Dying Earth


Dying Earth is a speculative fiction series by the American author Jack Vance, comprising four books originally published from 1950 to 1984.
Some have been called picaresque. The series includes short story collections, fix-ups, and novels.
The first book in the series, The Dying Earth, was ranked number 16 of 33 "All Time Best Fantasy Novels" by Locus in 1987, based on a poll of subscribers, although it was marketed as a collection and the Internet Speculative Fiction Database calls it a "loosely connected series of stories".
The Dying Earth series has been described as a "sword and sorcery" series, as the plots of the various stories often revolve around picaresque exploits, swordplay, and magic.

Setting

The stories of the Dying Earth series are set in the distant future, at a point when the sun is almost exhausted and magic has reasserted itself as a dominant force. The Moon has disappeared and the Sun is in danger of burning out at any time, often flickering as if about to go out, before shining again. The various civilizations of Earth have collapsed for the most part into decadence or religious fanaticism and its inhabitants overcome with a fatalistic outlook. The Earth is mostly barren and cold, and has become infested with various predatory monsters.
Magic in the Dying Earth is performed by memorizing syllables, and the human brain can only accommodate a certain number at once. When a spell is used, the syllables vanish from the caster's mind. Creatures called sandestins can be summoned and used to perform more complex actions, but are considered dangerous to rely upon. Magic has loose links to the science of old, and advanced mathematics is treated like arcane lore.
The Dying Earth exists alongside several Overworlds and Underworlds. These help add a sense of profound longing and entrapment to the series. While humans can, with relative ease, physically travel to the horrific Underworlds the vast majority of the population are only capable of mentally visiting the wondrous Overworlds through rare artifacts or dangerous magic phenomena. Though they can look at the wonders and pretend they are really there, humans can never truly inhabit or escape to these utopias as their physical bodies remain stuck on the Dying Earth and will die with the sun regardless. These siren-like visions of paradise lead to the deaths, insanity, and suffering of many, especially during Cugel's journeys.
While most remaining civilizations on the Dying Earth are utterly unique in their customs and cultures, there are some common threads. Because the moon is gone and wind is often weak the oceans are largely placid bodies of water with no tide and tiny waves. To cross them, boats are propelled by giant sea-worms. These worms are cared for and controlled by "Wormingers". In addition, the manses of magicians, protected by walls and spells and monsters, are relatively common sights in inhabited lands.

Origins

Vance wrote the stories of the first book while he served in the United States Merchant Marine during World War II. In the late 1940s several of his other stories were published in magazines.
Science fiction historian Brian Stableford noted the influence of Clark Ashton Smith and his "Zothique" stories on the "Dying Earth" series.
According to pulp editor Sam Merwin, Vance's earliest magazine submissions in the 1940s were heavily influenced by the style of James Branch Cabell. Fantasy historian Lin Carter has noted several probable lasting influences of Cabell on Vance's work, and suggests that the early "pseudo-Cabell" experiments bore fruit in The Dying Earth.

Series

The series comprises four books by Vance and some sequels by other authors that may be or may not have been canonical.
  • The Dying Earth — 1950 collection of original, related stories
  • The Eyes of the Overworld — 1966 fix-up
  • Cugel's Saga — 1983 novel
  • Rhialto the Marvellous — 1984 collection of related stories and one canonical essay
One 741-page omnibus edition has been issued as The Compleat Dying Earth and in both the US and UK as Tales of the Dying Earth.

