Poking Around the Intert00bz, Found Some Jack Vance Goodness

Poking around the internet, I found a podcast featuring an interview with Jack Vance. Anyone who has read my blog for any length of time is aware that Jack Vance is one of my all-time favorite writers. Besides the awesomeness of hearing a 93-year-old-but-still-with-it Jack Vance (he's 95 now), I dig the Newcastle accent of Tony C. Smith, the interviewer.

Mr Smith tries to keep Jack on the subject of science fiction, but it turns out that Mr Vance really isn't a fan of science fiction (though he does praise the criminally underappreciated C.L. Moore). Jack prefers to characterize his work as portrayals of human beings attempting to adapt to and cope with exotic locales, such locales as could never be found on Earth. As far as the topics go, he'd rather discuss music and travel than science fiction... happily, Mr Smith has the good manners to "step back" and let the man address the topics he prefers to discuss. Even cooler, Jack invites Mr Smith to bring his whole family to Casa Vance in Oakland, California in the course of the interview. I think I'm going to have to set up an interview with Jack Vance myself... Perhaps the best part of the interview is Vance's discussion of Frank Herbert, especially a hilarious anecdote about Frank's piano virtuosity. As an aside, Jack told Frank that his idea for Dune was silly while the two of them were staying at a house in Mexico, but Frank was too absorbed in the scenery to pay attention, and ended up thanking Jack for his input at a later date.

For a briefer taste of pure Vancian awesomeness, here's a recent video of Jack Vance playing the ukulele and kazoo:

First Vance Post

I was surprised and delighted when I found, in the July 19 Sunday New York Times Magazine, a short profile of one of my favorite authors, underappreciated fantasist John Holbrook Vance. Like the authors profiled in the Times article, I first encountered Jack Vance while an adolescent, and was hooked from the start. Paradoxically, Vance's prose is simultaneous baroque and sprightly- adjective heavy descriptive passages alternate with acerbic dialogues, roguish scamps connive and steal as they traverse lovingly depicted landscapes, and even churlish peasants speak a mock-Elizabethan stage patois.

As Don Herron noted in his essay "The Double Shadow: The Influence of Clark Ashton Smith", in Underwood and Miller's JACK VANCE (Writers of the 21st Century Series) published in 1980 by Taplinger Publishing Company, CAS is one of Jack Vance's greatest influences, although Vance, as Herron notes, was always more concerned with human experience than Smith.

Much to my chagrin, the Vance Integral Edition project compiled all of Jack Vance's works into a collection of deluxe hardbacks, but (lacking a grand in disposable income at the time) I did not obtain a set. Yes, call me a maundering mooncalf, but those were the hard, sad facts.

Now, I would be remiss to ignore a frustrating tendency in Vance's ouvre- his plots are often simple picaresques (which often read like weird travelogues for many paragraphs), and many of his characters tend to blend together (hypercompetent heroes Adam Reith and Kirth Gersen are virtually indistinguishable, as are a plethora of avaricious innkeepers, merchants, peasants, drovers, tradesmen- need I say more?). In contrast, the societies, landscapes, and cultural artifacts Vance conjures up are drawn in beautiful detail- the background of the tapestry is ornate, the foreground figures are often a tad stereotypical.

Now, enough of my yapping, how about a little Jack Vance? Here's the opening of one of my favorite short stories, the anthropological/xenological mystery The Moon Moth*:

The houseboat had been built to the most exacting standards of Sirenese craftsmanship, which is to say, as close to the absolute as human eye could detect. The planking of waxy dark wood showed no joints, the fastenings were platinum rivets countersunk and polished flat. In style, the boat was massive, broad beamed, steady as the shore itself, without ponderosity or slackness of line. The bow bulged like a swan's breast, the stem rising high, then crooking forward to support an iron lantern. The doors were carved from slabs of a mottled black-green wood; the windows were many sectioned, paned with squares of mica, stained rose, blue, pale green and violet. The bow was given to service facilities and quarters for the slaves; amidships were a pair of sleeping cabins, a dining saloon and a parlor saloon, opening upon an observation deck at the stern.

The Moon Moth also contains one of my favorite Vancian put-downs, as the protagonist interacts with a functionary who is familiar with the society into which the protagonist is thrown:

Thissell asked, "Does this mask signify any degree of prestige?"

"Not a great deal."

"After all, I'm Consular Representative," said Thissell. "I represent the Home Planets, a hundred billion people."

"If the Home Planets want their representative to wear a Sea Dragon Conqueror mask, they'd better send out a Sea Dragon Conqueror type of man."

*Although I am linking the story, I don't know the copyright status, and will certainly take down the link if there is a problem.

Now, THIS Is Royalty I Can Get Behind

In yesterday's post, I wrote about how unseemly I find it when the media fawns over royalty. I will make exceptions for certain royal figures, such as the King of the Bop and Ellery Queen. Ellery Queen was a 'house name', originally for cousins Daniel Nathan and Emanuel Benjamin Lepofsky- besides being an author pseudonym, Ellery Queen was the detective protagonist of many of the stories. A stable of other authors also wrote under the 'Ellery Queen' pseudonym, including my beloved Jack Vance (one can say I'm a bit of a fanboi), the 5th anniversary of whose death will fall on next Saturday.

I recently got my hands on a copy of one of Jack Vance's three 'Ellery Queen' novels, 1966's The Madman Theory, a police procedural concerning the murder of a businessman hiking in Kings Canyon National Park with a small group of business associates and a brother-in-law. This is the first of Jack Vance's mysteries that I've ever read- until recently, they were extremely hard to get hold of, and prohibitively expensive. Jack Vance's Science Fiction and Fantasy novels are baroque, gorgeous tapestries depicting strange planets and stranger persons... intricate anthropological surveys of societies which never were. Constrained by a 'house style', Vance seemed to use a lot of restraint while writing as 'Ellery Queen'. Fresno police inspector Omar Collins, the protagonist of The Madman Theory, is a low-key version of the typical hyper-competent Vancian hero:


At nine o’clock on the morning of Tuesday, June 16, three men arrived at the Fresno airport: Dr. Albert Koster, assistant to the Fresno County Coroner; and Sergeant Easley and Detective Inspector Collins of the Sheriff’s office. Koster, a small oval sort of man with a waxen scalp and hornrimmed glasses, carried a black case. Sergeant Easley was almost as bald, but he was rectangular, with the patient look of a butcher’s block. Inspector Omar Collins, the tallest of the three, was spare in the flanks, with coarse black hair, a broken nose, gloomy eyes, and a quality of unpredictability that made people shy away.


Given the amount of characters necessary to set up the 'whodunit' plot, and to provide a sizable cast of victims who fall prey to the murderer, Vance had to draw them in broad strokes. Pharmaceutical firm employees, transplanted Okie musicians, wives and girlfriends are succinctly described, though Vance occasionally got in some of his typical dry humor:


“It’s something to look into.” Collins made a note. “Apparently he got on well with Bob Vega.”

“Bob has outlasted every man that’s ever worked for Earl. He’s a real careful manager. In fact you could call him a bunny except where the ladies are concerned. There Bob throws caution to the winds. I don’t know how many times he’s been married—I doubt if he knows himself. Anyway, Vega’s energy is pretty well sopped up by his wives and ex-wives and wives-to-be. He doesn’t have time for juggling the accounts.” Kershaw spoke in a tone of amiable contempt, as if any ordinary man would find the time.


In another wryly funny passage, Vance describes a collaboration between Inspector Collins and a lieutenant from the San Jose police department:


Collins made no reply. He had formed no high opinion of Loveridge’s competence, and he suspected that the young lieutenant held similar sentiments toward him.


The description of the national park is where Vance's characteristic flair comes to the fore, though his signatiure use of recondite adjectives is missing:


Orchards, vineyards, housing developments tailed off into alfalfa fields, which turned into dry pasture. The foothills began to swell and loom, until they became the spurs of the Sierra Nevada. Eucalyptus and live oak gave way to manzanita and pine, then to fir and redwood. Kings Canyon opened before them: a glacial trough a mile wide and a mile high, with the Kings River a silver trickle on its floor. The helicopter flew east, between granite crags.


The plot is a typical murder mystery/police procedural- Vance puts Collins through his paces: interrogating witnesses, seeking clues, trying to piece together a motive. Illegal drug manufacturing, embezzlement, marital infidelity, or the madman theory of the title... all are considered, though a mounting body count points to a methodical effort to eliminate loose ends.

There are moments of grue- one cannot write a murder caper without bloodshed, but Jack Vance, himself a musician, seemed to find a particular horror in the fate of a musician whose teeth are smashed out and hands cut off in order to stymie identification of his corpse:


Collins grimaced. Poor guitar player. He would have thrown up at what was about to happen to his hands.


The Madman Theory is a fun read if you have a tolerance for some discreet grue. It was my introduction to another facet of the career of one of my favorite authors, so I found it particularly fascinating.

