Jack Vance

27 Feb 2017 16:30

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American author of science fiction, fantasy and mysteries (the last as either John Holbrook Vance or various pseudonyms). For more than forty years now, Vance has been writing wonderful and remarkable prose, which I can best characterize as "elegantly contrived" --- he fills it with unusual words and elaborate constructions and often enough a slightly ironic tone. It almost flaunts its studied, artificial, utterly uncolloquial character, but it always says exactly what he wants it to, and always says it better than any other construction could have. Irony notwithstanding, he can use it to evoke any emotion he pleases. No one else writes anything quite like it, though Quine has something of the same character of elegance and deliberate artificiality (who was it who said "All art is artifice"?), and some of his humorous passages recall Ernest Bramah --- Mike Berro, who is an aficionado of both, tells me that Vance, in correspondence, recalls reading Bramah at about the time he wrote The Dying Earth.

These qualities of the prose reflect (or are reflected by) his worlds and their inhabitants: he is fond of strange, elaborate cultures with strict internal rules and pride (which, come to think of it, describes most cultures; Vance perhaps just makes this plain...). Some of his characters are given to pragmatism and iconoclasm; most are much closer to the anthropologist's ideal of fidelity to culture; none of them should be even remotely plausible, but they almost always come to life. (This fits nicely with what little politics he displays --- a sort of crudmuggeonly conservativism with strong conservationist leanings.) In a better-ordered republic of letters, he would be recognized as one of the glories of our literature; as it is, he is appreciated by SF fans and the Dutch.

The Vance Integral Edition is an attempt to produce a complete, high-quality edition of all of Vance's works; it looks very nice, and way beyond my price-range.

Recommended:
• By Vance:
  • Alastor [A series about a cluster of 30,000 worlds, with a combined population in the trillions, named after Shelley's "spirit of solitude."]
    • Trullion: Alastor 2262
    • Marune: Alastor 933
    • Wyst: Alastor 1716
  • Big Planet
  • The Blue World
  • The Cadwal Chronicles trilogy
    1. Aramanita Station
    2. Ecce and Old Earth
    3. Throy
  • The Dragonmasters
  • The Durdane trilogy
    • The Faceless Man [also published as The Anome]
    • The Brave Free Men
    • The Asutra
  • The Dying Earth series
    1. The Dying Earth
    2. Eyes of the Overworld
    3. Cugel's Saga
    4. Rhialto the Marvellous [perhaps only for dedicated fans]
  • Emphyrio
  • The Gray Prince
  • The Languages of Pao
  • The Last Castle
  • To Live Forever
  • The Lyonese trilogy
    1. Suldrun's Garden
    2. The Green Pearl
    3. Madouc
  • Maske: Thaery
  • Night Lamp
  • Planet of Adventure a.k.a. Tschai [Originally published in four separate volumes, now reprinted in an omnibus]
    1. City of the Chasch
    2. Servants of the Wankh
    3. The Dirdir
    4. The Pnume
  • Ports of Call [The sequel, Luruluru, is not as good --- but it's still Vance!]
  • Showboat World
  • Story collections:
    • Future Tense
    • Green Magic
    • The Narrow Land
    • When the Five Moons Rise
  • as John Holbrook Vance [I read these in my university library as an undergrad, and fell eagerly on the recent omnibus reprints.]
    • The Deadly Isles
    • The Man in the Cage
    • The Pleasant Grove Murders
  • as Ellery Queen, The Four Johns
• About Vance:
  • Carlo Rotella, "The Genre Artist", New York Times 15 July 2009
  • Eric Walker, Jack Vance page at Great Science Fiction and Fantasy [An extended essay on Vance's work, with copious quotation]
  • Jack Vance Manuscript, which left me green with envy.

To read:
• The Demon Princes
• Galactic Effectuator
• This Is Me, Jack Vance! (Or, More Properly, This Is "I")
• Space Opera
• Mysteries:
  • Dangerous Ways: Selected Mysteries, vol. I [The Deadly Isles; The Man in the Cage; Bad Ronald]
  • Desperate Days: Selected Mysteries, vol. II [The Fox Valley Murders; The Pleasant Grove Murders; The Dark Ocean]
  • House on Lily St. [as John Holbrook Vance]
  • Isle of Peril [as Anthony Wade]
  • Madman Theory [as Ellery Queen]
  • A Room to Die In [as Ellery Queen]
  • Take My Face [as Peter Held]
• Story collections:
  • The Augmented Agent and Other Stories
  • Dream Castles
  • Hard Luck Diggins
  • The Jack Vance Treasury
  • Magic Highways
  • The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph