have colonized the Solar System but dare not go farther, as the first extra-solar expedition to Barnard's Star failed and the survivors came back as babbling, grotesque, diseased madmen. They spoke of a gigantic planet, populated by ferocious animals and the single city left of the evil "Medusae." The Medusae bear a vague resemblance to jellyfish, but are actually elephant-sized, four-eyed, flying beings with hundreds of tentacles. The Medusae cannot speak, and communicate with one another via a microwave code.

While attending a Great Books course, Williamson learned that Henryk Sienkiewicz had created one of his works by taking the Three Musketeers of Alexandre Dumas and pairing them with John Falstaff of William Shakespeare. Williamson took this idea into science fiction with Legion of Space.

The series employs the plot device of the false document, purporting to have been written by a 20th-century American capable of experiencing the lives and adventures of his remote descendants in future centuries and writing them down. Williamson may have been influenced by the similar provenance which Edgar Rice Burroughs provided for The Moon Maiden and The Moon Men a decade earlier.

The Falstaff character is named Giles Habibula. He was once a criminal, and can open any lock ever made. In his youth he was called Giles The Ghost. Jay Kalam (Commander of the Legion) and Hal Samdu (an anagram of Dumas) are the names of the other two warriors.

The name Habibula seems to imply an Arab or Muslim background (it means "beloved of Allah" in Arabic). However, since the character displays few other signs of such a background, and since he bears an English first name going back to the Norman Conquest, Williamson seems to have rather implied a mixture of ethnicities and cultures during the centuries of spaceward expansion.

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