Araminta Station is my favorite and his best IMO
You’re quite right Reno Nevada, my earlier observation is meaningless for this thread. I was just thinking aloud, what I meant to articulate is that I love them both but lean to the Saga over the Dying Earth because it’s a fabulously sustained story, rather than a collection of (fabulous) vignettes. And the Saga has Cugel in it, obv.
Well the Alessan Hypothesis was almost confirmed (with the seventh response including not one but two double ups). Still we have a fine range of nominations (some of which I must confess to not having read myself, so I’ll have to add them to my wishlist).
I must apologise for the confusion in the OP, with ‘book’ in the title and ‘work’ in the body. I certainly wanted the fix-ups (The Dying Earth and Eyes of the Overworld in particular) to be eligible, and to avoid the whole ‘Is it a novel?’ question.
I hadn’t considered short stories and novellas, but given Vance’s relative brevity (such a rare virtue amongst SF and fantasy authors these days) many of the longer novellas aren’t much shorter than his shorter books, so I think they qualify.
Vance to me is one of those very rare authors who I latched onto as a young lad (The Eyes of the Overworld was my introduction to Vance at about 14 or so) and have never stopped enjoying. I can’t remember ever reading a bad work by Vance and even seriously considered purchasing the entire Vance Integral Edition at one point (sanity prevailed - how the hell was I going to lug 40+ volumes around?)
One thing I found interesting about the selections - no one so far has chosen any of the Demon Princes novels, and yet you often see this series cited as his major SF work. Perhaps it’s because they are so interlinked to not rank particularly high individually?
My immediate thought was The Languages of Pao. I don’t know if it’s the conceit of controlling societies through language, or the mental image of the neutraloids with shields, but that book has stuck with me.
All of his stuff is good, though. At least, all of it that I remember. 
Well, my Planet of Adventure series is a single book. So, despite my user name, I’d choose that.
I’ll be the one to chime in and choose a Demon Princes novel as my favorite. I think of them as one long saga, but if I had to pick one, I’d go with The Killing Machine. I think it had the most mind-boggling concepts of all five of the books, from the “fake meter” to “Interchange” to the whole “lost planet” of Thamber thing. Awesome story.
Vance’s short stories “The Moon Moth,” “The Kokod Warriors” and “Sail 25” have long been favorites of mine. I’m bumping this thread to say that there’s now a graphic novel of “The Moon Moth.” The artwork is a little odd, almost crude in places, but it sticks pretty closely to the classic short story, and if you’re a Vance fan you’ll want to check it out. It also includes a reprint of an interesting 2009 New York Times Magazine article about Vance: http://www.amazon.com/The-Moon-Moth-Jack-Vance/dp/1596433671/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1393187378&sr=8-1&keywords=the+moon+moth
Here’s more on it: http://us.macmillan.com/themoonmoth/JackVance
I seem to have missed this thread first time around. I’m a big Jack Vance fan… And, yeah, the Demon Prince novels are magnificent. “The Killing Machine is very good.” I like “The Face” a little better, but the two are close to equal.
The “Tschai, Planet of Adventure” series is also good, and, of those four books, “The Dirdir” is my favorite.
“Ecce and Old Earth,” the second book of the Cadwal Chronicles trilogy, is worth mentioning for being one of Vance’s personal “breakthrough” novels. It was his first book with a well-rounded, fully developed, dramatically mature and independent female character. Up to then, nearly all of his women were space princesses of one stripe or another. In this book, he presents a female hero every bit the equal of his male protagonists. He deserves praise for freeing himself from the limitations of his pulp-era origins.
The Moon Moth
Too close to call between The Last Castle and The Moon Moth.
Isn;t “The Moon Moth” just a Short?
In fact, quite a few tales nominated here are shorts or novellas.
True, both The Moon Moth and The Last Castle are too short to be real novels. But they have been published as “books” so, if we read the threat title literally…
(Pedantic cop-out!)
