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".
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?
The current Connatic is Oman Ursht, sixteenth in the Idite succession: a man of ordinary and undistinguished appearance. In portraits and on public occasions he wears a severe black uniform with a black casque, in order to project an image of inflexible authority, and this is how he is known to the folk of Alastor Cluster. In private Oman Ursht is a calm and reasonable man, who tends to under- rather than over-administrate. He ponders all aspects of his conduct, knowing well that his slightest act a gesture, a word, a symbolic nuance might start off an avalanche of unpredictable consequences: hence his effort to create the image of a man rigid, terse and unemotional.
Because of the powerful leverage of the Federal Reserve System, public statements by the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board are scrutinized by bankers and investors for clues as to whether "the Fed" is likely to tighten the money supply or ease up. An unguarded statement by the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, or a statement that is misnconstrued by financiers, can set off a panic in Wall Street that causes stock prices to plummet. [...] Given such drastic repercussions, which can affect financial markets around the world, Federal Reserve Board chairmen over the years have learned to speak in highly guarded and Delphic terms that often leave listeners puzzled as to what they really mean.
A concert was going on, and I for the first time heard a gipsy band. Music is an instinct with these Hungarian gipsies. They play by ear, and with a marvellous precision, not surpassed by musicians who have been subject to the most careful training. Their principal instruments are the violin, the violoncello, and a sort of zither. The airs they play are most frequently compositions of their own, and are in character quite peculiar, though favourite pieces from Wagner and other composers are also given by them with great effect. I heard on this occasion one of the gipsy airs which made an indelible impression on my mind; it seemed to me the thrilling utterance of a people's history. There was the low wail of sorrow, of troubled passionate grief, stirring the heart to restlessness, then the sense of turmoil and defeat; but upon this breaks suddenly a wild burst of exultation, of rapturous joy--a triumph achieved, which hurries you along with it in resistless sympathy. The excitable Hungarians can literally become intoxicated with this music--and no wonder. You cannot reason upon it, or explain it, but its strains compel you to sensations of despair and joy, of exultation and excitement, as though under the influence of some potent charm.
Reminds of a passage from Jack Vance's Trullion which describes a grisly and ritualistic public execution, with emphasis on the accompanying music provided by the gipsy-like Trevanyi:
Oh, the prutanshyr's a wicked place! And to hear the music! Sweet as flowers, strange and hoarse! It strikes through you as if your own nerves were being plucked for tones... Ah well, at any rate, a great pot of boiling oil was prepared, and a traveling-crane stood by. The music began; eight Trevanyi and all their horns and fiddles. How can such stern folk make such sweet music? It chills the bones and churns the bowels and puts the taste of blood in your mouth! Chief Constable Filidice was there, but First Agent Gerence was the executioner. One by one the starmenters were grappled by hooks, then lifted and dipped into the oil, then hung up on a great high frame; and I don't know which was more awful: the howls or the beautiful sad music. The people fell down on their knees; some fell into fits and cried out, for terror or joy I can't tell you; I don't know what to make of it...After about two hours all were dead."
I have often admired the mysticall way of Pythagoras, and the secret Magicke of numbers(Sir Thomas Browne: Religio Medici)
In this fashion did Turjan enter his apprenticeship to Pandelume. Day and far into the opalescent Embelyon night he worked under Pandelume's unseen tutelage. He learned the secret of renewed youth, many spells of the ancients, and a strange abstract lore that Pandelume termed "Mathematics."(Jack Vance: Turjan of Miir)
"Within this instrument," said Pandelume, "resides the Universe. Passive in itself and not of sorcery, it elucidates every problem, each phase of existence, all the secrets of time and space. Your spells and runes are built upon its power and codified according to a great underlying mosaic of magic. The design of this mosaic we cannot surmise; our knowledge is didactic, empirical, arbitrary. Phandaal glimpsed the pattern and so was able to formulate many of the spells which bear his name. I have endeavored through the ages to break the clouded glass, but so far my research has failed. He who discovers the pattern will know all of sorcery and be a man powerful beyond comprehension."
So Turjan applied himself to the study and learned many of the simpler routines.
