Jack Vance

After a several year hiatus in which I didn't read much Sci-Fi (previously my favorite genre), I've been giving it another go-around. I started with Alfred Bester's "The Stars My Destination" and "The Demolished Man" (which were both great), and lately I've been reading some of Jack Vance's work. I decided to read Vance, oddly enough, due to the recommendation of George R.R. Martin (who is effusive with praise). I checked out a compendium of short stories and was mildly impressed. I recently read the "Demon Prince" cycle. Fantastic series. The plotting is ridiculously elegant, these were the most creatively imagined sci-fi worlds I can recall, and the main character's quest for revenge is absolutely engrossing. They're also the finest detective novels I've read recently (a serious Blade-Runner vibe abounds). I highly, highly recommend reading these books. In fact, other than A Song of Ice and Fire and the Hobbit, I cannot imagine any other novels that I would be more intrigued to see brought to the silver screen.

I have reached a point now where I am continuously reading 100 to 200 pages of sci-fi/fantasy novels, then throwing them away and searching for the next Jack Vance work. I keep finding that he has already written entire, masterful books on random notions that I have had about what the next few decades will bring....and he wrote them decades ago. I've been tearing through his work at a steady clip, and haven't been disappointed yet. For example, I just wrapped up Blue World, which is somewhat of a cross between Moby Dick and The Old Man and the Sea. It's a masterpiece, and more metaphorical and symbolic than most of Vance's works. On one hand it can be read as a straight-forward adventure story about the descendants of shipwrecked starfarers attempting to defeat an aquatic monster. However, it can simultaneously be read as an indictment of religion, orthodox thinking, and institutionalized bureaucracies as being stultifying narcotics that sap human free-will and advancement. It is amazingly and deliciously subversive.