The Dying Earth ~Jack Vance

–originally published 1950
–Orb Books
–130 pages
–4/5 stars

Jack Vance has been on my radar for several years, beginning when I purchased the Subterranean Press collection, The Jack Vance Treasury. I read a handful of stories out of that collection and really enjoyed them yet I hadn’t gotten back to reading any of his work in the past two years or more. Recently Tor Books sent me a copy of the Jack Vance tribute collection, Songs of the Dying Earth. This volume is filled with wonderful illustrations by Tom Kidd and many stories written by authors whose works I have enjoyed. Although I suspect one could jump right in and enjoy these tales, I decided I would take the time to read the book that inspired the tribute in the first place. This was one of my good decisions.

The Dying Earth is actually a series of 6 short stories, loosely linked by the world in which they occur. Jack Vance’s Dying Earth novels take place at an undisclosed time in the far distant future of Earth, a time in which the sun is burning itself out. As you immerse yourself in the stories you begin to understand that in large part humanity has reverted to less technologically advanced state. Large cities do exist, but these are mostly in ruins, with people living a more simplified life and suspiciously avoiding what to 21st century humans would be advanced technology and mechanization. This dying Earth is populated by wizards, who practice arts that are hinted to be a melding of magic and science, made indistinguishable by the fact that no one truly understands science anymore.

I did not realize before beginning this book that the Dying Earth series was more fantasy than science fiction, although both are present. Vance employs an interesting magic system whereby the wizards have to memorize complicated formulas in order to cast spells, and once cast they are immediately forgotten and have to essentially be reloaded, through memorization, to be used again. This makes for an interesting plot device in several of the stories as the wizards have to plan for any eventualities that might occur as they can only memorize a certain amount of magic depending on their skill level and the difficulty of the spell. The short tales that make up this novel are:

Turjan of Miir: Wherein we meet the wizard Turjan who undertakes a perlious journey to learn the secrets of creating life. Two female characters, T’sain and T’sais are introduced in this story and will crop up in later tales.

Mazirian the Magician: In this story Turjan finds himself on the losing end of a battle between wizards. T’sain features prominently in this story and proves that she can hold her own.

T’sais: The reader learns a great deal about T’sais in the first story in this novel, particularly about her flaws in regards to understanding and seeing beauty. Her search for understanding continues here and it is one of the more satisfying stories in the novel. I liked both women a great deal, but T’sais is a more complex character and is thus the more interesting of the two.

These first three stories are woven together with overlapping characters and form something of a loose, ongoing story. I enjoyed each of them separately and taken as a whole they are an engaging introduction to this greater world Jack Vance was creating. The remaining three are not so closely interconnected.

Liane the Wayfarer: I had actually read this story in The Jack Vance Treasury but had forgotten much of it, so while it felt vaguely familiar this was essentially a fresh reading. We meet Liane briefly in the previous story and it is safe to say that he is far from a likable character. Liane the Wayfarer is a darkly satisfying tale that taps into the vein from which the Brothers Grimm mined their stories. This one can be read and enjoyed on its own, independent of any knowledge of Vance’s created universe. Although it does pack a bit more punch after meeting Liane in T’sais.

Ulan Dhor: This is far and away my favorite story in the novel, no doubt influenced by the fact that I read it thinking that Larry Niven must have been inspired by it for parts of his novel, A World Out of Time, one of my long-time favorites. This story has some of the elements of a classic adventure tale: the hero’s quest, a damsel in distress, overwhelming odds, and an evil villain. Despite the presence of these now-familiar tropes, it is as much evident in this as in the other stories that Jack Vance has a particular deftness at fantastical storytelling. Ulan Dhor has more science fictional elements in it than the rest of the tales in this novel. Because it tapped into several positive memories of lifelong reading experiences, I found myself completely immersed in and absorbed by this story.

Guyal of Sfere: This was the only story in the novel that I was not impressed with, largely because I felt the end was unsatisfying. There was nothing particularly wrong with the character Guyal, but his quest and its ultimate end did not engage me the way the rest of the novel had, which is unfortunate given that it is the last story in the novel.

The Dying Earth as a whole has given me a much greater appreciation for the talent of Jack Vance. It is a testament to his skill that he can craft stories around some of the more strange character and place names that I have ever read and yet they are in no way distracting, because the story itself is so good. There is an ambiguity to many of the characters in The Dying Earth that made reading the stories an interesting process. While great depth of character is seldom achieved in the short story format, this blurring between “good” and “evil” did at least provide a semblance of depth to many of the characters introduced in The Dying Earth. I find the dying Earth concept, with its ruins of a far distant future, to be fascinating. This kind of story telling, where the “present” is built upon the foundations of earlier civilizations, stirs the imagination. Authors before and after Vance, from Robert E. Howard to J.R.R. Tolkien and beyond, have handled this concept with consummate skill and I look forward to immersing myself in the other Dying Earth novels to learn more about this world birthed from the imaginings of Jack Vance.
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The cover image accompanying this review is from the collection, Tales of the Dying Earth, which features all four complete novels in Jack Vance’s Dying Earth series. This is the book I picked up, with its beautiful John Berkey cover illustration. I mention this merely to point out that I have not read the entire 741 volume, just the 130 pages that make up the novel, The Dying Earth. However, I am mid-way through the second novel and if it is anything to go by, all four novels in this trade edition make it a great, and gorgeous value.