The Fifth Anniversary of Jack Vance's Death

The reason why I decided to post about beloved Science Fiction and Fantasy author Jack Vance all week is the occasion of the fifth anniversary of his death. Vance was known for his baroque language, his spirited dialogue (often between characters trying to scam each other), and his unparalleled ability to invent weird planets and weirder societies... seriously, Jack Vance could throw up a dozen interesting planets in the course of a single novel. Jack Vance was also one of the major influences on Gary Gygax's Dungeons and Dragons, with Vancian Magic being the preferred model for dweomercrafting, rather than a more traditional sympathetic magic approach. In his 'Dying Earth' story cycle, written while he was serving in the Merchant Marine during the Second World War and published in 1950, the wizards who haunt the moribund Earth are forced to commit discrete spells to memory with no knowledge of the dangers they may be facing. The tale Mazirian the Magician perfectly illustrates the trope:


The Magician climbed the stairs. Midnight found him in his study, poring through leather-bound tomes and untidy portfolios ... At one time a thousand or more runes, spells, incantations, curses and sorceries had been known. The reach of Grand Motholam—Ascolais, the Ide of Kauchique, Almery to the South, the Land of the Falling Wall to the East—swarmed with sorcerers of every description, of whom the chief was the Arch-Necromancer Phandaal. A hundred spells Phandaal personally had formulated—though rumor said that demons whispered at his ear when he wrought magic. Pontecilla the Pious, then ruler of Grand Motholam, put Phandaal to torment, and after a terrible night, he killed Phandaal and outlawed sorcery throughout the land. The wizards of Grand Motholam fled like beetles under a strong light; the lore was dispersed and forgotten, until now, at this dim time, with the sun dark, wilderness obscuring Ascolais, and the white city Kaiin half in ruins, only a few more than a hundred spells remained to the knowledge of man. Of these, Mazirian had access to seventy-three, and gradually, by stratagem and negotiation, was securing the others.

Mazirian made a selection from his books and with great effort forced five spells upon his brain: Phandaal's Gyrator, Felojun's Second Hypnotic Spell, The Excellent Prismatic Spray, The Charm of Untiring Nourishment, and the Spell of the Omnipotent Sphere. This accomplished, Mazirian drank wine and retired to his couch.


Similarly, from the story Turjan of Miir in the same collection:


As he sat gazing across the darkening land, memory took Turjan to a night of years before, when the Sage had stood beside him.

"In ages gone," the Sage had said, his eyes fixed on a low star, "a thousand spells were known to sorcery and the wizards effected their wills. Today, as Earth dies, a hundred spells remain to man's knowledge, and these have come to us through the ancient books ... But there is one called Pandelume, who knows all the spells, all the incantations, cantraps, runes, and thaumaturgies that have ever wrenched and molded space .. ." He had fallen silent, lost in his thoughts.

"Where is this Pandelume?" Turjan had asked presently.

"He dwells in the land of Embelyon," the Sage had replied, "but where this land lies, no one knows."

"How does one find Pandelume, then?"

The Sage had smiled faintly. "If it were ever necessary, a spell exists to take one there."

Both had been silent a moment; then the Sage had spoken, staring out over the forest

"One may ask anything of Pandelume, and Pandelume will answer—provided that the seeker performs the service Pandelume requires. And Pandelume drives a hard bargain."

Then the Sage had shown Turjan the spell in question, which he had discovered in an ancient portfolio, and kept secret from all the world.

Turjan, remembering this conversation, descended to his study, a long low hall with stone walls and a stone floor deadened by a thick russet rug. The tomes which held Turjan's sorcery lay on the long table of black steel or were thrust helter-skelter into shelves. These were volumes compiled by many wizards of the past, untidy folios collected by the Sage, leather-bound librams setting forth the syllables of a hundred powerful spells, so cogent that Turjan's brain could know but four at a time.

Turjan found a musty portfolio, turned the heavy pages to the spell the Sage had shown him, the Call to the Violent Cloud. He stared down at the characters and they burned with an urgent power, pressing off the page as if frantic to leave the dark solitude of the book.

Turjan closed the book, forcing the spell back into oblivion. He robed himself with a short blue cape, tucked a blade into his belt, fitted the amulet holding Laccodel's Rune to his wrist. Then he sat down and from a journal chose the spells he would take with him. What dangers he might meet he could not know, so he selected three spells of general application: the Excellent Prismatic Spray, Phandaal's Mantle of Stealth, and the Spell of the Slow Hour.


While there are no statistics out there, it's probably that reading Jack Vance in high school would add two hundred points to a test taker's SAT verbal score. It's the language which ultimately draws fans to Jack Vance's work- the worlds are beautifully detailed, the dialogue sprightly and droll, the characters (whether noble or despicable, and Vance has written some incredible villains and antiheroes) memorable, even if some of his more competent, heroic protagonists tend to blend together a bit. Vance provided the perfect escapism- his satirical content was applied with a light touch, his plots were often secondary to the sheer wall of glorious purple prose. He's been five years gone, but he'll be a part of my dreamscape for the rest of my life... and for that I will be forever grateful.

Continuing Jack Vance Week Here...

Since the fifth anniversary of the death of Jack Vance is this coming Saturday, I have decided to continue Jack Vance week, having been a huge fan of Jack Vance since my youth. One of the tropes common to Jack Vance's oeuvre is the protagonist's encounters with unscrupulous business professionals proffering dubious services. Perhaps the funniest of these scenes is stranded Earthman Adam Reith's encounter with a professional assassin in the hilariously titled Servants of the Wankh, the second book in his 'Planet of Adventure' series. Earlier in the book, the same protagonist encounters another sort of tradesman, who runs afoul of the supercilious renegade Dirdirman (a member of a human population kidnapped from Earth millennia ago by the sinister, spacefaring Dirdir and bred to serve, and ultimately resemble their captors) Ankhe at Afram Anacho:


An hour later, clean and refreshed, the four met in the downstairs lobby. Here they were accosted by a black-haired blackeyed man with a pinched melancholy face. He spoke in a gentle voice. "You are newly arrived at Coad?"

Anacho, instantly suspicious, drew himself back. "Not altogether. We are well-known and have no needs."

"I represent the Slave-taker's Guild, and this is my fair appraisal of your group. The girl is valuable, the boy less so. Dirdirmen are generally considered worthless except in clerical or administrative servitude, for which we have no demand. You would be rated a winkle-gatherer or a nut-huller, of no great value.

This man, whatever he is, appears capable of toil, and would sell for the standard rate. Considering all, your insurance will be ten sequins a week."

"Insurance against what?" demanded Reith.

"Against being taken and sold," murmured the agent. "There is a heavy demand for competent workers. But for ten sequins a week," he declared triumphantly, "you may walk the streets of Coad night and day, secure as though the demon Harasthy rode your shoulders! Should you be sequestered by an unauthorized dealer the Guild will instantly order your free release."

Reith stood back, half-amused, half-disgusted. Anacho spoke in his most nasal voice: "Show me your credentials."

" 'Credentials'?" asked the man, his chin sagging."Show us a document, a blazon, a patent. What? You have none? Do you take us for fools? Be off with you!"

The man walked somberly away. Reith asked, "Was he in truth a fraud?"

"One never knows, but the line must be drawn somewhere."


Planet of Adventure is a pretty good introduction to Vance. It's got a pretty simple 'planetary romance' plot- an Earthman, a hypercompetent military scout stranded on a strange planet by a sneak attack on his 'mothership' is forced to fight his way through strange aliens and stranger humans (taken from Earth and bred to be clients of various contending aliens) in order to obtain a spacecraft so he can return to Earth to warn the authorities of various hostile alien species. In some ways, it's Vance's 'love letter' to Edgar Rice Burroughs' 'Barsoom' novels (complete with savage giant green-skinned nomads), though Vance was a lot funnier than Burroughs.

A Valuable Social Distancing Resource

In these days of social distancing, one has to derive one's entertainment mainly from solitary pursuits, of which reading is perhaps the best (no jokes, now!). Thankfully, the Internet Archive has instituted a National Emergency Library for great justice the common good.

Poking around the archive, I found a rare novel by my beloved Jack Vance. Written in 1965 and published under Jack's full name in 1967, John Holbrook Vance's The Pleasant Grove Murders is a murder mystery set in the fictional San Rodrigo County in northern California, a few hours drive southeast of San Francisco. It would seem that Jack Vance was in a 'mystery' phase of his career during the 60s, as even his Science Fiction tales, such as 1961
s The Moon Moth (one of my absolute favorites) and 1964's The Star King and The Killing Machine were mysteries. The Pleasant Grove Murders itself is a sequel to The Fox Valley Murders, published in 1966... which I foolishly found after I'd read The Pleasant Grove Murders.

Jack Vance didn't use quite so flowery an idiom in his mysteries as he did in his Science Fiction and Fantasy fiction. The long, flowery dialogues between amoral reprobates in decadent settings are absent from his contemporary fiction. Nevertheless, The Pleasant Grove Murders is unmistakably Vance- the novel begins with a long introduction to the cast of characters, providing a suitable array of suspects. There's the haughty girl from a wealthy family, the obsessive teenage boy who hates her as much as he years for her, the snobby aristocratic boy... all typical Vance archetypes. The protagonist, Sheriff Joe Bain, is a typically competent individual, but not a macho wish-fulfillment figure- his wife left him for a 'cowboy singer', he lives with his mother and headstrong teenage daughter, and lives in the shadow of his predecessor, the flamboyant Sheriff Cucchinello (the sort of showoff who'd ride a white horse in the county parade, but send his Deputy, Joe Bain, to handle a dangerous situation. Joe Bain fits well into the tradition of rural police officers thrown into incongruously violent circumstances, such as Marge Gunderson. Faced with a growing body count on a street populated by the town's wealthy and influential, he frets about the future of his electoral prospects. As he conducts the investigation, he contends with a hostile newspaper publisher, an alluring 'New Agey' type who fancies herself an alien, and a deranged ranch hand who precipitates a violent standoff (Vance uses this sideline to highlight Sheriff Bain's cool-headedness and guile in the course of duty).