"I find herein a wonderful beauty," he told Pandelume. "This is no science, this is art, where equations fall away to elements like resolving chords, and where always prevails a symmetry either explicit or multiplex, but always of a crystalline serenity."
The Jack Vance tribute anthology Songs of the Dying Earth seems to be shaping up nicely. The anthology is reminiscent of other projects like The Last Continent: New Tales of Zothique and Night Lands Vol I: Eternal Love. (Author John C. Wright contributed to the latter, and will have a story in the Dying Earth one, too.)
Here are some of my hopes for "Songs...". First, I hope that they do not sacrifice any creative possibility for the sake of story consistency or continuity, either with Vance's original work or among the new stories themselves. Vance is not Tolkien; he usually isn't very concerned about such matters.
Second, I hope that not all of the stories recycle old places and characters invented by Vance. Sure, it would be nice to read about ol' Cugel again, but it would also be interesting to expand the Dying Earth universe with brand new characters and locales.
Third, and most important, I hope stories are featured that go beyond merely imitating Vance's style and touch on some the deeper themes (the grim view of humanity, the cultural relativism, the religious satire...) underlying the Dying Earth tales. Not necessarily to agree with them; perhaps to comment on, subvert, or criticize them!
In that respect, I'm really intrigued about contributions by women authors like Paula Volsky, Elizabeth Moon, and Liz Williams, because anyone interested in giving a female (feminist?) perspective on the Dying Earth stories will have a lot to chew on.
For example, what do they think about T'sais/T'sain? In that storyline, women are created in vats, their physical and mental characteristics determined by the whims and preferences of powerful male mages. Do they find this reworking of the Frankenstein/Pygmalion myth disturbing? Do the mages have too much power over their female creations? T'sain doesn't seem to mind, but presumably her brain was designed not to mind. Maybe T'sais is the sane -if unhappy- one?
What about the unflinching cruelty directed against female characters in the Cugel stories? Granted, the Gugel stories feature cruelty against pretty much everybody, but still... Derwe Coreme (oterwise a powerful and independent character) is abandoned to sexual slavery at the hands of the Busiacos. It is also implied that Cugel raped Derwe. At one point, he uses extortion to gain sexual favors from another woman.
Finally, the first Rhialto the Marvellous story is a reenactment of the war of the sexes featuring mages and witches, and a (kind of funny) apology for traditional gender roles.
I can't wait to get my hands on "Songs..."! The planned Wild Thyme, Green Magic also looks interesting. Now, if only they decided to reprint Bad Ronald...
Tchamast, morose of mood, an avowed ascetic, whose distrust of the female race runs so deep that he will allow only male insects into the precincts of his manse.
(Jack Vance: Rhialto the Marvellous)
The Athonite banning of persons and images female was first decided a thousand years ago. Following various mystic visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the bigwigs of the Byzantine Orthodox Church decided that the burgeoning monastic community on the lush 400-square-mile peninsula should be dedicated solely to the Virgin. And to ensure that the Virgin was not outshone by anything else female, it was ruled that all rival females should be banished from the peninsula. From the off, the monks took this ordinance literally. Not only did they banish all the washerwomen and fishwives, they also drove off the female animals: the mares, sows and bitches. Even the hens were shooed away. Eventually, only the female songbirds were allowed, mainly because there was nothing that could be done about them.
(Sean Thomas: How the other half lives. See also The Straight Dope.)
The monks at Mount Athos are also reminiscent of the Chilites Vance invented for The Anome. The Chilites scrupulously avoid the untidy contacts of real women, but venerate an abstract feminine essence they call "Galexis".
"You must start to forge the strongest of all bonds, the holy link to the temple. Galexis, the nervous essence, corresponds to female women as the candy of unmel to tannery sludge; you will learn more of this. Meanwhile, strengthen yourself!"
(Jack Vance: The Anome)
Through the window came a mumble of voices: "...Galexis of a million beatific forms, individual but universal, for all but for each alone, submissive but magnificent in your forward search; we avert our souls from sordid stuffs, the greases and taints, the First Order Palpabilities!"
(ibid.)
Did Vance knew of the "no girls allowed" rule at Mount Athos?
There's an interesting post down at Ben and Alice about CSI as science fiction and anthropology, which also touches on Jack Vance's story The Moon Moth.
