Most reviews of Jack Vance's autobiography "This Is Me, Jack Vance" point out that he avoids talking about his own writing for the most part. Apparently, he dislikes such "shop talk", as he calls it.
Well, he wasn't as reticent near the beginning of his writing career, as this snippet taken from The Illustrated Vance shows (click to enlarge):
The story being discussed is "Phallid's Fate".
In Jack Vance's novel "Emphyrio", evil alien invaders execute the eponymous hero—who wanted to contact them in order to talk peace—by driving a nail through his head. For an author so disdainful of religion as Vance, the scene is remarkably Passion-like (as with the Passion, the death of Emphyrio is theatrically reenacted within the world of the novel).
The Old Testament features an example of death by nail through the head. Yael received Sisera into her house with feigned hopitality after the latter's armies were routed, only to push a tent peg through his temples when he laid asleep.
I'm not very partial to Yael's form of heroism. Its sneakiness precludes bravery, while still not requiring any particular cunning. You only need a modicum of hand-eye coodination, really. And slaughtering your guest in his sleep is unbecoming. At least Judith had to take the effort of infiltrating Holofernes' camp and seducing him.
Another example of these low-effort heroines is the portuguese Brites de Almeida, a baker who discovered in her furnace spanish soldiers seeking refuge from their defeat at Albujarrota, and dispatched them in a manner which almost suggested itself, given the circunstances. You have to admit that lighting a furnace and waiting for the screams to subside hardly constitutes the apex of heroic achievement.
Maybe I'm being parochial, but I much prefer local heroine María Pita, who helped defend A Coruña against the forces of Sir Francis Drake.
(later) Either I misremembered or there are several versions of Brites' legend. Internet says that she didn't bake the poor chaps, but instead silenced them forever by applying a number of vigorous shovel strikes. That's better I guess, but still not as meritorious a deed as besting a son of Albion in the throes of a honest-to-God battle like María Pita did.
A second draft manuscript of Suldrun's Garden:
From the webpage of Tim Stretton. First spotted at the Jack Vance Message Board.
I wish authors employed some kind of version control software, so that we could trace the development of novels in minute detail, starting from when pen is first put to paper, through subsequent growth and revisions, until the final version.
However, version control may have too much granularity. It would not distinguish between authors who write their sentences in spurts only to revise them later, and those who meditate obsessively on every word before committing it to the page. ¿How about a keylogger, then?
