Category: Fiction

I have done a bit of reading this past week.

After posting about Jack Vance’s birthday, I found an ancient Ace Double with back-to-back Vance novels, The Houses of Iszm and Son of the Tree. I remember seeing the book lying around through my childhood – Dad was hugely into sf, as is Mom – but for some reason I never read them. Rediscovering the book when going through a neglected section of one of my shelves seemed like a sign, so I dug in.

Houses concerns a planet that grows organic houses, and the attempts of various parties to get the secrets or a female house off of the planet. The viewpoint character is an innocent tourist caught up in the conspiracy. There is the usual Vance imagery and imaginative systems and dialogue. Very little action, but what there is is direct. The punchline, while telegraphed for a time, I managed to figure out just before it was made plain. A well-written, fast-moving story with interesting characters and plot twists.

Son was written about 1951, so a decade or more before Houses. It concerns a struggle between two worlds to control a third that is rich in resources. This one has a little more of the Sword & Planet vibe from earlier decades, but the direct action is still minimal. Interesting races and characters and locations are a solid backdrop for a story where the central character’s motivation and the lengths he has gone to stretch credulity, but I still liked the novel very much. Vance’s writing possesses a certain clarity that carries you along, much as Robert E. Howard’s intensity does.

I also read two novels in the Dumarest saga by E. C. Tubb. The saga concerns the efforts of Earl Dumarest, interstellar badass, to find his lost homeworld of Earth. He is a spiritual twin to one of the core characters in all sf/fantasy, Leigh Brackett’s Eric John Stark. The universe here is fascinating, thousands of worlds plied by free-trading starships but with no central government – each world is essentially self-contained. Many aspects of this series went directly into the Traveller RPG, such as High and Low Passage. Much has been written of the series, so I won’t repeat it here (go to Wikipedia if you want a brief rundown), but I may go over it in depth here later. I had read about 10 of the first twenty when I picked up these two.

Web of Sand is number 20 in the series (they are in chronological order, though you can pick up one at any point and not be lost). Dumarest and some travelling companions are stranded on a desert world controlled by five families (the Cinque) in a debt-based society. They need to earn enough to buy their passage off world, and it is a difficult feat, with most of those living in the protective dome-city never earning their freedom. Earl enters the gladiatorial arena (a staple in the series) to earn a payday, but instead finds himself a pawn in intrigue. He maneuvers between players and finds a possible solution to the financial woes, and sets out with his companions. They face deadly nature in the forms of huge serpents and devastating sandstorms, and then they have to deal with the Cinque when they return…A solid entry in the series.

Iduna’s Universe is number 21. Dumarest is caught by slavers, and his bid for freedom fails. He is given the choice between an impossible task and slow, painful death. I was a bit concerned getting into this novel as I cannot stand dream-like adventures; they lack heft. But this one was decent in that respect, and there was also plot development going on outside. The resolution was not a happy ending, which I am cool with, and it made sense. Not sure I buy Earl figuring everything out while on the inside, while those closest to the situation missed everything…not real strong overall, but OK. Earl is a fun character to follow.

So it was a strong week of reading. It had been a few years since I read any Dumarest, and I have a few more after these. The series went up to 33. Not sure whether I want to go back and track down the ones I missed up to this point, or finish the last I have and then start filling in gaps. Probably the latter, as I still have many other books waiting to be read (among hundreds of other projects waiting to be done!).

…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.