30 essays, which originally appeared in Cosmopolis and Exant (the electronic monthly project magazines of the Vance Integral Edition) between 2000 and 2006, rewritten for this book in 2009:
The Science in Vance’s Fiction;
What Kind of Artist is Jack Vance?;
Amaranths, Hormagaunts and Seishanee;
Sinister Old Men in Institute Black;
The Pulpish Plot;
Style and the Spenglerian Atmosphere;
The Mecca of Scientism;
The Cadwal Chronicles;
Anti-Paul Auster;
Jane Austen and Jack Vance;
Locus Review Reviewed;
Rlaru, Lurulu and the Grand Tournament At Mornune;
Capitalist and Fascists, Citizens And Slaves;
The Roots of Variety;
Thomas Sowell’s Cosmic Regret;
The Purple Magic of Sigmund Freud;
Thoughts on Throy;
Is Jack Vance Anti-christian?;
Myth and a Vancian Anatomy of the New Culture;
The Plot of Blue World;
Between Heaven and Earth;
How to Praise Lurulu;
Beyond Democratic Art;
The Aesthetics and Ideology of The Domains of Koryphon;
Some Theoretical Aspects of The Domains of Koryphon;
Marxist Money;
The Situation of Infinity and The Eliatic Illusion;
Archetypes of the Peripatetic Scamp;
The Inner Darkness of the Winged Being;
The Plain of Standing Stones.
