The Jack Vance Treasury

by Jack Vance, Jonathan Strahan (Editor), Terry Dowling (Editor)

A massive (over 230,000 words) gathering of fiction by the master of science-fantasy.

Nebula and World Fantasy Grand Master Jack Vance is one of the most admired and cherished writers of science fiction and fantasy in the world, and is one of the truly important and influential storytellers of the 20th century.

From his first published story “The World Thinker” in 1945 to his final novel Lurulu in 2004, Vance has shown an astonishing range of inventiveness, versatility and sheer storytelling power, as well as a gift for language and world-building second to none. Winner of the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy and Edgar awards, his acclaimed first book The Dying Earth and its sequels helped shape the face of modern heroic fantasy for generations of readers—and writers! In more than sixty novels, he has done more than any other author to define science fantasy and its preeminent form: the planetary adventure.

Born in San Francisco in 1916, Vance wrote much of what you'll find between these covers both abroad and at home in the hills above Oakland, either while serving in the merchant marine or traveling the world with his wife Norma, all the while pursuing his great love of fine cuisine and traditional jazz.

Now, at last, the very best of Vance's mid-length and shorter work has been collected in a single landmark volume. With a Preface by Vance himself and a foreword by long-time Vance reader George R.R. Martin, it stands as the capstone to a splendid career and makes the perfect introduction to a very special writer.

Table of Contents

Preface, Jack Vance
Jack Vance: An Appreciation, George R.R. Martin
Introduction: Fruit from the Tree of Life
The Dragon Masters
Liane the Wayfarer
Sail 25
The Gift of Gab
The Miracle Workers
Guyal of Sfere
Noise
The Kokod Warriors
The Overworld
The Men Return
The Sorcerer Pharesm
The New Prime
The Secret
The Moon Moth
The Bagful of Dreams
The Mitr
Morreion
The Last Castle
Biographical Sketch & Other Facts, Jack Vance

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fiction, Anthologies, Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy

633 pages, Hardcover

First published January 30, 2007

About the author

Aka John Holbrook Vance, Peter Held, John Holbrook, Ellery Queen, John van See, Alan Wade.

The author was born in 1916 and educated at the University of California, first as a mining engineer, then majoring in physics and finally in journalism. During the 1940s and 1950s, he contributed widely to science fiction and fantasy magazines. His first novel, The Dying Earth , was published in 1950 to great acclaim. He won both of science fiction's most coveted trophies, the Hugo and Nebula awards. He also won an Edgar Award for his mystery novel The Man in the Cage . He lived in Oakland, California in a house he designed.

Reviews

[Mohammed Abdikhader Firdhiye · Rating 5 out of 5]

Middle-period,polished Vance stories makes this collection a masterpiece specially for his SF,Science Fantasy stories.

Vance is in my opinion his best in novella length, he can create such wonderful worlds, weird, smart stories in 50,60 pages. More depth than many longer SF novels. His shorter stories are more creative than his best novels. There is huge variety in the shorter stories.

Best stories in this collection are: "The Moon Moth","The Miracle Workers","The Last Castle","The Men Return" ,"The New Prime","The Mitr"

The Dying Earth stories in this collection i dont have in the top because i have read them elsewhere in their own omnibus. You cant seprate Dying Earth stories like this collection does.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 to 5.0 stars. I have not read all of the stories in this excellent collection so this review is only for the stories listed below (I will update the rating/review as I read additional selections):

The Dragon Masters (4.5 to 5.0 stars)- Outstanding Hugo-winning novella about a far future lost colony of Earth battling aliens.

Liane the Wayfarer (6.0 stars) - One of my favorite stories from the The Dying Earth featuring Chun the Unavoidable.

Guyal of Sfere (5.5 stars) - Another superb tales from the The Dying Earth.

The Overworld (5.0 stars) - A classic Dying Earth tales featuring Vance most famous recurring character, Cugel.

The Sorcerer Pharesm (4.5 stars) - Another excellent Cugel story set in the world of the Dying Earth.

Worlds of Origin (3.5 to 4.0 stars) - A neat science fiction mystery featuring some classic Vance characters and descriptions of alien cultures.

The Men Return (4.0 stars) - A classic Vance story about the last survivors of Earth living in chaos after the Earth experienced a phenomenon that has destroyed the "cause and effect" rule of nature (i.e. no action's consequence can be predicted). Bizarre and very interesting.

[Jaro]

This special signed edition is limited to 374 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies. This is copy 222.

