Eight Fantasms and Magics

by Jack Vance

The stories of this collection are by no means homogeneous, and are told from different perspectives and different moods. “The New Prime,” strictly speaking, has no psionic or paranormal reference. “The Men Return” toys with a somewhat recondite (and perhaps not wholly defensible) physical concept. “Cil” is an episode from Eyes of the Overworld, a picaresque novel of the twenty-millionth century. “Telek” and “The Miracle Workers” have a more definite psionic orientation, and make at least a superficial inquiry into certain aspects and implications of telekinesis and demonpossession. I can’t pretend to offer enlightenment; there isn’t any to be had. The stories, in any event, were not conceived as argumentative vehicles, but simply reflect my own fascination with the vast and wonderful reaches of the unknown.
Jack Vance
- The Miracle Workers (1958)
- When the Five Moons Rise (1954)
- Telek (1952)
- Noise (1952)
- The New Prime (1951)
- Cil (1966)
- Guyal of Sfere (1950)
- The Men Return (1957)

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy

288 pages, Hardcover

Published October 1, 1969

About the author

Aka John Holbrook Vance, Peter Held, John Holbrook, Ellery Queen, John van See, Alan Wade.

The author was born in 1916 and educated at the University of California, first as a mining engineer, then majoring in physics and finally in journalism. During the 1940s and 1950s, he contributed widely to science fiction and fantasy magazines. His first novel, The Dying Earth , was published in 1950 to great acclaim. He won both of science fiction's most coveted trophies, the Hugo and Nebula awards. He also won an Edgar Award for his mystery novel The Man in the Cage . He lived in Oakland, California in a house he designed.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jack Vance’s tales are always rich in imagination and full of unexpected twists so they are inevitably delightful.
The Miracle Workers is a story of the warfare in the forgotten and isolated star colony… All the scientific knowledge was lost ages ago so they wage wars using elaborate witchcraft…

The war party from Faide Keep moved eastward across the downs: a column of a hundred armored knights, five hundred foot soldiers, a train of wagons. In the lead rode Lord Faide, a tall man in his early maturity, spare and catlike, with a sallow dyspeptic face. He sat in the ancestral car of the Faides, a boat-shaped vehicle floating two feet above the moss, and carried, in addition to his sword and dagger, his ancestral side weapons.

When the Five Moons Rise simultaneously they create unique mind-bending effects… It’s the time of five moons and the solitary lighthouse keeper on the tiny isle is being paid unpredictable visits by mysterious beings… The tale reads like the earlier attempt at Solaris.
In Telek the minority possessing the ability of telekinesis constitutes the elite of society and factually rules the earth. And of course there is an underground resistance movement…

People living in masses, thought Shorn, were like pebbles on a beach, each grinding and polishing his neighbor until all were absolutely uniform. Color and flair were to be found only in the wilderness and among the Teleks.

Noise is a story of fabulous fantastic occurrences on the enigmatic planet after the spaceship wreck…
The New Prime is about the competition of candidates on the post of the highest galactic executive…
Cil is a flowery episode from the picaresque novel about the end of time The Eyes of the Overworld…

Cugel stood watching a moment, then, kicking idly in the sand, uncovered a glint of metal. Stooping, he picked up a bracelet of black metal shining with a purple luster. Around the circumference were thirty studs in the form of carbuncles, each circled by a set of engraved runes.

Guyal of Sfere also takes place on the Dying Earth… It’s an outstanding tale about the quest of life – the spiritual journey to the Museum of Man in order to obtain there the ultimate wisdom…

A great face looked from the wall, a face taller than Guyal, as tall as Guyal might reach with hands on high. The chin rested on the floor, the scalp slanted back into the panel.
Guyal stared, taken aback. In this pageant of beautiful objects, the grotesque visage was the disparity and dissonance a lunatic might have created. Ugly and vile was the face. The skin shone a gun-metal sheen, the eyes gazed from slanting folds. The nose was a lump, the mouth a pulp.

