1991, Omnibus Edition, Tom Doherty Associates
City of the Chasch
3 ⭐
P.12-13:
"The scouts aboard the Explorator IV were Adam Reith and Paul Waunder. Both were men of resource and stamina; each was Master of many skills; there the resemblance ended. Reith was an inch or two over average height, dark-haired, with a broad forehead, prominent cheekbones, rather gaunt cheeks where showed an occasional twitch of muscle...
...Waunder was older by a year or two; Reith however, held senior rank, and was in nominal command of the scout boat: a miniature spaceship 30 ft long, carried in a clamp under the Explorator stern.
In something over 2 minutes they were aboard the scout boat. Waunder went to the controls; Reith sealed the hatch, pushed the detach-button. The scout-boat Eased away from the great black hull. Reith took his seat, and as he did so a flicker of movement registered at the corner of his vision. He glimpsed a gray projectile darting up from the direction of the planet, then his eyes were battered by a tremendous purple white dazzle. There was rending and wrenching, violent acceleration as Waunder clutched convulsively upon the throttle, and the scout-book went careening down toward the planet."
P.74-5:
"Anacho [a Dirdirman] spoke on, describing his difficulties, but Reith's attention wandered. it was clear, to Reith at least, how men had come to Tschai. The Dirdir had known space-travel for more than 70,000 years. During this time they evidently had visited earth, twice at the very least. On the first occasion they had captured a tribe of photo - mongoloids; on the 2nd occasion -- 20,000 years ago, according to Anacho -- they had collected a cargo of proto - Caucasoids. These two groups, under special conditions of Tschai, had mutated, specialized, remutated, re-specialized to produce the bewildering diversity of human types to be found on the planet."

Animal cruelty on Tschai:
P.100:
"at a Corral to the rear of the inn Reith and the Dirdirman hired leap-horses of a tall rubber-legged breed strange to Reith. The ostler threw on the saddles, shoved guide-bars through holes in the creatures' brains, at which they screamed and whipped the air with their palps. The reins were attached, Reith and Anacho vaulted up into the saddles; the beasts made angry sidling leaps, then sprang off down the road."

Servants of the Wankh
4 ⭐
The strange Phung:
P.161:
"it was over 8 ft in height, in its soft black hat and black cloak, like a giant grasshopper in magisterial vestments.
Reith studied the face, watching the slow working of chitinous plates around the lower section of the face. It watched the Green Chasch with brooding detachment, though they crouched over their pots not 10 yards away.
'a mad thing,' whispered Traz, his eyes glittering. 'Look, now it plays tricks!'
the Phung reached down its long thin arms, raised a small Boulder which it heaved high into the air. The Rock dropped among the Chasch, falling squarely upon a hulking back.
the Green Chasch sprang up, to glare toward the top of the butte. The Phung stood quietly, lost among the shadows. The Chasch which had been struck lay flat on its face, making convulsive swimming motions with arms and legs.
The Phung craftily lifted another great Rock, once more heaved it high, but this time the chasch saw the movement. venting squeals of fury they seized their swords and flung themselves forward. The Phung took a stately step aside, then leaping in a great flutter of cloak snatched a sword, which it wielded as if it were a toothpick, hacking, dancing, whirling, cutting wildly, apparently without Aim or direction. The Chasch scattered; some lay on the ground, and the Phung jumped here and there, slashing and slicing, without discrimination, the Green Chasch, the fire, the air, like a mechanical toy running out of control.
crouching and shifting, the Green Chasch hulked forward. They chopped, cut; the Phung threw away the sword as if it were hot, and was hacked into pieces. The head spun off the torso, landed on the ground 10 feet from one of the fires, with the soft black hat still in place. Reith watched it through the scanscope. The head seemed conscious, untroubled. The eyes watched the fire; the mouth parts worked slowly.
'it will live for days, until it dries out,' said traz huskily. 'gradually it will go stiff.' "

