/lit/ - Literature

>>9974886
Some of his stories, like the later Dying Earth tales, are more wryly comic, and loquacious. He also has a more taut and almost hard-boiled style in the Demon Princes books. He also wrote some detective fiction, presumably in a similar style. He can also write something with a more nostalgic and lyrical feel like Emphyrio. He does have versatility of tone while being recognizably Vancian.

One thing I noticed when I read Vance is how good he is at describing the way light falls and is diffused, as well as his dialogue. I think he writes women in an interesting way. He is also dense, most of the books covering a lot of ground in two hundred pages.

>>9920830
<spoiler>Cugel being sold a bill of goods by a town, and being stranded in a shabby guard tower</spoiler>

>>9920862
I think this is the Clark Ashton Smith influence, not the writing so much as the idea that on a dying planet, the human reaction is to live selfishly and without remorse in the pursuit of pleasure, money, sex, food.

Would modern fantasy books be very different if Lord Of The Rings was forgotten and out of print, like Lord Dunsany? Would another tradition and style have predominated - planetary romance, sword and planet, weird fantasy - in the 60s/70s?