Tarrano the Conqueror was serialized in Hugo Gernsback's Science and
Invention in 1925 and published in book form five years later. It contains one
of Cummings's best villains. In most of Cummings's novels, the villains are
either deformed or ugly. Physical abnormality is linked with moral depravity.
Not so with Tarrano. He is described as hawklike, handsome, and smiling. He has
a musical voice. But perhaps most significantly, he has a magnetic personality,
a dominant force that "radiated like a tower code-beam"(28). Even his enemies
readily acknowledge Tarrano's greatness.
Tarrano is an obscure military officer on Venus who rises to great military
power and nearly conquers three planets. He is eventually defeated and exiled
to an asteroid populated with insectlike creatures with the woman who loves him
(but who he is too egotistical to love). Almost certainly, Tarrano is modeled
on Napoleon.
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