The Dying Earth

11 Mar 2024 22:35

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A sub-genre of science fiction and fantasy, set in the far future: decadent, inward-looking, dreaming cities, largely forgotten technology-indistinguishable-from-magic (or maybe it is magic), the sun growing dim, red, splotchy, etc. Jack Vance gave it its best expression in a set of his books beginning with The Dying Earth. Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun is another outstanding instance. Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique stories have this setting, and I think Klarkash-ton is the oldest writer where we find all the elements combined. One root is of course The Time Machine, with its terminal vision of a run-down world, and, I think, even the earlier passages on the Eloi and the Morlocks. (Ch. 3 of Sebastiano Timpanaro's On Materialism gives a number of late nineteenth century instancees of the "dying earth" theme, but oddly does not mention Wells.) The other root, probably Smith's real contribution, is the 19th century decadents and symbolists: hence (in part) the pseudo-medieval or pseudo-classical settings, with no real thought to poltics or society.

Recommended:
• Damien Broderick, The Black Grail
• C. J. Cherryh, Sunfall [The great exception to what I wrote above about the inattention to politics. Cherryh looks at power in her usual flinty-eyed, archaeological way, giving the impression of Huysmans as re-told by Colin Renfrew --- or, more precisely, by Ariane Emory. Strangely enough, it works: but nothing else by her that I've read shares this setting. Reprinted in her Collected Short Fiction.]
• Arthur Clarke, The City and the Stars [A highly mutated member of the species.]
• Paul McAuley
  • Confluence [Trilogy. This is not so much a dying Earth as a dying artificial world at a time when Earth is long gone; but the feel is there, though everything which seems magical gets a hard-SF explanation in the end. The three separate books are, in order, Child of the River; Ancients of Days; and Shrine of Stars.]
  • "A Brief History Of Far Future Fiction", Earth and Other Unlikely Worlds, 9 April 2020
• Larry Niven, A World Out of Time
• Robert Silverberg, Nightwings
• Doris Piserchia, A Billion Days of Earth
• Dan Simmons, Hyperion [Part of the Poet's Tale is a Dying Earth story, sort of; and the poet survives the Earth to write a book called, exactly, The Dying Earth. But Hyperion should be read anyway, since it's fabulously good.]
• Clark Ashton Smith, Zothique [Smith wrote a series of stories set on the as-yet-non-existent continent of Zothique, which are pure dying earth, and almost certainly an inspiration for Vance. The complete set was collected in a book edited by Lin Carter (Zothique; Ballantine, 1970), which is long out-of-print, but many of them are reprinted in other Smith anthologies (e.g., A Rendezvous in Averoigne [Arkham House]), and available online (follow the link).]
• Jack Vance
  • The Dying Earth
  • Eyes of the Overworld
  • Cugel's Saga
  • Rhialto the Marvellous
  • Many of Vance's other works, like The Last Castle, have something of the flavor of the dying earth.
• H. G. Wells, The Time Machine [On-line text]
• Gene Wolfe
  • The Book of the New Sun: originally, Shadow of the Torturer, Claw of the Conciliator, Sword of the Lictor, Citadel of the Autarch. These are now in print in two volumes (Shadow and Claw and Sword and Citadel), plus a sequel, The Urth of the New Sun. It must be confessed that there's every possibility that this world is in fact in the very distant past, but is, itself, at the end of the line.
  • The Book of the Long Sun is peripherally connected to the New Sun series; I've only read the first half.

Genre specimens I have read but cannot recommend:
• Matthew Hughes, Fools Errant [This wasn't bad, exactly, but definitely underwhelming. There are a number of sequels, which I haven't read.]
• Tanith Lee, The Birthgrave
• Jack Lovejoy, Magus Rex
• Darrell Schweitzer, The Shattered Goddess

To read:
• Brian Aldiss, Hothouse
• A. A. Attanasio, Last Legends of Earth
• Damien Broderick (ed.), Earth Is but a Star: Excursions through Science Fiction to the Far Future [Compilation of fiction and criticism]
• Samuel R. Delaney, Dhalgren
• Philip Jose Farmer, Dark Is the Sun
• William Hope Hodgson
  • The House on the Borderland
  • The Night Land
• George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois (eds.), Songs of the Dying Earth [Vance-authorized anthology]
• Michael Shea, A Quest for Simbilis [Vance-authorized sequel to Eyes of the Overworld]
• Brian Stableford, Curse of the Coral Bride
• Gene Wolfe, The Book of the Short Sun