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Dying Earth (novel) (view source)

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(Import from TV Tropes TVT:Literature.DyingEarth 2012-07-01, editor history TVTH:Literature.DyingEarth, CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported license)
 
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Welcome to Earth, a few million years in the future. [[The Magic Comes Back|Magic is back]], mostly displacing science, and it is both [[After the End]] and [[Just Before the End]]: Civilization has pretty much collapsed, and the Sun is close to going out. Earth's remaining inhabitants are generally aware of this but have no means to escape their increasingly hot and barren [[Crapsack World]]. Those that haven't become religious zealots are largely [[Nietzsche Wannabe|nihilistic fatalists]], engaging in what debauchery they can in the time left.
 
The original four books consist of short stories about different characters (most notably Turjan of Miir and Rhialto the Marvellous), interspersed with the longer saga of Cugel the Clever. Thief, charlatan, con man, and whatever else he needs to be to get the most benefit with the least work, Cugel teeters on the border between [[Anti -Hero]] and [[Villain Protagonist]]. When he botches robbing the mansion of Iucounu the Laughing Magician, the wizard teleports him across the world with a command to bring back an artifact he wants... and includes a small demon attached to his liver and equipped with various sharp implements to encourage his compliance. The series relates his various adventures attempting to return and revenge himself on Iucounu, while conning as many people as possible out of their valuables and/or virginity along the way.
 
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* [[An Aesop]]: One of the stories with T'sais is definitely one, some of the other ''Dying Earth'' stories could be said to be one also. Arguably, Cugel the Clever learns that backstabbing is bad and trust is good by the end of his second book.
* [[Anti -Hero]]: Liane the Wayfarer. Also Cugel. Also Magnus Ridolph. In fact many of Vance's characters are [[Anti -Hero|antiheroes]].
* [[Artificial Human]]: T'sais and T'sain
* [[Badass Bookworm]]: The Curator, Guyal of Sfere
* [[BraininaBrain In A Jar]]: Rogol Domedonfors, ruler of Ampridatvir
* [[Casanova]]: Rhialto the Marvellous
* [[Clarke's Third Law]]: Ampridatvir
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