Earth is a decadent world older than memory, the bloated red sun soon to wink out forever. Iucounu the Laughing Magician has for the second time magicked Cugel the Clever across the Ocean of Sighs, to faraway Shanglestone Strand. Beset by thieves and sche...
Eight of these nine stories were published between 1951 and 1955, years when Jack Vance wrote for the pulp magazines. Even in this early work, the voice of the future SFWA Grandmaster may be heard.
The planet Pao has a stagnant culture. Scientists of the neighboring world Breakness launch a ruthless experiment, jarring Pao into new vitality by installing three class-languages; one for a warrior class, one for technicians, and one for merchants. But...
The races of Koryphon keep an uneasy peace - the swift, nomadic Wind-runners, the fierce Uldras, and the aristocratic Outkers. For over two hundred years the Outkers have occupied the Alouan lands, living in baronial splendor where Uldra chieftains once...
Big Planet is a far-away world where any metal is rare. Its surface area is 20 times that of Earth. It is populated by the descendants of outlaws and dissidents who formed many tribes and societies, each with its own strange customs. On the Big Planet,...
Roy Barch, the first Earthman held captive by the Klau on the planet Magarak, had to accomplish the superhuman - he had to fins a way back to Earth! And he had to warn his people, make them aware of the menace from the skies, or in no time the entire huma...
This volume might have been titled "The Early Jack Vance", as it features stories from the first dozen years of Vance's career, when his major outlet was pulp magazines. In these stories, Vance already displays the lively imagination and...
The Alastor Cluster: A sprawling system of thirty thousand live stars and three thousand inhabited planets, the cluster is ruled by the mysterious Connatic. He sees all and knows all, but with five trillion people contained within such far-flung boundarie...
Kirth Gersen tracks Lens Larque across several worlds, most notably Aloysius, the desert world Dar Sai and the more temperate Methel. He eventually learns that Larque is a rachepol Darsh, born Husse Bugold, who became a notorious criminal renowned for...
The Alastor Cluster: A sprawling system of thirty thousand live stars and three thousand inhabited planets, the cluster is ruled by the mysterious Connatic. He sees all and knows all, but with five trillion people contained within such far-flung boundarie...