The Emperor's Fan

"The Emperor's Fan"
Cover art from first paperback edition of The Best of L. Sprague de Camp (Ballantine Books, 1978), showing a scene from "The Emperor's Fan"
Author	L. Sprague de Camp
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	Novarian series
Genre(s)	Fantasy short story
Published in	Astounding: The John W. Campbell Memorial Anthology
Media type	Print (Hardback)
Publication date	1973
Followed by	"The Fallible Fiend"

"The Emperor's Fan" is a fantasy story written by L. Sprague de Camp, the fourth of his Novarian series. It was first published in Astounding: The John W. Campbell Memorial Anthology, edited by Harry Harrison, in 1973. It has since been reprinted in other anthologies, notably The Year's Best Fantasy Stories, edited by Lin Carter (1975), as well as such collections of de Camp's work as The Best of L. Sprague de Camp (1978) and Footprints on Sand (1981).^[1]^[2] It has also been translated into German.^[1]

Plot summary

Tsotuga the Fourth, emperor of Kuromon, is a competent but dull ruler, notable only for occasional temperamental outbursts. Having poisoned his father to attain the throne, he finds his dreams haunted by his father's spirit, who prophecies a dreadful doom for him. Seeking some impregnable magical defense, Tsotuga is heartened when his crony, Reiro the Beggar, tells him that just such a weapon is said to be in the possession of the sorcerer Ajandra, from the tropical empire of Mulvan.

Tsotuga receives Ajandra, who produces a large painted fan, created centuries before for the king of the Gwoling Islands. Anything at which the fan is waved vanishes, and can only be recalled by tapping the fan in a particular pattern. The list of patterns is contained in a code book Ajandra also possesses. As an instance of the fan's power, the sorcerer relates how Prince Wangerr, grandson of the king for whom it was made, had once even fanned away a dragon he had encountered. After seeing the fan's powers demonstrated, Tsotuga purchases the fan and its code book.

For a month all is well; then the emperor is irked by his finance minister, Yaebu, and fans him away. He instantly regrets the action, but cannot bring the minister back, as he had hidden the code book and cannot remember where. The missing book is searched for, but fruitlessly. Spring advances, and Tsotuga becomes irritated with Chingitu, the minister of war, and Dzakusan, the prime minister, each of whom also suffers Yaebu's fate. He is now running short of functionaries, and the government suffers. Therefore, on the advice of his wife the empress Nasako, Tsotuga appoints as his new prime minister Zamben of Jompei, Supervisor of Roads and Bridges for Jade Mountain Province. Unbeknownst to him, Zamben is also the empress's secret lover.

Zamben proves an able administrator and so ingratiates himself with the emperor that he even ousts Reiro the Beggar from his position as the emperor's crony. Canny as well as ambitious, he manages through a stratagem to switch Tsotuga's fan for a duplicate. When the testy monarch eventually loses his temper with him as he had with his previous ministers and tries to fan him away, Zamben produces the true fan and dispatches the tyrant with his own weapon. To allay suspicion, he and Nasako give out that the vanished ruler had absent-mindedly fanned himself. The two subsequently wed, making Zamben imperial consort and regent to the fourteen-year-old Prince Wakumba, in effect emperor himself in all but name.

Zamben tries to reconstruct the fan's lost code book by trial and error, testing various combinations of taps with the fan and noting what he gets each time. A succession of past victims are restored thus, among them Yaebu — and the dragon once fanned away by Wangerr of Gwoling! The dragon promptly eats Zamben, fan and all, and bursts from the palace.

In the aftermath of this tragedy, Yaebu and Nasako become co-regents for Prince Wakumba. The missing code book finally turns up when the prince is crowned the new emperor — it was in a secret compartment in the crown of state. But without the fan it is useless. Court wizard Koxima is commissioned to create a replacement fan but is unsuccessful. The code book is consigned to the imperial archives as a curiosity, and the weapon's remaining victims are doomed to languish in limbo.

Chronologically, "The Emperor's Fan" is the earliest story in the Novarian series, being set centuries before the others. It also drives part of the plot of the final volume, The Honorable Barbarian, in which the fan is at last recreated and a later emperor accidentally consigned to the fan's limbo. The attempt to restore that emperor brings back Tsotuga instead, resulting in him regaining the throne of Kuromon after an absence of two hundred years.

