Note!

I first wrote this in 1996, and my opinion of Vance’s works has changed over the years. I’ve left the text mostly the way it was, with only a few additions here and there, and a few concessions to grammar. I’ve removed the book reviews of his works.

Preface

The first book of Vance’s I read was Cugel’s Saga back when I was perhaps 17 or 18.

To say it fired my imagination is an understatement. Writing-wise, I wanted to be Vance. Much of my early fiction is written in a style that crudely approximates Vance’s own. Of course, I never came close.

He was everything I wanted a writer to be. His work took me places; his people had dash and panache; they went on hair-raising adventures, and everything was colourful.

But nowadays, if I was to re-read his work, I’d find it lacking. For sure, the last work of his I’ve read – Lurulu, I would’ve put down after page 30 if it hadn’t been Vance. I thought it was a poor work, and a sad end to a lengthy literary career.

In a way, it’s like outgrowing your childhood toys and other fancies. What thrilled me at 18 barely raises a cynical smile past 50. Alas, I’ve moved on.

So, please read what comes next in context. If you still feel the same way about Vance now as you did many years before, that’s wonderful. I wish I could share that enthusiasm.

Introduction

Jack Vance first entered authorial history in 1945, when his first published short story, The World Thinker made an appearance in Thrilling Wonder Stories, a now defunct American “pulp” magazine. He has published numerous amounts of both short and long fiction, in the genré’s of fantasy, science-fiction and mystery, often blurring the distinctions of all three.

I was introduced to Vance’s work in 1984 when I chanced upon a copy of Cugel’s Saga. I immediately fell in love with it and sought out more work.

The Style

Much has been said and written on the style of Jack Vance. He imbues every scene, every character, every sunset or brook flowing in a long-forgotten forest with a poesy that is captivating as well as mildly off-putting for the newcomer. In the Lyonesse trilogy, he gives every character, protagonist or scene-player, mannerisms and diction so archaically romantic that it becomes a joy simply devouring one page after the other.

His use of Latin derivatives such as “nuncupatory” or “turpitude” abound. Naturally, the folks of Fowler’s Good English Guide or pedants at a writing college would object, but their objections are obstreperous, to use another Vancian favourite. Style is not only a question of “big words”, is it more fun to write opprobrium than hate? Or appropriate over apt? With Vance they are tools of expression, much like a sculptor adds a twirl here or there to his latest Adonis. A hallmark, as it were.

Harking back to the Lyonesse trilogy; these books are masterpieces of fantasy. Although the Matter of Britain is a subject as hackneyed as the Watergate scandal, Vance adds his own measure of dash and colour. Among the devilish political goings-on of the island’s rulers, we find the deepest and fey magic and machinations existing. Alternative realms, musty Celtic folklore dusted off and a touch of tantalising wonder resonate throughout.

The style comes to the fore in these books, more so than anything else he has done prior or hence. Even the peasants speak like didacts at a Royal Society function. In all, it adds to the spice and wonder which Lyonesse provides. Stories concerning the lost nation off the Scilly Isles are common or garden and Avalon and Lyonesse are omnipresent in British folklore, yet Vance has excelled himself insofar as style goes; I thoroughly recommend them.

Lyonesse are works of fantasy. His science-fiction shows a similar sort of stylistic bent, but it is muted as Vance attempts to present another impeccable skill he has: world building. The style of his work is always characteristic, even in his mystery novels Fox Valley Murders and The Deadly Isles his method is still there, even if allowances are made due to the contemporaneous settings of them. They were aimed at the mystery set who possibly would rather content over style.

He has an Edgar Award for The Man in the Cage so his versatility can go unchallenged. Elsewhere he shows erudition in his text.

In the Planet of Adventure quartet, he calls the noise of an explosion a “thunderous reverberation”. These books, individually City of the Chasch, Servants of the Wankh (renamed to the “Wannek” once Vance was informed of what “wank” meant), The Dirdir and The Pnume make for superb reading.

All four are written stylistically similar. Each of them introduces events, people and drama with nuances of grammatical facility. His other series of books, the Durdane trilogy or the five-set Demon Princes or even the Magnus Ridolph collection of short stories there is the ever-present style of one who, not only knows his English lexicons well, but utilises it to a very high degree. Other authors can be written off as pretentious, euphuistic, prosodic or the like yet Vance has endured any adversity he may have faced in reference to his writing style.

