Jack Vance

The Wanderer

The Wanderer

Zelazny's Worlds
Joined
Feb 9, 2007
Messages
240
Location
In Shadow
I've read Emphyrio, Loved it, any other recomendations, 'Tales of Dying Earth' and 'Lyonesse' are on my List, anyone recommend 'Blue World' or the 'Planet of Adventure' saga - I would like to read 'Star King' and it's follow ups but they seem to be out of print :mad:
 
Haven't read much of his work, oddly enough, seeing there's quite a lot of it.
Enjoyed "Big Planet", and would recommend the "Lyonesse" trilogy.

Welcome to the Jack Vance archive

One of the best author sites around.
 
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Very. Also very interesting. As has been said, he often throws off concepts in the span of a chapter on which many would have built series of novels. Definitely influenced by Dunsany and Smith, but nonetheless very much a voice of his own....
 
j. d. worthington said:
Very. Also very interesting. As has been said, he often throws off concepts in the span of a chapter on which many would have built series of novels. Definitely influenced by Dunsany and Smith, but nonetheless very much a voice of his own....
Click to expand...

Also the Emotional Elements of the narrative that he is able to poetisize, very simply too, for instance Ghyl finding that Duplicated Plate (The one with Earnest Looking faces along with the words 'Remember Me' that his father 'Amiante' had made) in a shop window far off in another world, it's striking and the story elements are beautifully told
 
He is one of my favorite authors (as my username indicates).

The first chapters of some of his novels are avaliable for sampling here.

And here is TOTALITY, the Vance Vocabulary Search Tool. It allows you to search all of Vance's work, looking for vital information, like for example how many times Vance uses the word "nuncupatory".

Emphyrio is one of his best works, maybe his most emotional. I especially like the play-within-a-play near the beginning, I felt it was quite poignant.

I'm also very fond of the second book of the Dying Earth sequence, titled The Eyes of the Overworld. Top-notch picaresque fantasy.
 
Emphyrio is one of his best works, maybe his most emotional. I especially like the play-within-a-play near the beginning, I felt it was quite poignant.
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Yes, I found that it emotionally got me
 
Vance is one of my favorite authors, a master of prose and a creator of wonderful, quirky worlds that take jabs at human nature.

The "Demon Princes" novels are wonderful. His fantasy stuff is great too; the Dying Earth stories with Mazirian the Magician, Cudgel the clever (who's never quite clever enough...) and so forth.
 
Glad to know there are Vance fans all over the world.Funnily enough,after I had stopped reading SF for a pretty long while,one of the first stories I read
was the Planet Machine,which I gathered from stylistical clues was early work,
probably fifties)The Reason:with very few exceptions JV tells pretty good yarns.Like his early stuff though(Son of the Tree,Houses of Iszm).

Greeting and salutations
 
The Planet of Adventure series is his best, followed by the Demon Prince novels, Galactic Effectuator, a book of detective sci-fi tales is excellent as well. He's one of my favorites. I don't know why he didn't get more attention...
 
He gets plenty of attention, although not so much these days. It's likely we'll see no more from him - he's very old and very infirm. Someone told me his last book, Lurulu, was dictated to his son.

As to his best work... I remember the Demon Princes series as being very good, but I need to reread it one of these days... The Alastor Cluster books - Marune, Wyst and Trullion - are also very good, and the Dying Earth novels are hilarious. Mind you, even Vance's lesser works are entertaining and worth a read.
 
I'm reading "Dragon Masters" at the moment (the first of his novels I've read) and I'm quite enjoying it...
 
I have heard alot of good about his work that i decided to go and buy one of his books.

I was wondering which story or book of his is most suited to someone that is totaly new to him?

I heard about Demon Princes,Emphyrio. Would you recommend one of those or an another work?
 
Ok i was thinking about saving Demon Princes as the second thing of him to read.


When its about old greats i learned to not read thier most famous work first of all, like to know how they write before taking on thier best works.

Maybe a truly stupid question is Demon Princes series SF or fantasy?

I dont like to read too much info on a book im interested in, dont wanna spoil myself. I saw the vengance thing on the demons and that is enough info.
 
Demon Princes is most certainly SF,but remember,Jack writes SF differently from the rest of them.He is like Dick,Sturgeon,Ellison,Cordwainer Smith,Ursula LeGuin...
a voice all of his own
It's certainly not "Hard" SF,if that's what you are afraid of.
Why don't you start with the Dying Earth?
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