Today I'm going to spend some time discussing my favorite author of 2011.
I've already discussed how I have a serious problem with not reading contemporary genre fiction. And so, it should come as no surprise that my favorite author of 2011 wrote and published many years ago: Jack Vance.
I hadn't given Jack Vance a long, thorough read until this year. I'd read his famous short story, "Mazirian the Magician," in book 1 of Isaac Asimov's Magical Worlds of Fantasy series, Wizards. I remember wanting to follow this reading up with more Vance and so I purchased both The Dying Earth and Eyes of the Overworld.
I subsequently put them on my shelf and quickly forgot about them. It just so happened The Dying Earth was on my qualifying examinations list for my degree, and so I found myself reading it again earlier this fall. This was followed by Eyes of the Overworld.
I wrote a review for almost each book I read during my qualifying exams reading. I know this is a short-cut, but I'm going to cite those reviews.
I read Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth (New York: Baen, 1986, originally published 1950) and I loved it. It’s a collection of loosely related short stories about all sorts of different fantasy scenarios; however, the main character, I think, is the setting: the dying earth.
Some words about “the dying earth.” All of the stories take place in an extremely distant future where the sun has become a huge red giant and it could nova at any time. Meanwhile, magic has returned to the world but it has been forgotten. Sorcerers and wizards continue to weave spells, but they are no longer imaginative or understand the principles upon which magic is based. Thus, their magical art is a decadent endeavor marked by atavism. These sorcerers know how to do magic, but they do it by rote, by simply following through the formulas of previously developed spells. The spells have interesting names like “the Excellent Prismatic Spray,” “Phandaal’s Mantle of Stealth,” and “the Spell of the Slow Hour.”
If you’ve played Dungeons and Dragons before, then these names will seem familiar. Why? Well, Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth and its sequels were influences on the creators of Dungeons and Dragons. This is of course why I came to these stories in the first place, to see the mythic forefathers of the magical spells of Dungeons and Dragons.
But the interest of the stories aren’t exhausted in that one, esoteric characteristic. Vance has an extremely distinct style. He writes with humor while depicting cruel violence. Amid horrifying scenes—say, an orgy wherein a cult cavorts with demons—love and beauty can blossom. Eclectic is the adjective that best describes Vance’s fantasy.
I recommend giving these stories a read. Of all the stories, I believe “Mazirian the Magician” is the best. The main character—a sorcerer who is obsessed with a girl--will linger with you for a long time after reading of him.
Eyes of the Overworld
I finished The Eyes of the Overworld (New York: Pocket Books, 1966) last night and enjoyed it. For me its better than the earlier Dying Earth collection of short-stories because each of the stories are embedded into an overarching, picaresque plot (though at times some of the stories due seem incidental and random, though I enjoy the tone of playfulness this creates). Though such a comparison is silly because obviously the originality of Dying Earth is the platform upon which Vance constructs this narrative. Rather than make more bald assessments, let me tell you a little about the novel.
Published in 1966, The Eyes of the Overworld is the second book in Jack Vance’s Dying Earth series. Many of the same plot elements show up in this story: powerful sorcerers, strange creatures, an extremely dangerous yet beautiful wilderness. What anchors this series of stories is the main character’s quest. His name is Cugel the Clever, a roguish figure who I thought was hilarious. He’s a great anti-hero: extremely self-interested, narcissistic, borderline crazy, a fast-talker. In the opening frame story he gets tricked into burglarizing a powerful sorcerer’s home who catches him and threatens to curse him with the “Charm of Forlorn Encystment,” “which constricts the subject in a pore some forty-five miles below the surface of the earth” (14). The novel is filled with all sorts of cruel, interestingly humorous curses and spells like this. Rather than accept this punishment, the sorcerer and Cugel work out a deal together. Cugel is required to go to a far away land and retrieve a magical contact lens that allows one to see the world as a paradise.
The sorcerer’s magic quickly spirits him far away to where he discovers the lens; the rest of the novel is Cugel’s adventures in making his way back to his home in Azenomei. I won’t spoil the story by listing these numerous adventures, but many of them are strange, disturbing, hilarious, intense, and sad.
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