Songs of the Dying Earth: Stories in Honour of Jack Vance is a 660 page hardback nominally priced at £25, delivered to me in Denmark by the magic of Amazon for a lot less than it would have cost in the local bookshop (where they did actually have it – impressive in a country relatively indifferent to SF and fantasy). It was also autographed – presumably by one of the editors (but hard to say which – could just as be easily be the mark of Zorro). The book has an introduction, a short “thank you” preface by Jack Vance (JV) himself, and 22 stories (21 short, one novella) by a range of big name SF and fantasy authors up to and including Robert Silverberg. Each story has an introductory bio about the author, and an afterword where the author describes discovering JV’s work (as a youth, in 50-cent editions in huckster shop bookstores in the 50’s and 60’s and 70’s etc.) and how it marked his or her life. In a few cases, the author tells us how the he or she became a great friend of JV and often visits his home and so on. At about 250 to 300 thousand words the book is coincidentally about the same length as the actual four Dying Earth books combined. So much for that. As part of reading and reviewing the Songs of the Dying Earth, which took me about three months, I also re-read, not for the first time, the original Dying Earth stories (30p edition from 1972 – six stories – 50 thousand words – two days). The stories in Songs of the Dying Earth fall into a number of categories and styles. There are pastiches and prequels and sequels of the main Dying Earth stories. Chun the Unavoidable is as unavoidable in various places in this collection as he was to Liane the Wayfarer in unreal life. Cugel also gets a past and a future, and various portrayals as a more loveable or less loveable rogue, depending on the author. Rhialto and his associates also feature, as do T’sais and Turjan and others. Deodands and Pelgranse appear to have disproportionately caught the attention of the tribute writers. One or two of the stories name-drop and creature-drop to excess and without good enough effect. There are also several stories which are general fantasy or thereabouts and not really Dying Earth stories at all, even though some of them recycle characters from the Dying Earth and are in their own right passable stories. And there are a couple of stories which I am surprised made it into the collection – because the connection with JV or Dying Earth is so tenuous (or less) that the author can hardly have been making a serious effort in that direction. One or two are fairly memorable for the wrong reasons (one has an ending more contrived and telescoped than the live soap opera scene in Tootsie, and another seems to try to merge Dying Earth with the Bloomsbury Set). However, some of the stories are quite good – and even fairly close to JV. The best stories are: Aside from those highlights, the collection does not quite match JV’s short and memorable and suspenseful plotlines. The best JV short stories compete with some of the best short stories in mainstream literature (and with the best of the original Conan short stories). Even more absent is the dry and witty and improbably erudite dialogue which JV puts in the mouths of his picaresque characters (Dying Earth and elsewhere), or his half-descriptions which stimulate the reader’s imagination better than a better description would. For example – there is nothing anywhere in the collection to match: "For twenty terces I phrase the answer in clear and actionable language; for ten I use the language of cant, which occasionally admits of ambiguity; for five, I speak a parable which you must interpret as you will; and for one terce, I babble in an unknown tongue." At his elbow a voice said, "I am Chun the Unavoidable." Zaxa rode a small pacing wole, and carried his fabulous sword Zil, while the others of the party rode steeds of other descriptions. Jack Vance deserves a tribute more than most SF or fantasy authors do – and this collection is not a bad effort at providing that - but to see all his work available in print would be even better – a lot of JV’s work is out of print and has been for some time. Several of the authors in their afterwords mention the many memorable images which come from such a relatively short body of work, and describe re-reading the Dying Earth stories many times. Those are things that most JV fans and I share with them. However, this tribute book, while fairly readable, is not very re-readable. If the collection had been limited to the 10 or 12 best stories in it then it might be a more forceful and memorable tribute. In fact, one of the best tributes in the book is a line from one of the afterwords “in a well-run world, prominent geographical features and wide, impressive plazas and boulevards would bear his name”. If you know where to buy some Jack Vance books (probably secondhand), Dying Earth or not, then "So now, be off! Or I inflict upon you the Spell of the Macroid Toe, whereupon the signalized member swells to the proportions of a house." Songs of the Dying Earth: Stories in Honour of Jack Vance (2009) Review by Ed Ward. |
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