Blue Jade Flower, a young woman kidnapped by witches to serve as a sacrifice in their man-hating festival, had promised Reith that her father, the Blue Jade Lord of The Blue Jade Palace, would reward Reith for saving her, giving him whatever he asked. Thus, Reith planned to ask him for money to build his spaceship to return to earth. But the Blue Jade Lord wasn't so happy when Reith told him that Blue Jade Flower had killed herself, on the journey to Cath.
P.207:
" '...I helped her escape from the Priestesses of the Female Mystery; thereafter she was secure and under my protection. She was anxious to return to Cath and urged me to accompany her, assuring me of your friendship and gratitude. but as soon as we started Eastward she became gloomy, and, as I say, halfway across the Draschade she threw herself overboard.'
While Reith spoke Cizante's face had shifted through phases and degrees of various emotions. 'so now,' He said in a clipped voice, 'with my daughter dead, after circumstances I do not care to imagine, you come hurrying here to claim the boon.'
Reuth said coldly, 'I knew then and know nothing now of this "boon". I came to Cath for several reasons, the least important of which was to make myself known to you. I find you indisposed to what I consider civilized standards of courtesy and I will now leave.' Reith Gave a curt nod and started for the door. He turned back. 'if you wish to learn further details regarding your daughter, consult Dordolio, whom we found stranded at Coad.'
Reith left the room. The Lord's sibilant murmur reached his ears: 'you are an uncouth fellow.'
In the hall waited the majordomo, who greeted Reith with the faintest of smiles. he indicated a rather dim passageway painted red and blue. 'This way, sir.'
Reith Paid him no heed. Crossing into the grand foyer, he left the way he had come."

Lord Cizante's aide, Helsse, offers to advise Reithth in the best way to approach The Blue Jade Lord. They go out to a nightclub together, where Reith observes some strange musical performers.
P.214-5:
"The orchestra had dispersed. to the platform came a somewhat obese man in a long maroon robe. Behind him sat a woman with long black hair plucking a lute. the man produced an ululating wail: half-words which Reith was unable to comprehend. 'another traditional Melody?' he inquired.
Helsse shrugged. 'A special mode of singing. It is not all together without value. If everyone belabored themselves thusly, there would be far less aWaile [a word meaning the dark side of a being].'
Reith listened. 'Judge me harshly, all,' Moaned the singer. 'I have performed a terrible crime; it is because of my despair.' "

The Dirdir
4 ⭐
On their journeying in the sky-car they captured, the three stay at different inns. One of them is riddled with the Planet Tschai's equivalent of cockroaches. The owners of the inn, instead of fighting them, make use of them.
P.312-3:
"Anacho turned the sky-car somewhat to the north and landed at a dingy village on the Sandy North cape. the three spent the night at the Glass Blowers Inn, a structure contrived of bottles and jugs discarded by the shops at the sand-Pits behind the town. The inn was dank and permeated with a peculiar acrid odor; the evening meal of soup, served in heavy Green Glass turreens, evinced something of the same flavor. Reith remarked on the similarity to Anacho, who summoned the Gray servant and put a haughty question. The servant indicated a large black insect darting across the floor. 'the skarats do indeed be pungent creatures, and exhale a chife. Bevol made a plague on us, until we put them to use and found them nutritious. Now we hardly capture enough.'
Reith long had been careful never to make inquiry regarding food set before him, but now he looked askance into the tureen. 'You mean... The soup?'
'indeed,' declared the servant. 'The soup, the bread, the pickles: I'll be skarat - flavored, and if we did not use them of purpose, they'd infest us to the same effect, so we make a virtue of convenience, and think to enjoy the taste.'
Reith Drew back from the soup. Traz ate stolidly. Anacho gave a petulant sniff and also ate. It occurred to Reith that never on Tschai had he noticed squeamishness. He heaved a deep sigh, and since no other food was forthcoming, swallowed the rancid soup."