My girlfriend is obsessed with CSI in all of its multifarious incarnations, and enamored with the characters of Grissom and the one played by David Caruso. David Caruso? Oh, come on. The guy looks like he is permanently suffering for some kind of hepatic dysfunction. I don't care how nonchalantly and cocksurely he takes off his sunglasses.
J. G. Ballard wrote about CSI a few years ago. Here is the article.
Ifness permitted himself a faint smile. "They are a fascinating cult; the Chilite rationale and its physical projection makes a most elegant pattern. You don't follow me? Consider: a group which nightly intoxicates itself into a frenzy of erotic hallucinations, under the pretext of religious asceticism isn't this sublime insouciance? A social machinery is necessary to maintain this state of affairs: it is as you know. How to ensure persistence in a group not itself regenerative? By recruiting the children of other men, by the constant infusion of new blood. How to secure so precious a commodity, which other men normally protect with their lives? By the ingenious institution of Rhododendron Way, which also turns a good profit. What marvelous effrontery! It can almost be admired!"
Etzwane was surprised to find Ifness so enthusiastic. He said coldly, "I was born on Rhododendron Way and became a Pure Boy; I find them disgusting."
Ifness seemed amused. He said, "They are a remarkable adaptation, if perhaps too highly specialized. What would happen, for instance, if they no longer could obtain galga? In a generation or less, the structure of the society would alter, in one of several conceivable directions."
(Jack Vance: The Anome)
Ifness (and maybe Vance himself?) is capable of appreciating the intrincacy and ingenuity of a social arrangement, while still recognizing its perversity. Etzwane, having been a member and a victim of the group in question, is understandably incapable of such cool detachment.
Speaking of perverse social arrangments, one is reminded of certain mormon fundamentalist churches and their lost boys. Of course, chilites and mormon fundamentalists face very different problems. For the woman-hating chilites devised by Vance the problem is how to produce enough male children to replenish their ranks. For the mormon fundamentalists, the problem is how to dispose of the excess male population so that the remaining ones can enjoy the delights of polygamy. The true victims of polygamy are not women as it is commonly assumed, but low-status males.
Jack Vance's Green Magic and John Varley's The Persistence of Vision both feature protagonists who seek to master a difficult knowledge.
In "Green Magic", Howard Fair investigates the thaumaturgic discipline of the same name. He is motivated by his thirst for knowledge, but also by a desire to remake himself in an improved form, maybe even achieve immortality. Ir order to pursue his studies, he enters the otherworldly "green realm", the source of that strange magic.
The narrator of Varley's story also enters an unconventional place. A failed writer wandering across a North America in crisis, he encounters during his travels an experimental commune inhabited by deaf-blind people and their children. There, he finally finds a sense of community, of belonging. But to stay, he must learn the extraordinarily complex "touch language" used by the residents.
Through arduous study and constant practice, both protagonists slowly make progress in mastering their respective subjects, and gain a measure of confidence in their own abilities. But ultimately, that same progress brings the realization that their disciplines are even more difficult than they at first thought. Impossibly so, in fact. Fair acknowledges that he will never achieve the easy mastery of magic that the native inhabitants of the green realm routinely flaunt. In "The Persistence of Vision", the narrator discovers that the language he was studying was just a heavily simplified version of a much more subtle and expressive touch language, that no man capable of sight will ever be able to learn.
In an agony of frustration, they both leave and return to the "real world". But once there, they are unable to adapt. Though incomplete, the knowledge gained has changed them. Fair now possesses incredible powers, but has come to see the world as a mediocre and uninteresting place when compared to the glories and wonders of the green realm. The training received by the narrator of "The Persistence of Vision" has improved his communication skills and he achieves success as an author. But he is rootless and alienated once again, and yearns for the commune.
It's at the end when the two stories diverge. Fair ends up accepting his situation. He stays on Earth, but also keeps his memories and knowledge of the green realm despite the unhappiness they bring him. The nostalgia of Varley's protagonist is too great for that. He leaves everything and heads once again to the commune. What happens is unclear, and more than a little disturbing.
Gary Gygax, co-creator with Dave Arneson of Dungeons & Dragons, has died. I think I'll buy a twenty sided dice and roll it over the map of some imaginary land in his honor.
