Above all, his stories are whimsical in a way that transcends any merely-adequate work of fantasy. His characters have odd-sounding monikers and come from odd-sounding places the times they inhabit are odder still. Vance has a deft touch when it comes to names, places, and descriptions. There is so much to praise about The Dying Earth. Not that there is anything wrong with this, but I think that jarred me when I began reading. Either I missed that part when reading about it, or no one deigned to mention that The Dying Earth is actually a collection of episodic shorts rather than a continuous narrative. The second surprise was the serialized nature of the novel.
That was my mistake, for I am young and unfamiliar with the pulpiness of paperbacks from that era, even British reprints from the 1980s. I was expecting something epic, not quite doorstopper (for I'm aware that they did not publish doorstopper fantasy in those days, Tolkien excepted), but something with more presence. The first surprise was the length of The Dying Earth. Since then, Vance has led to nothing but surprises. So I ordered the massive volume from Subterranean Press, and then I set about finding a copy of the original book that started it all. Apparently Vance is a master fantasist, on par with Tolkien, and his Dying Earth series inspired all of those authors, and many more, in the latter half of the twentieth century. I had never heard of Jack Vance until Subterranean Press announced it would be publishing a tribute anthology containing stories from some of my favourite authors.
0 kommentar(er)