If you are a fan of whodunits, I would suggest that you give John Holbrook Vance a try. His descriptive passages are gorgeous, his character studies well-sketched in economical fashion. For me, the book didn't reach the empyrean heights of his better-known SFF fiction, but my opinion is nuncupatory.

Should I Make this a Jack Vance Week?

So far, I have put up two posts about Jack Vance this week, and seeing that the fifth anniversary of the great science fiction grandmaster's death is this coming Saturday, I may just make it a Jack Vance week. Current events will be just as stupid, just as worthy of skewering, next week.

Speaking of stupid current events, Trump has decided to use his office to attack Amazon- I suspect it's because Jeff Bezos is a lot richer than he as, as well as being owner of The Washington Post. I haven't bought anything from Amazon in years, but I think I will make an exception just to spite Vulgarmort. Jack Vance's two best known mystery novels are finally available in affordable editions, and it behooves me to buy them. The shop at the Jack Vance website is Paypal only, so I figure buying hard copies is preferable to having to set up an account with yet another 'evil empire'.

Another Vance Mystery

Yesterday's post concerned a mystery novel written by Jack Vance, perhaps my favorite author, under the aegis of the Ellery Queen Industrial Complex. Jack Vance typically wrote his mysteries under his full birth name, John Holbrook Vance, and won an Edgar Award for best first mystery novel (he had written previous science fiction novels) for 1960's The Man in the Cage. The book, until recently, had been prohibitively expensive to buy, but it was adapted for an episode of the television anthology show Boris Karloff's Thriller:





The big takeaway from watching this is that one should NEVER imprison a Jack Vance protagonist- that only leads to heartache and eventual defeat. I also enjoyed the twist at the end of the plot with regards to the police informant who saves the day.

International Talk Like a Jack Vance Character Day

Ordinarily, I would have written up last night's Secret Science Club lecture, but like a mooncalf, I left my libram of notes at home when I departed for work with much celerity. Today being the anniversary of Jack Vance's transition to realms Empyrean, I hereby declare this sidereal day to be this annum's Talk Like a Jack Vance Character Day.

Accordingly, we shall indulge in rococo rodomontades of considerable loquacity and castigate oafs and varlets, blackguards and mooncalves. Let us woo demimondaines in the gloaming in verdant plaisances, plying them with choice viands and the chansons of Old Earth. Of greatest importance, let us avoid the snares and guiles of the deodands and hormaguants, venefices and jinxmen:

In the next diurnal round, I shall endeavor to scribe the sagacities of the scientists, but until then, I shall engage my tongue in the verbosities of Vance.

Maundering Mooncalves Mismanage Masks

I was thinking of giving this post the title 'Night of the Living Dumbfucks', having just had the following exchange on the job with three persons walking through our parking lot toward a picnic area we maintain for visitiors:

"We're closed!"
"We know!"
"I'm asking you to leave!" By this, I meant, "I'm telling you to leave." I try to initiate confrontations in a tactful manner, and it works the vast majority of the time. A mentor of mine drilled into my head, "If you start off loud, you have nowhere to go but ugly."

Anyway, they got the hint and left in timely fashion. Most people don't want conflict... even the Oppositional Defiance Disorder Poster Boy didn't curse out our National Costco Hero until he was out of earshot. It's amazing how quickly bravado turns to cowardice among the toxic masculinity crowd.

I've been in a bit of a pissy mood most of the evening. Most of my ire is the result of seeing a bunch of people wearing their masks in improper fashion... typically, they have their noses sticking out over the tops of the masks. Yeah, great, that's effective. I have to say, though, the instructions for mask-wearing tend to be pretty bad. The package of masks sitting in my office doesn't have an indicator of which side goes out, though it does make clear that the mask should cover both mouth and nose.

Longtime readers, or sci-fan fans of good taste and breeding, will readily figure out that the post title is a reference to the late, legendary Jack Vance, possibly my all-time favorite author. Jack Vance had a thing or two to say about masks in one of my favorite short stories, The Moon Moth (PDF), originally published in the August 1961 issue of science fiction magazine Galaxy (PDF). It's a fun read, a murder mystery combined with an anthropological mystery, with a hapless protagonist who has to navigate the intricacies of an alien (though human) culture while hunting a criminal who has several 'legs up' on him. The alien nature of the culture in which the protagonist, a junior diplomat on his first assignment, is summed up after an in medias res opening:


Masks are worn at all times, in accordance with the philosophy that a man should not be compelled to use a similitude foisted upon him by factors beyond his control; that he should be at liberty to choose that semblance most consonant with his strakh*. In the civilized areas of Sirene- which is to say the Titanic littoral- a man literally never shows his face; it is his basic secret.


Here on 21st Century Earth, it's the attitude toward wearing masks that reveals a person's basic secret. Is the person a dumbass who can't figure out how to wear a mask? Is a person a self-centered asshole who doesn't wear a mask, believing that endangering others in order to buy stuff is a right?

The seventh anniversary of Jack Vance's death is coming up, I think I might write some more Vance posts (as has been my tradition from the beginning) as a panegyric to this paragon. I've actually been re-reading his 'Demon Princes' novels, along with some critical analyses of the books. I need a break from 'all COVID all the time' posting, and what better escape is there than escapist fiction?


*Prestige, used as currency in the society described in the story. Footnotes are a typical Vancian trope.

The Passing of the Best: RIP Jack Vance

Via zrm, I have learned that a day I have long dreaded has finally arrived- my absolute favorite author, Jack Vance, died on May 26 at the age of ninety six. A perusal of older blog posts will reveal my love of Jack's work. He was a larger than life figure, a merchant seaman who traveled the globe, wrote for the pulps, and built his own house. A world traveler, but more importantly, a world builder. Jack had a knack for sketching exotic societies in a succinct fashion- he could create several more interesting cultures in a novella than the typical "paper doorstop" author could create in a multi-novel series. The best way to memorialize Jack is to read his work. I have excerpted several of my favorite passages from his novels in previous blog posts, but I feel obligated to re-post one of his hilarious trademark dialogues from The Killing Machine:


...The air of Ard Court smelled richly indeed, with a heavy sweet-sour organic reek that distended the nostrils. Gersen grimaced and went to the shop from which the odors seemed to emanate. Taking a deep breath and bowing his head, he entered. To right and left were wooden tubs, containing pastes, liquids, and submerged solids; overhead hung rows of withered blue-green objects the size of a man's fist. At the rear, behind a counter stacked with limp pink sausages stood a clown-faced youth of twenty, wearing a patterned black and brown smock, a black velvet headkerchief. He leaned upon the counter without spirit or vitality, and without expression watched Gersen sidle past the tubs.

"You're a Sandusker?" asked Gersen.

"What else?" This was spoken in a tone Gersen could not identify, a complex mood of many discords: sad pride, whimsical malice, insolent humility. The youth asked, "You wish to eat?"

Gersen shook his head. "I am not of your religion."

"Ha ho!" said the youth. "You know Sandusk then?"

"Only at second-hand."

The youth smiled. "You must not believe that old foolish story, that we Sanduskers are religious fanatics who eat vile food rather than flagellate ourselves. It is quite incorrect. Come now. Are you a fair man?"

Gersen considered. "Not unusually so."

The youth went to one of the tubs, dipped up a wad of glistening black-crusted maroon paste. "Taste! Judge for yourself! Use your mouth rather than your nose!"

Gersen gave a fatalistic shrug, tasted. The inside of his mouth seemed first to tingle, then expand. His tongue coiled back in his throat.

"Well?" asked the youth.

"If anything," said Gersen at last, "it tastes worse than it smells."

The youth sighed. "Such is the general consensus."


Here is one of Jack Vance's most gloriously "purple" descriptive passages from Jack's first collection, The Dying Earth, written while he was serving with the Merchant Marine in the Pacific Theater during the Second World War:


"This is the Museum," said Guyal in rapt tone. "Here there is no danger ... He who dwells in beauty of this sort may never be other than beneficient ..." He flung wide the door.
The light came from an unknown source, from the air itself, as if leaking from the discrete atoms; every breath was luminous, the room floated full of invigorating glow. A great rug pelted the floor, a monster tabard woven of gold, brown, bronze, two tones of green, fuscous red and smalt blue. Beautiful works of human fashioning ranked the walls. In glorious array hung panels of rich woods, carved, chased, enameled; scenes of olden times painted on woven fiber; formulas of color, designed to convey emotion rather than reality. To one side hung plats of wood laid on with slabs of soapstone, malachite and jade in rectangular patterns, richly varied and subtle, with miniature flecks of cinnabar, rhodocrosite and coral for warmth. Beside was a section given to disks of luminous green, flickering and flourescent with varying blue films and moving dots of scarlet and black. Here were representations of three hundred marvelous flowers, blooms of a forgotten age, no longer extant on waning Earth; there were as many star-burst patterns, rigidly conventionalized in form, but each of subtle distinction. All these and a multitude of other creations, selected from the best of human fervor.

The door thudded softly behind them; staring, every inch of skin a-tingle, the two from Earth's final time moved forward through the hall.

