Captain Pausert, commercial traveler from the Republic of Nikkeldepain, has every reason to feel very good about himself. The captain of the trusty Venture is all set to make a small fortune off his latest cargo, wipe out his not inconsiderable debts, and sail off into the stars with his beloved fiancée. Indeed, a man in his situation can afford to be generous, particularly when said generosity merely entails rescuing three sweet little slave girls from their monstrously mean masters and returning them safely to the loving arms of their family.

Of course, as we all know, rare is the good deed that goes unpunished.

No sooner has Pausert’s brief philanthropic career commenced than things start to get seriously weird. First, the horrid masters seem strangely, well, overjoyed to divest themselves of the poor little innocent slave girls. Then it turns out that the girls -- Maleen, Goth, and the Leewit (never just “Leewit”) have the ability to co-opt Pausert’s ship’s drives and make the ship go really, really fast. (Like, really fast.) And then he learns that these aren’t just any adorable tots. No, it is Pausert’s, um, fortune to have stumbled upon three young witches from the notorious and “prohibited” planet of Karres.

Oops!

In short order, Pausert finds himself persona non grata on Nikkeldepain (where, just for starters, purchase of slaves is a serious crime, even when carried out with the very best of intentions), abandoned by his faithless fiancée, stuck with a load of unsaleable merchandise, and fleeing a significant chunk of the Imperial fleet. Oh, and also his ship is full of magic: Goth has decided, for reasons of her own, to stow away. And Goth is a master operator of the Sheewash Drive, the magical thingamabob that makes the ship go really, really fast. (Like, really fast.) And the Empire would love to get their hands on Pausert and toss him into prison for the rest of his natural life, for a whole laundry list of crimes. And they would dearly love to get their hands on the Drive.

Hijinks ensue as Pausert and young Goth (she’s maybe eleven or twelve) have hair-raising adventures involving Imperial police, double agents, a ruthless space pirate called the Agandar and his fearsome Sheem robot, aliens from an alternate dimension, and the Worm World, “the darkest threat to mankind in all of space.” Ultimately, it will be up to Pausert, Goth, and the Leewit (Maleen exits the picture fairly early on) to face down dread Moander and save the entire universe.

Parts of The Witches of Karres were first published as a novella in 1949, and it wasn’t until 1966 that James Schmitz (of Telzey Amberdon fame) got around to expanding the earlier work into a full-length novel. In 1967, the novel was nominated for the Hugo Award (it lost to Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress). It’s easy to see why: there are plenty of SF novels from the 60s that are deeper or more profound or have more interesting things to say about the human condition, but I defy anyone to find another book from that era that’s more fun. Goth and Pausert skip from adventure to adventure, and although they do face various dangers, things never get too heavy; even the Agandar is amusing and urbane (if just a little bit evil). And Schmitz was certainly imaginative; between the terrors of the Chaladoor and the aristocratic Lyrd-Hyrier and the adorable but ill-mannered grik-dog and -- best of all -- the mischievous personifications of klatha energy known as vatches, you may feel as though you’ve learned a whole new and wonderful language. For a book that’s nearly a half-century old, The Witches of Karres holds up remarkably well.

Baen re-edited and re-released the book in 2005¹, and several reviewers on Amazon hint darkly that the Baen version has been freshened up a little too freshly in the name of making the text seem less “dated.” (These reviewers are too polite to mention, but I’m not, that the cover of the Baen version resembles nothing more than three orgasmic harpies moaning over a glowing golden vagina. Baen, what were you thinking?) I’m… not sure what I think about that. I mean, I’m sure editor Eric Flint wouldn’t go so far as to drop in lines like “Pausert had just cued up Arcade Fire on his iPod when Goth texted him that Jersey Shore had just finished downloading.” (Although that would be pretty funny.) But really, the text didn’t need a whole lot of help to begin with. And passages that really date the book -- like, say, the scenes where Pausert lights a cigarette on the bridge of his ship in order to calm his frazzled nerves -- only add to the book’s considerable charm. Sez this reviewer, anyway.

Someday, perhaps someone will conduct a page-by-page comparison of the two editions. In the meantime, if you haven’t read it yet (and why not?), whichever edition you can get your hands on, you’re in for a treat. Unnecessary revisions (and unfortunate cover art) aside, Baen deserves credit and gratitude for ensuring that this genre classic remains available to another generation of readers.

  -- Kate Nagy

¹ This review references the 1981 Ace paperback printing.