His Worlds

Durdane, Tschai, Dar Sai, Cadwal, Alphanor, Sibol, Tanjecterly, Embelyon. And what people dwell there! The Brown Bersaglers, the Thangs, the Ka, the Darsh and the Methlen, T’sais, the Fojos of Boniface, Rogol Domendonfors, Alice Wroke and the Connatic.

The rear cover of the Grafton omnibus edition of Planet of Adventure gives us Robert Silverberg’s paean of this quartet. To quote Robert Silverberg:

Who could not return from a visit to Jack Vance’s world, without feeling that he had been somewhere unique, that he had experienced things unavailable in our mundane world?

Frankly, this is accurate to the nth degree. Although Silverberg was citing Planet of Adventure here, this could equally apply to all of his published work. What a strange place Wyst would be to live! Or could you imagine yourself wandering the Dying Earth with Liane the Wayfarer? Or even viewing the dramatic lightning of Athmore Violet on the planet Boniface? It is exactly these sentiments which make Vance unparalleled in world-building.

He has been criticised for his use of explanatory footnotes in much of his work, especially the Alastor series or The Gray Prince, I feel they embellish and further his creation. If you create, why not explain your creation? More often than not, Vance does an admirable job merely by writing the stories themselves. Neither the footnotes nor the characteristics of the world drown the story. At this juncture, I should also point out that his style doesn’t impede the reading either. They are all parts of a wondrous whole.

His worlds vary from the bizarre Big Planet to the coldly beautiful The Dying Earth. The folk who dwell within generally possess like traits or express their own vivacity to spite their locales. Societies such as the odd welfare states of Emphyrio, Wyst: Alastor 1716 and To Live Forever present us with glimpses of alternative fundamental existence. You know they wouldn’t work, as such, but they are grand, full of pomp, dash, coruscation and lustre. The strangest of his worlds is The Blue World.

Set on an endless ocean inhabited by gargantuan lily pads, we see survivors and descendants of a spaceship wreck adapt, work with and against the environment and eventually, we have a rebellion. A rebellion against the authority, as manifested by humans, and by the sea-living monster which forms a part of their religious stricture. The denouément is imaginatively strange, electrocuting the monster with a Voltaic cell made from seawater and reconstituted copper taken from blood. It is all absurd, as such, yet I take my hat off to Vance for even thinking of such a setting.

The Durdane trilogy, a society led by a faceless man; the Anome, a man who lives in complete secrecy to his subjects, yet has the power of life and death overall, the protagonist eventually becomes the Faceless Man. Elsewhere there is oddity, fey, strangeness and paradoxical vivacity. Vance is sometimes anachronistic, having swords in a far future setting, or people dancing stately pavanes, when such things died out several hundred years ago. It’s all done with convincing logic, and where logic is inapt, done with polish and not a small degree of concerted effort.

A critique

While I admire Vance’s works wholeheartedly, I’m not above carping or being fractious regarding them. Much of his output could be described as formulaic. How so? Formulaic with regards to certain niggling “Vancisms” I have encountered. His characters always seem niggardly and ready to haggle. There is hardly a generous or charitable soul in his work.

The Cadwal Chronicles especially Ecce and Olde Earth seemed full of people wishing to bend over triple to win some pointless advantage or to extort an extra cent from whoever. I’m not really sure as to any real life examples Vance may have based this on, but in every book I’ve read so far, he descends to the bazaar quite readily in order to haggle or be parsimonious with his character’s personae.

Another, perhaps more serious “flaw” is the depth and colour of his characterisation toward his protagonists. With a couple of remarkable exceptions, Jean Parlier from the novellas Abercrombie Station and Cholwell’s Chicken’s and the rambunctious Cugel, his main characters are oddly uni-dimensional. To me, there is no real, discernible difference in the characters of Kirth Gersen or Adam Reith. Even Glawen Clattuc or Jantiff Ravensroke seem to behave in a fashion you can predict. Although I swore not to make authorial comparisons, I will break this rule, if only transiently. Compare the protagonists of Philip. K. Dick to those of Vance, Dick’s characters go through all grades of Hell and tribulation.

Vance’s seem to carry infinite aplomb. Sure, Kirth Gersen and Adam Reith suffer grief, horror and joy, but it isn’t something which affects the story to any great degree. We witness a page or two of hair-pulling or musing, but in comparison to the vicissitudes they face, you’d expect the story to dramatically alter accordingly. It’s as if Vance made his mind up that the story is the story, and the character’s pratfalls, troubles, etc, are momentary. In short, they lack the essential humanity of learning from experience, things happen and, qué sera sera.