Stories by Vance

All four books were published with Tables of Contents, the first and fourth as collections. The second and third contained mostly material previously published in short story form but were marketed as novels, the second as a fix-up and the third without acknowledging any previous publication.
  1. The Dying Earth was openly a collection of six stories, all original, although written during Vance's war service. ISFDB calls them "slightly connected" and catalogs the last as a novella.
  2. # "Turjan of Miir"
  3. # "Mazirian the Magician"
  4. # "T'sais"
  5. # "Liane the Wayfarer"
  6. # "Ulan Dhor Ends a Dream"
  7. # "Guyal of Sfere"
  8. The Eyes of the Overworld was a fix-up of six stories, presented as seven. All were novelettes by word count. Five were previously published as noted here.
  9. # "The Overworld", from F&SF December 1965
  10. # "Cil", the original component
  11. # "The Mountains of Magnatz", from F&SF February 1966
  12. # "The Sorcerer Pharesm", from F&SF April 1966
  13. # "The Pilgrims", from F&SF June 1966
  14. # "The Cave in the Forest", originally the first part of "The Manse of Iucounu"
  15. # "The Manse of Iucounu", from F&SF July 1966
  16. Cugel's Saga was marketed as a novel. ISFDB calls it "wice as large and less episodic than The Eyes of the Overworld" but qualifies that label. "This is marketed as a novel, but there is a table of contents, and some of the parts were previously published." It catalogs previous publication of three chapters without remark on the degree of revision.
  17. # "Flutic", the first part of the first chapter, published separately in the Italian anthology Fantasy and rereleased in English in Coup de Grace and Other Stories, a sampler of the Vance Integral Edition
  18. # "The Inn of Blue Lamps"
  19. # "Aboard the Galante"
  20. # "Lausicaa"
  21. # "The Ocean of Sighs"
  22. # "The Columns"
  23. # "Faucelme"
  24. # "On the Docks"
  25. # "The Caravan"
  26. # "The Seventeen Virgins", from F&SF October 1974
  27. # "The Bagful of Dreams", from Flashing Swords #4, ed. Lin Carter, May 1977
  28. # "The Four Wizards"
  29. # "Spatterlight"
  30. Rhialto the Marvellous was marketed as a collection, a Foreword and three stories, one previously published. The Foreword is non-narrative canonical fiction presenting the general state of the world in the 21st Aeon.
  31. # "Foreword", with list of players
  32. # "The Murthe"
  33. # "Fader's Waft"
  34. # "Morreion", from Flashing Swords! #1, ed. Lin Carter, April 1973

    Sequels

Some sequels have been written by other authors, either with Vance's authorization or as tributes to his work.
Michael Shea's first publication, the novel A Quest for Simbilis, was an authorized sequel to Eyes. However, "When Vance returned to the milieu, his Cugel's Saga continued the events of The Eyes of the Overworld in a different direction."
The tribute anthology Songs of the Dying Earth contains short fiction set in the world of the Dying Earth by numerous writers alongside tributes to Vance's work and influence.
In 2010 Shea wrote another authorized story belonging to the Dying Earth series and featuring Cugel as one of characters: "Hew the Tintmaster", published in the anthology Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery, ed. Jonathan Strahan and Lou Anders.

Translations

contributing libraries report holding all four books in French, Spanish, and Hebrew translations; and report holding The Dying Earth in five other languages: Finnish, German, Japanese, Polish, and Russian.
The whole first volume has been translated also into Esperanto together with two Cugel stories and made available on-line as e-books by a long-time fan and Vance Integral Edition co-worker. Permission to translate and distribute was obtained informally direct from the author and, since his death in 2013, continues with ongoing permission from the author's estate. To date these are three: Mazirian the Magician, The Sorcerer Pharesm, and The Bagful of Dreams available for free download as EPub, Mobi and PDF.
The entire series has seen several Italian translations, and in Italy Vance remains one of the US scifi authors most often translated and published

Legacy

The Dying Earth subgenre of science fiction is named in recognition of Vance's role in standardizing a setting, the entropically dying earth and sun. Its importance was recognized with the publication of Songs of the Dying Earth, a tribute anthology edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. Each short story in the anthology is set on the Dying Earth, and concludes with a short acknowledgement by the author of Vance's influence on them.

Print

's The Book of the New Sun is set in a slightly similar world, and was written under Vance's influence. Wolfe suggested in The Castle of the Otter, a collection of essays, that he inserted the book The Dying Earth into his fictional world under the title The Book of Gold. Wolfe has extended the series.
Michael Shea's novel Nifft the Lean, his second book eight years after A Quest for Simbilis, also owes much debt to Vance's creation, since the protagonist of the story is a petty thief, who travels and struggles in an exotic world. Shea returned to Nifft with 1997 and 2000 sequels.
The Archonate stories by Matthew Hughes — the 1994 novel Fools Errant and numerous works in this millennium —
take place in "the penultimate age of Old Earth," a period of science and technology that is on the verge of transforming into the magical era of the time of the Dying Earth.
Booklist has called him Vance's "heir apparent."