I confess I never read any of Vance’s novels, but I enjoyed his short stories very much. “The Moon Moth” has been a favorite since childhood, when I read it in a great-sf collection of my dad’s. I also enjoyed the wry humor and ornery central character of “Sail 25,” about a training mission for starfaring cadets. Vance also wrote a funny, clever short story about a interstellar big-game preserve where the aboriginals, long thought nonsentient, stage a rebellion against the human staff - I forget the title and now can’t find it online. Good stuff.
RIP Jack. My all time favorite writer. Something about the the tone of his stories is unique, I can’t put my finger on it. Maybe the unabashed use of obscure words or his vivid descriptions of truly bizarre places, people and costumes.
My friends and I quote, “Once again Cugel left town under a cloud”, when we screw up.
Often he set up scenarios in which people are constrained by societal rules to go to extreme lengths to be courteous while trying to screw each other over. The humor was so subtle and his language so baroque that I instantly find myself completely immersed in his writing.
Haven’t read a great deal of his work, sad to say for a big SF buff like myself. But I do recall one that I think was his. Can somebody ID it for me?
The plot, as I recall it, was something like this: there was a generations-long war between Earth and another planet. We’d captured some of their guys and they some of ours. The captives were selectively bred/genetically engineered so that both sides had corrupted member of the other species that they used principally as cannon-fodder.
They were among the best parts of those novels! They were great fun!
And Unspiek, Baron Bodissey, is alluded to, now and then, in the Cadwal Chronicles, thus implying that these novels are set in the future of the Oikumene.
Also a shout-out of thanks to Daw Books, for publishing to many of Vance’s books. You can easily zero in on my favorite part of the bookshelf by the bright yellow row of paperback spines.
Found it - it’s “The Kokod Warriors” (1952). I misremembered it a bit - it’s set on a world where the local tribes constantly fight each other, and those visiting a human-run tourist inn wager on the battles’ outcomes. A man with an understandable grudge against the innkeepers messes with them in a funny way.