The Dying Earth: Tales of the Dying Earth, Book 1 (Unabridged)
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4.2 • 10 Ratings
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- $21.99
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
The stories in The Dying Earth introduce dozens of seekers of wisom and beauty - lovely lost women, wizards of every shade of eccentricity with their runic amulets and spells. We meet the melancholy deodands, who feed on human flesh and the twk-men, who ride dragonflies and trade information for salt. There are monsters and demons. Each being is morally ambiguous: The evil are charming, the good are dangerous. All are at home in Vance’s lyrically described fantastic landscapes, like Embelyon, where, “The sky [was] a mesh of vast ripples and cross-ripples and these refracted a thousand shafts of colored light, rays which in mid-air wove wondrous laces, rainbow nets, in all the jewel hues....”
The dying Earth itself is otherworldly: “A dark blue sky, an ancient sun.... Nothing of Earth was raw or harsh—the ground, the trees, the rock ledge protruding from the meadow; all these had been worked upon, smoothed, aged, mellowed. The light from the sun, though dim, was rich and invested every object of the land ... with a sense of lore and ancient recollection.” Welcome.
Customer Reviews
A true gem of sci-fi/fantasy.
I had listened to the stories in a tribute volume to “The Dying Earth” last year and found them very entertaining, so I thought I ought to read the original book.
It turns out “the Dying Earth” isn’t actually a single story, it’s a collection of short stories that take place on Earth, a few billion years in the future when magic and science have become one. This book is amazing to me, for the fact that it was published in 1950 and yet has no feel of being at all dated., these stories could have been written yesterday. They have more of a fantasy than a sci-fi feel, very atmospheric and dreamlike. Vance created a truly haunting setting with his “Dying Earth”.
I wasn’t crazy about the narrator, he’s a very businesslike reader who keeps up a brisk pace for such startlingly visual stories. But the material transcends whatever may be left to be desired.
Definitely read the tribute volume if you like this, they’re great companion pieces.
from one of the grandmasters
This is a fascinating story by one of the grandmasters. Jack Vance has written classics in both fantasy and science fiction. His writing is stark and unsentimental. In it, you will find evil people and good people, none of whom necessarily view themselves as such. They are simply people, pursuing their goals in a very, very dangerous world.
Here, at the end of countless millennia, the sun is near the end of its life. Powerful sorcerers walk the earth, dreaming of bygone eras before so many of the great spells of yore were forgotten. They vie against one another, steal, kill.
The Dying Earth is where Gygax got the idea of spells having to be memorized, then disappearing from memory as they're cast. And the magic--every spell is a fascinating invention from Vance. Every time I read one of his books, I'm surprised at the sheer number of original ideas he cranks out, page after page.
Read this. It truly is a classic.