[Charles · Rating 2 out of 5]

That's it. I made it to 90%, started the last story, can't read another word. I found Vance's use of archaic language annoying, and his pseudo-archaic or made-up fantastical words irritating. I want to know what the words that I read mean. I am happy to use a dictionary. When a writer uses words that aren't in the dictionary, I'd prefer that he provide some context clues for the words--which I suppose Vance does from time to time--and spare use of these neologisms for important elements of the story. What Vance does is drop neologisms and purple prose in service of setting and atmosphere. And for many of these stories, a disproportionate percent of the text is setting and atmosphere. The characters are profuse and often flat. I didn't get a sense of who many of them were, and I rarely cared for or about any of them.

Maybe I was born too late for Vance. I do see how he's idiosyncratic and perhaps unique. I just didn't enjoy reading at least three-quarters of this collection. A few stories such as "Noise", "Sail", and "The Moon Moth" redeem it, but that's pretty slim pickins for a book of this size.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of my old faves in this collection: LAST CASTLE, several Cugels, a Magnus Ridolf, DRAGON MASTERS...but too much crap, particularly "The Mitr," which is a lowlight about an innocent castaway being raped by passing thugs, the venturesome but unreadable "Men Return," in which Earth passes into and then out of a zone of non-causality, and most of the afterwords, which are so allusive as to be free of actual insight.

But at his best Vance could combine good action with wonderfully erudite mannerist prose, and I think he was also one of the funniest writers in SF:

"I will gladly perform a more comprehensive divination, though the process requires six to eight hours." "So long?" asked Cugel in astonishment. "This is the barest minimum. First you are swathed head to foot in the intestines of fresh-killed owls, then immersed in a warm bath containing a number of secret organic substances. I must, of course, char the small toe of your left foot, and dilate your nose sufficiently to admit an explorer beetle, that he may study the conduits leading to and from your sensorium. But let us return to my divinatory, that we may commence the process in good time."

[Zachary Stewart · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice collection of various Jack Vance works. One problem: Six Dying Earth stories. Three of them Cugel. These are the most well known of Vance's work and the easiest to find in print. If you already own the complete Dying Earth collection, you may want to pass on this one and find the other half of this book elsewhere.

The mini autobiography at the end is pretty neat though so if you are a real Vance fanatic, you will probably want to pick up this volume just for that.

Each story has an afterward written by Jack Vance which more often than not has little or nothing to do with the preceding story, so throughout this book does show what is going on in Jack's head, or at least what he wants to show.

Overall, highly recommended and a good gift for any speculative fictions fans who don't know Vance yet.

[J.P. Mac · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grab you dictionary, it's Jack Vance! An old school master of sci-fi and fantasy, the author's Hugo and Nebula-award winning stories are included in this eighteen-tale anthology. Marvel at "The Dragon Masters," where an inquisitive Prince on a far-off world battles to hold his kingdom together in the face of a dragon war, the secretive politics of a powerful aloof race, and an alien invasion intent on enslaving humanity.

On another planet where everyone wears masks, a methodical official struggles to uncover the identify of a wanted assassin in "The Moon Moth." In "The Last Castle," a collection of spoiled sophisticates discovers the unpleasant truth that the lower orders have plans and goals that don't include the sophisticates.

In addition, several stories appear from Vance's Dying Earth canon. Set in a remote eon when our sun is a red giant, on the verge of guttering out, the selections feature picaresque protagonists afoot in a fragmented society of clannishness, bizarre customs, powerful magic, and sinister monstrosities capable of reason.

This book is best read on Kindle so as to take advantage of the dictionary function. Vance loved the English language, not to mention Old English, Latin and French. Prepare to encounter words such as "helminths," "nacre," and, a personal favorite, "nuncupatory" (obsolete.) Language and communication are themes in several Vance stories. And while the vocabulary can be vexing, it contributes to a depth and sense of place that enriches the author's unique works.

So sample the tales of Jack Vance. Enjoyment will eventuate.

[Jeffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jack Vance is an interesting author. He does a fantastic job of creating these rich worlds of weird nonsense without spending pages and pages on backstory. Vance simply makes up a term or technology if he needs one like a self-aware star trek episode. The stories range from obvious moral parables to strange ramblings on chaos and order. I don't think this would be for everyone, and it took me like three months to finish it, but I was sad it was over.

17/52 - A book with more than 500 pages

[Steven Sullivan]

An excellent compendium of classic Vance (especially 'The Dragon Masters' and 'The Last Castle' and including 'The Mitr', which is quietly devastating), but be advised that this book uses the 'Vance Integral Edition' versions of the texts -- Vance's unedited original versions. If you're familiar with the edited versions that have been in print for decades, it can be startling to find substantial 'new' text in stories like 'Sail 25'.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 4 out of 5]

More like 4.5 stars. The review to read is Mohammed Burhan Abdi Osman's 5-star one, which you can easily find nearby. I plan a reread fairly soon. I own many of these stories in other reprints. This would be a particularly good introduction to prime Jack Vance story-telling.

