Jack Vance (nonfiction)

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Karl Jones on Vance

From a Boing Boing comment:

The master craftsman of word-smiths … the voice of angels in a world-wise throat … Jack Vance.

He was good from the outset: the style and the substance alike.

Vance is hailed as a stylist, and with good reason.

But the substance is there too, in rich measure: Vance was a natural born story teller who had things to say and reasons to say them, a modern-day Jack London sailing the space-lanes.

Like many, I discovered Vance in my teens (the mid-1970s) via The Dying Earth.

Forty-some years, and many Vance novels and short stories later, the work I like to call out for special attention is his early (1956) novel To Live Forever. It shows great maturity for so early a work, and presages the central concerns that Vance will elaborate in his subsequent work.

I think of it sometimes when I read someone extolling their interpretation of Ayn Rand. (It’s the extolling that I find problematic, not Rand as such.) Neo-Randians need to lighten up and have some fun. Try To Live Forever – it’s got all the extolling of self-reliance that you are hoping for, and the cold pitiless individual-atomizing universe that will be the death of us all in due course which you celebrate in fear and delight … and yet recognizes (the part I like) that No Man Is An Island and that Bad Things Happen when we forget it or try to pretend otherwise.

Why I Love Jack Vance So Much

"Why I Love Jack Vance So Much" ...

A fantasist for certain, he occasionally dabbled in mysteries, but his main concern was the way people behave and the social, political and personal forces that motivate them. He thought of himself as “a speculative anthropologist,” his son said, interested in human beings and their foibles and their ability — or inability — to adapt to strained and bizarre situations.

— “Jack Vance, Novelist of the Fantastical, Is Dead at 96” by Bruce Weber @ New York Times

• Comment @ Boing Boing

The Last Castle

Xanten drives through the night

The gentlefolk of the castles, for all their assurance, disliked to wander the countryside by night, by reason of what some derided as superstitious fear. Others cited travelers benighted beside mouldering ruins and their subsequent visions: the eldritch music they had heard, or the whimper of moon-mirkins, or the far horns of spectral huntsmen. Others had seen pale lavender and green lights, and wraiths which ran with long strides through the forest; and Hode Abbey, now a dank tumble, was notorious for the White Hag and the alarming toll she exacted.A hundred such cases were known. While the hard-headed scoffed, none needlessly traveled the countryside by night. Indeed, if truly ghosts haunt the scenes of tragedy and heartbreak, then the landscape of Old Earth must be home to ghosts and specters beyond all numbering; especially that region across which Xanten rolled to the power-wagon, where every rock, every meadow, every vale and swale was crusted thick with human experience.The moon rose high. The wagon trundled north along an ancient road, the cracked concrete slabs shining pale in the moonlight. Twice Xanten saw flickering orange lights off to the side, and once, standing in the shade of a cypress tree, he thought to see a tall quiet shape, silently watching him pass.

Philidor and Xanten

Philidor nodded. "I know that the history of man is not his technical triumphs, his kills, his victories. It is a composite, a mosaic of a trillion pieces, the account of each man's accomodation with his conscience. This is the true history of the race."

Xanten made an airy gesture. "A.G. Philidor, you oversimplify grievously. Do you consider me obtuse? There are many kinds of history. They interact. You emphasize morality. But the ultimate basis of morality is survival. What promotes survival is good; what induces mortifaction is bad."

"Well spoken!" declared Philidor. "But let me propound a parable. May a nation of a million beings destroy a creature who otherwise will infect all with a fatal disease? Yes, you will say. Once more: ten starving beasts hunt you, that they may eat. Will you kill them to save your life? Yes, you will say again, though here you destroy more than you save. Once more: a man inhabits a hut in a lonely valley. A hundred spaceships descend from the sky, and attempt to destroy him. May he destroy these ships in self-defense, even though he is one and they are a hundred thousand? Perhaps you will say yes. What, then, if a whole world, a whole race of beings, pits itself against this single man. May he kill them all? What if the attackers are as human as himself? What if he were the creature of the first instance, who otherwise will infect an entire world with disease? You see, there is no instance where a simple touchstone avails. We have searched and found none. Hence, at the risk of sinning against Survival, we — I, at least; I can only speak for myself — have chosen a morality which at least allows me calm. I kill — nothing. I destroy — nothing."

"Bah," said Xanten contemptuously. If a Mek platoon entered this valley and began to kill your children, would you not defend them?"

Philidor compressed his lips, turned away. Another man spoke. "Philidor has defined morality. But who is absolutely moral? Philidor, or I, or you, might desert his morality in such a case."

Fiction cross-reference

• Gnomon algorithm
• Gnomon Chronicles
• High-energy literature

Nonfiction cross-reference

• Jack Vance quotes (nonfiction)

External links

• Jack Vance @ Wikipedia