Why You Should Read Dying Earth by Jack Vance
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- Опубликовано: 3 июл 2024
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Also the inspiration for Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun.
It's very interesting but not for the faint-hearted!
I'm in my mid 50s and first ran across Jack's works as a teenager. I've had a life long love affair with his works. His use of language and his world and character building are second to none. You're right about fandom having forgotten about the old masters. Another great writer that fed into the original D&D rules was Fritz Leiber. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser and the worlds they inhibit are another great series of stories.
Read it, loved it, wish there were more books like it.
Vance, Moorcock, Howard, Burroughs - all these luminaries wrote books that aged very well.
And the more people who are introduced to fantasy however they are whether it's modern with Sandersen or Rothfuss or Martin - the more they stand out as genuinely great works.
I think they will keep aging well, too
Cudgel the Clever, who is the main lead in the second and third books in the series, is a riot. 'The Clever' is his name for himself, he's the sort of guy who tries to screw over everyone, esp those who treat him nicely, but it always ends up blowing up in his own face. Maybe it marks me as a bad person but there's something just so fulfilling about seeing a snotty jerk getting his own comeuppance...
I never wanted Cugel to get his come uppins lol
I always rooted for him on the bounce back after he would. He has a sort of aplomb about him. A less heroic goonies never say die attitude about who he is.
Dude doesn't change his stripes and I appreciate it lol
Speaking of Vance, his Lyonesse trilogy (my favorite) is a simultaneous homage and satire of Arthurian Romance. Highly reccomend
People dislike the original dnd magic systems because of the spell limitations but they forget the implications of creating scrolls and potions daily as well as casting spells into rods and wands for later discharge.
Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun series.
I read Moorcock last year, and you're right, he moves very fast. I love his imagery, it's very metal.
Weirdly enough, the reason why I stumbled across Vance's works is exactly because of D&D. In older versions of D&D, wizards and clerics (and later druids) were specifically referred to as Vancian casters precisely because they had to prepare their spells for the day every morning, trying to anticipate whatever they might encounter (this is in contrast to spontaneous casters like sorcerers, who simply cast whatever spells they knew as long as they had spell usages remaining), which got me really curious about the etymology of the term "Vancian" and led me to the books.
thank you David
Great commentary fella.
Crazy synchronicity, I just heard about this book last night and was planning on ordering it.
Never heard of this book but it sounds really interesting, I love that genre.
Dying Earth is great! I became interested in it through D&D after hearing about the original magic system being based on it, Vecna's name being an anagram of Vance, and even spell names such as prismatic spray coming from The Dying Earth. Some friends and I are getting ready to start a campaign in D&D. I'm usually the DM but Im playing this time.
I wanted to play a somewhat whimsical character that pays homage to these roots. My character is a custom race (much like a racoon) that is not born but rather spawned through some mysterious means he doesnt understand. As such he does not have a name initially. He befriends a child whom he later discovers is the granddaughter of an extremely powerful and cartoonishly evil wizard. The wizard makes my character into his familiar/assistant where he learns various spells, though at this point my character is pretty undecerning and doesnt realize how evil the wizard is, just that he has the cookies he likes. This wizard has traveled to various planes of existence one of which is the real world and he has a copy of The Dying Earth in his library. My character loves The Dying Earth after reading it and decides to call himself Pandelume when the girl he befrieded tells him he needs to have a name. Through some goofy antics, the recently named Pandelume inadvertantly causes some issues with a particular spell the evil wizard is attempting and instead of achieving immortality, the cartoonishly evil wizard is transformed into Pandelume's awakened spellbook (Pandelume is an Order of Scribes wizard if you are familiar with 5e).
Science fiction as an offshoot of fantasy is something I never realized. That’s rad
SF fans tend to get uppity about it (and you wouldn't market it that way) but in a technical sense it is true.
@@DVSPress totally agree. Especially far future sci fi which is what you were touching on.
Just snatched the complete series on kindle. Heard about it for years but this convinced me.
Definitely not boring.
Added it to my list.
Haven't read dying earth but I grew up on Jack Vance's Lyoneese trilogy. Awesome fantasy books.
Cugel's Saga made me laugh out loud. Great book.
Jack Vance is the greatest pleb filter
I approve this message. Right now I'm reading the Runelords series by David Farland. It has an interesting and unique magic system and so far the author seems to be exploring the implications pretty thoroughly. Recommend.
So good , first book ive read in over 15 years since im a lazy sorta dude addicted to instant gratification but i instantly remember why i enjoyed books so much as kid after the very first chapter , and i was moved by the final one , books go hard dude , jack vance go hard dude
great title
I've been on a Philip K. Dick jag of late. Despite my evolution into a real prose snob who bores quickly with most genre fiction, PKD never fails to impress me with weird language and even weirder ideas.
He really knew how to take the speculative element and make a compelling story out of it.
Dave, you've always been as sharp as a double-edged sword and perfectly cleft a skull here saying today's doorstoppers are slow.
I think the guilty culprit undoubtedly is the word processing programs available on the computer. If Sanderson had to type a story
page by page on a typewriter his manuscripts wouldn't exceed 400 pages, including his Stormlight series. I typed two novels but
my third and all the rest in a Word program, it's easier. I think if Dickens had had ballpoint pens The Mystery of Edwin Drood would
not be a mystery anymore, he might've even written a couple more doorstoppers. That said, he could've finished Drood had he not
discovered he could make more money reading his work aloud on the college lecture circuit than writing new ones.