Simon J. Rogers links to a brief article by Gygax about the influence of Jack Vance in D&D.
It appears that the fourth edition of the game will move away from vancian magic. Nevertheless I hope that, even if the mechanics change, they'll keep the vancian flavor of the spell nomenclature. And what will happen to IOUN stones?
Jeff VanderMeer recently reread Jack Vance's The Dying Earth. A few months ago, Robert Silverberg did the same.
This is a poster for D-War (Dragon Wars) a movie so bad watching it will give you eye cancer. The poster is reminiscent of one classic cover for Jack Vance's The Dragon Masters, a novella so good that its reading sets cross-eyes straight and allows you to perceive three extra colors of the spectrum*.
* hyperbole.
So then: these were Srenki, men whose virtue was the excess of vice, who with leaden zest performed quintessential evil and so redeemed their fellows from turpitude.
(Jack Vance: The Gray Prince)
It is common knowledge that there are two kinds of scholar these days: the stationary and the peripatetic. The stationaries pursue their studies in the traditional way, while their restless colleagues participate in every sort of international seminar and symposium imaginable. The scholar of this second type may be readily identified: in his lapel he wears a card bearing his name, rank, and home university, in his pocket sticks a flight schedule of arrivals and depatures, and the buckle of his belt -as well the snaps on his briefcase- are plastic, never metal, so as not to trigger unnecessarily the alarms of airport scanners that search boarding passengers for weapons. Our peripatetic scholar keeps up with the literature of his field by studying in buses, waiting rooms, planes, and hotel bars.
(Stanislaw Lem: The Futurological Congress [1971])
On the following day Laurz Mur called the conclave of xenologists to order. Standing on the speaker's podium, he swept the audience with an appraising eye. Five hundred xenologists came under his purview: every sort of philosopher, explorer, biologist, anthropologist, historian, cultural psychologist, linguist, analytical aesthetician, philologer, dendrologist, lexicographer, cartologist, and a dozen other more recondite professions. Some were scheduled speakers; others would listen and engage in the important work of intellectual cross-fertilization. Still others had brought papers they intended to read, if the opportunity offered, or even if not: somehow, by hook or by crook, the precious paper with its carefully honed phrases and engaging new ideas must be heard!
(Jack Vance: Night Lamp. By the way, "cartologist" seems to be a real word. Is it a mere synonym for "cartographer", or has it some particular shade of meaning?)
One possible way to enliven the closing ceremonies of academic conferences would be to arrange a "PowerPoint collage" by taking one slide from each of the transpired presentations, and then forcing one unfortunate attendant chosen at random to defend it as if it were his own paper. If he didn't make a convincing case, he would be erased from the proceedings. Fun for everyone, except one! (If the congress is about Moral Philosophy, the utilitarian guy should be chosen.)
In the essay "Rules to Mock Your Vain Ambitions", noted RPG designer Robin D. Laws describes what were his aims when adapting Jack Vance's "Dying Earth" setting to a Role-Playing Game.
I find fascinating the discussion of how the game mechanics were carefully tailored to achieve a proper "Dying Earth" feeling during play. Besides design artistry, it required a deep knowlege of Vance's stories: the identification of their recurring themes, motifs, an character archetypes, not to mention an ear for his use of language (the players are encouraged to speak in the rarefied dialogue peculiar to the series, and the rules themselves are written "in voice".) It's no wonder then that the essay doubles as an interesting commentary on Vance's work.
The bit about the different dice "personalities" is amusing:
Maybe I'm crazy, but I've always found that the different dice used in RPGs all carry different emotional temperatures. The d4 is primal, parsimonious, and, as anyone who has ever stepped on one knows, hostile. The d12 is your goofy uncle, the one who tells you stories aren't supposed to hear and asks you to pull his finger. The d20 is a serious-minded juggernaut of decimal regularity. The six-sider, on the other hand, is a Dying Earth die all the way. A cube, it is elegant, spare, and classical. As the die used by normal civilians, the d6 offers a kind of bridge out from the world of RPGs, just as the Dying Earth stories straddle the boundaries between genre fiction and literature.
This blog post comments on a felicitous turn of phrase by Jack Vance: "spasm of zeal".
