A Planet Called Treason
A Planet Called Treason, a science fiction novel by Orson Scott Card, was originally published in 1979 by St Martin's Press and Dell Publishing Co. After being heavily revised, the book was republished in 1988 under the title Treason by St. Martin's Press. The premise for this work of science fiction is a planet without metal to which the ancestors of the inhabitants were banished. Through the ages, the descendents of each of the banished members (mostly scientists) formed nations which warred and allied with one another to gain an advantage over their rivals. Since Treason (the name of the planet) contained no hard metals, the nations were forced to trade for it with their off-planet jailers. A condition of their sentence on the planet was that they must stay until they could produce a ship to take them off planet. The main character in the book is Lanik Mueller, heir to the Mueller family kingdom. The Mueller's, through generations of genetic mutation, have the ability to regrow body parts naturally. The dark side to the Mueller nations is that they trade organs and body parts for hard metals. These trade goods are harvested from radical regeneratives that are placed in pens like animals. Since the body parts naturally regrow, the radical regeneratives wallow in the pens till they are harvested, then returned to the pens, until they grow more parts. Radical Regeneratives differ from the other Muellers in that their bodies are confused from the genetic alterations and grow extra appendages and (unlike normal Muellers) organs from the opposite sex. After discovering that Lanik is a radical regenerative, Lanik's father banishes him from the kingdom. Fearing that he will be sentenced to the pens, Lanik evades his father's guards and escapes. Lanik, hoping that he can regain his father's favor, travels to a rival nation incognito. Due to his radical regenerative body, Lanik looks like (and passes for) a woman. Using this subterfuge, he poses as an ambassador from a matriarchal nation in order to discover by what method his rivals are obtaining ore to produce weapons. Their abundance of ore has allowed them to dominate the region militarily. That is only the beginning of the adventure for Lanik, who discovers the secrets of the most powerful nations and at the same time gains supernatural abilities to save his people and more importantly his planet.
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