[Joel De Gan · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's Jack Vance.

[Justin Covey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everything Jack Vance creates seems to pulse with life.
The true gems of this Treasury, such as The Dragon Masters, The Miracle Workers, and The Last Castle perfectly display Vance's genius for effortlessly assembling an expansive cast of three dimensional, memorable characters and creating a setting both fascinatingly alien and utterly believable. Theses stories also display Vance's virtuoso talent for melding familiar tropes from fantasy and science fiction genres into a seamless whole far better and more wondrous than either were apart. A talent also on full display in the Dying Earth tales, some of which are contained in this collection including highlights from the saga of Cugel the Clever, a ceaselessly entertaining, amoral gem of a character.
Even the singular clunker in this collection, The Gift of Gab, an early story where Vance's usual character and verve are swapped for technical problems of the hard sci-fi variety and journalistic description, is a better than average story by virtue of it's fully fleshed out world. A world where Vance manages to paint a believable ecosystem including an alien society working of an inhuman system of intelligence and an interstellar bureaucracy capable of exploiting that ecosystem. All that is set up effortlessly with almost no exposition inside a rather short and for the most part engaging story.
Finishing the collection is an autobiographical sketch which reveals Vance's life to be as remarkable a story as anything he wrote. A life that included traveling the country performing odd jobs before studying physics at Berkeley, getting into the merchant marines despite poor eyesight by memorizing the eye chart, and building a houseboat with Frank Herbert. Perhaps it is a small wonder that his stories so crackle with life, given that he lived his so fully.

[Fantasy Literature · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I don’t think there’s any one novel or short story or even collection of Jack Vance‘s work that comes close to capturing all the best aspects of his writing, I do think that this 633-page Subterranean Press collection does a fairly good job of exposing the reader to a wide array of Vance’s oeuvre. In addition to eighteen stories that span much of Vance’s writing career, there’s a brief comment from Vance himself after each story that gives a little view into how his mind worked while in creative mode, as well as some of the authors and factors that had a major impact on him in developing his writing (note to self after reading one of his comments: re-read P. G. Wodehouse, then find and read some Jeffrey Farnol, two of the writers he says influenced him). There’s also an “Appreciation” by Read More:
http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi...

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

This omits the late-period Vance works, such as the Lyonesse and Durdane cycles, while over-representing the Cugel the Clever stories that are widely available. But all the quibbling in the world can't diminish Vance's status as a grandmaster of science fiction and fantasy, with a flavorful, highly mannered style that brings to mind a Restoration comedy with monsters and spaceships. Every page of this collection is loaded with wonders produced by a writer of boundless imagination.

[Darth · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is likely better than I am giving it credit for, but I just could not get into it.
Generally I love short stories, but it seemed like these jumped around and were so jargon-y that it distracted me from enjoying them.
I had also read around half of them before, but I dinna always catch on to the fact until later - my fault, but still detracted from my enjoying them.

[William Humphreys · Rating 5 out of 5]

A couple of early, relatively clumsy stories, do not mar what is close to literary perfection in this beautiful collection. "The Men Return', 'The New Prime' and 'The Secret' were all new to me and particularly amazing..

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoy the stories of Cugel and Rialto. The magic is imaginative and the scenarios are original.

[Isca Silurum · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore.

[Alex Jackl · Rating 5 out of 5]

As with all his works... mastery.

This is a great collection of the work of a master. I love his humor, insight, and willingness to risk.

[Rashid Yasin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been on a sci-fi anthology kick in the past year, which feels somewhat like cheating. You get to have the fun of a lot of interesting stories and ideas, but don't have to spend as much time on any one. Each of the stories collected is easily finishable in an evening, making it a nice way to end the day or while away a chunk of an afternoon.

I haven't read any Vance before, I used this as a way to dip my toe in - so far I'm pretty happy! I will definitely pick up more of his work in the future. It suffers, as a lot of science fiction does, in having almost zero female characters (other than "fair maidens", which basically count as negative characters), but the rest of it is exciting and imaginative. Vance has an expansive imagination and builds diverse worlds with varying technologies and peoples.

