The Jack Vance Treasury by Jack Vance, edited by Terry Dowling and Jonathan Strahan
reviewed by Matthew Hughes
Among his devotees, the perennial question arises: of all the Master's works, what to choose when one wishes to introduce
him to a new reader? The variety of answers delineates the subsects within the broad, and occasionally genteelly contentious, universe of Vance
aficionados. Those who like best his decidedly non-Tolkienesque fantasies will recommend the Lyonesse trilogy. Fans of space
opera will plump for the muscular saga of revenge and retribution spread over the five volumes of
The Demon Princes. Lovers of planetary romances will offer Big Planet or the four sequential novels
that combine in Tschai: Planet of Adventure. Those with a taste for far-future picaresque will hold high
their tattered copies of The Dying Earth.
Lurulu by Jack Vance
reviewed by Matthew Hughes
The tale is a continuation of 1997's Ports of Call wherein began the interstellar
peregrinations of Myron Tany. The Glicca wanders from planet to planet, taking on and
discharging cargoes, while the crew visits taverns to sample varieties of bitter ale and more potent beverages like
Ponchoo Punch. It is a pageant of worlds, some civilized, some wild, some hospitable to strangers, some less welcoming
to the traveler's knock.
The Dragon Masters by Jack Vance
reviewed by Rich Horton
Composed of "The Dragon Masters" (1962) and "The Last Castle" (1966),
both stories are set in the far future, and they feature humans enslaving genetically modified aliens. In each, the plot
turns on a war between the humans and the aliens. The two stories are quite cynical, and our admiration for the heroes is tempered
by our natural antipathy for some of their attitudes and actions.
Lyonesse II: The Green Pearl and Madouc by Jack Vance
reviewed by Alma A. Hromic
There is something otherworldly about the Lyonesse books. That may sound oddly redundant, given that we are talking about a
book of fantasy -- surely it is a given that we would be transported into another world. All fantasy aims for that (and good fantasy
succeeds). But the mere transportation is not the point. It's the sense that we aren't being told about an imaginary
world. Instead, we somehow find ourselves in the real one, there between the covers of this book, while lurking in some other dimension which
the inhabitants of the author's world would find passably peculiar.
Lyonesse: Suldrun's Garden by Jack Vance
reviewed by Alma A. Hromic
These books, now reissued, succeed by quite simply taking a land which never really existed and treating
it in such a matter-of-fact way that the reader is practically tricked into accepting the most outlandish
magicks (and there are plenty of outlandish magicks in these books) at face value, and without blinking an
eyelid. It feels like you're reading actual historical fiction.
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Night Lamp by Jack Vance
reviewed by Rodger Turner
An off-world couple find a young lad named Jaro who has been beaten into a coma. They take him home when no
trace of his family can be found. As he grows up, he becomes more determined to discover his past
and the cause of jumbled images which appear periodically in his mind. He's brought up on a
world of formalized castes for which he gives not
a fig. His status as a nimp throws him in with others like himself but most of his energy is
devoted to raising the cash to search for his home world.
Tales of the Dying Earth by Jack Vance
reviewed by Peter D. Tillman
Here's a handsome new omnibus edition of four classic fantasies: The Dying Earth,
The Eyes of the Overworld, Cugel's Saga and Rhialto the Marvellous. This series spans much
of the author's career, from his first published book (The Dying Earth, 1950, a collection of six stories from the 40s)
through the 1984 collection Rhialto the Marvellous.
Big Planet by Jack Vance
reviewed by Nick Gevers
This novel, the conceptual template for all Vance's baroque lawless locales to come, was perhaps the first attempt at a
convincingly complete imaginary world in genre SF. Instead of a thinly rationalized displacement of the opulent East
or some other mundane historical epoch to an extraterrestrial setting, Big Planet was fully thought through,
its ecology, economics, technology, and political organization carefully formulated, so much so that the conviction
persists that it is not the characters who serve as the book's protagonists, but rather Big Planet itself.
Emphyrio by Jack Vance
reviewed by Rich Horton
This is one of his better novels, and in many ways a good introduction. On display are many of
the hallmarks of his mature style: his elegant writing, his wonderful depiction of local colour, his unusual social
systems. It lacks only the humour that is so often present in Vance: this is one of his more melancholy
books. It's also better plotted than many of his novels, and it's a stand-alone.
Ports of Call by Jack Vance
reviewed by Greg L. Johnson
Throughout human history there is a kind of story in which the hero or heroine
voyages to far-away lands full of wonders and peopled only by the story-teller's
imagination. Jack Vance is a master of this form and the pleasure of Ports of Call is
how effortlessly he invents one exotic society after another.
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