Gardner Dozois (1947–2018)

Exciting, visceral, thought-provoking science fiction at its best. This novel, begun in the late 1970s by authors Martin and Dozois, languished in a desk drawer for nearly two decades than was handed over to Abraham to update and conclude. It's amazing how it doesn't feel like a multi-author work. Ramon Espejo is a mining prospector working on the distant planet Sao Paulo. Ramon's got a temper that easily goes out-of-control, and after a violent incident in a bar leaves a man dead, Ramon show more needs to escape into the planet's wilderness for some "away time". Unfortunately, the discovery he makes in the remote mountains starts him on a desperate race back to civilization with an alien threat close on his heels. What, on the surface, is ostensibly an action-packed scifi adventure has a lot more going for it. Ramon is an intensely unlikeable character, who grows on the reader as the story progresses. The settings are gritty and believable. The aliens introduced in the story are fantastic. And the issues raised -- what it means to be human, how to control one's baser instincts, how to empathize with the inhuman -- will keep you thinking long after you've finished the book.

Originally reviewed for my local library's website: http://www.lincolnlibraries.org/depts/bookguide/srec/staffrec10-01.htm show less

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

Songs of the Dying Earth: Stories in Honor of Jack Vance is the best anthology I’ve ever read. These stories will be enjoyed by any SFF reader, but they’ll be ten times more fun if you’ve read Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth, because they are all written in honor of that fantastic work. Each tale is written in the style of Vance, which is quite amusing in itself, and each takes place on the Dying Earth, that far-future wasteland in which natural show more selection means survival of the cleverest, nastiest, sneakiest, and most self-serving.

Songs of the Dying Earth was written by “many high-echelon, top-drawer writers” (as Mr. Vance says in the preface): Robert Silverberg, Matthew Hughes, Terry Dowling, Liz Williams, Mike Resnick, Walter Jon Williams, Paula Volsky, Jeff Vandermeer, Kage Baker, Phyllis Eisenstein, Elizabeth Moon, Lucius Shepard, Tad Williams, John C. Wright, Glen Cook, Elizabeth Hand, Byron Tetrick, Tanith Lee, Dan Simmons, Howard Waldrop, George R.R. Martin, and Neil Gaiman. And there’s an introductory “appreciation” by Dean Koontz.

It was pure pleasure to listen to these authors emulate Jack Vance’s writing style and to fill their stories with Vance’s beloved (if I can call them that) characters such as Rhialto the Marvellous, Cugel the clever, Derwe Coreme, Guyal, Turjan, T’sais, Ioucounu the Laughing Magician, Lith, Chun the Unavoidable and, of course, plenty of Deodands, sandestins, pelgranes, and Twk-men. They used some of Vance’s neologisms and hilariously named magic spells (e.g., The Spell of Forlorn Encystment, The Excellent Prismatic Spray, The Spell of the Macroid Toe) and plenty of those other strange things we find in Vance novels: colors that don’t exist, baroque architecture and fashion, slimy creatures that squirm and pulsate, eyeball jelly, blue concentrate, miniaturized enemies, nostrils used as doorways, pulp, ichor, fungi, and empty eye sockets… as Kage Baker said in her afterword, the Dying Earth is like a Hieronymus Bosch painting.

These stories were so well done that much of the time I forgot that I wasn’t actually reading Jack Vance. Many of the tales give us supplementary history about some of Vance’s well-known characters and they fit into the canon so smoothly that I’m afraid I’ll forever be remembering them as original Vance! Every story in this anthology is a lot of fun (except for Elizabeth Moon’s because I have a phobia of cockroaches), and they are all highly recommended reading, but my favorites were those that best affect Vance’s florid style, magniloquent dialogue, distinctive character names, black humor, and sense of irony — not so easily done. Those that accomplish this best are:

* Tad Williams, whose story about a low-order traveling magician who gets stuck to a Deodand was the funniest
* Terry Dowling, who made me late to work because I was sitting in the parking lot and laughing at his magicians’ contest
* Kage Baker, who had won me over even before she has Cugel say to himself “What, though, Cugel! Have you not an unfailing way with the female sex? If you cannot ingratiate yourself with the old witch, you are not your father’s child.”
* Tanith Lee, whose style is spot-on in every respect and gets extra points for creating a spell “extrapolated from Phandaal’s empurpled theorem of Locative Selfulsion”
* Walter Jon Williams, who creates a delightfully clever hero, puts a disagreeable wife in a bottle, and makes up some nice new words
* Mike Resnick, who explains the origin of Chun the Unavoidable and why he sews eyeballs onto his cloak
* Matthew Hughes, whose unlucky protagonist inhabits flying insects who keep getting squashed
* Neil Gaiman, whose charming last story answers the ultimate question: what happens when the sputtering sun finally goes out?

Something that makes the Songs of the Dying Earth very special (especially to me, a rabid but newer Vance fan) were the authors’ afterwords in which they explain what Jack Vance’s work means to them. I was amazed at how similar their stories were: almost invariably they were between 13 and 15 years old, looking for something to do, found a Vance novel on their brother’s bookshelf or one of his stories in a pulp magazine, became completely enthralled, scoured the bookstores and newsstands for more, and eventually read all of his work. They consider Vance a major influence in their own writing, and (almost all of them say this) he’s one of the few authors they still feel the same way about today as they did when they were teenagers. I found this fascinating. And kind of sad, for I have never experienced the joy of needing to hunt for, and therefore eventually finding, a treasured book that I didn’t know existed. I’ve never seen an Ace Double at a newsstand. This was all before my time and I feel like I’ve missed out.

