Remembering a Master
One of my favorite authors died last week. Jack Vance has been eulogized now all over the internet by more influential authors than me, and more eloquently by people who knew him better. (Matthew David Surridge wrote up a nice overview at Black Gate, and John O’Neill talks about Vance’s importance in the field in another essay there.)
I love Vance’s first Dying Earth novel, The Dying Earth, and the four books from his Planet of Adventure sequence, and I enjoy much of his other work as well. I have much of it left to read, and I’ll probably start dipping back into his fiction in remembrance this week.
The intellect, wit, and sheer invention to be found in Vance are marvelous. I can’t think of anyone who’s brought to life so many odd and fascinating human cultures, which is why I always recommend Vance not just to fantasy readers, but to writers who want to improve their world building. That said, often character building becomes almost incidental to Vance in preference to verbal cleverness and imagination, leading to a different kind of writing than that I usually enjoy, which is why I often read him in small doses. I find him rich, but brilliant, like a really rare and excellent dessert I wouldn’t want to eat every day.