It’s pretty trippy
I love the Dying Earth! The Eyes of the Overworld was a bit tougher for me?? 😅
Have you read William Hope Hodgson's The Nightland? It's one of the earliest in the dying earth genre. It's a chore to read but still one of my all time favorites.
lane the wayfarer is the best. love vance! have several signed books by him. its a shame about the eye problems he had, if it weren't for his wife writing his dictations down probably wouldn't get the cugel books
Have you read Three Body Problem? I'm halfway through this beloved series and am feeling gaslit.
Have you read the Repairman Jack series?
I quite like Raymond E Feist books, you ever read his works?
I have not. What is your favorite?
@@DVSPressIt's hard to say because he had a long running series that spanned into different Sagas, but it's either between Honoured Enemy ( Riftwar Saga ) or Shadow of a Dark Queen ( Serpentwar Saga ) the latter being the first book I read by him. I'm currently reading Raymond's new series of books, The Firemane Saga.
Been going back pre-1980 lately. Tired of the majority Grimderp "we are the monsters" mindset. + all the debbie downer characters that just exist to suffer.
Excellent recommend. Are the sequels worthwhile?
Yes they are.
I've never read it but I intend to.
I wonder, it sounds to me like the world of Torment: Tides of Numenera was loosely inspired by this.
Tad William's "Memory, Sorrow And Thorn" trilogy.
The immersion is second to none, but they are doorstops.
Found them very bland and forgettable.
@@Eldritchfan right on both accounts.
Recommendation noted. I have a hard time finding good modern fantasy books and harder time finding older ones.
Can you discuss your thoughts on the novel The Road if you've read it?
Why do people like Cormac McCarthy? Serious question.
@@DVSPress I can't speak to anything except The Road. I haven't read any of his other books.
I found it to be filled with small moments of hope, love, and sometimes faith, juxtaposed with frequent horror and darkness.
Although the bad outnumbers the good in the broken world of The Road, I found these small "good" moments more powerful for it. For me, it's a novel that shows the value of love & kindness even in a world almost entirely devoid of a reason to have any hope. In a way, it's like the old Christian stories where believers like Job suffered but still maintained their faith and values.
I enjoyed the many layers of symbolism and the subtle battle between hope/love/faith and nihilism (in which I'd argue hope ultimately wins, despite everything). I also found the writing and use of archetypes rather than character names interesting and relatively unique.
For all I know, the rest of his books suck. But I did enjoy The Road.
@@DVSPress Because he's good.
I think Demon Princes and Tschai (Planet of Adventure) are even better.
The demon Princes is one of my favourite books....so well written.
You touch on an interesting subject re. fandoms forgetting things. Given enough of a time stretch. New fans risk merely being fans of the series or genre itself, but disconnected from any older source, tradition or idea. If this happens to whatever new creative team takes over, it usually spells doom as new content inevitably becomes self-referential to an incestuous degree.
I think it explains why a movie like Force Awakened sucked. JJ Abrams is a soulless bugman who adores Star Wars but has no love or appreciation for anything greater beyond that. And as a result, he could only make a pale imitation of one of the original movies.
This why a lot of modern metal sounds so boring, especially the solos. The musicians grew up listening to metal, practicing metal solo transcriptions, and then they "write" solos for their songs. Most of them end up sounding like technical exercises or etudes.
Solos are supposed to be improvised in the jazz tradition, which is what Black Sabbath grew out of.
Thoughts on Gene Wolfe?
I like his books. More people should read Book of the New Sun instead of Name of the Wind.
@@DVSPress I haven't read name of the wind, but I've been suggested it a lot and my wife is reading it. Is it bad in your opinion, or just overrated?
@@Eversca I think it's terrible.
@@DVSPress do you have a video on it?
I only have a video on how to design the cover (its very cheap).
Just watched sam hyde talk about the book and now you too? Very neat
Didn’t this have a rolepaying game as well?
No, did not read, probably won't read. But I have something to say regarding fantasy and sci-fi. I will probably never get a better chance.
There is a weird idea that sci-fi is opposed to fantasy, and you got to pick a side, and one of better than the other. Or, at least, the 2 are incompatible. YET, a setting with advanced technology AND magic, is the coolest setting one can imagine.
The most popular science fiction franchises of all time freely mix magic and tech - there is just a small segment of fandom that thinks their genre is too good for it.
@DVSPress Magic and wizards are for little babies after all. Spaceships and giant robots are for adults.
I don't really like d&d, just not my thing, know what is / supposed to be.
But the things I hear coworkers talk about in their d&d game are just insane/dumb. "oh so your character is basically immortal?" "no not basically, literally immortal"
It just depends on the group. I've met a lot of highly intelligent people through D&D, and I've also met some people that are about as sharp as a bag of potatoes. There has been a definite and noticeable decline in the average player's intelligence over the years, and it went off a cliff after 5th ed exploded, to the point that I've started looking towards alternatives for tabletop gaming.
Gotta play first edition
@@DVSPress Easier said than done, unfortunately. Never been able to find anyone willing to play older editions.
I've read The Houses of Iszm, also by Vance, because of the titular houses are said to be spectacular. While I did enjoy that part, the rest just wasn't very good. It felt like a lame mystery/detective thriller with no scifi themes, just the scifi aesthetic. At least the story was short, but I'm a bit put off by the pulpiness. Does it get better? Love ur vids
Sam hyde approved