jack vance

Earth. Aliens on peoples backs. One person can suddenly see them and finds he can read other peoples minds. There is a second set of aliens. He helps first set of aliens defeat the second. May have been a short story. Help

I believe the book was written the 60's. A young man after graduating from academy becomes an investigator trying to solve his father's disappearance,the murder of a female classmate ,and an attempt to overthrow his family from control of a planet in their keeping as a preserve. As all of this...

This is a short story ID question that has been lingering on another forum, so I thought I'd try here. The plot is that a team of explorers land on a planet that is inhabited by human-like beings that have a "special quality" about them. The aliens are kind to the explorers and welcome them...

Looking for title about an Ellison story where Janitor finds computer in basement that runs society.I believe the Harlan Ellison was the Author.

Not a bad conclusion to the series, pretty much on par with the previous four. The bad guy in this one is Howard Alan Treesong, and he sort of resembles Viole Falushe from the third novel, because he is given a fairly detailed and particular backstory. The first two Demon Princes were provided...

Contemporaneous fans of the series may have been somewhat miffed that there was a twelve year gap between the last installment (The Palace of Love, 1967) and this one (1979). However, their patience would’ve been rewarded by a nifty little potboiler in what I am rapidly coming to see is the...

Now this is more like it! The superiority of this third installment in the Demon Princes series provides a perfect illustration of what was defective in the first two. It struck me in the first two novels that our hero plays an oddly passive role. He’s an interplanetary avenger who is hunting...

The first in a five novel epic of interplanetary revenge, Star King has several flaws but also many virtues. The premise is pulp simplicity itself: the inhabitants of our hero’s home world were carried away in slavery, and now he must find and destroy the five Demon Princes responsible...

Jack Vance who gave us the Dying Earth Book , The Demon Prince novels ect ect or Gene Wolfe who gave us the book of the Ne sun series , . The Knight and The Wizard duelolgy , The Latro trilogy ect ect which of the town...

Book I: Suldrun's Garden

Hey all - trying and failing to find a sci-fi series I read a long time ago. I found it via TV Tropes 5+ years ago, and all the searching I must have done hasn't revealed what I was looking for. I believe the series was published in the 70's - but I could be wrong on this, sadly. I remember the...

Book or probably(?) series, read maybe(?) pre-2000 in paperback Science fiction: three races, one warlike and individualistic (win by any means), one seemingly peaceful and rather old-fashioned (not innovators, but good spies and technology thieves), one ultra-capitalistic (succeed or be...

Incidentally, I also posted this question on stackexchange about half a year ago, but so far without result. Since I cannot yet put URL's in my post, I cannot link to it, but it's easily found by searching for the line "Looking for a short SF story about two ultra-fast ships flying around the...

In another thread I compared Jack Vance to Gilbert and Sullivan (and Archer) because both combine high culture and low humor, write manic, topsy-turvy plots, and there isn't really anything quite like either. However I think that there might be at least as much of an analogy with Warren Zevon...

Something that I've wondered about pretty much since I discovered him, is why Jack Vance has never, as far as I'm aware, been adapted for movies or television. Not that I mind the lack for my own sake—his work is perfect as it is—but Phillip K. Dick was a second-tier writer until studios began...

Hi all. Have you heard of Jack Vance? I recently ran a game of Kerberos Club at my local RPG club and imported a character from Jack Vance's Dying Earth to serve as a suitably powerful villain - Chun the Unavoidable. Though surrounded by roleplayers with an interest in fantasy, sci-fi or both...

This was a LOT of years ago (early seventies ?) and what I remember is the protagonist, using some invention, could suddenly see these metaphysical cords reaching down into people's brains and controlling/ feeding off their energy. I think he could see massive shapes in deepest space sending...

The story is about a boy who grows up on a planet that is a planet wide "national park". The community he lives in has a limited number and the residents have a point system to see who stays and who goes. There's also another community that are bureaucrats who live in a cliffside location. The...

Many years ago in high school I found a book that was a collection of short stories/novellas. I think it was an 80's edition of Best of Sci-Fi and Fantasy, and basically where I developed a love of the genre. I read it from cover to cover several times, and I've purchased many collections since...