Book Review: Jack Vance Seven Articles on His Work and Travels- Michael Andre-Driussi

Book Review: Jack Vance Seven Articles on His Work and Travels- Michael Andre-Driussi

Vancealot: Jack Vance in Review, TJ Jones

Sirius Fiction, paperback, 65 pages

Release Date: 2016

Availability: Can be purchased new from Amazon for $7.20 as of 2/24.

Contents:

·       Asi Achih: The Future History of Jack Vance

·       The Blue World: Jack Vance’s Hard Science Wonder

·       The Adventures of Jack Vance on Traveling and Waiting

·       Tracing Terms in Jack Vance’s “Sjambak”

·       Patterns to the Five Demon Princes of Jack Vance

·       “The New Prime” as Herald of Future Jack Vance

·       Review of An Encclopedia of Jack Vance

·       Index

The six essays were previously published in The New York Review of Science Fiction and the one review was published in the Journal of Fantastic Arts. Michael Andre-Driussi is well known for his articles and books about the writings of Gene Wolfe.  He has also written about Jack Vance and is the author of Handbook of Vance Space, which is a very useful reference book for Vance fans. Below is a brief summary of each of the seven articles:

"Asi Achich: The Future of History of Jack Vance" is the first article and is 18 pages long and, in addition to a fascinating discussion, it provides a very interesting chronological guide called "Tentative Unified Timeline for Vance Space."  The timeline begins with the year "-9.3meg: Pnume history begins on Tschai," continues through The Oikumene, The Middle Millennia and The Gaean Reach into the Post-Gaean Period.  Vance novels extend through a vast history of time with most of his novels set in a particular period  Here is novels are listed each in its appropriate time frame.  The author clearly points out that, "Vance drives home the impression that all history is local in scale, provincial in focus, and basically the same sorry mess as the post colonial world."  Those who read and study history should have a deeper appreciation of Vance's writings and how history often repeats itself.  Asi achich, by the way, is the term of resignation that the men of Dar Sai utter each day when they return from the mines.  The author does an excellent job of tying the timelines of Vance novels together.  Vance fans will want this book simply for this one article.

The second article is "The Blue World: Jack Vance's Hard Science Wonder."  In 14 pages the author explains how Vance used hard science in his novel The Blue World.  He also provides an interesting table of Blue World social castes with the name, crime, new role and rank of each caste.  The article should be immensely interesting to anyone who has read and appreciates the novel.  After reading this article I wanted to go back and carefully reread The Blue World which I’ve already read three times.

"The Adventures of Jack Vance in Traveling and Writing" is eight pages long and is quite captivating because it connects Vance's novels and stories with his travels.  It is fascinating to see which stories Vance wrote during specific trips, beginning with those he wrote when he was in the Merchant Marines in World War Two up through 1974 when he and his family went on a world wide travel tour, starting in Ireland and continuing on to Borneo.  This last major adventure included a month on the island of Madeira, three months on a houseboat on Nagin Lake in India, and a month in Sri Lanka.  These travels certainly influenced Vance's ability to create atmospheric cultures, unusual worlds, strange beings, and interesting characters.  His travels also seemed to help increase the sociological, anthropological and psychological depth and insights of Vance's writings.

"Tracing Terms in Jack Vance's Sjambak" is a very short article of only three pages where the author guesses at some of Vance's word plays and explains how Vance combined some Malay related words to create new words.

"Patterns to the Five Demon Princes of Jack Vance" is nine pages long.  The author discusses the five demon princes and then proceeds to discuss the five mutant races in The Five Gold Bands, how the five fingers of the human hand relate to the five demon princes, how colors are related to the seven days of the week and how the metals in the Gaean Reach correspond to the days of the week in the Gaean week.  I've never been fond of this sort of analysis of symbolism but it is a creative and sometimes humorous article, and the author admits that the "last bit seems like an outrageous stretch." 

"The New Prime as Herald of Future Jack Vance" is five pages long.  The author states that "The New Prime stands out for me as exemplifying Vance's work beginning ten year later with the Moon Moth (1961)."  He discusses the "Woodhouse mode", the "Beowulf mode", the "Barsoomian mode," the "Battle of Techno-Wizards" and "heroic insanity."  Andre-Driussi concludes that The New Prime (also known as The Brain of the Galaxy) "is a direct ancestor to the Demon Prince series...Which further emphasizes the import of this one early piece to the entire body of Vance's work."

The final article is six pages long and is titled "Review of an Encyclopedia of Jack Vance."  This is a short review of the three volume Encyclopedia of Jack Vance compiled by David G. Mead.  This is the most comprehensive Jack Vance reference set ever compiled.  The closest competition is The Jack Vance Lexicon by Dan Temianka that has 1700 entries focusing on words coined by Vance.  The Encyclopedia, by comparison, is nine times that size, and there is an even more extensive data base.  He mentions that unfortunately David Mead has been unable to find a publisher for the CD-ROM version.  I do not own the Encyclopedia but have seen it for sale.  Personally I'd prefer access to the data base to make searches easier.

In summary, Jack Vance Seven Articles on His Work and Travels is recommended as an essential purchase for Vance devotees.  I loved reading it so gave it a rating of 5.