"Somewhere near must be the Curator," whispered Guyal. "There is a sense of careful tending and great effort here in the gallery."

"Look."

Opposite were two doors, laden with the sense of much use. Guyal strode quickly across the room but was unable to discern the means for opening the door, for it bore no latch, key, handle, knob or bar. He rapped with his knuckles and waited; no sound returned.

Shierl tugged at his arm. "These are private regions. It is best not to venture too rudely."

Guyal turned away and they continued down the gallery. Past the real expression of man's brightest dreamings they walked, until the concentration of so much fire and spirit and creativity put them into awe. "What great minds lie in the dust," said Guyal in a low voice "What gorgeous souls have vanished into the buried ages; what marvelous creatures are lost past the remotest memory ... Nevermore will there be the like; now, in the last fleeting moments, humanity festers rich as rotten fruit. Rather than master and overpower our world, our highest aim is to cheat it through sorcery."


Here is the opening to The Miracle Workers, a novella which ranks among Jack's best:


The war party from Faide Keep moved eastward across the downs: a column of a hundred armored knights, five hundred foot soldiers, a train of wagons. In the lead rode Lord Faide, a tall man in his early maturity, spare and catlike, with a sallow dyspeptic face. He sat in the ancestral car of the Faides, a boat-shaped vehicle floating two feet above the moss, and carried, in addition to his sword and dagger, his ancestral side weapons.

An hour before sunset, a pair of scouts came racing back to the column, their club-headed horses loping like dogs. Lord Faide braked the motion of his car. Behind him, the Faide kinsmen, the lesser knights, and the leather-capped foot soldiers halted; to the rear the baggage train and the high-wheeled wagons of the jinxmen creaked to a stop.


This is perhaps Jack's funniest passage, from the unfortunately titled Servants of the Wankh:


That fellow yonder I believe to be an assassin, from the style of his garments."

The man at this moment approached their table. "You are Adam Reith?"

"Yes."

"I regret to say that the Security Assassination Company has accepted a contract made out in your name: the Death of the Twelve Touches. I will now administer the first inoculation. Will you be so good as to bare your arm? I will merely prick you with this splint."

Reith backed away. "I'll do nothing of the sort."

"Depart!" Zarfo Detwiler told the assassin. "This man is worth ten thousand sequins to me alive; dead, nothing."

The assassin ignored Zarfo. To Reith he said, "Please do not make an undignified display. The process then becomes protracted and painful for us all. So then-"

Zarfo roared: "Stand away; have I not warned you?" He snatched up a chair and struck the assassin to the ground. Zarfo was not yet satisfied. He picked up the splint, jabbed it into the back of the man's thigh, through the rust-ocher corduroy of his trousers. "Halt!" wailed the assassin. "That is Inoculation Number One!"

Zarfo seized a handful of splints from the splayed-open wallet. "And here," he roared, "are numbers Two to Twelve!" And with a foot on the man's neck he thrust the handful into the twitching buttocks. "There you are, you knave! Do you want the next episode, Numbers Thirteen to Twenty-four?"

"No, no, let me be; I am a dead man now!"

"If not, you're a cheat as well as an assassin!"


Here's the first part of an interview with Mr Vance from 1976:




And here is the man himself, playing the ukulele and kazoo (his schtick):





Thanks, Jack... thanks for everything.

From Jack Vance to Cy Vance

 Yesterday, I posted a diverting piece commemorating a beloved author, so today I figured I'd go back to the subject of politics.  Yesterday, I posted about Jack Vance, today I am pivoting to post about Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, who convened a grand jury to determine if Trump should face criminal charges.  As a New Yorker, I've suspected that Trump has been guilty of fraud (among other crimes) for decades, and finally something might be done about this deadbeat tax-cheat.  For years, it's been alleged that Trump manipulated real estate values in order to maximize profits, and values of loans, and to minimize tax burdens.

Perhaps the most delicious factor in this grand jury empanelling is the role being played by Jennifer Weisselberg, the former daughter-in-law of Trump's longstanding finance man.  Apparently, she handed over years worth of documents in response to a subpoena.  Insert 'Hell hath no fury' quote.  Former Trump consigliere Michael Cohen also handed over a bunch of documents.  I guess this is what happens when your criminal boss has absolutely no loyalty to anyone whatsoever.

Cy Vance's investigation is the second blow in the one-two punch initiated by New York State attorney general Letitia James, who recently announced that her investigation into the Trump Organization would take on a criminal capacity, formerly being a civil matter.  As a New Yorker, I have to note that we have hated Trump for a much longer time than anyone else.

Another New Yorker, a blonde lady in leafy Chappaqua, must be laughing her ass off right now.  "Lock her up," indeed!

2020 International Talk Like a Jack Vance Character Day

Troubadours, ply ukulele and kazoo to herald this momentous occasion, for the International Talk Like a Jack Vance Character Day is, once again, upon us:





On this anniversary of the loss of our most estimable sage, we sing panegyrics and intone encomia. To supplement our nuncupatory eulogies, we inscribe our elegies. Those of a terpsichorean disposition, let them praise with corybantic measures!

For those unfamiliar with the oeuvre of Jack Vance, the man was a master of the English vocabulary, taking up the linguistic mantle of Clark Ashton Smith and passing on the baton to a legion of acolytes, among them the speakers of High Gygaxian. The works of Jack Vance are a feast for the ear, a banquet for the mind, an armory for the castigating tongue.

To celebrate Talk Like a Jack Vance character properly, one should haggle with a mountebank:


Wandering the crumbled streets, he put the languid inhabitants such a spate of questions that one in wry jocularity commended him to a professional augur. This one dwelled in a booth painted with the Signs of the Aumoklopelastianic Cabal. He was a lank brown man with red-rimmed eyes and a stained white beard.

"What are your fees?" inquired Guyal cautiously.

"I respond to three questions," stated the augur. "For twenty terces I phrase the answer in clear and actionable language; for ten I use the language of cant, which occasionally admits of ambiguity; for five, I speak a parable which you must interpret as you will; and for one terce, I babble in an unknown tongue."

"First I must inquire, how profound is your knowledge?"

"I know all," responded the augur. "The secrets of red and the secrets of black, the lost spells of Grand Motholam, the way of the fish and the voice of the bird."

"And where have you learned all these things?"

"By pure induction," explained the augur. "I retire into my booth, I closet myself with never a glint of light, and, so sequestered, I resolve the profundities of the world."

"With all this precious knowledge at hand," ventured Guyal, "why do you live so meagerly, with not an ounce of fat to your frame and these miserable rags to your back?"

The augur stood back in fury. "Go along, go along! Already I have wasted fifty terces of wisdom on you, who have never a copper to your pouch. If you desire free enlightenment," and he cackled in mirth, "seek out the Curator." And he sheltered himself in his booth.


For a celebratory feast, one should consume a meal of alien, even dubious, culinary origin, perhaps some fine Darsh provender:


Gersen read from the sign "'Chatowsies Pourrian Ahagaree' Do you have your appetite with you?"

"Not really. I am a fastidious eater I may taste a bit of this and that."

Gersen, who often had gulped down food he dared not think about, only laughed. "A keen journalist doesn't know the word 'fastidious'."

"Somewhere we must draw the line," said Rackrose. "It may be here, at Tintle's Shade."

They pushed through the door into a hall. Ahead stairs led up to the upper floors, to the side an arch opened upon a white-tiled chamber heavy with a musty stench. A dozen men drank beer at a counter tended by an old woman in a black gown, with straight black hair, dark orange skin, and a black mustache. Posters announced exhibitions and novelty dances, at Rath Eileann and elsewhere.

.........................................................................

The woman behind the bar called out: "Why do you stand like hypnotized fish? Did you come to drink beer or to eat food?"

"Be patient," said Gersen. "We are making our decision."

The remark annoyed the woman. Her voice took on a coarse edge. " 'Be patient,' you say? All night I pour beer for crapulous men; isn't that patience enough? Come over here, backwards; I'll put this spigot somewhere amazing, at full gush, and then we'll discover who calls for patience!"

"We have decided to take a meal," said Gersen. "How are the chatowsies tonight?"

"The same as always, no worse than any other. Be off with you; don't waste my time unless you're taking beer.. . . What's this? Smirk at me, will you?"

She seized a mug of beer to hurl at Maxel Rackrose, who alertly jumped back into the anteroom, with Gersen close behind. The woman gave her black mane a scornful toss, twisted her mustache between thumb and forefinger, then turned away.

"She lacks charm," grumbled Rackrose. "She will never know me as a habitue."

"The dining room may surprise us," said Gersen.

"Pleasantly, so I hope."

They started up the steps, which, like the beer-chamber, exhaled an unpleasant vapor: a compound of strange cooking oils, offworld condiments, and a stale ammoniacal waft. At the first landing Rackrose halted. "Candidly, I find this all a bit unsettling. Are you sure that we actually intend to dine here?"

"If you have qualms, go no farther. I myself have known places both better and worse."

Rackrose muttered under his breath, and trudged on up the steps. A pair of heavy wooden doors opened into the restaurant. At widely separated tables small groups of men huddled like conspiators, drinking beer or eating from platters immediately below their faces.

A massive woman stepped forward. Gersen judged her no less formidable than the woman who tended the beer spigot, though perhaps a few years younger. Like the woman below, she wore a shapeless black gown and her hair hung in a rank tangle; her mustache was not quite so full. With glittering eyes she looked from one to the other. "Well then, do you wish to eat?"

