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Space Books Media Book Reviews

Tales of the Dying Earth 55

Posted by timothy from the oh-mutti-bist-du-OK? dept.
Duncan Lawie wrote this review of a book (a collection, really, but in a single volume) that's been more than 50 years in the making -- A good reminder that good fiction can transcend its time of origin. Maybe it helps that time of origin plays an important role in the stories collected here.

Tales of the Dying Earth
author Jack Vance
pages 752
publisher St. Martin's Press
rating 8.5
reviewer Duncan Lawie
ISBN 0312874561
summary One of the ur-books of SF and of fantasy, and a delight to read.

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.
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Tales of the Dying Earth

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  • empty post not permitted :(
  • I know what you mean, but I didn't see this as a weakness, more as thought provoking. In fact, it's very much in tune with the way most people live. The characters are mostly amoral, concerned with nothing beyond their own benefit, utterly incapable of considering things from another's perspective - just like real people. It's just that their thought processes are sometimes revealed which makes these flaws more obvious.

    Live and don't learn, that's my motto ;-)
  • As my copy-editor girlfriend would say, "The passive voice is to be avoided. [princeton.edu]"

  • Vance: recommended (Score:3)

    by warmcat ( 3545 ) on Friday May 04, 2001 @08:22AM (#245448)
    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.

  • Jack Vance is a riot (Score:3)

    by GypC ( 7592 ) on Friday May 04, 2001 @08:23AM (#245449) Homepage Journal

    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.

    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.

  • Just in case anyone may be laboring under the impression that Fatbrain is still a by geeks / for geeks site, I believe that (and their brick and mortar parent, Computer Literacy Books) have been purchased by Barnes and Noble. They are part of the conglomerate now. Which doesn't make them Satan or anything; however, I know that I prefer to go with smaller vendors when possible. And if I had to choose between Barnes and Noble / Fatbrain and Borders / Amazon as far as lesser of megacorp evils go, I'd likely go with the latter.
  • It just doesn't get any better than Vance. He's the one true master prose stylist that the genres of science fiction and fantasy have produced;; only Dick comes within spitting distance. Vance's Lyonesse trilogy , for instance, is the equal of the Lord Of The Rings in grandeur, but much less turgid and unpleasant a read.

    Much of Vance is out of print, sadly, although there is a project to reprint all of his books in a limited-run collector's edition -- check out http://www.vanceintegral.com

    A pleasant surprise, to see a Vance review on Slashdot.

    Peace,
    (jfb)
  • My problem isn't so much that they can't consider things from another's perspective, it's that they don't even seem to consider things from their own perspectives. :)
  • Dying Earth is one of those books you just ought to read -- Vance's language is unsurpassed, his wry sense of humor is often delightful, and his talent for invention makes most fantasy written in the last hundred years look depressingly unimaginative.

    That said, there's a certain thin quality to the stories in Dying Earth that's kept me from wanting to read them again, even though the book has a permanent place on my shelf. Vance's characters are original and individual, but still strangely flat. They seem to lack not just emotional depth, but self-awareness, so that they wander through life uncaringly, completely unaffected by their adventures; with the result that in the end the reader, too, finds it hard to care what happens to them, and walks away equally unaffected.

    So after you've read Dying Earth, do yourself a favor and pick up something like Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun or Fritz Lieber's Fafhrd & Grey Mouser stories -- very different works, but each in their own way showing how the same material could have been more rewarding in the hands of a writer less afraid to get his hands dirty.

  • Ironic that you should talk about richness of language when referring to the author of Servants of the Wankh [vance.hw.nl]. Nonetheless I agree. With the exception of the stultifying Lyonesse series (I suppose Someone liked them), Vance is an excellent author, a fact that's all the more amazing when you consider how many authors have lost the plot as the years advanced (consider Foundation and Earth, Number of the Beast...)
  • > With the exception of the stultifying Lyonesse series (I suppose Someone liked them)

    I did. In fact it has the position of honor on my bookshelf.

    There's no accounting for taste, eh?

    --

  • Re:This should never have been out of print (Score:3)

    by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Friday May 04, 2001 @07:59AM (#245456)
    > 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.

    --
  • Simmons acknowledges Vance in Hyperion :)

    "It was her idea to title the book The Dying Earth (a records search showed a novel by that name five hundred years earlier, but the copyright had lapsed and the book was out of print)."
    --
    Full Time Idiot and Miserable Sod
  • Part of Vance's genius is the way he almost plays with language, inventing words on the spot and writing with an almost formal, mannered style. The Dying Earth books are some of the best examples of this, and there's an underlying mischievousness which really makes the books a joy to read.

