Tuesday, October 4, 2011

You Too Can Know Jack

Have you met Jack Vance?  As far as I'm concerned, Science Fiction writer Jack Vance has more imagination in his pinkie than most writers do anywhere in their whole entire body.  Ear lobes, love handles, second-to-biggest-toe, you name it.  Not there.  Imagination-free zones, they are.  In the Blue World of vast oceans people live on floating 'islands' made of enormous rush mats and the only metal they have is copper they boil down from blood!!!  Vance is funny too - Cudgel the Clever  is not only anything but clever, he is an extremely unreliable narrator.  Cudgel's not stupid, just deluding himself.  Then there's the Dying Earth, one of SF's most original constructs.  Set so far in the future that the sun is fading, these stories center on the return of magic and on cultures fleeing into decadence.  Pick your Vance.  Take a chance on Vance.  Ask Vance to the dance.  Well, now I'm just being silly.

Jack Vance books

1 comment:

cboy said...

Cool! I love Science Fiction, but I have not read Jack Vance. Maybe I will give him a try some day.