![]() Once it was a tall world of cloudy mountains and bright rivers, and the sun was a white blazing ball. The collection starts with Vance's 1950 debut, The Dying Earth, six interlinked short stories set on a far future version of Earth. I wanted to find those books and authors who shaped the fantasy writers of today, and here, in Vance, I see foreshadowings of so much. The omnibus, which collects Vance's four Dying Earth stories, is exactly, but exactly, why I set out on this (much delayed) fantasy quest in the first place. ![]() ![]() Moving on from my laxness - with apologies to anyone who's been waiting (Lioc, I am thinking of you - you made my day posting here!) – I've finally finished it, and boy oh boy, am I excited. Particularly given that it was more than a year ago that I said it'd be my next world of fantasy title. It fired my imagination something proper, so I am at a loss to understand why it's taken me until now to read Jack Vance's Tales of a Dying Earth. Some might dwell on the Eloi and the Morlocks my abiding memory of the novel is the "monstrous crab-like creature" scuttling on a beach 30m years in the future, as "the sun, red and very large, halted motionless upon the horizon, a vast dome glowing with a dull heat, and now and then suffering a momentary extinction". ![]() ![]() E ver since I read The Time Machine (I think I was about 12) I have hankered after stories of an ancient, dying earth, circling an ancient, dying red sun. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |