Praise for Songs of the Dying Earth

Among my favourite works of fantasy fiction are the Dying Earth stories and the Lyonesse trilogy by Jack Vance. I’ve read the Lyonesse trilogy three times and most of the Dying Earth stories twice since I first discovered them as a teenager. While I preferred the Lyonesse trilogy when I was younger, as it was (despite its many quirks and abundant dry Vancian humour) closer to the “high fantasy” style that I adored then, I now think that I prefer many of the Dying Earth tales overall, especially the two Cugel sagas, due to the remarkable uniqueness of the setting and characters. In any case, they’re all well worth reading if you’re a fan of fantasy fiction. 

I recently finished an excellent collection of short stories written in honour of Jack Vance called Songs of the Dying Earth. It actually took me a few years to get all the way through the twenty-two stories included in the volume. This isn’t a criticism – after reading a few stories I would put aside the volume in order to read something else for a while (a new novel or whatever). That’s the nice thing about short story collections: they’re easy to dip into if you want to read a few tales and then put aside without “forgetting” anything important to continue onwards later.

The collection includes a preface from Jack Vance and stories from an impressive set of authors. I especially enjoyed the stories by Robert Silverberg (“The True Vintage of Erzuine Thale”), Jeff Vandermeer (“The Final Quest of the Wizard Sarnod”), Glen Cook (“The Good Magician”), Byron Tetrick (“The Collegeum of Mauge”), and Tanith Lee (“Evillo the Uncunning”).

But in my judgement the best one of the bunch – and the one that is a proper novella because of its length – is “The Guiding Nose of Ulfänt Banderõz” by Dan Simmons. It is a wonderfully bizarre tale that captures the flavour and “ethos” of the Dying Earth delightfully well, but without simply trying to imitate Vance’s style. It’s worth the price of the book alone. 

One thing I especially like about many of the stories in this collection, as well as Vance’s own classic Dying Earth tales, is that the protagonists often are magicians. I love mages (or wizards or sorcerers or whatever) and regret that they are only rarely the main characters in fantasy stories. 

Giants in the Earth and the pre-TSR Known World

Some interesting notes from the original “Known World” Dungeons and Dragons campaign setting have been made available for all to enjoy. (See this thread at the Piazza forum or find the PDFs here.)

 

These notes are from a shared campaign developed and run by Tom Moldvay and Lawrence Schick when they were college students in the late 1970s. Both Schick and Moldvay went on to become employees at TSR for a few years. These notes clearly were developed into the “Known World” setting originally described in the module X1: Isle of Dread (and used by subsequent modules in the “Basic” and “Expert” D&D lines—eventually becoming, well after the departure of Moldvay and Schick from TSR, Mystara).

 

I've only skimmed the notes. Based on that skim, of most interest to me are the write-ups for fictional characters: Cugel the Clever, Kane, Conan, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and the like. These would later appear in Dragon magazine’s feature: “Giants in the Earth: Classic Heroes From Fiction & Literature.”

As a great Jack Vance fan, I love the work they put into their write-up of the Dying Earth wizard Iucounu. Here’s the version that was published in Dragon issue 29:

 

I’m not a member of the Piazza but it looks like an interesting place. Perhaps I’ll join…

 

 

Not one but two forthcoming Vance-based games

I’m a big fan of Jack Vance’s fantasy works—in particular, his Lyonesse trilogy and his Dying Earth stories. So I’m quite excited about the Design Mechanism’s forthcoming Mythras-based Lyonesse role-playing game. (For an interesting discussion of the first Lyonesse novel, go here.)

To my amazement, though, I completely missed the announcement a few years ago of another Vance-based role-playing game: namely, one from Goodman Games set in the Dying Earth. Since the original announcement claimed that the game would be available in ‘late 2017’, I was worried that the project had been abandoned. However, this GG post from about two weeks ago (March 12th) indicates that it’s still on the cards.

It looks like the Dying Earth RPG will be based upon the Dungeon Crawl Classics role-playing game. I’ve never played DCCRPG, but based on my reading of the ‘quick start’ rules (which I picked up a couple of years ago), I’m not sure I’m too keen on it. While I quite like old school games—I even contributed to one (Crypts & Things)—the particular interpretation of ‘old school’ offered by DCC (e.g., the ‘funnel’ for 0-level characters; the randomness of the magic system) does not really resonate with me. At the same time, though, I’m open to the possibility that my ‘pre-play’ assessment is off, and I’d be happy to try it someday. And if the DCC system is suitably adapted for the Dying Earth setting, I’ll definitely pick it up and give it a shot!

(Goodman Games has a brief discussion of Vance’s writings here.)