…for the third year in a row since starting this blog.
He wasn’t a cornerstone of Sword & Sorcery, and I guess it is debatable whether anything he wrote technically fit into the genre. But his world creation qualifies him as a master here at SUDS. The Dying Earth series, while not action-driven, is beautiful and funny and horrific, and certainly not High Fantasy. The Planet of Adventure series is Sword & Planet, which I am a big fan of, too. Leigh Brackett is the only one who does S&P better, though their styles are very different.
Vance was prolific. He wrotte into his seventies, when he went blind, and then kept writing more. Writing both Fantasy and Science Fiction, his career spanned six decades or so, and he always maintained the highest skill and vision.
He has too many works to list, much less discuss, in this entry, but if you are unfamiliar with his works, you owe it to yourself to check a few out. The aforementioned Dying Earth series is a good place to start. The first book, a collection of stories, is pretty good, but lacks some of the wit and drive of the later Eyes of the Overworld. Cugel’s Saga is the direct sequel to this* and Rhialto the Marvelous is the final book in the sequence. If you want high adventure, go with the Planet of Adventure stories (consisting of four novels).
August 28 was his birthday. i should do more to mark such momentous occasions!
*There was actually a direct sequel to Eyes, written by Michael Shea, called A Quest for Simbilis. It was authorized by Vance, though it was obviously voided by Vance when he wrote Cugel’s Saga. I read it, and it is a really good book, with vibrant imagery. Shea went on to write some stories and novels with a Cugel-like character of his own, Nifft the Lean.
I missed his birthday too, but I don’t feel too bad, because almost every week something he wrote is part of my life. Just today I received in the mail a first edition copy of Flashing Swords! #1, which contains the story Morreion (one of his most droll and imaginative, in my opinion).
In 2004 I contributed a birthday message online which I believe was read out to him along with the others. Closest I got to contact with the master.
Cheers to you as always Mr Vance!
Hey, DarkPumpkin,
First edition of FS#1 is a great treasure! Morreion is awesome.
That is really cool that your birthday wishes were read aloud to him! That had to make him smile!
It’s little notes like this that increase the scope of what I read. I will definitely take a look!
Glad we could expand the view just a tad! You won’t be sorry.
I’ve actually thought about doing more brief notes like this, not necessarily for birthdays. I just happened to notice that I missed it when I went to Vance’s Wikipedia page to see when he wrote a particular story I am reading (Houses of Iszm). I’ll try to do one a week(ish).
Thanks for the comment!