Jack Vance
| Paperback - Gollancz Millenium (2003) |
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Lyonesse II
The Green Pearl and Madouc
The Elder Isles, the magical lands of high enchantment from which King Arthur’s ancestors fled to Britain, come to brilliant life again in the final parts of Jack Vance’s majestic fantasy. In this ancient land the realm of chivalry and the world of Faerie exist side by side and it is a place of strange beauty, high adventure and eerie magic. Warring kings renew their conflicts, opposing magicians devise ever more strange and sinister stratagems, and Madouc, ostensibly the daughter of the ill-fated Princess Suldrun but in reality a changeling, becomes embroiled in political rivalries, political adventures, and the quest for the Holy Grail.
The Series
Fantasy Masterworks is a library of some of the greatest, most original, and most influential fantasy ever written. These are the books which, along with Tolkien, Peake and others, shaped modern fantasy.
`Dazzlingly imaginative, fascinatingly intricate, delicately controlled, engagingly peopled . . . Fantasy at its brilliant best’ Kirkus Review
`Jack Vance is one of the greatest image-makers of English letters’ Frank Herbert
| Paperback - Gollancz Millenium (2002) |
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Lyonesse
Lyonesse is one of the ten kingdoms of the Elder Isles and Casmir, its ruthless and ambitious king, is at the centre of intrigue as their rulers contend for control. Casmir’s beautiful but otherworldly daughter, Suldrun, is a key element in his plans: he intends to cement alliances by arranging a marriage. But Suldrun defies him. She is confined to her beloved garden, where she meets her love, and her tragedy unfolds.
Lyonesse is a spellbinding novel of eerie beauty, mystery and enchantment as intrigue, war, magic, adventure and romance are interwoven in a rich and sweeping tale set in a fabled land.
Fantasy Masterworks is a library of some of the greatest, most original, and most influential fantasy ever written. These are the books which, along with Tolkien, Peake and others, shaped modern fantasy.
`A fertile inventiveness’ Locus
`Zestful creativity . . . description itself becomes epic’ Washington Post
`A beautifully told, very readable novel’ Publishers Weekly
‘Suldrun is one of the most felicitous creations of high fantasy… Vance’s strengths are impressively utilized’ Fantasy & Science Fiction
‘Names ring strangely and evocatively. Motives are complex and subtle. Events concatenate. If you love Vance, you’ll love Lyonesse’ Analog
‘The continuous invention is staggering’ Asimov’s
‘It never lets you down’ Frank Herbert
| Paperback - Gollancz (2000) |
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Big Planet
Charley Lysidder, the Bajarnum of Beaujolais was ruthlessly expanding his empire on the Big Planet. The objective of the mission from Earth was to stop him and ensure that the whole world didn't fall under the domination of the tyrant.
But when sabotage forced the spacecraft carrying the mission to crashland, the priority changed. The survivors faced an epic 40,000 mile trek to safety, across the vast and unknown surface of the planet, harassed by monsters, the native people and the agents of the Bajarnum, and riven by their own deadly disputes.
Rich, strange and powerful, Big Planet, is an important landmark in the history of SF. The sophistication of the concept of the Big Planet itself, with its huge size and negligible metal resources, and Jack Vance's subtly effective baroque style, changed the planetary romance for ever.
‘One of the finest writers the science fiction field has ever known’ Poul Anderson
'Vividly compelling... Vance at the top of his form' Damon Knight
'Inventive and entertaining' Science Fiction Writers
| Paperback - Gollancz Millenium (2000) |
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Tales of the Dying Earth
'A dim place, ancient beyond knowledge. Ages of rain and wind have beaten and rounded the granite and the sun is feeble and red. A million cities have fallen to dust. In place of the old peoples, a few thousand strange souls live. There is evil on Earth ... Earth is dying ...
Travel to a far distant future, where magic and science are one, and the Earth has but a few short decades to live. Here, in one volume, is Jack Vance's masterpiece, the Dying Earth saga, comprising The Dying Earth, The Eyes of the Overworld, Cugel's Saga and Rhialto the Marvellous.