"Yes; that is why we are here," said Gersen.

"Sit yonder."

The woman followed them across the room. When thev were seated she leaned forward portentously with hands on the table. "What is to your taste?"

"We know Darsh food by reputation only," said Gersen. "What are your special dishes?"

"A ha! Those we reserve for our own eating. Out here we serve chichala and you must make the best of it."

"Whiat of the fine Darsh provender you advertise? The chatowsies, the pourrian, the ahagaree?"

"Look about you. Men are eating."

"True."

"Then that is what you must eat."

"Bring us portions of all these dishes; we will give them a try."

"As you like." The woman departed.

Rackrose sat in glum silence while Gersen looked around the room. "Our man is not among those present," said Gersen at last.

Rackrose glanced skeptically from table to table. "Did you seriously expect to find him here?"

"Not with any confidence. Still, coincidences occur. If he were passing through Rath Eileann, this is where we would hope to find him."

Maxel Rackrose surveyed Gersen dubiously. "You are not telling me all you know."

"Should that surprise you?"

"Not at all. But I'd like a hint as to what I'm getting into."

"Tonight you need fear only the chatowsies and perhaps the pourrian."

.........................................................................

From the kitchen came the black-gowned woman, with bowls and platters. She thumped them down upon the table- "Here is the food, Chatowsies. Pourrian. Ahagaree. Eat your fill. What you leave returns to the pot."

"Thank you," said Gersen. "By the way, who is 'Tintle'?"

The woman gave a derisive snort. "Tintle's name is on the sign. We do the work; we chink the coin. Tintle keeps his distance."

"If possible, I'd like a few words with Tintle."
The woman gave a derisive snort. "You'd like nothing whatever from Tintle; he's stupid and dull. Still, for what it's worth, you'll
find him in the backyard counting- his fingers or scratching himself with a stick."

The woman moved away. Gersen and Rackrose gingerly addressed themselves to the food. After a few moments Rackrose said:
"I can't decide what tastes worst. The chatowsies are fetid, but the ahagaree is ferocious. The pourrian is merely vile. And the lady seems to have washed her dog in the beer. . . . What? Are you eating more?"

"You must do the same. We want to establish a pretext for returning. Here; try some of these remarkable condiments."

Rackrose held up his hand. "I have taken quite enough, at least on the basis of my present salary."

"As you wish." Gersen gulped down a few more mouthfuls, then thoughtfully put down his spoon. "We have seen enough for this evening." He signaled to the woman. "Madame, our account, if you please."

The woman looked over the platters. "You have eaten ravenously. I will need two or, better, three Standard Value Units from each of you."

Rackrose cried out in protest. "Three SVU for a few mouthfuls of food? That would be exorbitant at the Domus!"

"The Domus serves insipid gutch. Pay your account or I will sit on your head."

"Come now," said Gersen. "That is no way to attract a steady clientele. I might add that we are waiting to meet a certain member of the Bugold Clan."

"Bah!" sneered the woman. "What is that to me? A Bugold outcast robbed the Kotzash warehouse, and so now I live here in this place of dank winds and curdled rheum."

"I've heard a somewhat different story," said Gersen with an air of careless omniscience.

"Then you heard nonsense! The Bugold rachepol and that scorpion Panshaw connived together. They should have been broken and not poor Tintle. Now pay me my coin and so your way. This talk of Kotzash has put me out of sorts."

Gersen resignedly put down six SVU. The woman, with a triumphant leer toward Maxel Rackrose, swept up the coins. "As for the gratuity, another two SVl' will be considered adequate."

Gersen handed over the coins and Madame Tintle departed.

Rackrose gave a snort of disgust. "You are far too obliging. The woman's avarice is matched only by the vileness of her cuisine."


Most importantly, one must remonstrate with a mooncalf, preferably in minatory fashion:


Cugel grasped the pommel of his sword. "It seems that I must speak without ambiguity. I command you: depart, and never return! I understand your purpose and I warn that you will find me a less indulgent enemy than was Iuconou! So now, be off! Or I inflict upon you the Spell of the Macroid Toe, whereupon the signalized member swells to the proportions of a house."


So, now, be off! Venture forth, my picaroons, and belabor the crass and addlepated in the fashion of our beloved Grand Master.

Vance's Hugo and Nebula Awards

In keeping with this being Jack Vance week, this coming Saturday being the 5th anniversary of Jack's passing, I figured I would comment on some of Jack's award winning writings. He won the 1962 Best Short Fiction Hugo for The Dragon Masters and 1967 Best Novella/Novelette Hugo and Nebula awards for The Last Castle. These two works are related thematically- they both concern human populations which have enslaved intelligent alien species and bred them for various tasks, such as waging war or providing transportation.

The Dragon Masters was originally published in the August 1962 edition of Galaxy magazine. Besides being a typical 'planetary romance', the long short story can be interpreted as an allegory of the arms race. The plot of the story concerns an isolated population of humans, stranded on a distant planet in the aftermath of an interstellar war and unsure of the current status of the bulk of humanity:


“You know the legends as well as I, perhaps better. Our people came to Aerlith as exiles during the War of the Ten Stars. The Nightmare Coalition apparently had defeated the Old Rule, but how the war ended—” he threw up his hands — “who can say?”

............

Carcolo sidled close, prodded Joaz with his forefinger.“We know nothing of the outer worlds. We are marooned on this miserable planet of stone and wind while life passes us by. You assume that Basics rule the cluster. But suppose you are wrong? Suppose the Old Rule has returned? Think of the rich cities,the gay resorts, the palaces, the pleasure-islands! Look up into the night sky. Ponder the bounties which might be ours! You ask how can we implement these desires? I respond, the process maybe so simple that the sacerdotes will reveal it without reluctance.”“You mean —?”

“Communication with the worlds of men! Deliverance from this lonely little world at the edge of the universe!”

Joaz Banbeck nodded dubiously. “A fine vision. But the evidence suggests a situation far different, namely the destruction of man and the Human Empire.”


Separated from the bulk of humanity, the population has stagnated, devolving to feudal societies using technologies from the early age of gunpowder. In their vulnerable state, they are subject to periodic invasions by slave-taking reptilian aliens who breed their human captives to fill various martial capacities. One such invasion goes awry due to the vicissitudes of the planet's weather, and an ancestor of the tale's protagonist manages to capture some of the aliens. Vance denies moral superiority to his human protagonists- they subject their captives, dubbed Basics, to the same enslavement and genetic manipulation that the aliens are guilty of- breeding them into the dragons of the title: Termagants, Blue Horrors, Long Horned Murderers, Striding Murderers, Fiends, Juggers, and Spiders.

In the course of the story, the Basics, accompanied by their human cannon fodder, stage their periodic invasion of the planet:


“Look you,these Basics are neither ghouls nor angels of death. They are no more than pallid Termagants, the basic stock of our dragons."

..........

Phade stared at the queer pale shapes who had come tentatively out on the ramp. “They seemstrange and twisted, like silverpuzzles for children.”

“They are the Basics. From their eggs came our dragons.They have done as well with men: look, here are their Heavy Troops.”

Down the ramp, four abreast,in exact cadence, marched the Heavy Troops, to halt fifty yards in front of the ship. There were three squads of twenty: short squat men with massive shoulders, thick necks and stern, down-drawn faces. They wore armor fashioned from overlapping scales of black and blue metal,a wide belt slung with pistol and sword. Black epaulets, extending past their shoulders, supported a short ceremonial flap of black cloth ranging down their backs.Their helmets bore a crest of sharp spikes. Their knee-high boots were armed with kick-knives.

A number of Basics now rode forth. Their mounts were creatures only remotely resembling men. They ran on hands and feet, backs high off the ground. Their heads were long and hairless, with quivering loose lips.


In the ensuing battle, the protagonist uses broken terrain and his specially-bred dragons to counter the aliens' technological advantages. There is also a wild-card... a secretive human population living in caverns under the planet's surface, espousing a doctrine of non-interference and a prophecy of a resurgence after their 'inferiors' on the surface are utterly defeated. The tide of battle is ultimately determined by sheer numbers of cannon fodder, as the dragons can be bred in larger numbers and greater variety:


“Only two dozen? Perhaps they are hard to breed. Generations pass slowly with men; dragons lay a clutch of eggs every year."


There is also a timely intervention by combatants wielding what boils down to a wave motion gun.

Rereading The Dragon Masters, I noticed that it is less flowery than much of Vance's other works. The adjective use is almost restrained, the dialogue not as baroque as that in other Vance novels. It's a quick read, and the satirical/allegorical content sneaks up on the readers while they are occupied with a bunch of kaiju battles.


The Last Castle concerns a population of aristocrats who have forgotten how to work because they have delegated all of their tasks to various alien species, particularly the vaguely anthropoid Meks:



A specimen in a museum case,was a man-like creature native,in his original version, to a planet of Etamin. His tough rusty-bronze hide glistened metallically as if oiled or waxed. The spines thrusting back from scalp and neck shone like gold, and indeed they were coated with a conductive copper-chrome film. His sense organs were gathered in clusters at the site of a man’s ears; his visage—it was often a shock, walking the lower corridors, to come suddenly upon a Mek—was corrugated muscle,not dissimilar to the look of an uncovered human brain. His maw, a vertical irregular cleft at the base of this “face’, was an obsolete organ by reason of the syrup sac which had been introduced under the skin of the shoulders, and the digestive organs, originally used to extract nutrition from decayed swamp vegetation and coelenterates,had atrophied. The Mek typically wore no garment except possibly a work apron or a tool-belt,and in the sunlight his rust-bronze skin made a handsome display. This was the Mek solitary, a creature intrinsically as effective as man—perhaps more by virtue of his superb brain which also functioned as a radio transceiver. Working in the mass,by the teeming thousands, he seemed less admirable, less competent: a hybrid of sub-man and cockroach.


