World-Thinker, The-Jack Vance novelette
World-Thinker , The- Jack Vance novelette The World-Thinker was the first story Vance ever published and was issued in Thrilling Wonder Stories in August of 1945. It is a 25/27 page novelette that Vance wrote while he was at sea. I don’t think it is such a bad story for a first publication but years later Vance said he found it embarrassing. In Vance’s introduction to the 1982 collection Lost Moons he said The World-Thinker and another story Dream Castles were bothw “so embarrassing that I rewrote a few stand-out passages, a lick-and-a promise operation rather like putting rouge on a corpse.” The story involves Isabel May who escapes prison on Earth and flees in a spaceship pursued by Lanark who is hired to capture her alive. She possesses a very valuable code that is highly important to the government. Lanark finally tracks her spaceship down on another planet but cannot find Isabel. Instead he encounters a godlike creature named Laoome , "the one-time Sag...