Vancealot: Jack Vance in Review

Jack Vance Book Collection Review: The Augmented Agent Vancelot : Jack Vance in Review, TJ Jones Underwood-Miller, hardcover, 237 pages Release Date: 1986 Cover art: Ned Dameron Contents: ·        Introduction-Steven Owen Godersky, 11 pages ·        Shape-Up , 11 pages, short story ·        The Man From Zodiac , 40 pages, novelette ·        Golden Girl, 10 pages,   short story ·        The Planet Machine , 28 pages, novelette ·        Crusade to Maxus , 49 pages, novelette ·        Three-Legged Joe , 16 pages, short story ·        Sjambak , 22 pages, novelette ·        The Augmented Agent , 32 pages, novelette This is a very nice hardcover collection of eight shorter works by Jack Vance....

Augmented Agent , The- Jack Vance , novelette (author’s preferred title) AKA: I-C-a-BeM The Augmented Agent is a 32/42 page novelette that was written in 1956 and first published in October, 1961 in Amazing Stories magazine under the title "I-C-a-BeM."   This is another story that is pure enjoyment.   James Keith is in a special branch of the CIA where agents are surgically altered ( augmented ).   Keith's hair consists of, " multi-laminated accumulators ."   His dentures are "scrambled, condensed, transmitted, received, expanded and unscrambled radio waves of energies almost too low to be detected."   Fingernails are " copper-silver alloy , internally connected to the accumulators in his hair" and allow Keith to electrically kill or stun others by touching them with his fingers. Keith has been altered to look identical to an African politician whom he is supposed to dispose of and impersonate.   It is James Bond , Monty Python and J...