The Dying Earth – By Jack Vance: A review.
In going through the list of recommended novels in the back of the Dungeon Master’s Guide, I was always intrigued by the titles listed for Jack Vance. Having never read any of his works before, I was curious to know what had made them stand out enough to merit mention as seminal to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.
Finding a copy of The Dying Earth took me long enough, although there is a trade paperback version of the book available through Amazon.com, I first sought out a second-hand copy to ensure I wouldn’t be too terribly disappointed if I didn’t like it.
I wasn’t disappointed.
The Dying Earth, as the name implies, deals with an Earth very close to it’s own doom – in the far reaches of the future. Our sun has swollen and grown weaker by the millennium, and the few humans remaining on earth have become melancholy and estranged; the study of science over the eons has given way to the practice of magic, and the knowledge and civilizations of the past have long been lost or forgotten.
But there is still some adventure unto this age. Magic-users, cutthroat killers, mutants and other weird creatures populate the short stories that comprise The Dying Earth and give it a life all their own. For example, a young thaumaturgic experimenter named Turjan, who seeks to create life in his own laboratory – even when he has failed several times, and when one of his creations slays his sole success, he soldiers on, bringing hope to a hopeless world.
T’sais, the beautiful but mad enchantress from a different world is cursed with the inability to perceive any good or any beauty, and thus tries to destroy or slay all life she sees – until she meets Etarr, a being doomed to live without his own face. Through this she struggles to come to understand the meanings of good and beauty – and love.
Vance’s writing style is a pure joy to take in. Each place or object he describes seems have an indescribable baroque feel to it, as if at once futuristic and ancient. The characters themselves sometimes seem wooden, or distant, so becoming sympathetic with a character isn’t necessarily easy. But overall, the nobility of individual deeds by some of them make it a slightly easier read.
The only other complaint about The Dying Earth is it’s brevity – it shows us little of the future-ancient Earth, and as tantalizing as those glimpses are, they’re frustratingly incomplete feeling. Perhaps I would have been better off purchasing The Compleat Dying Earth (a volume which contains The Dying Earth, Eyes of the Overworld and other short stories from the same milieu); next time I’ll know better.
As to it’s relation to Dungeons & Dragons, several spells (Prismatic Spray and Prismatic Sphere, to name but a pair) are lifted straight from the novel. Further, the whole mechanic of learning and memorizing spells and losing them after casting until re-memorized comes from The Dying Earth: all of the magicians live in fear of expending their last defensive spell and being caught without any ability to protect themselves.
Overall, The Dying Earth is a worthy read if your tastes run towards authors such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, or some of the earlier works of Michael Moorcock, such as The Ice Ships.
Three of Five stars.