In The Men Return the Earth is passing through the zone of noncausality so there are no cause-effect relationships anymore and only the mad survived… The tale is a sheer paranoiac vision…

Far away rose low hills, blurring into the sky, which was mottled and sallow like poor milk-glass. The intervening plain spread like rotten black velvet. A fountain of liquid rock jetted high in the air. In the middle distance a family of gray objects evolved with a sense of purposeful destiny: spheres melted into pyramids, became domes, tufts of white spires, sky-piercing poles; then, as a final tour de force, tesseracts.
The Relict cared nothing for this; he needed food and out on the plain were plants.

Any life is a set of quests and even a trivial visit to a library is a kind of quest.

[mark monday · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars for "The Miracle Workers". reviewed in Green Magic.

3 stars for "Telek". it's dandified but oppressive telekinetic superhumans versus the sheep rest of humanity! the protagonist does his best to move his fellow revolutionaries away from terrorist slaughter and towards a more exalted goal: if you can't beat 'em... join 'em! this is a briskly paced novella full of fun ideas, understandable fervor against aristocrats, and the occasional bit of moody but hopeful introspection about the fate of human kind, given the vagaries of human nature.

3 stars apiece for "When the Five Moons Rise" and "Noise". these short stories are linked by a common theme: the wonders and horrors that can arise from a man's mind, and so sometimes take actual shape. of course, as this is science fiction, those shapes achieve actual physical forms. in the former story, they entrance and then terrify; in the latter, they entrance and entrance again, leading our hero astray...

4 stars for "The Men Return". reviewed in Green Magic.

5 stars for the fascinating "The New Prime". 5 lives, 5 paths, 5 choices, 5 qualities displayed or absent. 5 tests. but tests for what exactly? perhaps the important questions are these: if 5 qualities are being tested, which qualities have been left out of that test - and who designed the test itself? certain qualities make a certain kind man; most certainly, the ruler of the universe should have abundant qualifications.

"The New Prime" also functions as an admirable display of how elastic Vance's storytelling can be, no matter the milieu, as the novella moves easily through various scenarios including a search on an abandoned planet, vengeful warfare against monstrous aliens, a battle between color artists, a prisoner's torture, and what to do when you suddenly find yourself in the middle of a fancy garden party in mid-20th century Boston, stark naked. why, pretend to be a fratboy in the middle of some typical hazing ritual, of course! these stories within a story were all compelling and the overall purpose/message/ending of "The New Prime" was sublime. per usual Vancean standards, the prose is lambent.

also includes two stories from The Dying Earth.

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in January 2002.

What these stories, one novella and several shorter tales, have in common is an interest in the use of fantasy ideas in settings more commonly seen in science fiction. One is a Dying Earth story, appearing in that collection as well. The others have wide ranging settings, even if Guyal of Sfere is not the only story set towards the end of Earth's history. Vance's style, where things are not quite what they seem to be in a baroque world, is another constant; it is at its best in The New Prime.

The longer story, The Miracle Workers, is about the relationship between magic and science. The descendants of starship captains stranded centuries ago, the lords of the planet Pangborn utilise magic as a matter of course, while the surviving technology of their ancestors is the almost completely incomprehensible object of superstition.

The stories in Fantasms and Magics live up to Vance's inventive and well written standard and it would, as a collection, make a good introduction to his bizarre universes.

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 3 out of 5]

The high points are "Miracle Workers" in which psis discover the difference between their methods and conventional science, and "Teleks," about a struggle between ordinary humans and telekinetics that ends in a way I didn't expect. The other stories aren't bad but not particularly standout either.

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Miracle workers is good

[Jerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

The initial draw for me was Anthony Sini’s cover art for this. I’m a huge fan of Vance’s Dying Earth stories; I can take or leave much of his general science fiction.