    On the other hand, inventing words can have it's problems, as anyone in the UK will realise when shown a copy of Vance's "Servants of the Wankh"...
  • >I like his footnotes.

    Oh yes! They're one of the best things about the books, somehow more honest than trying to sneak an explanation into the dialogue.

    Reminds me of Pratchett's stuff, and now that I come to think of it the first two Discworld novels bear more than a passing resemblance to the Dying Earth stories. Rincewind has definite echoes of Cugel in his character, at least in the early stories.

  • A long time ago there was an obscure little roleplaying game called 'Talislanta' which was inspired by the Dying Earth series, and which was even given kudos by Jack Vance. It was shoofed around from publisher to publisher and finally is coming out this year in a new and hoopy edition.

    How appropriate that both that and the Dying Earth Tales are back out in the world. :)
  • This is a silly statement. Anyone who lived through the era can be considered a veteran of the War. Its effects were so far reaching that you had almost had to live on the Moon not to feel anything from the experience, even if they weren't personal. Going into combat was just one of the many ways in which people's lives were affected and even those countries that weren't directly involved in the war were affected.

    --

  • What, you can't even put your name behind your comments? God, I hate ACs.

    Now, in response, nowhere did I say that people "suffered." I only stated that people were "affected," which could be in good or bad ways. You have some grudge against "suffering" veterans? Maybe you shouldn't read so much of your own biases into my comment.

    All I was saying was that the people of that era can be considered "vererans" of the war. I include everyone who was affected, including the military, including the women, including the children, including the migrant farm workers who got better jobs. They're all veterans and that makes the statement, "like most of his generation, is a veteran of the second world war," not flat out wrong. Yes, it's a bit broader definition than we might be used to. Live with it.

    --

  • What is wrong with the word palimpsest? It is a perfectly valid word that I have seen used since way back when I was a kid (the Beyond Zork game let you pick up a palimpsest as part of a puzzle, IIRC). Not only that, but the author is using it perfectly correctly - the world of Dying Earth is a medium upon which many people have scribbled but which has been wiped clean due to the impending cock-up in the sun.

    Using palimpsest here is accurate, economical and I daresay even elegant. It is a good choice; why are you criticising him just because you had to look it up?

    -konstant
    Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
  • Tales of the Dying UCITA Bill

    Tales of the Dying Redmond Corporation

    Tales of the Dying Silly Patent Lawsuits

    Tales of the Dying Anti 2600 Lawsuits

    This guy wasn't as innovative as you think he was.

    FBI mole almost captured [antioffline.com]

  • > It just doesn't get any better than Vance. He's
    > the one true master prose stylist that the
    > genres of science fiction and fantasy have
    > produced;; only Dick comes within spitting
    > distance.

    R.A. Lafferty was an even greater stylist (still alive last I heard, but too infirm to write). If you think it's hard to find Vance's books ...

  • > By way of comparison, I think it's probably
    > safe to say that Lafferty dropped way more acid
    > than Vance. (Although perhaps not as much as
    > Dick :)

    Curiously enough, no acid. Plenty of beer, however.

    Lafferty was a conservative Catholic mechanical engineer with no "literary" background (other than being a voracious reader. Definitely no counter-cultural tendencies, despite his very unique style (and subject matter). I suspect his neglect arose from the fact that there was no pigeon-hole in the literary establishment for eccentric literary stylists who were also "cranky right-wingers".

    Back in my youth, my family lived in Tulsa, and my little brother had a friend who lived next door to RAL. Consequently, my wife and I got to visit him in his tiny, book-stuffed house.

  • Jack Vance must die. (Score:3)

    by Alik ( 81811 ) on Friday May 04, 2001 @11:46AM (#245467)
    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.
  • Guy's 9/10ths blind, but he's still popping out light, literate SF and fantasy. Vance doesn't write cutting-edge incisive SF. He is often deliberately archaic. It's just good reading, wonderfully written. Also recommended: _Emphyrio_: Perhaps his best novel. Sad story about a boy growing up and rebelling against a highly structured society. The "Demon Princes" novels: Assassin/detective tracks down the bizarro criminals who headed a raid on his home town. Some of the later books are incredibly funny.