Setting

"The Emperor's Fan" does not take place in Novaria itself, but the eastern empire of Kuromon, another country in the same world. Kuromon is on a different continent, separated from that in which Novaria and Mulvan are found by the Eastern Ocean and the Gwoling Islands. De Camp patterned the empire after China and Japan. Kuromon is revisited in the final book in the Novarian series, The Honorable Barbarian, in which the magical fan is finally recreated. The world of which Novaria and Kuromon are part is a parallel world to Earth, a plane of existence related to ours in that ours constitutes its afterlife. Culturally it bears resemblances to our Classical and Medieval eras.

Reception

David Bratman, in Mythprint, writes that he "treasure[s]" "The Emperor's Fan" as one of "a few gems" among its author's later fiction, calling "[t]he fan in question ... one of de Camp's cleverest inventions." Of de Camp's later work in general, Bratman notes "[t]he best shows even more incisive humor and ornate imagination than his earlier work, and it's blessedly free of pulpy writing." He praises de Camp's "elegant, lapidary style that retained the virtues of clarity, and the skill of his plotting disguises any sketchiness in characterization."^[3]

Notes

1 2 Laughlin, Charlotte; Daniel J. H. Levack (1983). De Camp: An L. Sprague de Camp Bibliography. San Francisco: Underwood/Miller. pp. 154–155.
↑ The Emperor's Fan title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
↑ Bratman, David. "L. Sprague de Camp: An Appreciation" in Mythprint v. 37, no. 12 (whole no. 225), Dec. 2000, p. 14.

Preceded by none	Novarian series "The Emperor's Fan"	Succeeded by The Fallible Fiend

Works by L. Sprague de Camp

Viagens Interplanetarias

Krishna	"Finished" (1949) "Perpetual Motion" (1950) The Queen of Zamba (1949) "Calories" (1951) The Hand of Zei (1950) The Hostage of Zir (1977) The Prisoner of Zhamanak (1982) The Virgin of Zesh (1953) The Bones of Zora (1983) The Tower of Zanid (1958) The Swords of Zinjaban (1991)

Kukulkan	The Stones of Nomuru (1988) The Venom Trees of Sunga (1992)

Other	"The Animal-Cracker Plot" (1949) "The Colorful Character" (1949) "The Continent Makers" (1951) "The Galton Whistle" (1951) "Git Along!" (1950) "The Inspector's Teeth" (1950) Rogue Queen (1951) "Summer Wear" (1950)

Collections	The Continent Makers and Other Tales of the Viagens (1953) The Virgin of Zesh & The Tower of Zanid (1983)

Harold Shea (with Fletcher Pratt and others)

de Camp/ Pratt canon	"The Roaring Trumpet" (1940) "The Mathematics of Magic" (1940) The Castle of Iron (1941/50) "The Wall of Serpents" (1953) "The Green Magician" (1954) "Sir Harold and the Gnome King" (1990) "Sir Harold of Zodanga" (1995)

Collections	The Incomplete Enchanter (1941) Wall of Serpents (collection) (1960) The Compleat Enchanter (1975) The Complete Compleat Enchanter (1989) The Enchanter Reborn (1992) The Exotic Enchanter (1995) The Mathematics of Magic (2007)

Pusadian series

Stories	The Tritonian Ring (1951) "The Eye of Tandyla" (1951) "The Owl and the Ape" (1951) "The Hungry Hercynian" (1953) "The Stone of the Witch Queen" (1977) "Ka the Appalling" (1958) "The Rug and the Bull" (1974) "The Stronger Spell" (1953)

Collections	The Tritonian Ring and Other Pusadian Tales (1953)

Novarian series

Stories	"The Emperor's Fan" (1973) The Fallible Fiend (1973) The Goblin Tower (1968) The Clocks of Iraz (1971) The Unbeheaded King (1983) The Honorable Barbarian (1989)

Collections	The Reluctant King (1985)

Neo-Napolitanian series

Novels	The Incorporated Knight (1987) The Pixilated Peeress (1991)

Conan series (with Robert E. Howard and others)

Novels	Conan and the Spider God (1980) Conan of the Isles (1968) Conan the Barbarian (1982) Conan the Buccaneer (1971) Conan the Liberator (1979) The Return of Conan (1957)