It is this contempt for the Meks that leads to the downfall of their aristocratic masters, and Vance's human characters echo some of the horrendous arguments that current apologists for slavery try to employ:


In spite of such research, the Mek revolt came as an utter surprise, no less to Claghom, D. R.Jardine and Salonson than to anyone else. Why? asked everyone. How could a group so long submissive have contrived so murderous a plot?


The most reasonable conjecture was also the simplest: the Mek resented servitude and hated the Earthmen who had removed him from his natural environment. Those who argued against this theory claimed that it projected human emotions and attitudes into a non-human organism, that the Mek had every reason to feel gratitude toward the gentlemen who had liberated him from the conditions of Etamin Nine.


One hears this kind of bullshit a lot from right-wing types...


The plot involves the defense of the last human stronghold against the revolt of their specially bred alien slaves, which even include their 'cars':


Power-wagons, like the Meks, were originally swamp-creatures from Etamin 9. They were great rectangular slabs of muscle, slung into a rectangular frame and protected from sunlight, insects and rodents by a synthetic pelt. Syrup sacs communicated with their digestive apparatus, wires led to motor nodes in the rudimentary brain. The muscles were clamped to rocker arms which actuated rotors and drive-wheels. The power-wagons were economical, long-lived and docile, and so they were principally used for heavy cartage earth-moving, heavy-tillage, and other arduous jobs.


Both The Dragon Masters and The Last Castle are thematically similar to perhaps my favorite Jack Vance work, 1958's The Miracle Workers, which also involves a regressed, isolated human population coping with an insurgency of the natives of the planet they have colonized. I find The Miracle Workers to be a superior story, though, having a fantastic protagonist and some entertaining secondary characters. The human characters in The Dragon Masters and The Last Castle are pretty despicable people, their careers of evil making their struggles for survival less urgent to this reader. I think I'll tackle The Miracle Workers in tomorrow's post- the theme of employing empiricism to pursue one's goals is particularly appealing to me.

Saturday Morning Cartoons from a Cooler Alternate Universe

This post was inspired by a post by M. Bouffant which was clear cut bait for Smut Clyde (or his alter ego Sm*t Cl*de) and Zombie Rotten McDonald.

I can't see a post referencing Harvester of Eyes without making a reference to Chun the Unvoidable. While poking around on the intert00bz looking for a better reference to "Chun", I found a trailer for an alternative-universe Saturday morning cartoon which rivals The Wacky Adventures of Maal Dweb and Saturday Morning Watchmen in awesomeness. I present to you the opening credits for Saturday morning cartoon version of Jack Vance's The Dying Earth:





OMGOMGOMGOMG!!! I'm a huge fan of Jack Vance as long-time readers of my blog will know. While the video doesn't always conform my visualizations of the action in the stories (I've always pictured Chun the Unavoidable as a hulking, hunched, rather beetle-like brute), I love it nonetheless... what kind of fanboy's heart wouldn't beat just a little faster to see "The Excellent Prismatic Spray" depicted in a video? As a bonus, I found a multi-part interview with Jack Vance on teh Y00T00B.

Health and Immunity!

I've been sorta remiss in my runup to International Talk Like a Jack Vance Character Day. As I noted last week, I've had Jack Vance on my mind lately. There are a couple of reasons for this... one is that a podcast I like, which looks at fantasy and science fiction literature using St Gary's famous Appendix N as a starting point, covered The Star King in a recent episode.

The primary reason I've had Vance on the mind is that I've been using "HEALTH AND IMMUNITY!" as a greeting and farewell lately. This was inspired by a passage in The Palace of Love, in which protagonist Kirth Gersen, honed by his grandfather into an instrument of vengeance against the pirates and slavers who destroyed their community, visits one of the Planets of Hats (WARNING: TV Tropes, may cause hours of lost time) that pop up in the series, in this case, a planet on which poisoning is an art form. The visit, prompted by a news item concerning the upcoming execution (by poison, of course) of a guildmaster 'venefice' for selling poisons to the Big Bad Evil Guy of the book, involves contacting a local guide and poisoners' guild member to allow Gersen to interview the condemned man in the hope of obtaining information about his quarry.

In typical Vance fashion, this episode in the novel is all about mordant humor, cultural relativism, and verbal repartee, with a side order of an off-putting culinary exposition. One of the highlights involves a pre-interview visit to a forest, in which the local guide shows off local flora and fauna to Gersen and his female companion, who is beginning to weary of Gersen's role as an obsessed avenger:


"Very well," sighed Edelrod "The interview may be conducted later this afternoon In the meantime what are your wishes^ Would you care to explore the countryside5 The weather is fine, the woods are ablaze with flowers, sultnes, pop-barks, there is a well-drained path " Alusz Iphigenia, who had been restless, rose to her feet Edelrod led them along a path which crossed a brackish river and plunged into the forest. The vegetation was a typical Sarkovy melange trees, shrubs,cycads, bubble-shells, grasses of a hundred varieties The high foliage was for the most part black and brown, with occasional splotches of red; below were purples, greens, pale blues. Edelrod enlivened the stroll with a discussion of various plants beside the way. He indicated a small gray fungus. "Here is the source oftwitus, an excellent selective poison, fatal only if ingested twice within a week. It ranks in this respect with mervan, which migrates harmlessly to the skin, and becomes a lethal principle only upon exposure to direct sunlight. I have known persons who fearing mervan kept to their tents for days on end."

They came to a little clearing. Edelrod looked sharply in all directions. "I have no overt enemies, but several people have died here recently . . . Today all seems well. Notice this tree growing to the side." He pointed to a slender white-barked sapling with round yellow leaves. "Some call it the coin-tree, others the good-fornought. It is completely inoffensive, either as a primary or an operative. You might ingest the whole of it leaves, bark, pith, roots, and note nothing other than a sluggishness of digestion. Recently one of our venefices became irritated at such insipidity. He made an intensive study of the coin-tree, and after several years finally derived a substance of unusual potency. To be useful it must be dissolved in methycm and wafted into the air as a fog or a mist, whence it enters the corpus through the eyes, causing first blindness, then numbness, then complete paralysis. Think of it' From waste, a useful and effective poison' Is this not a tribute to human persistence and ingenuity?"

"An impressive accomplishment," said Gersen. Alusz Iphigema remained silent.

Edelrod went on: "We are frequently asked why we persist in deriving our poisons from natural sources. Why do we not immure ourselves in laboratories and synthesize? The answer is of course that natural poisons, being initially associated with living tissue, are the more effective."

"I would suspect the presence of catalyzing impurities in the natural poisons," Gersen suggested, "rather than metaphysical association."

Edelrod held up a minatory finger. "Never scoff at the role of the mind' Eor instance—let me see—there should be one somewhere near . Yes. See there—the little reptile."

Under a mottled white and blue leaf rested a small lizardlike creature.

"This is the meng. From one of his organs comes a substance which can be distributed either as uigar or as furux. The same substance, mind you' But when sold as uigar and used as such, the symptoms are spasms, biting off of the tongue and a frothing madness. When sold and used as furux, the interskeletal cartilage is dissolved so that the frame goes limp. What do you say to that? Is that not metaphysics of the most exalted sort?"

"Interesting, certainly... Hm... What occurs when the substance is sold and used as, say for the sake of argument, water?"

Edelrod pulled at his nose. "An interesting experiment. I wonder... But the proposal encases a fallacy. Who would buy and administer an expensive vial of water?"

"The suggestion was poorly thought out," admitted Gersen.

Edelrod made an indulgent gesture. "Not at all, not at all. From |ust such apparent folly come notable variations. The graybloom, for instance. Who would have ever suspected the virtue to be derived from its perfume, until Grand Master Strubal turned it upside down and left it in the dark for a month, whereupon it became tox meratis? One waft will kill; the venefice need merely walk past his subject."

Alusz Iphigema stooped to pick up a small rounded pebble of quartz. "What horrible substance do you produce from this stone?"

Edelrod looked away, half embarrassed. "None whatever. At least none to my knowledge. Though we use such pebbles in ball mills to crush photis seed to flour. Never fear; your pebble is not so useless as it seems."

Alusz Iphigema tossed it away in disgust. "Unbelievable," she muttered, "that people should dedicate themselves to such activity."

Edelrod shrugged. "We serve a useful purpose, everyone occasionally needs poison. We are capable of this excellence and we feel duty-bound to pursue it." He inspected Alusz Iphigema with curiosity. "Have you no skills of your own?"

"No."

"At the hotel you may buy a booklet entitled Primer to the Art of Preparing and Using Poisons, and I believe it includes a small kit of some basic alkaloids. If you are interested m developing a skill—"

"Thank you. I have no such inclination."

Edelrod made a polite gesture, as if to acknowledge that each must steer his own course through life.