Fantasy Masterworks is a library of some of the greatest, most original, and most influential fantasy ever written. These are the books which, along with Tolkien, Peake and others, shaped modern fantasy.
‘One of the best and most influential fantasy works of the 20th century.' Terry Pratchett
"A modern classic by one of the great fantasy and science fiction writers of the 20th century. A rare tale of an Earth so far in the future as to be nearly unrecognisable to the contemporary reader.’ Raymond E. Feist
'A complete world which springs up fully-formed from its own fragments. Anyone who wants to understand fantasy should begin here, at the End of Time.' M. John Harrison
'Jack Vance is one of the greatest image-makers of English letters' Frank Herbert
'Endless inventiveness ... superb style ... one of the very best writers we have' Poul Anderson
'Jack Vance has been for half a century central to both sf and fantasy. He has a genius of place' Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
'Nobody paints the kind of pictures of worlds and societies that Jack Vance does' P. Schuyler Miller, Analog
| Paperback - Gollancz Millenium (1999) |
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Emphyrio
Far in the future, the craftsmen of the planet Halma create goods which, unknown to them, are the wonder of the galaxy, Their society is harshly regimented - any use of machinery is punishable by death - and its religion is unforgiving. When Amiante Tarvoke is executed for processing old documents with a camera, his son Ghyl rebels, and decides to bring down the system. But first he must interpret the ancient story of the legendary hero Emphyrio.
'All Vance's novels have exotic locales and cultures, resourceful heroes, and vigorous action, but in Emphyrio they are raised to the pitch of perfection, making the novel a tremendous pleasure to read, and giving it also a mysterious beauty' Kim Stanley Robinson
'Mr. Vance has written a fine book. Reading Emphyrio is like looking at the world through the wrong end of a telescope… and this combination of strange things seeming familiar and familiar things suddenly becoming strange is the oddest and the finest in the world… I really cannot do it justice. Mr. Vance knows about childhood, grief, love, social structure, idealism, and loss, but none of these breaks the perfect surface of the hook; everything is cool, funny, and recognisable while at the same time everything is melancholy, real, and indescribably strange.' Joanna Russ, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
'Jack Vance is our greatest living SF writer, and Emphyrio is one of his very best books, a magical tour de force of mystery, marvel, invention, incident, world building, and wordplay. But be warned: reading Vance is addictive' George R. K. Martin
'Jack Vance has been for half a century central to both sf and fantasy. He has a genius of place’ Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction
'Nobody… paints the kind of pictures or worlds and societies that Jack Vance does' P. Schuyler Miller, Analog
About The Author
Jack Vance is the version of his name used by John Holbrook Vance. Vance was born in 1916 in the US. He studied engineering, physics and journalism at the University of California. During WWII he served in the Merchant Navy and was torpedoed twice. He wrote his first SF story during the war, and published it in Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1945. For the rest of the forties and early fifties he published a considerable amount of short fiction in the pulp magazines. His first novel, The Dying Earth (1950) was influenced heavily by the work of Clark Ashton Smith. Vance has continued to write of increasingly elaborate and highly individual worlds ever since. His first SF award was a Hugo for the novella The Dragon Masters, published in 1963 The Last Castle (1966) was to win both a Nebula and a Hugo in 1966 and 1967 respectively. The most notable of his sequences have been the 'Demon Princes' series (published between 1964 and 1981), the 'Alastor' sequence (1973-'978) and more recently, the Lyonesse stories, the third of which, Madouc, won the World Fantasy Award in 1990. Vance has also written several detective novels, one of which, The Man in the Cage (1960) won an Edgar Award. Given his large body of work, it is not surprising that Vance has received both the World Fantasy Convention Lifetime Achievement award (1984) and the Grand Master Nebula for Lifetime Achievement (1996).
Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.
Lyonesse II
Gollancz Millenium Pbk Feb 03
Lyonesse
Gollancz Millenium Pbk Mar 02
Big Planet
Gollancz Pbk Jul 00
Tales of the Dying Earth
Gollancz Millenium Pbk Apr 00
Emphyrio
Gollancz Millenium Pbk Oct 99
Lyonesse II
pbk 13 Feb 03
by Jack Vance
