After having been told I needed to read Jack Vance’s ‘Dying Earth’ novels for about twenty years, I finally am doing so. I picked up a book that has four of the DE novels collected into one place. They are fantastic!
But…
Vance mentions the creatures that inhabit his world sometimes just by name as if the reader should already know what they are. Should I be reading something other than the novels in order to gain some background knowledge, or is this just Vance’s style?
Thanks,
-rainy
I’m in the middle of reading it too. I haven’t found anything like that, but most are original to him. Grues are the creature with the most lasting appeal thanks to Zork.
Eyes of the Overworld has a description of the origins of some of them. It’s page 248 in my edition, linked here.
Barlowe’s Guide to Fantasy has a description and picture of Nissifer, from Cugel’s Saga.
Part of Vance’s charm is that he leaves a lot to the readers’ imaginations. He’ll mention some fierce creature being chained up in the shop Cudgel is trying to break into and you have to fill in the details of what it looks like (maybe he’ll mention a tentacle or fierce fangs, but those are just teasers). It’s like old school horror where you never saw the worst of the action, which made it much more scary, IMHO.
I came back to add that the NYTimes had a good article about him a couple months ago (registration required) http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19Vance-t.html
I’m a huge Vance fan (in case my user name didn’t tip you off). He tends to let concepts leak between his various series, even if they are in otherwise unconnected universes. So if you don’t find an explanation in one book (or series of books), it may be lurking and waiting for you to discover in another book or series. It’s all part of the inimitable Vance charm!..TRM
Another Vance fan checkng in (again note the Username *I *chose).
A large part of the charm of his work is the fact that you feel as if he is telling you a story that is not all that unusual. A mundane storyteller will not describe a dog, except possibly its colour or that it has unusually strong jaws. Vance’s critters are no more notable* within the story *than a dog or a horse would be, and so get no more or less attention from the characters.
And there is so much plot, color and imagination in the Dying Earth books that it would slow it way down to describe it all in full detail. Vance wisely lets the reader’s mind become a partner in the tales.
**Eyes of the Overworld **is my favorite fantasy novel. Vance is a treasure.
Vance is my absolute favorite sci-fi writer (well, maybe he’s tied with Alfred Bester). I think if times got tough, I’d sell all my other books before I let one of his go.
The Planet of Adventure series would make a great set of movies.
Ah, good to know. Coming into reading him directly through a compliation of novels I wasn’t sure if he did a lot of short stories in magazines before hand that added to the ‘canon’ or not. I have really enjoyed the read, and find myself saddened to be nearing the end. Just need to figure out what of his to read next!
Strangely enough I think most of the Dying Earth ‘novels’ were originally short stories in magazines.
I’m another big Vance fan, once you’ve finished the Dying Earth you should move on to Lyonesse,
Still another huge fan of Jack Vance. When I first started them, the Overworld novels were kind of hard to wade through - It’s like being dropped into the middle of a story. They are just so rich, if he tried to describe everything it would be a hundred novels. Personally, I found *Cugel’s Saga *to be the easiest to digest.
“Once again, Cugel left town under a cloud.”
The ones in this compliation are; ‘The Dying Earth,’ ‘The Eyes of the Overworld,’ ‘Cugels Saga’ and ‘Rialto the Magnificent.’
And the ‘Lyonesse’ books sound like they may be my next stop.
Vance is under rated, not as a genre author, but as an author period. It’s funny, there is a SF author named Varley that I only know because when I get to his name on the bookstore shelf, I know I’m out of Vance.
His finest work IMHO.
But do also read his novella The Dragon Masters. Mucho geeky fun.
Varley, when he is good, is very good.
Me too! One day I will read a Varley book but, for now, the name just means not-Vance to me.
It’s funny, I kind of hate Varley because he is so ubiquitous and Vance is so rare. I don’t know anythign about him except that he is not Vance.
The mention of Varley’s proximity to Vance on the shelf is funny to me because I just recently finished reading the Titan trilogy…immediately after I had read “Rialto the Magnificent” and “Cugel’s Saga” (all of them taken out in the same library trip, no less).
You could do worse than try some Varley, actually. His Titan trilogy (Titan, Wizard and Demon) is very good science fiction.
You all have intrigued me into trying some of the *Dying Earth *novels. What is the first one, or where should I start?