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Jack Vance: Difference between revisions
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{{quote| ''"An idea of great merit! While we are alive we should sit among colored lights and taste good wines, and discuss our adventures in far places; when we are dead, the opportunity is past."''}}
Jack Vance
Many of his science fiction works share a common, very broad setting called the Gaean Reach, a huge area with many, many settled stars. The area is so large that the works actually have little in common, except some details of shared culture.
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* [[Awesome McCoolname]] -- ''Jack Vance''. Seriously.
* [[Badass Bookworm]] -- The Curator, Guyal of Sfere
* [[Big Words]] -- Very common in his writing and often used by jerkass characters. Reading Vance is a great way to expand your vocabulary.
** One reviewer commented that part of the charm of Vance's work is the incongruity of "dull, stupid, ignorant" people who from time to time use implausibly erudite turns of phrase.
* [[Blue and Orange Morality]] -- A constant theme in his works. No two settings have the same prevailing moral code.
* [[
* [[Clarke's Third Law]] -- Ampridatvir
* [[Character Development]] -- Cugel the Clever behaves quite differently towards the end of the second book, capable of making friends who he does ''not'' plan to backstab later.
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* [[Narrative Filigree]] -- A constant in the works of Jack Vance. World building is an objective in and of itself. In ''Lyonnesse'' we learn the exact layout of Suldrun's garden, the names of the plants, how it looks at several times and day and times of year. For the grand plot it would suffice to simply confine Suldrun to her garden. Vance will build up a history, a religion, a race, a river or a plain, never necessarily needing it to advance the core story.
** Vance will seriously create societies and planets to mention them in passing without any relevance to the nominal story.
* [[Nice Job Breaking It Hero]] / [[Nice Job Fixing It Villain]] -- Characters ''often'' screw themselves up this way.
** "The Miracle Workers" is set on a planet where human colonists made [[Hollywood Voodoo]] '''work''' to replace their aging technological weapons. When the planet's natives finally decide to attack the humans, one of the "jinxmen" notices that dying natives spew a purple foam. Deciding this foam must be associated in the aliens' minds with death, he uses his powers to project the image of purple foam into the minds of a large group. Another jinxman explains, "Then he learned that purple foam means not death--purple foam means fear for the safety of the community, purple foam means desperate rage." So he tries to intimidate them with an effect that turns them into [[Determinator]]s. Oops.
* [[Our Nudity Is Different]] -- In "The Moon Moth", everybody keeps their faces covered at all times by stylized masks that show the wearer's current social standing. Not even spouses ever see each other's naked faces.
* [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism]] -- Vance visits every point on the scale in his many different worlds -- being most at home with cynicism. The ''Dying Earth'' setting seems like it is an ''extremely'' cynical [[Crapsack World]] in most respects, but there are often morals that you'd expect to find much further on the Idealistic scale.
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