The macabre tour continues in town, as the guide escorts them to the poisoners' guildhall, where Gersen will attempt to convince, that is bribe, the guildmasters to use a quick, painless poison rather than an experimental toxin for the execution so the condemned man will give him the information he needs:


Subdued and depressed, Edelrod took them through the bazaar. Only in the Poison Quarter did he recover his animation, and pointed here and there to bargains and especially noteworthy preparations. He seized a ball of gray wax. "Observe this deadly material. I handle it without fear: I am immunized^ But if you were to rub it on an article belonging to your enemy—his comb, his earscraper—he is as good as gone. Another application is to spread a film over your identification papers. Then, should an overofficious administrator hector you, he is contaminated and pays for his insolence."

Alusz Iphigenia took a deep breath. "How does a Sarkoy survive to become an adult?"

"Two words," Edelrod replied, holding two fingers didactically high. "Caution, immunity. I am immune to thirty poisons. I carry indicators and alarms to warn ofcluthe, meratis, black-tox and vole. I observe the most punctilious caution in eating, smelling, donning garments, bedding with a strange female. Ha—ha. Here is a favorite trick, and the overimpulsive lecher finds himself in difficulties. But to go on. I am cautious in these situations and also in passing downwind of a covert, even though I have no fear of meratis. Caution has become second nature. If I suspect that I have or am about to have an enemy, I cultivate his friendship and poison him to diminish the risk."

"You will live to become an old man," said Gersen


When time comes for the public execution, which takes the form of an entertainment accompanying a banquet, the friendly guide and poisoner uses the salutation that I adopted a couple of weeks ago:


As if in response to her question Edelrod appeared bowing in absurd punctilio. Tonight he wore a long gown of green cloth, a tall fur cap "Health and immunity'" he greeted them. "Do you attend the poisonings? They are scheduled for the hotel rotunda, for the education of gathered notables "


Health and immunity, everybody!

It's a Miracle, a Vancian Miracle!

Tomorrow being the fifth anniversary of the death of Science Fiction/Fantasy grandmaster Jack Vance, I figured that I would make this week Jack Vance Week- all Jack Vance, all week.

If one were to force me to pick a favorite work of fiction by Jack Vance, I would eventually have to conclude that

The Miracle Workers, a novella originally published in the July 1958 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, an illustration of one of the book's 'jinxmen' is a real beaut:

The electrical diagrams on the vestments of the jinxman are a particularly nice touch! I first encountered the story in the a library copy of the hardcover edition of the 1969 compilation Eight Fantasms and Magics, which I found in paperback at a library booksale years later.

I disagree with this review, being of the opinion that The Miracle Workers is better than The Dragon Masters and The Last Castle- the protagonist is a more genuinely (HEH) character, an amiable misfit who challenges a society which has stagnated to the point of peril, possible extinction. Like the societies depicted in the later The Dragon Masters and The Last Castle, the human society of The Miracle Workers' planet Pangborn is descended from spacefarers defeated in an interstellar war and taking refuge on a planet inhabited by insectlike autochthones, who they promptly began to slaughter:


Sixteen hundred years before, with war raging through space, a group of space captains, their home bases destroyed, had taken refuge on Pangborn. To protect themselves against vengeful enemies, they built great forts armed with weapons from the dismantled spaceships.

The wars receded, Pangborn was forgotten. The newcomers drove the First Folk into the forests, planted and harvested the river valleys. Ballant Keep, like Faide Keep, Castle Cloud, Boghoten, and the rest, overlooked one of these valleys. Four squat towers of a dense black substance supported an enormous parasol roof, and were joined by walls two-thirds as high as the towers. At the peak of the roof a cupola housed Volcano, the weapon corresponding to Faide’s Hellmouth.

............

During the first centuries of human settlement, sportive young men had hunted the First Folk with clubs and lances, eventually had driven them from their native downs into the forests.


In the intervening centuries, the humans of Pangborn descended into superstition and medievalism, with the voodoo-esque 'jinxmanship' replacing empiricism. The ancient 'miracle workers' are seen as superstitious sorcerors:


Peculiar, these ancient men! thought Lord Faide: at once so clever, yet so primitive and impractical. Conditions had changed; there had been enormous advances since the dark ages sixteen hundred years ago. For instance, the ancients had used intricate fetishes of metal and glass to communicate with each other. Lord Faide need merely voice his needs; Hein Huss could project his mind a hundred miles to see, to hear, to relay Lord Faide’s words. The ancients had contrived dozens of such objects, but the old magic had worn away and they never seemed to function.


The action of the novella begins as one of the planet's feudal rulers, Lord Faide, is consolidating his power over the other keep lords. The military action between human armies depends on the use of mannikins to induce pain or terror into enemies and the use of 'demons' (the 'rights' to which can be traded between jinxmen) to possess soldiers in order to confer to them superhuman ferocity, agility, or vitality:


“Listen then. What happens when I hoodoo a man? First I must enter into his mind telepathically. There are three operational levels: the conscious, the unconscious, the cellular. The most effective jinxing is done if all three levels are influenced. I feel into my victim, I learn as much as possible, supplementing my previous knowledge of him, which is part of my stock in trade. I take up his doll, which carries his traces. The doll is highly useful but not indispensable. It serves as a focus for my attention; it acts as a pattern, or a guide, as I fix upon the mind of the victim, and he is bound by his own telepathic capacity to the doll which bears his traces.

“So! Now! Man and doll are identified in my mind, and at one or more levels in the victim’s mind. Whatever happens to the doll the victim feels to be happening to himself. There is no more to simple hoodooing than that, from the standpoint of the jinxman. But naturally the victims differ greatly. Susceptibility is the key idea here. Some men are more susceptible than others. Fear and conviction breed susceptibility. As a jinxman succeeds he becomes ever more feared, and consequently the more efficacious he becomes. The process is self-generative.

“Demon-possession is a similar technique. Susceptibility is again essential; again conviction creates susceptibility. It is easiest and most dramatic when the characteristics of the demon are well known, as in the case of Comandore’s Keyril. For this reason, demons can be exchanged or traded among jinxmen. The commodity actually traded is public acceptance and familiarity with the demon.”

“Demons then do not actually exist?” inquired Lord Faide half-incredulously.

Hein Huss grinned vastly, showing enormous yellow teeth. “Telepathy works through a superstratum. Who knows what is created in this superstratum? Maybe the demons live on after they have been conceived; maybe they now are real. This of course is speculation, which we jinxmen shun.

“So much for demons, so much for the lesser techniques of jinxmanship. I have explained sufficient to serve as background to the present situation.”


The opening scene involves a war party from Faide Keep encountering a trap-filled forest planting created by the planet's natives... to locate the traps in the planting, the novella's protagonist, bumbling apprentice jinxman Sam Salazar (my favorite Vance character), is considered the most expendable person, and tasked to prod the perilous planting in order to ensure the safety of head jinxman Hein Huss... leading to some of Vance's trademark brilliant dialogue:


“Send someone to speak to the First Folk. Inform them we wish to pass, offering them no harm, but that we will react savagely to any hostility.”

“I will go myself,” said Hein Huss. He turned to Comandore, “Lend me, if you will, your brash young apprentice. I can put him to good use.”

“If he unmasks a nettle trap by blundering into it, his first useful deed will be done,” said Comandore. He signaled to Sam Salazar, who came reluctantly forward. “Walk in front of Head Jinxman Hein Huss that he may encounter no traps or scythes. Take a staff to probe the moss.”

Without enthusiasm Sam Salazar borrowed a lance from one of the foot soldiers. He and Huss set forth, along the low rise that previously had separated North from South Wildwood. Occasionally outcroppings of stone penetrated the cover of moss; here and there grew bayberry trees, clumps of tarplant, ginger-tea, and rosewort.

A half mile from the planting Huss halted. “Now take care, for here the traps will begin. Walk clear of hummocks, these often conceal swing-scythes; avoid moss which shows a pale blue; it is dying or sickly and may cover a deadfall or a nettle trap.”
“Why cannot you locate the traps by clairvoyance?” asked Sam Salazar in a rather sullen voice. “It appears an excellent occasion for the use of these faculties.”

“The question is natural,” said Hein Huss with composure. “However you must know that when a jinxman’s own profit or security is at stake his emotions play tricks on him. I would see traps everywhere and would never know whether clairvoyance or fear prompted me. In this case, that lance is a more reliable instrument than my mind.”

Sam Salazar made a salute of understanding and set forth, with Hein Huss stumping behind him. At first he prodded with care, uncovering two traps, then advanced more jauntily; so swiftly indeed that Huss called out in exasperation, “Caution, unless you court death!”

Sam Salazar obligingly slowed his pace. “There are traps all around us, but I detect the pattern, or so I believe.”

“Ah, ha, you do? Reveal it to me, if you will. I am only Head Jinxman, and ignorant.”

“Notice. If we walk where the spore-pods have recently been harvested, then we are secure.”

Hein Huss grunted. “Forward then. Why do you dally? We must do battle at Ballant Keep today.”

Two hundred yards farther, Sam Salazar stopped short. “Go on, boy, go on!” grumbled Hein Huss.

“The savages threaten us. You can see them just inside the planting. They hold tubes which they point toward us.”
Hein Huss peered, then raised his head and called out in the sibilant language of the First Folk.