  • Richness in language (Score:4)

    by BierGuzzl ( 92635 ) on Friday May 04, 2001 @07:48AM (#245469)
    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.
  • Several posters have lamented the out-of-print status of much of his work.

    The fantastic "Demon Princes" reprint compilations are available at Amazon. I bought the hardcovers, and love them. A couple of other compilations, and his two most recent books are also available there.

    To purchase his complete works (for a considerable price - I would prefer a CD/DVD myself) check out the Vance Integral Edition, as mentioned by another poster (but missed by moderators):
    www.vanceintegral.com [vanceintegral.com]

    Also, many of his books can be picked up at second hand stores in towns all over the world. I've done this from London (UK) to Manhattan (Kansas)!

    It's such a pleasure to read 'soft' sci-fi that occasionally requires a dictionary at hand for complete understanding - and enjoyment. Most of all, his vivid imagery and witty, dry (though sometimes slightly formulaic) dialogue makes me cherish his works like old friends.

    Spread the word!


    [Antispam] Kill the x in my email address to reply

  • Even Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, produced over 30 years later, has an apparent debt to Vance.

    Gene Wolfe has a published article examining all of the stories that make up the first Dying Earth collection in Jack Vance: Critical Appreciations and a Bibliography (published 2000 by The British Library, ISBN 0-7123-1102-5). The book also has an article by Dan Simmons, author of Hyperion et al., acknowledging his immense debt to Vance.
  • With the exception of the stultifying Lyonesse series (I suppose Someone liked them), Vance is an excellent author

    I find some of Vance's series just tail off: the first Lyonesse book (Suldrun's Garden) was better than either of its sequels; the Durdane novels started well with The Anome but kinda lost it by the time of The Asutra.

    The exceptions -- The Demon Princes, Tschai (Planet of Adventure), and of course the Dying Earth books themselves -- only make this more painful for the reader.

    Vance's standalone books (other than the lamentable Slaves of the Klau) are by and large excellent. It's just when he's finishing off a long series you sometimes get a feeling he got bored before the end and wanted to move on...
  • He's the one true master prose stylist that the genres of science fiction and fantasy have produced

    Maybe so. But if you want a true master prose stylist from pre-genre fantasy, check out James Branch Cabell.

    His most notorious novel, Jurgen, was prosecuted for obscenity in the 1920s; I mention this in case it tempts any goatse.cx-fanciers to give it a go. (Though, for my money, Something About Eve is far ruder).
  • There's only two Cugel books, right? They're definitely the funniest things I've read from Vance.

    There's a third, The Quest for Simbilis, but it's not by Vance. It's an alternate sequel to Eyes of the Overworld, written by Michael Shea (whose Nifft the Lean stories are well worth a look, if you like Vance or Leiber), and I suppose was rendered obsolete when Cugel's Saga came out.

    Rumour has it that Vance didn't like Shea's book one little bit. (Though I did).

    Shea's most recent book is The A'Rak, and The Incomplete Nifft collects his other Nifft stories, AFAIK. (Please advise me if I'm wrong!).
  • A Dying Earth role-playing game (pencil & paper, not computer-based) has just been published in a snazzy hardback volume from Pelgrane Press [dyingearth.com]. It was written by Robin D. Laws (Over The Edge, Feng Shui, Hero Wars...), who is thought to be rather good at writing this kind of thing. Worth a look, if you still play those old-fashioned sociable multiplayer games we had before computers came along.

    There are various PDF downloads on Pelgrane's site if you want to check out the quality before you buy.
  • "Dearth" means lack. To indicate overabundance you have a variety of words at your disposal; I recommend "glut". :)
  • Hey, I'm just a lone open source refugee who has been thrust in the middle of Solaris sysadming without any prior experience. That white boot screen console is so fucking slow that I think even an X console would beat it.
  • Dearth of star trek and star wars crud? There is PLENTY of star trek and star ward crud out there! You want even more??? Or don't you know what "dearth" means?
  • I've never seen Vance's characters as the strongest point of his work. Some authors build characters for the sake of the character, so that the personality of the character becomes a driving force in the plot. Vance provides characters that support the social framework that he is building. They tend to have firmly held opinions because that reinforces the cultural contrast which he is usually trying to illustrate.

    Generally, what I take away from a Vance book (and I think I've read most of them, having scavenged used-bookstore shelves for quite a while now) is the sense that our own customs and lifestyles are arbitrary and more than a little ridiculous.

