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Tales of the Dying Earth
Jack Vance, like most of his generation, is a veteran of the second world war, during which he started to write. He has continued to be published for over half a century, garnering a worthy collection of awards along the way, including one for his detective fiction. However, his most significant contribution has been to science fiction concepts of the far future and its tropes of planetary romance. In fact, his Tales of the Dying Earth largely defined a subgenre of the distant future. Even Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, produced over 30 years later, has an apparent debt to Vance.
Tales of the Dying Earth is a recently released omnibus which begins with Vance's first published book -- The Dying Earth from 1950 -- and runs through to his last collection of stories from that setting, published in 1984. Over the extensive period in which the stories were produced, the definition of science fiction has changed, so that this omnibus is published in the UK as a "Fantasy Masterwork". However, it is apparent from the American cover that his work is still marketed within the SF mainstream there.
With the weight of opinion supporting Vance and the age of the early parts of this tome, it might seem that actually reading it would be a duty rather than a delight. Thankfully, this is not the case -- Vance has a light but sure touch. To an extent, he is making a virtue of his early inability to produce a complex plot, but the collection of vignettes and episodic stories allows a truly broad canvas.
In any case, the Dying Earth is not a place for great epics. When the bloated red sun may go out at any moment, heroics or malevolence each seem destined to go without reward. The world is a palimpsest and the rich breadth of history, whilst mostly lost or jumbled, is sufficient to ensure that few people of the last days expect to rank with the figures of the past. Nevertheless, the follies and foibles of human nature are inescapable and much of the verbiage is concerned with its wry investigation. Verbiage is used advisedly, as Vance clearly enjoys the richness of the English language and takes pleasure in the opportunity to add to what he finds. Some of his artful extensions have reached out of the book and into our usage -- the dying Earth is the native home of the grue , for example.
The first book, The Dying Earth, is a series of short stories, laying the foundations of a vast and ancient world. The next two, The Eyes of the Overworld and Cugel's Saga make up the bulk of the volume, describing Cugel's accidental journeys across the face of the planet. The final book, Rhialto the Marvellous, focuses on a coterie of magicians. The protagonists are flawed yet have a high opinion of themselves. Cugel often appears unlikely to get away with more than his life but faces both riches and poverty with equanimity. He is almost an archetypal trickster/thief and yet he is a very distinct individual. Rhialto also shows how influential Vance was in defining the idea of the magician, being both intelligent and cunning.
The magic within the book is vast and vague, allowing a reasoned approach to come to any conclusion it chooses -- perhaps deciding that the daemons have an extraterrestrial rather than a supernatural origin. Some of the stories offer the picaresque of a travelogue. Many offer a puzzle of some sort. On occasion, the narration reveals the solution before the character -- usually Cugel -- even notices the problem, allowing the reader to join in the amusement at the players' expense.
In other stories, mostly in the last book, only close reading will uncover something which the central figure considers almost too obvious to even mention. The Dying Earth has such depth and variety that both writer and reader are happy to return time and again to settings old and new. This compleat Tales of the Dying Earth is the essence of reading for pleasure.
You can purchase this book at FatBrain.
I tripped over Jack Vance when I was a kid reading random science fiction from my local library. His writing has had a measurable impact on my vocabulary and way of speaking in real life! Maybe once or twice a book you will read some choice of phrase that is so succinct that it will stay with you and many years later you will find it on your own lips... eg, "flexible tactics" (retreat from battlefield), "attenuation of circumstance" (in light of ascension to noble station blocked). Lately his books have been either short story collections or long fantasy-type 2- or 3-book series. But IMHO his best work is in the middle, like the Demon Princes series (nothing to do with demons). Sure his stories have common elements, like a young male hero forced into a situation where he has to forge a path through powerful incumbants that either actively oppose him or at least wish him no well; but his women as well as the men in the story are sketched with such understanding of their motives and internal dialogues, the path of the story so well structured, and the events along the way so eerie and interesting that every book has something new in it.
Yes, indeed. The dialogs that go on between characters in Vance's books are extraordinarily entertaining. Not only does he have a great sense of humor and wit, his use of English is in itself entertaining and enlightening. His work, more than anyone else, gave me a renewed appreciation of English and it's wild variety of words and subtle meanings.
I recommend his books even to Literature majors who would normally dismiss it as sci-fi pulp.
Great review Duncan, it's rare to find fiction reviews as insightful as this one on Slashdot.
> I hope the five "Demon Princes" novels get reprinted soon, too; they deserve to be read by a younger generation.
Orb put the 5 Demon Princes novels out in a two-volume trade-sized paperback edition in the late '90s, and I happened to notice them on the shelf in my local bookstore earlier this week.
Ditto for Planet of Adventure, new Orb edition in the early '90s, four short novels in a single trade-sized volume. I've spotted it fairly recently as well.
All these are somewhat old fashioned SciFi, but whacking good fun, and I highly recommend them.
For heroic fantasy, track down his Lyonesse trilogy, which is more recent than the originals of the above, but has not been reprinted AFAIK.
Another pseudo-SciFi that you might be able to find in a used book store is his Maske:Thaery [sp?], which also provides a great good time.
While almost anything Vance ever wrote is worth reading, the above are, IMO, the cream of the cream.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Why, you ask, must Jack Vance, legendary author and contributor of so many memes, be taken out back and shot? Because, as a poster above points out, his books inspired the Dungeons and Dragons magic system.
Jack Vance is personally responsible for the death of uncountable first-level mages who could only memorize one spell a day and just happened to pick the wrong one, not to mention all the adventuring parties wiped out by orcish hordes due to the accidental choice of a Lightning Bolt over an extra Fireball.
The death toll caused by Vance's books is only comparable to the massive damage inflicted by that most terrible hacker weapon, DeCSS. He must be stopped, and stopped now.
It's important to have authors who not only enjoy stretching the limits of the English language but also extending it. Particularly so in the sci-fi genre, where the concepts introduced have a similar effect on our sciences. Were it not for visionary writers such as this one, both our language and our sciences would be in danger of stagnation.
The Dying Earth has had more influence on later fiction than most people realize -- and it was also one of the core influences on the original Dungeons and Dragons system and its later offshoots, as those familiar with D&D will note while they read (Gygax admits this openly). It's also almost unique among this sort of work for having characters who are strangely amoral -- not evil, simply totally egoistic (sic). While many would consider this to be a horrible thing for any work of fiction (and if it were more widely known it would be banned in many circles) it leads to a very thought-provoking read. Having just reread the series (in this reprint) after many years, it was a refreshing mental exercise to consider such an alternate society. Highly recommended.