The Pnume
4 ⭐
Reith is at last constructing his spaceship. However, the man he is forced to use as a go-between to hire the technicians that work on it, is a crook. While Reith is sleeping, he drugs him and the Pnume capture him, taking him to their underground city. Reith Escapes, but is forced to kidnap a young female to help him find his way out.
P.450-1:
"She spoke softly: 'why do you look at me like that?'
'I was thinking,' he said, 'that, considering the circumstances, you appear remarkably unconcerned.'
She made no immediate reply. There was a heavy silence in the dim passage. then she said, 'I float upon the current of life; how should I question where it carries me? It would be impudent to think of preferences; existence, after all, is a privilege given a very few.'
Reith Leaned back against the wall. 'A very few? How so?'
the girl became uneasy; her white fingers twisted. 'how it goes on the GHAUN I don't know; perhaps you do things differently. in the Shelters the mother-women spawn 12 times and no more than half -- sometimes less -- survive... ' She continued in a voice of didactic reflection: 'I have heard that all the women of the GHAUN are mother-women. Is this true? I can't believe it. If each spawned 12 times, and even if six went to the Pit, the GHAUN would boil with living flesh. It seems unreasonable.' she added, as a possibly disconnected afterthought, 'I am glad that I will never be a mother-woman.'
again Reith was puzzled. 'How can you be sure? You're young yet.'
the girls face twitched with what might have been embarrassment. 'Can't you see? Do I look to be a mother-woman?'
'I don't know what your mother-women look like.'
'they bulge at the chest and hips. Aren't GHIAN mothers the same? some say the Pnume decide who will be mother-women and take them to the crêche. There they lie in the dark and spawn.' " ( )

My own favourites are the Cadwal Chronicles and the Alastor trilogy and, as a stand alone: “Night Lamp”. The majority of his short-stories are also great. The long running thread on the multi-volume philosophical treatise "Life" by Baron Bodissey, as well as Bodissey himself, which pop up in many of Vance's novels as either footnotes or character discussion is brilliant and amusing. Only Terry Pratchett comes close in his use of footnotes to both expand on and intensify a joke/idea.

Jack Vance is without doubt one of the greatest fantasists of his generation. He gets sidelined, I think, because he's not as directly political of the proto-New Wavers (Pohl, Dick, etc.) and not as commercially inclined as, say, Frank Herbert. He also wrote a lot of pot boilers in the fifties and first half of the sixties, before raising his game immensely between 1965 and 1985 (when he was in his late fifties to eighties!). In The Lyonesse Trilogy”, wherein you will see the roots of a lot of the last decade's "gritty" fantasy and New Weird. In fact, pretty much everything by Vance is worth reading.

His SF is of the distinctly non-hard variety, harkening back more to Flash Gordon era space opera with a darker view of the human state, and of course that brilliant, vivid Vancean imagination. Try Big Planet to give you a taste, then move on to the “Demon Princes” and “Planet of Adventure” ("City of the Chasch", "Servants of the Wankh", "The Dirdir" and "The Pnume") - they're five and four book series respectively, but only amount to the length of one of today's bloated epics.

Much modern fantasy suffers from a need to be perceived as ark, and combined with a desire to out-epic the competition it's led to something of a sameness in the huge-number-of-mutilated-dead count, tougher-than-the-last-tough-guy hyperinflation, and characters flawed by their amorality or brutality (Gwynne, Lawrence, Weeks, Ryan, etc.).

“Planet of Adventure” is still a 4 stars read for me after all these years.



SF = Speculative Fiction. ( )

Tornare sul buon vecchio Pianeta Tschai è sempre un piacere... ( )

This is classic science fiction, written by a master. The story is a series of four action/science fiction stories centered around scout Adam Reith, the only surviving member of a spaceship that has journeyed to the distant planet of Tschai to investigate a distress signal. The spaceship is destroyed and his scout ship is shot down and his partner slaughtered by the one of the five races on the planet. Adam uses his sensibility and cunning to help men oppressed by the one race and one race oppressed by men. He befriends the leader of the nomads and a human running from prosecution, and the three travel the planet together trying to help Adam get back to earth. ( )

Sempre un gran bel leggere fantascienza/science fantasy avventurosa. ( )