For my part, I want to mention another one I like very much: "glassy-eyed zest". It appears in the first chapter of The Green Pearl (freely avaliable here in PDF form for you to sample, dear reader.)
The expression is used in the context of some erotic exertions on the part of one of the characters, performed with a certain lack of genuine enthusiasm.
The tribal disdain for nature extended into its active denigration of hair, agriculture, childbirth and even, perhaps, representational art.
In all of this the tribe was proclaiming that while its dominance derived from nature and was beyond question, its superiority meant that nature had no further claim on it. Everything else was created by the tribe itself, particularly the ornate and elaborate tattoos and paintings on members’ bodies.
(Edward Rothstein: Postmodern Thoughts, Illuminated by the Practices of a Premodern Tribe)
Silence was absolute, save for the purl of water under the hull. At night a pair of large moons cast a serene light through the foliage in a manner which Maihac found almost dreamlike in its effect. He said as much to Bariano, who responded with a condescending shrug. "I am surprised to find you so enthusiastic. It is, after all, a mere trick of nature." [...] "It is simply that your aesthetic judgments are amorphous. It is naive to detect beauty where none has been specifically intended. The subject is large. Often you will notice an agreeable aspect of nature, effected by random or mathematical processes. It may be serene and congenial, but it is the work of chance and lacks the human afflatus. There is no pulse of positive creativity to infuse it with true beauty."
(Jack Vance: Night Lamp)
Al parecer, la Fundación Paul Allen posee un cierto número de Ediciones Integrales de Vance, que está dispuesta a donar sin coste alguno para los recipientes. Detalles aquí.
Creo que la Biblioteca Nacional de Argentina debería solicitar esa donación. El por qué es evidente...
En un capítulo de La Sombra del Torturador de Gene Wolfe, se narra el encuentro del protagonista con un bibliotecario ciego y anciano llamado Ultan, responsable de la biblioteca real en la ciudad de Nessus. El bibliotecario le habla de un método para reclutar aprendices propio del gremio: El Libro de Oro. Es éste un volumen tan absolutamente fascinante que, cuando se lo presentan a un niño, queda totalmente embelesado por él, y a partir de entonces orienta su vida al servicio de los libros.
Ultan es claramente Jorge Luis Borges; la inmensa biblioteca que supervisa se podría considerar un trasunto de Biblioteca Nacional Argentina en Buenos Aires, de la que Borges fue director durante 18 años. (Al parecer, Wolfe da indicios en su novela de que la ciudad de Nessus es una versión futura de Buenos Aires. Aunque a mí se me escaparon, la verdad.)
Ahora bien: Gene Wolfe ha mencionado en entrevistas que, para él, el Libro de Oro que leyó en su adolescencia fue... La Tierra Moribunda de Jack Vance. Por lo tanto, ¿qué mejor método de asegurar que el Libro de Oro se encuentre en la biblioteca de Ultan que solicitando la donación?
Obvio, ¿no?
They all had tough names except Ceran. Manbreaker Crag, Heave Huckle, Blast Berg, George Blood, Move Manion (when Move says "Move," you move), Trouble Trent. They were supposed to be tough, and they had taken tough names at the naming. Only Ceran kept his own—to the disgust of his commander, Manbreaker.
"Nobody can be a hero with a name like Ceran Swicegood!" Manbreaker would thunder. "Why don't you take Storm Shannon? That's good. Or Gutboy Barrelhouse or Slash Slagle or Nevel Knife? You barely glanced at the suggested list."
(R. A. Lafferty: Nine Hundred Grandmothers)
Mur took the paper into the cottage, and puzzled out the sense of the characters, with occasional help from Eathre. His face grew longer and longer as he read: "Bougozonie, the Seven-Spasm Ecclesiarch. Narth Homank, who ate but one nut and one berry each day. Higajou, who reorganized Pure Boy training. Faman Cocile, who allowed himself to be gelded by Shimrod Forest bandits rather than alter his creed of non-violence and peace. Borgad Polveitch who denounced the Ambisexual Heresy..." At last Mur put aside the paper.
"What is your selection?" asked Eathre.
"I can't make up my mind."
(Jack Vance: The Anome)