Vance often wrote multiple-book series, and those are problematic too. Lyonesse is probably the best of the Lyonesse trilogy, but it’s so much better with The Green Pearl and Madouc. The Tschai series really needs to be read as one complete story told in four volumes. The Demon Princes, bless 'em, can be read out of order without much loss of coherence.
(That’s my favorite kind of series: where you can pick 'em up in any order and do pretty much just as well. The Sherlock Holmes canon, for instance, has very little dependence on internal chronological order.)
I am very fond of Emphyrio as a stand-alone book, but I do have to say it isn’t his best. Just mighty darn good. Same for The Dragon Masters.
As with Lovecraft, I believe Vance was best served in the novella. That gave him the space to be as elaborate, but avoided padding or an overextension of our disbelieve suspsnders.
Good point: also, many of his books were episodic. In fact, one of the segments of Cugel’s Saga was published separately in a magazine as a short story.
Really? Is this the same as the 4-novel series that I bought called *Tschai *(the name of the planet involved)?
I got this for my Kindle more-or-less based on this recommendation, and I don’t find it very appealing. For the quality of the science and logic in it, it might as well be fantasy. Three alien races from other planets, plus humans apparently harvested from earth thousands of years ago and shaped to fit their various needs, on a planet with nothing in particular to recommend it for colonization? Faster than light space travel is assumed, I guess, but not addressed.
There’s lots of action and adventure, true, but on the whole it seems pretty pulpy to me. As an introduction to Vance’s work, it is not succeeding in drawing me in to read more.
Is there another work that I should try to give Vance a second chance, that would be a little more sophisticated than this one?
Roddy
If you are a hard SF fan, Vance might not be for you. He comes across as much interested in settings, tone and plot, rather than science. And yeah, much ( all? ) of his SF is a bit pulpy. Might not shock you to know that he ultimately may be slightly better known for his fantasy ( both high fantasy, as with Lyonesse or eclectic stuff like the Cugel tales ) than his voluminous SF output. After all this is the guy who is indirectly, but chiefly responsible for the design of the Dungeons & Dragons magic system ;).
Dunno, given the above. Try The Dragon Masters maybe. But the logic still may not work for you and it is still ultimately an adventure story.
Thanks, I didn’t realize that’s where he stood in the fantasy/sf spectrum.
(note: This is why I miss bookstores. Not only are the books already categorized, but you can get a pretty good idea from the book cover and blurb what kind of book it is.)
Based on this, I don’t think I will be pursuing further writings by Mr. Vance.
Roddy
It is fantasy! It’s science fantasy, loosely inspired by the John Carter of Mars series. (Same multiplicity of color-coded races, even the two moons “hurtling” through the night. A few other similarities.)
It’s rollicking high-adventure space fantasy…and just about the best example of the genre one could ever hope to find.
Exactly so!
Araminta Station, perhaps, book one of the Cadwal Chronicles trilogy. The other two books are Ecce and Old Earth, and Throy.
They’re still light and somewhat flimsy. Vance was never Arthur C. Clarke, or even Isaac Asimov. If you want the Foundation trilogy, Vance isn’t going to be your guy. Maybe a little closer to Larry Niven. (Let’s face it, the “Known Space” setting also has a lot that’s tough to swallow. Psionic powers being the biggest problem.)
Vance’s genius is as a stylist. He has a unique voice, a refined, abstract, urbane, almost remote narrative touch. He makes better use of connotations than any other writer I know. He works his words hard!
Alas, I think, ultimately, if you didn’t like “City of the Chasch,” there’s a good likelihood you won’t like Vance at all. It’s a very solid example of the apex of his storytelling skill.
Heh! Sometimes, at least! I was one who got suckered in by Zebra Books’ cover for Robert E. Howard’s “The Vultures of Whapeton.” It’s a Jeff Jones fantasy art cover – a flying vulture clawing at a skeleton that’s riding a horse – prominently labeled as “Fantasy Adventure.”
Actually? It’s a Western! A bunch of cowboy and gunslinger stories! One of the most outstanding examples of misleading packaging ever.