I really appreciated how he highlighted how different cultures and peoples thought differently about how to understand the world around them. The Dragon Masters genetically engineer dragons to be unthinking beasts of war while the Basics (the dragons' ancestors) engineer humans to be lumbering, thoughtless giants; the people of Sirene have a rigid cultural code, valuing status accumulated by individual effort - they wear masks to hide their natural faces because the face is inherited and thus not the product of your own doing; the gentlemen of the Last Castle value their refined social status to not think of defending themselves through hard work, even as other castles fall to their revolting mechanized slaves; the hoodoo master magicians think the process of 'experimentation' (e.g. science) to be irrational and backwards; the dekabrachs cannot communicate but appear to organize themselves sophisticatedly, do they still have intelligence? There are more examples, each reflecting a different portion of how we think of ourselves and how our understanding of the information we receive from our senses lies also in the ideology that information is filtered through.

And on top of that thinking stuff, there are magicians and time travel and trickery, wars and adventures. It's a more violent collection than some others, but not particularly gratuitous anywhere. I enjoyed reading it as well as found myself fascinated by the places and people that populated the worlds Vance created. Excellent fiction.

[Dan Cassino · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jack Vance wears his influences on his sleeve. He loved the Barsoom books of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and PG Wodehouse and Tom Swift and the golden age of Weird Tales. His characters are emotionless, driven generally by just one desire- often revenge- confronting strange worlds, and using words that make me thankful for my Kindle’s dictionary function. It’s strange, and often off-putting, but also has a wry humor built into it, especially in his most famous sequence of stories, The Dying Earth.
This volume is a lengthy compendium of short stories and novellas, including a few Cugel stories set on The Dying Earth, and my personal favorite Vance story, “The Moon Moth,” a murder mystery where the antagonist is mostly the alien social mores of a distant planet.
While not as widely read as contemporaries like Pohl or Herbert (who, I learned from this volume, Vance owned a houseboat with), Vance has been influential: if you were to describe the original version of Dungeons and Dragons as Tolkien plus Jack Vance, you wouldn’t be far off. It doesn’t read like most modern sci-fi, and if you’re looking for characters you can get behind, or women to have speaking roles, you’ll be disappointed. But if you liked The Three Body Problem, or other books that are more concerned with building out a world, and exploring the consequences of it, there’s a lot in here to like.
Also, you gotta love Cugel. What if Conan was a loser who thought he was way smarter than he was? Sure, every story basically ends with him being run out of town with just the clothes on his back, but they’re always fun reads.

[Andrew Brooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fairly large collection of the entire span of Vance's work, that I would have liked better if his style hadn't changed. In on of the After notes of each story he mentioned a change in SF away from the twist ending, feeling that:
"Readers today are not so interested in these tricks. They’re amusing, but they certainly can’t provide the basis for an extended work. What a reader wants is to discover a situation with which he can identify."
So his stories started to show this, and commonplace, everyday scenes with some thread I can't identify with just didn't make my grade.
They're all still very well written, but I need something more exotic, such as his tales of Cugel, some of which are included here.

[Pinky 2.0 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some stories are amazing, some not so much. I would personally recommend reading the Dying Earth stories in different editions as every interesting one came from those collections, with exception of Cugel, which is not a particularly enjoyable read as you are reading an adventure story in which the protagonist is malicious and evil. This of course wouldn't make a problem, if the nature of Vance in general wasn't primarily high quality entertainment, so instead of wonder, I was left feeling bile in my stomach. The best story, and by far, was The Dragon Masters.

[Tomasz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel horrible writing this, but Vance does feel dated these days. Not just in the matter of attitudes - these would be the understandable sins, he was of his time, like any of us. However, the writing can get so overwrought, it's like the editors were scared of the man. In the most extreme cases, the linguistic extravagance masks the puny plots, meringue-like. And I'm not really fond of meringue... Still, it's Vance, it's a worthwhile read.

[Spiegel · Rating 2 out of 5]

This took forever to finish. I liked a couple of stories and I appreciated the humor (like the running gag about proper rites), but overall I don't think it aged well. The scenery is spectacular, but the characterization falls flat and gets repetitive. And of course women in general are part of the scenery.

[Bryce · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't think a single story in this collection fails to employ the colour lavender when describing sunsets, foliage, clothing, etc. Vance's descriptions in general are richly coloured. He had notoriously bad eyesight, which deteriorated, and by the '80s he was legally blind. Maybe there's a parallel here with Claude Monet.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this in fits and starts: my first exposure to Jack Vance. I finally picked a couple of what seem to be common favorites and ended it there without reading the whole thing, something I rarely do.

[Capitalismissexy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jack Vance is arguably the best author ever.
Slight pro capitalism tinge andd anti democrat fascist flavour keeps him hidden by hateful academics and tv n press.

As a writer better than anything you will read in school. Has been described as velvety.

[Andrea]

Recommended ed halter

[Sheila Jean · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't read a lot of short stories. I found some of these interesting and some just downright odd.