A moment or two passed, then one of the creatures came forth, a naked humanoid figure, ugly as a demonmask. Foam-sacs bulged under its arms, orange-lipped foam-vents pointed forward. Its back was wrinkled and loose, the skin serving as a bellows to blow air through the foam-sacs. The fingers of the enormous hands ended in chisel-shaped blades, the head was sheathed in chitin. Billion-faceted eyes swelled from either side of the head, glowing like black opals, merging without definite limit into the chitin. This was a representative of the original inhabitants of the planet, who until the coming of man had inhabited the downs, burrowing in the moss, protecting themselves behind masses of foam exuded from the underarm sacs.

The creature wandered close, halted. “I speak for Lord Faide of Faide Keep,” said Huss. “Your planting bars his way. He wishes that you guide him through, so that his men do not damage the trees, or spring the traps you have set against your enemies.”

“Men are our enemies,” responded the autochthon. “You may spring as many traps as you care to; that is their purpose.” It backed away.

“One moment,” said Hein Huss sternly. “Lord Faide must pass. He goes to battle Lord Ballant. He does not wish to battle the First Folk. Therefore it is wise to guide him across the planting without hindrance.”

The creature considered a second or two. “I will guide him.” He stalked across the moss toward the war party.
Behind followed Hein Huss and Sam Salazar. The autochthon, legs articulated more flexibly than a man’s, seemed to weave and wander, occasionally pausing to study the ground ahead.

“I am puzzled,” Sam Salazar told Hein Huss. “I cannot understand the creature’s actions.”

“Small wonder,” grunted Hein Huss. “He is one of the First Folk, you are human. There is no basis for understanding.”

“I disagree,” said Sam Salazar seriously.

“Eh?” Hein Huss inspected the apprentice with vast disapproval. “You engage in contention with me, Head Jinxman Hein Huss?”

“Only in a limited sense,” said Sam Salazar. “I see a basis for understanding with the First Folk in our common ambition to survive.”

“A truism,” grumbled Hein Huss. “Granting this community of interests with the First Folk, what is your perplexity?”
“The fact that it first refused, then agreed to conduct us across the planting.”

Hein Huss nodded. “Evidently the information which intervened, that we go to fight at Ballant Keep, occasioned the change.”
“This is clear,” said Sam Salazar. “But think—”

“You exhort me to think?” roared Hein Huss.

“—here is one of the First Folk, apparently without distinction, who makes an important decision instantly. Is he one of their leaders? Do they live in anarchy?”

“It is easy to put questions,” Hein Huss said gruffly. “It is not as easy to answer them.”

“In short—”

“In short, I do not know. In any event, they are pleased to see us killing one another.”


Subsequently, the humans come into conflict with the natives, who have developed biological weapons:


“Notice, they carry tubes,” said Scolford.

“Blowguns possibly,” suggested Edwin.

Scolford disagreed. “They cannot blow through their foam-vents.”

“No doubt we shall soon learn,” said Lord Faide. He rose in his seat, called to the rear. “Ready with the darts!”

The soldiers raised their crossbows. The column advanced slowly, now only a hundred yards from the planting. The white shapes of the First Folk moved uneasily at the forest’s edges. Several of them raised their tubes, seemed to sight along the length. They twitched their great hands.

One of the tubes was pointed toward Lord Faide. He saw a small black object leave the opening, flit forward, gathering speed. He heard a hum, waxing to a rasping, clicking flutter. He ducked behind the windscreen; the projectile swooped in pursuit, struck the windscreen like a thrown stone. It fell crippled upon the forward deck of the car—a heavy black insect like a wasp, its broken proboscis oozing ocher liquid, horny wings beating feebly, eyes like dumbbells fixed on Lord Faide. With his mailed fist, he crushed the creature.

Behind him other wasps struck knights and men; Corex Faide-Battaro took the prong through his visor into the eye, but the armor of the other knights defeated the wasps. The foot soldiers, however, lacked protection; the wasps half buried themselves in flesh. The soldiers called out in pain, clawed away the wasps, squeezed the wounds. Corex Faide-Battaro toppled from his horse, ran blindly out over the heath, and after fifty feet fell into a trap. The stricken soldiers began to twitch, then fell on the moss, thrashed, leaped up to run with flapping arms, threw themselves in wild somersaults, forward, backward, foaming and thrashing.


It is later revealed that the natives have adopted the methods of the ancient human 'miracle workers' to defeat their human enemies:


"‘There are always more in the cells to replace the elements which die. But if the community becomes sick, all suffer. We have been forced into the forests, into a strange existence. We must arm ourselves and drive away the men, and to this end we have developed the methods of men to our own purposes!’

“Isak Comandore spoke. “Needless to say, the creature referred to the ancient men, not ourselves.”

“In any event,” said Lord Faide, “they leave no doubt as to their intentions. We should be fools not to attack them at once, with every weapon at our disposal.”

Hein Huss continued imperturbably. “The creature went on at some length. ‘We have learned the value of irrationality.’ ‘Irrationality’ of course was not his word or even his meaning. He said something like ‘a series of vaguely motivated trials’—as close as I can translate. He said, ‘We have learned to change our environment. We use insects and trees and plants and waterslugs. It is an enormous effort for us who would prefer a placid life in the moss. But you men have forced this life on us, and now you must suffer the consequences.’ I pointed out once more that men were not helpless, that many First Folk would die. The creature seemed unworried. ‘The community persists.’ I asked a delicate question, ‘If your purpose is to kill men, why do you allow us here?’ He said, ‘The entire community of men will be destroyed.’ Apparently they believe the human society to be similar to their own, and therefore regard the killing of three wayfaring individuals as pointless effort.”


Realizing that the natives have developed heretofore unknown military prowess, Hein Huss, his chief rival Isak Comandore, and Sam Salazar travel to one of the First Folk's safe Forest Markets in order to determine if a counter to the natives' techniques can be developed via jinxmanship. Once again, Sam Salazar proves to be the most awesome character in Vance's oeuvre:


Isak Comandore, nominal head of the expedition, spoke. “We rode along the river bank to Forest Market. Here was no sign of disorder or of hostility. A hundred First Folk traded timber, planks, posts, and poles for knife blades, iron wire, and copper pots. When they returned to their barge we followed them aboard, wagon, horses, and all. They showed no surprise—”
“Surprise,” said Hein Huss heavily, “is an emotion of which they have no knowledge.”

Isak Comandore glared briefly. “We spoke to the barge-tenders, explaining that we wished to visit the interior of Wildwood. We asked if the First Folk would try to kill us to prevent us from entering the forest. They professed indifference as to either our well-being or our destruction. This was by no means a guarantee of safe conduct; however, we accepted it as such, and remained aboard the barge.” He spoke on with occasional emendations from Hein Huss.
They had proceeded up the river, into the forest, the First Folk poling against the slow current. Presently they put away the poles; nevertheless the barge moved as before. The mystified jinxmen discussed the possibility of teleportation, or symboligical force, and wondered if the First Folk had developed jinxing techniques unknown to men. Sam Salazar, however, noticed that four enormous water beetles, each twelve feet long with oil-black carapaces and blunt heads, had risen from the river bed and pushed the barge from behind—apparently without direction or command.


The plot of the story reaches an inevitable climax as humans and natives wage war. The denouement of the novella is particularly satisfying, but you'll have to read it yourself... I've already cut-and-pasted too much of the novella into this blog post. If you are a fan of Science Fantasy, I would urge you to purchase the ebook. It's a great introduction to Jack Vance, mixing swashbuckling action, evocation of a sense of wonder, A celebration of the scientific method, and sidesplitting humor. You'll thank me.

Best Seventy-Five Cents I've Ever Spent

The local library branch had a major book sale today, and paperbacks were priced at twenty-five cents apiece. There I was, cheerfully browsing, when my heart started to race, my hands started trembling in barely concealed excitement:





OMGOMGOMGOMG!! You will notice that Fantasms and Magics and Eight Fantasms and Magics appear to be different editions of the same book, and you'd be correct. If, however, you had read The Miracle Workers, you'd have bought both editions as well:

The war party from Faide Keep moved eastward across the downs: a column of a hundred armored knights, five hundred foot soldiers, a train of wagons. In the lead rode Lord Faide, a tall man in his early maturity, spare and catlike, with a sallow dyspeptic face. He sat in the ancestral car of the Faides, a boat-shaped vehicle floating two feet above the moss, and carried, in addition to his sword and dagger, his ancestral side weapons.

An hour before sunset, a pair of scouts came racing back to the column, their club-headed horses loping like dogs. Lord Faide braked the motion of his car. Behind him, the Faide kinsmen, the lesser knights, and the leather-capped foot soldiers halted; to the rear the baggage train and the high-wheeled wagons of the jinxmen creaked to a stop.

The Miracle Workers may be Jack Vance's greatest work, it is certainly one of his most accessible. Although I love Vance's characteristic purple prose, he maintains a more subdued tone in this novella, a more spare and catlike prose, so to speak. The protagonist is also one of Vance's most felicitous characters, rather than a handsome, hypercompetent superman, we are presented with a "thick-set youth with a round florid face, overhung with a rather untidy mass of straw-colored hair" who is characterized by another character as "innocent and a trifle addled". No Mary Sue here, but a comical, sympathetic lead. As in many of Vance's works, The Miracle Workers is set in a stagnant, overly-conservative society faced with the need to change dramatically or face collapse. It's a theme that Vance explores in many of his works, and Vance does so rather succinctly, and extremely engagingly in The Miracle Workers.