  • I like his footnotes. He'll occasionally invent a word and then provide a half-page footnote with etymology and cultural context.

  • By way of comparison, I think it's probably safe to say that Lafferty dropped way more acid than Vance. (Although perhaps not as much as Dick :)

  • Sure, there's Dearth Vader and Dearth Maul ... I think they're Australian or something.

    I think literary quality declines in inverse proportion to the number of titles in a particular series. Which is not to say that it's not entertaining, just that it's formula fiction. (Remember "Doc Savage"? Now that was pulp with no redeeming literary value whatsoever. Man, I used to love reading that crap.)

  • Yeah, Rincewind and Cugel both succeed in spite of themselves, and are usually oblivious to the real causes of what happens around them.

    There's only two Cugel books, right? They're definitely the funniest things I've read from Vance.

    As for the footnotes, I remember being very impressed by one from "The Last Castle" where Vance explains that what the character said in the main text and what he literally said were different. It reinforced the notion that the story itself was an interpretation of something really quite alien.

    "Were power-wagons at hand, I'd volith riding forth with a whip to send the raudlebogs skirkling home."

    It's amazing what you can find on google.

  • They're cookie-cutter books. The level of inspiration and creativity is minimal. The author has to stay within pre-approved subject and plot boundaries. No risks.

    And usually the style is horribly reminiscent of fan-fiction. (This blithe over-generalization is based on reading a fair number of the old trek books, plus a truly unfortunate handful of X-files books.)

    It's escapist reading with no intention of making you think. Not really bad, but it's the SF equivalent of bodice-ripper romance novels.

  • What should be made clear is how D&D was influenced by these tales. Specifically, in the first volume, "The Dying Earth," magic spells are described laying in the mind like stones on a path, which are dispersed when the spell is used. This is much like the oft-maligned D&D magic system, where you must memorize specific spells, which can't be replaced readily or reallocated to other magical powers.

    But don't forget other major influences: DeCamp and Pratt's "Incomplete Enchanter," Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser tales, and of course Robert Howard's Conan tales.
  • The title and the cover clearly misrepresented this work. It is not even slightly what I would consider to be science fiction; it is pure fantasy. A few of the stories were OK but nothing to write home about.
  • Okay...really, really dumb question, but here goes. What exactly is bad about all the Star Trek novels? I've never read one, or really had any interest myself, but what makes them evil?
  • It'll be a cold day in hell when I order a book from Amazon.
  • As soon as I saw this I nipped over to Fatbrain and ordered the book. Vance's work is all classic stuff, but so little of it is available these days (due to the dearth of Star Trek and Star Wars crud filling the shelves, but I digress). I hope the five "Demon Princes" novels get reprinted soon, too; they deserve to be read by a younger generation.
    -----------------
  • What makes you think he was uncomfortable with the words he used?

    Verbiage is used advisedly is an extremely awkward phrase.
    --Kara
    --Kara
  • The world is a palimpsest.
    Indeed it is.

    Verbiage is used advisedly.
    In the book perhaps, but not in the review. Here's a tip, don't use words that you aren't comfortable with in a desperate attempt to appear smart. Just say no.

    I understand that pastiche and pretense are par for the course here on slashdot, but you go too far. We can handle 30,000 helpdesk monkeys claiming to be hotshot unix admins - after all, there's a shortage of qualified unix admins. What we do not need is another Jon Katz. One is more than enough.

    --Kara
  • It's good to hear you say that about sci-fi. These days, we need a little less fantasy in our lives and more attention to reality. The human condition doesn't lend itself toward idle dreaming, and all the youngsters who spend their time reading childish stories about star travel, alien races, and Middle Earth mystics should instead be applying themselves to more real-life issues.
    Oh, please!
    You're fantastically open-minded, so I won't spend a whole lot of time replying. Suffice it to say that purveyors of childish sci-fi stories absolutely fill the ranks of the scientific community -- and yes, punkass, I'm a real-life scientist, not some pretender who'll bullshit his way through a posting. My work in a pharmaceutical firm puts me in contact daily with molecular biologists, biochemists, bioinformaticists, programmers, physicians, statisticians, engineers ... you name the discipline, and I guarantee that I'm sitting next to or within shouting distance of someone with a PhD in it. And guess what almost all of us have in common? Encyclopaedic knowledge of the genre you disparage.
    When I climb into my BMW this afternoon and drive home, I'll listen to my Lord of the Rings CD and think of your posting, Anonymous Coward. And I'll just laugh.... You remind me so much of the kids who made fun of me in primary school. Two of them are groundskeepers in my community now.
    But please, keep spreading your message about sci-fi. I want my children to have an even greater advantage in their future careers. If you just turn one young mind away from creativity, imagination, or even just learning how to read, my children will have even more room to grow. Keep up the good work.
    And for those of you who sense some unapologetic elitism in my reply, you're quite right.


