The novel “Ivory: A Legend of Past and Future” by Mike Resnick was published for the first time in 1988.
Duncan Rojas is an expert on rare historical artifacts who works for a big corporation that publishes guides on the subject. His experience leads him to search for lost artifacts and authenticate the ones that are found, but even by his standards Bukoba Mandaka’s request is out of the ordinary. The man who calls himself the last of the Maasai asks him to find the tusks of the Kilimanjaro Elephant after their traces were lost millennia earlier.
To find that unique trophy, Duncan Rojas starts examining all available interplanetary archives. Gradually, he manages to reconstruct the history of the tusks and at the same time realizes how closely they were connected to the Maasai. Bukoba Mandaka promises to explain to him the reasons why he absolutely wants to get his hands on the tusks only after he finds them.
Over the course of his career, Mike Resnick wrote many stories related in various ways to Africa. The ones set in the fictional universe that includes most of them are often allegorical, instead “Ivory: A legend of the past and the future” has roots in historical Africa since at the center of the story there’s a hunting trophy, the tusks of the Kilimanjaro Elephant. Many years after that elephant is killed, the owner of the tusks loses them in a card game. Millennia later, the last of the Maasai wants to find them at all costs.
Duncan Rojas’s search for the tusks begins in the year 6303 G.E., but the novel is actually made of short stories set in various eras. The protagonists are the various owners of the tusks over the millennia going back to the history of the hunt for the Kilimanjaro Elephant. Theose are stories of people that go from colonial and post-colonial Africa to continue on other planets, arriving at the time when the Earth is a barren and uninhabited planet.
The various stories feature very different people who took possession of the tusks in very different circumstances. In the end, the tusks are a so-called McGuffin, an object used to move the plot forward. In this case, there are various plots that include the progressive revelation of the connection with the Maasai and the reasons why Bukoba Mandaka wants to have the tusks at all costs.
The result brings together the different styles used by Mike Resnick in his works. Over the course of his career, this author wrote stories ranging from adventurous, but at times rather superficial, space opera to other far more profound ones, often linked to Africa. “Ivory: A Legend of the Past and the Future” brings all of this together in a novel that spans space and time.
The pace is fast although there isn’t always a lot of action because there has to be room for all the stories in a book that’s not very long. There’s an abundance of dialogue, but Mike Resnick manages to handle all that talking so it doesn’t slow down the pace and uses it for the characterization, especially in terms of the characters’ emotions. All this adds strength to the novel and prevents the division into short stories from becoming a burden. On the contrary, the stories are well exploited also to build the final part of the novel with a crescendo of intensity.
By putting the more adventurous parts of “Ivory: A Legend of the Past and the Future” at the service of the more profound ones, Mike Resnick managed to build a novel that in the end leaves food for thought. For this reason, I consider it among the best of this author and I recommend reading it.