Short stories	"Black Sphinx of Nebthu" (1973) "The Treasure of Tranicos" (1953) "Black Tears" (1968) "The Blood-Stained God" (1955) "The Castle of Terror" (1969) "The City of Skulls" (1967) "The Curse of the Monolith" (1968) "Drums of Tombalku" (1966) The Flame Knife (1955/81) "The Frost Giant's Daughter" Conan (1953) "The Gem in the Tower" (1978) "The God in the Bowl" (1952) "The Hall of the Dead" (1967) "Hawks Over Shem" (1955) "The Ivory Goddess" (1978) "The Lair of the Ice Worm" (1969) "Legions of the Dead" (1978) "Moon of Blood" (1978) "The People of the Summit" (1970/78) "Red Moon of Zembabwei" (1974) "The Road of the Eagles" (1955) "Shadows in the Dark" (1978) "Shadows in the Skull" (1975) "The Snout in the Dark" (1969) "The Star of Khorala" (1978) "The Thing in the Crypt" (1967) "The Witch of the Mists" (1972) "Wolves Beyond the Border" (1967)

Collections	Conan (1967) The Conan Chronicles (1989) The Conan Chronicles 2 (1990) Conan of Aquilonia (1977) Conan of Cimmeria (1969) Conan the Adventurer (1966) Conan the Avenger (1968) Conan the Freebooter (1968) Conan the Swordsman (1978) Conan the Usurper (1967) Conan the Wanderer (1968) Sagas of Conan (2004) Tales of Conan (1955) The Treasure of Tranicos (1980)

Other speculative fiction

Novels	The Carnelian Cube (1948) Genus Homo (1950) The Glory That Was (1960) The Great Fetish (1978) Land of Unreason (1942) Lest Darkness Fall (1941) None But Lucifer (1939) Solomon's Stone (1942)

Short stories	"Aristotle and the Gun" (1958) "The Blue Giraffe" (1939) "The Command" (1938) "Divide and Rule" (1939) "Employment" (1939) "The Gnarly Man" (1939) "A Gun for Dinosaur" (1956) "The Hardwood Pile" (1940) "Hyperpilosity" (1938) "Internal Combustion" (1956) "The Isolinguals" (1937) "Judgment Day" (1955) "Living Fossil" (1939) "The Merman" (1938) "Nothing in the Rules" (1939) "The Reluctant Shaman" (1947) "The Stolen Dormouse" (1941) "The Wheels of If" (1940)

Collections	Aristotle and the Gun (2002) The Best of L. Sprague de Camp (1978) Divide and Rule (1948) Footprints on Sand (1981) A Gun for Dinosaur (1963) The Purple Pterodactyls (1980) The Reluctant Shaman (1970) Rivers of Time (1993) Scribblings (1972) Sprague de Camp's New Anthology (1953) Tales from Gavagan's Bar (1953/78) The Undesired Princess (1951) The Virgin & the Wheels (1976) The Wheels of If (1948) Years in the Making (2005)

Historical fiction

Novels	The Dragon of the Ishtar Gate (1961) The Arrows of Hercules (1965) An Elephant for Aristotle (1958) The Bronze God of Rhodes (1960) The Golden Wind (1969)

Fiction edited

Anthologies	The Fantastic Swordsmen (1967) The Spell of Seven (1965) Swords and Sorcery (1963) Tales Beyond Time (1973) 3000 Years of Fantasy and Science Fiction (1972) Warlocks and Warriors (1970)

Single author	Conan the Conqueror (1967) Conan the Warrior (1967) The Wolf Leader (1950)

Nonfiction

Science and history	The Ancient Engineers (1963) Ancient Ruins and Archaeology (1964) Antarctic Conquest (1949) The Ape-Man Within (1995) Darwin and His Great Discovery (1972) The Day of the Dinosaur (1968) Elephant (1964) Energy and Power (1962) Engines (1959) The Evolution of Naval Weapons (1947) The Fringe of the Unknown (1983) Great Cities of the Ancient World (1972) The Great Monkey Trial (1968) The Heroic Age of American Invention (1961) Inventions and Their Management (1937) Man and Power (1961) The Ragged Edge of Science (1980) Rubber Dinosaurs and Wooden Elephants (1996) Spirits, Stars, and Spells (1966) The Story of Science in America (1967)

Lit crit and biography	Blond Barbarians and Noble Savages (1975) The Conan Reader (1968) Dark Valley Destiny (1983) Lands Beyond (1952) Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers (1976) Lost Continents (1954) Lovecraft: A Biography (1975) The Miscast Barbarian (1975) Science-Fiction Handbook (1953/75) Time and Chance (1996)

Nonfiction edited

Multi-author	The Blade of Conan (1979) The Conan Grimoire (1972) The Conan Swordbook (1969) The Spell of Conan (1980)

Single author	To Quebec and the Stars (1976)

Poetry

Demons and Dinosaurs (1970) Heroes and Hobgoblins (1981) Phantoms and Fancies (1972)

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