Jack Vance

[Anonymous No.6005106]

I just finished reading the Demon Princes a little while ago. Jack Vance thread?

Vance is really fun to read, and he portrays humanity as highly adaptable into a massive array of weird and usually parochial cultures. This was all in the Demon Princes books but I was a bit caught off guard by having a protagonist who's a SPACE HERO instead of a jerkwad. The Cugel books get a lot of their flavor from watching a bad person do bad things and completely fail to learn any lessons. Kirth Gersen does stuff like risk his life to defend the honor of women he barely knows. I still enjoyed reading; in fact I'm glad to see that my appreciation of Vance isn't rooted in how terrible a person Cugel is.

The Oikumene in the Demon Princes bears some interesting similarity to both some of Heinlein's and the Dune books. All three portray space as a limitless new frontier, enabling disaffected individuals and organizations to pull up stakes and take their ball into the wild black yonder. In Dune this is a source of danger--you don't know what kind of sex ninjas or killer robots are lurking out there preparing to make a sudden unwelcome return to the "Core". Heinlein claims (not entirely coherently) that war would become pointless. In Heinlein's far future, strange cultures are free to develop, but that author sure seems fixated on letting us know how great his free love cult will be compared to anything else. Vance has a more conservative/fatalistic attitude. All sorts of societies will develop, they all work more or less, the old ways always fall away, and there are always those who seek power for its own sake. The comparison with Heinlein is particularly illuminating and I think Heinlein comes off worse in just about every way.

I don't plan to read anything else by Vance for a while--I've got too much of a backlog--but I'm still interested in recommendations. I've already read the Dying Earth/Cugel/Rhialto stories.

[Anonymous No.6005121]

Also, I'm glad I didn't have campy cover art poisoning the well of my imagination when reading this or other books from the same period. Your preferences may vary.

[Anonymous No.6005137]

The Jack Vance Treasury for the Kindle is only $5 and it is a fabulous collection. It starts with his novella, The Dragon Masters, which I'd say is my favorite Vance work so far.

The introduction by George RR Martin is really interesting. He basically says what your saying, just how astounding it is how completely Vance could imagine these alien cultures but yet all of them feel intensely human and believable, with their own problems and niceties like any actual human culture. Not some horrid dystopia or impossible utopia.

I haven't read Demon Princes yet. I hope too soon.

Also, Heinlein is a hack. I read Starship Troopers, Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and Stranger in a Strange Land based on all three being 'cornerstones' of science fiction. All three were rubbish. Moon is passable. For once he establishes an interesting conflict and, almost unbelievably, one interesting character in Mycroft the AI. His prose is even worse than Asimov or other comparable golden age sci-fi writers but he doesn't have anywhere close to the good ideas they had, which is why their stories are still bearable.

[Anonymous No.6005172]

How I would rank the science fiction authors I enjoy:
Gene Wolfe
Jack Vance
Roger Zelazny
Frank Herbert
Harlan Ellison
Philip K Dick
Neal Stephenson
Alfred Bester
HG Wells
Isaac Asimov
Stephen Baxter
Arthur C Clarke
Larry Niven
AE von Voigt

With all these brilliant people, and I'm sure even more I'm unaware of, it boggles my mind how people talk unceasingly about hacks like Heinlein and John Scalzi

[Anonymous No.6005196]

>>6005172
I've only read The World of Null-A. It was fun but I wasn't exactly blown away. Apparently Alfred used to wake himself up with an alarm two hours after falling asleep and write down his dreams so he could incorporate them into his fiction. What other novels by him would you suggest?

[Anonymous No.6005207]

>>6005196
The Stars My Destination

[Anonymous No.6005217]

>>6005207
Wrong Alfred.
Voigt won't really blow you away, that's why he's lowest on the list, he's just solid and enjoyable and certainly won't bore you to tears like Heinlein. Check out Slan.

[Anonymous No.6005493]

>>6005137
Yeah, I feel like my wanting to read some more of Heinlein's books (I'll probably still read Moon) is going to go the way of 11-year-old me's desire to play all the Final Fantasy games in order.

[Anonymous No.6005508]

>>6005172
What's the best Zelazny? I've heard Lord of Light is good, is that a good place to start?