The afterwords were beautifully nostalgic, but in reality I’m thankful to Subterranean Press and Brilliance Audio, that scrounging around on used bookstore floors is a thing of the past for Vance fans. Both of these houses have lately been supplying us with Vance in print and audio, and both have published Songs of the Dying Earth: Stories in Honor of Jack Vance. Sub Press’s print version has terrific illustrations by Tom Kidd. Arthur Morey does the narration for the audio version and, because he also narrated The Dying Earth stories and uses the same voices for the characters in this anthology, it helps give the impression that these are actually Vance tales. Mr. Morey “gets” Jack Vance — he has the wry tone just right. He really had me laughing at the bad-poetry-quoting barbarians in Robert Silverberg’s story.

Songs of the Dying Earth is a must-read for Vance fans. If you haven’t read The Dying Earth, I highly suggest that you read it first (may I recommend Brilliance Audio’s versions?). Mr. Martin and Mr. Dozois, please give us more Songs of the Dying Earth! show less

I am always delighted to see Festschrifts expand beyond the realm of Academia, and within the domain of literature there are few so deserving of the honour as Jack Vance. Though the stories are excellent, often I find myself most looking forward to the afterword of each tale - where each contributor describes what Jack Vance meant to them, how his works spurred their imagination from their youth to the present day, influenced their writing, or how they thought and interpreted the world show more around them.

This anthology is particularly striking in regards to the high degree of quality each tale attains. Usually most collections of short stories contain at least a few stinkers, but thankfully that is not the case here - there is not one work which I regret reading, and the top half dozen or so would likely be the best in the book had they been contained in a different anthology.

Standouts for me were Walter Jon Williams' Abrizonde (adventure of an architect-wizard), Terry Dowling's The Copsy Door (more legitimate laugh-out-loud moments than any other), and Dan Simmons The Guiding Nose of Ulfänt Banderōz (The tale the felt perhaps the most Vancian in terms of overall structure). Some tales were a bit disappointing to my own personal preferences, but not to the extent of making me feel as if the time spent reading them was not worthwhile. Howard Waldrop's Frogskin Cap felt as if half the story was missing, Liz Williams' Caulk the Witch-chaser is really only spoiled if you are familiar with the predilections inherent to her own writing, and Lucius Shephard's Sylgarmo’s Proclamation seemed to be written solely to redeem the honour of a certain minor character ignominiously discarded by Cugel. Speaking of Cugel, while he does appear often, there's really only a single story in the volume that properly counts as a Cugel tale - Kage Baker's The Geen Bird. Fortunately there are a few others that also delve into the character in different ways - there's also a secret Cugel tale, a tale of Cugel's son, of a would-be adventurer following in Cugel's footsteps, and one about seeking revenge against Cugel.

Any ranking of stories is going to involve a certain degree of approximation - for example, while I rated Robert Silverberg's The True Vintage of Erzuine Thale fifth, in many ways I felt as if it was the best written, and certain ideas stick with me more strongly than any other. Regardless, if you hold any degree of affection towards Jack Vance, or his Dying Earth setting, these Songs of the Dying Earth are well worth your time.

Ranking the Tales in descending order of preference:

1. Abrizonde, by Walter Jon Williams
2. The Copsy Door, by Terry Dowling
3. The Guiding Nose of Ulfänt Banderōz, by Dan Simmons
4. The Last Golden Thread, by Phyllis Eisenstein
5. The True Vintage of Erzuine Thale, by Robert Silverberg
6. A Night at Tarn House, by George R. R. Martin
7. Evillo the Uncunning, by Tanith Lee
8. Inescapable, by Mike Resnick
9. The Collegeum of Mauge, by Byron Tetrick
10. The Good Magician, by Glen Cook
11. Guyal the Curator, by John C. Wright
12. The Lamentably Comical Tragedy (or the Laughably Tragic Comedy) of Lixial Laqavee, By Tad Williams
13. The Green Bird, by Kage Baker
14. The Traditions of Karzh, by Paula Volsky
15. Grolion of Almery, by Matthew Hughes
16. An Incident in Uskvosk, by Elizabeth Moon
17. Caulk the Witch-chaser, by Liz Williams
18. The Final Quest of the Wizard Sarnod, by Jeff Vandermeer
19. The Return of the Fire Witch, by Elizabeth Hand
20. An Invocation of Incuriosity, by Neil Gaiman
21. Frogskin Cap, by Howard Waldrop
22. Sylgarmo’s Proclamation, by Lucius Shephard show less

Thought-provoking story. Some spoilers follow in comments.

This story does an effective job of painting a mostly unsympathetic protagonist, and his subtle transition into a place of having scruples, ethics, and working towards a higher purpose than just his own self-interest. This is put into stark relief when the (cloned) character has to interact with his original, who is still a mean-spirited murderous low-life. The interactions the clone has had, and his reactions which awaken him to a show more sense of conscience, are so delicately interwoven that it is impossible to pin down the moment when this shift in character happens. This metamorphosis is very delicately handled by the authors, who use interactions with aliens and the colonization of a new world to explore the issues of how one lives one's experience and what one gets out of it. It also does a great job of evoking truly alien cultures and thought processes.

There are many layers of meaning tucked away in this story - I find it mildly haunting, in the way a good book is that provokes one to think long after you've put the book down. Highly recommended. show less