Christopher’s Comments (group member since Jan 13, 2013)

Christopher’s comments from the Beyond Jack Vance group.

Josh wrote: "I read Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun first, wanted something similar, saw that BotNS was inspired by The Dying Earth. Loved The Dying Earth so much, I read almost everything else Vance has written."

Same for me. Book of the New Sun was my gateway to Dying Earth (which eventually brought me to Zothique). Its fitting because The Dying Earth was what Gene Wolfe himself said was his 'Book of Gold' as referenced in his own works.

I really like Lyonesse, but I dont consider it in his very apex of works (a la Dying Earth, Demon Princes). More like second highest tier with Planet of Adventure, Blue World, and the like. Considering how much I like Vance though, and how prolific he was, second tier is still super super high.

No experience with Cabell, but the prior author who I really see as a strong influence on JV is Clark Ashton Smith.

I think its worth throwing Roger Zelazny's 'Jack of Shadows' in here for something that hits the mark very close to home.

In an old interview I remember Vance saying that he took a double sided view towards human culture-on the one hand he lamented the disappearance and mass homogenization that occurred in modernity, on the other hand he spoke of ossified system in isolation getting worse and more irrational with time.

This tension is particularly noticeable in his high space works. All the interesting characters and action happens outside of the core worlds which are often implied to be nice but boring places to live. At the same time, many of the adventures are set in places where problems are caused by societies of a reactionary and navel-gazing nature.

Although I do not know if it is intentional, there is more than a whiff of Ibn Khaldun's theory of the rise and fall of nations in many of his works. Success leads to complacency, complacency to decay, decay to collapse, and collapse to the rise of a new order founded by relative outsiders that re-invigorates the place and begins the cycle all over again.

Seconding Jaro here (nice reference btw). I used to think 'Wow Vance really came out of the blue!' when he was new to me, but Clark Ashton Smith was clearly an enormous influence on him. The Dying Earth in particular takes much mood and setting from the lost fantasy settings of Smith--above all that of the doomed far future continent of Zothique.

I also agree that 'The Moon Moth' is probably the best shorter work to pick up his general vibe and favorite themes (duplicity, doublespeak, faux-etiquette, cultures that develop from human settlements on isolated planets, etc).

Personally I would rank my favs as

1. Collected Dying Earth (especially Cugel but all of them are in his best setting)
2. Demon Princes (best villains, especially in the final story-but quite the long commitment)
3. Lyonesse
4. The Dragon Masters (the funniest that wasnt primarily a comedy)
5. Emphyrio (the most serious but also most different of his works, smart though).

Honorable mention for Planet of Adventure for just being plain fun, and an upgrade from Big Planet. Space Opera (actually about an opera company...in space, lol) is another good stand alone for his general vibe.

I would also add Iucounu the Laughing Magician as well, come to think of it.

Well, there is a section for favorite Vancean heroes, so why not villains? (Arguably, a few characters like Cugel could be both hero and villain).

For out-and-out villainy I say Howard Alan Treesong from the final book in The Demon Princes. Insane, yet capable (at least at first). Sure he was taken out like a chump, but his back story, the excerpts of his writing, that whole scene with the high school reunion really made him a stand out to me.

After that, I would say though he barely appears, the adjectives used to describe Tamurello make him pretty good too. And King Kasimir in Lyonesse is a good more typical kind of villain for Vance, especially that part where it describes the 'morbid and dutiful love he makes with his wife.' [paraphrasing]

He will certainly be missed. The world became a little bit more gray today.