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Jul. 18th, 2009
Jack Vance: Having a Good Month, so far
Jul. 18th, 2009 10:26 pmOne of the sf news sources I read is the RSS feed from Subterranean Press, a specialty press who offer very high-end books for the collectible sf/fantasy/horror market (chapbooks, $900 editions of The Martian Chronicles, and so forth) but also a lot of more reasonably priced, smaller-audience goodies including offbeat anthologies (Joe Lansdale's Son of Retro Pulp Tales), novellas (Poppy Brite's Liquorverse story D*U*C*K), and so forth.
This month they've just published a gigantic tribute to one of the most important American fantasy writers, Jack Vance: Songs of the Dying Earth, a![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
grrm-edited collection of stories in honor of Vance's most famous creation, the world of the Dying Earth. Their second volume of Vance short stories (Wild Thyme, Green Magic) came out last month. (Alas, The Jack Vance Treasury from 2007 is out of print--maybe they'll bring it back?). They're also publishing his memoir, This Is Me, Jack Vance (Or, More Properly, This Is "I"). In response to this explosion of productivity, there's a long appreciation of Vance in the New York Times Sunday Magazine dated today, available online, treating both the writer and the person with the proper respect.
Nice to see all this.
To add just a little original content: At the June NYRSF Work Weekend, David Hartwell mentioned that Vance had once said something to the effect that his entire style was born in two stories by Clark Ashton Smith. A few minutes' research turned up the stories, both of which are available online at the astonishingly complete CAS fan site, Eldritch Dark: "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" and "The Theft of the Thirty-Nine Girdles"
It's very, very easy to see the cradle of Vance's combination of whimsey and opalescent prose here:
I would write further were it not for this tentacle gripping my leg.
This month they've just published a gigantic tribute to one of the most important American fantasy writers, Jack Vance: Songs of the Dying Earth, a
grrm-edited collection of stories in honor of Vance's most famous creation, the world of the Dying Earth. Their second volume of Vance short stories (Wild Thyme, Green Magic) came out last month. (Alas, The Jack Vance Treasury from 2007 is out of print--maybe they'll bring it back?). They're also publishing his memoir, This Is Me, Jack Vance (Or, More Properly, This Is "I"). In response to this explosion of productivity, there's a long appreciation of Vance in the New York Times Sunday Magazine dated today, available online, treating both the writer and the person with the proper respect. Nice to see all this.
To add just a little original content: At the June NYRSF Work Weekend, David Hartwell mentioned that Vance had once said something to the effect that his entire style was born in two stories by Clark Ashton Smith. A few minutes' research turned up the stories, both of which are available online at the astonishingly complete CAS fan site, Eldritch Dark: "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" and "The Theft of the Thirty-Nine Girdles"
It's very, very easy to see the cradle of Vance's combination of whimsey and opalescent prose here:
I, Satampra Zeiros of Uzuldaroum, shall write with my left hand, since I have no longer any other, the tale of everything that befell Tirouv Ompallios and myself in the shrine of the god Tsathoggua, which lies neglected by the worship of man in the jungle-taken suburbs of Commoriom, that long-deserted capital of the Hyperborean rulers.
I would write further were it not for this tentacle gripping my leg.