'The Men Return'

I guess 'weird' means different things to different people, but I've just reread the Jack Vance short story The Men Return and still think (as I did when I first came across it back in the 1980s) that it's one of the strangest things I've ever read - not 'weird' in the formal horror-story sense, but more in the informal one of just genuinely, deliciously, surreal. Does anyone out there know of anything similar (or even more so) - any advance on Vance?

I haven't read that story, but what I've read of Vance I've mostly liked. The Dying Earth, frex, is great, and while not Weird certainly full of weirdness.

Not familiar with that particular story, but if you enjoy Vance you're sure to like the sublimely weird Clark Ashton Smith, who was a significant influence on him.

Vance's Tales of the Dying Earth (an omnibus edition including the Cugel and Rhialto stories) do share some of that surreal quality, but I suspect that you'll find some of his short stories to be much more like The Men Return than his novels. Try Green Magic (available online here), or the story collection The Narrow Land. The novella The Last Castle might also tickle your fancy.

(and at the risk of spamming: cheap digital story collections are available on his fansite. Disclaimer: I have no connection whatsoever to that website.)

I second arttunerjr's recommendation of Clark Ashton Smith.

edited to fix link

4 > The link to the fansite needs fixing, methinks.

The Last Castle is quite good.

Thx, AndreasJ, I fixed it.

Yeah, I've also got to second Art at #3. If you're a Dying Earth fan, you must read Clark Ashton Smith's stories of Zothique, where it all originally ended.

Thanks to everybody for some excellently weird-sounding suggestions - all of which I'll be following up.

Hi
Thanks to you all I'll join Clark Ashton Smith with Jack Vance on my list of authors I wish to try out.
I haven't come across any of Vance's books but the tribute Songs of the Dying Earth had plenty of weird tales.

For weird laws of nature and aplications thereof I'll recomend Julie E. Czerneda espescially Ties of Power or Beholder's eye.

In Startide Rising david Brin sets out to apply all kinds of technologies, laws of physics, and cultures he can think of. The result are a gigantic melé of a space battle where our heroes goal is to lurk away unscathed. A hilarious story for the openminded. Be warned though, in this novel Brins fondness for odd language and poetry flourishes and can be to much to swallow fore some.

9 > If you read e-books, www.jackvance.com has more-or-less the lot (and the man wrote a lot) at quite affordable prices.