This is a collection of stories about “flights into the regions of the paranormal, where possibility—and probability—exceed the reaches of our wildest dreams.” So it’s not surprising that of the four stories I’ve already read, two—“The Miracle Workers” and “The Men Return”—are also included in Green Magic: The Fantasy Realms of Jack Vance. The other two are “Cil” from The Eyes of the Overworld and “Guyal of Sfere” from The Dying Earth

Each of those were well worth reading again, especially “Guyal of Sfere” and “The Miracle Workers”.

“Guyal of Sfere” includes one of the best examples of a phantom city I’ve read. Phantom cities, villages, and other human gatherings are something I enjoy putting in D&D adventures as random encounters between adventures. So I’ll be “treasuring this one in my heart” as recent Gospel readings have repeated.

Also of interest is that “Cil” mentions a monster called a “grue” twice. While most people are probably familiar with the name from the Zork series, it originated in Vance’s Dying Earth.

The new-to-me stories, “When the Five Moons Rise”, “Telek”, “Noise”, and “The New Prime” are also wonderful. Warning: the back-cover blurb (which, thankfully, Sini’s cover art drew my attention from) spoils the ending of “The New Prime”.

“Noise” had me momentarily forgetting I was reading Vance; it’s a very Clark Ashton-Smith-like tale of things seen askance. Howard Charles Evans is marooned on a far planet, surrounded by many suns, each of a different color, and each nightfall a new sun rises and reveals different aspects of the planet, or his illusions of the planet, in its new tint.

The silver star is like an enormous Christmas tree bauble, round and glistening. It floats low, and once more I stand irresolute, half expecting night. The star falls; the forest receives it…

In the darkness there is a peculiar cessation of sound. The music has dwindled; down through a series of wistful chords, a forlorn last cry…

A glow in the east, a green glow, spreading. Up rises a magnificent green sphere, the essence of all green, the tincture of emeralds, deep as the sea.

A throb of sound; rhythmical, strong music, swinging and veering.

The green light floods the planet, and I prepare for the green day.

“When the Five Moons Rise” is similarly a story of multiple planetary orbs and the resultant illusion and irreality.

When the five moons rise together, it’s not wise to believe anything.

Especially if you’re somewhat neurotic and can’t stop thinking of horrors.

[Richard Rogers · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is another cast-off book I picked up from the school library years ago. I left it on my shelf for a long time--in class and at home--before I opened it up, and it turns out it's pretty good. A very even collection.

Vance has kind of a dark view of our future, both for earth and for people, and some of the stories are kinda sad and dreary for that reason, though I still found them satisfying and interesting. Others are a tad more hopeful and just very cool. All of them are deeply original and creative.

My favorite is the one called "Telek," set in a future where a fraction of humanity develops telekinesis to the point that they become wealthy rulers--able to bring back treasures from anywhere in the universe--and they live in a cloud city from which they control the entire population. It kinda reminds me of humans and fairies, but it still feels more like science fiction than fantasy. Told from the perspective of downtrodden common humans trying to take back some control over their lives, plotting a one-shot-at-this-thing uprising, it is compelling and engaging and a little frightening. It has a great ending, too. I recommend hunting this one up. (It's found in several other collections, so it's not that obscure.)

"The New Prime" starts out like a series of dream stories, especially with the first scene being a man waking up naked in a wedding, trying to figure out how he got there and how to proceed. It slides into the story of a platoon of soldiers going up against a hive of giant aliens, then slips into a search through a long-abandoned ruins in the desert, then leads us into a disorienting art competition, with contestants creating images and movies on giant screens for an audience using only their minds, before taking the reader to another kind of battle with the first person protagonist being captured and tortured without end. All of these vignettes make sense in the final portion of the story, when we see how they were all the same person, somehow, and his performance has a score attached. Wildly inventive.

I have never read Jack Vance, though I've seen his books all over for decades. Having enjoyed his short stories, guess it's time I try some of his greatest hits. I'll gladly accept recommendations.

This is a fun collection. Still exists on eBay, for those who enjoy SF of the 50s and 60s.