  • they wander through life uncaringly, completely unaffected by their adventures . . . [much snipped] . . . the same material could have been more rewarding in the hands of a writer less afraid to get his hands dirty.

    By chance, I've been re-reading a log of old Vance recently (this week: The Faceless Man novels, Night Lamp, and a couple of the Alastor ones), and I'd have to say that you've missed a few important things here.

    Vance didn't write the same book over and over. The Dying Earth stories are like what "demo coders" do: Brief exercises in virtuosity for its own sake, just for the sheer joy of it. Vance's other forty-odd books go in different directions. Generalizing about Vance from just one or a few of his books is a silly business. Even if you say "Vance writes lovely prose", you'd still be wrong in a few cases -- and that's just about as close as you can get to a meaningful generalization about Vance. You might also say he's not often very interested in plotting. But is he interested in character development? Yes. Obsessively so, at times.

    As for Wolfe, he's a drab fake, entirely beneath contempt. I waded through half of one of the "Long Sun" things and I have, literally, no recollection of any of it. There was nothing interesting, compelling, or memorable in that book.

    Wolfe's a hack in the Guy Gavriel Kay mode: He goes through some of the motions of pretendint to be a real writer like Vance, but he'll never fool anybody who knows the difference. Orson Scott Card's a big Wolfe fan, if I recall correctly, and that says it all -- except Card makes up for his inadequate technique by telling compelling stories about memorable characters. Wolfe is just a blank.

    Fritz Leiber, now: There's a real writer. He's in Vance's league, and that's rarefied company indeed. Lord Dunsany, anybody?

  • I dont quite understand what your problem was with these two words. They are both used in their correct contexts and with their correct meanings.

    Is the use of unusal words to be frowned upon? Should we all refrain from using interesting words lest we be accused of trying to appear "smart"?

    What makes you think he was uncomfortable with the words he used?
  • You have confused 'amoral' with the stage quality 'evil'. This is, of course, a major failing of most SF/fantasy, RPGs (the whole D&D concept of alignment set me off on philosophical wanderings nearly 20 years ago), and even your 'automated methods of play'. Sauron and Darth Vader are evil -- their agenda are destruction, fear, and death. Very nice and clear cut. But rarely in the real world do you find self-declared evil -- the evils of our society tend to be all the worse for believing themselves to be doing good. And so training ourselves to see the world in black and white is perhaps not as constructive as you might think. Hence the difference in Dying Earth -- Cugel has no evil agenda, but neither does he have any specific moral code that he ascribes to. Only very rarely does he show any remorse for the tremendous amount of damage he does, but he doesn't seek to do that damage either. Hence the egoism -- he thinks purely for himself and others value exactly zero in his ethical equations. In that way, Vance has represented characters that are 'more real' than your stereotypical work of fantasy, which tend to be mirrors of western religious thought reflecting the original Avestan duality of pure good and pure evil.

  • Vance's influence (Score:4)

    by piyamaradus ( 447473 ) on Friday May 04, 2001 @07:44AM (#245496)
    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.
  • The obliviousness of the characters to their own flaws is the humour of the stories. Even the relatively decent and able characters are devoid of self-awareness, and we as readers find satisfaction in how much better we are than they.

    Get the joke?
  • His output isn't as consistent (or vast) as Vance's, but "Little Big" and "Engine Summer" have some really beautiful wordsmithing in them.
  • I was aware of the structural parallels between
    • Icehenge
    and
    • The Fifth Head of Cerberus
    , but didn't realize that they were conscious. That said, I think Icehenge is a very politically important book, though it may be difficult for those who might benefit most from it.

    Often, Wolfe's stories can be likened to one segment of Kurosawa's
    • Rashomon
    , or one viewpoint of Faulkner's
    • As I Lay Dying
    . The puzzles are more difficult because we must usually tweak out the "truth" from internal inconsistencies, rather than having extra help of external inconsistencies to rely on.

    While we all bring something to the table as interpreters when we read, Wolfe insists that his readers bring much more than usual.

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