All Tomorrows: The Dying Earth
A reader is not supposed to be aware that someone’s written the story. He’s supposed to be completely immersed, submerged in the environment.
-Jack Vance
In 1955, The Lord of the Rings was published, and promptly changed fantasy forever. In its juggernaut status, the particular breed of epic it spawned often pushed aside, in the popular mind, any type of fantasy that came before.
Just what was that? Its rough-hewn predecessors took the form of hybrid stories rooted in fairy-tale, lurid history and the raw juices of pulp adventure. Robert E. Howard’s sword and sorcery romps are a perfect example — as are H.P. Lovecraft’s nightmares, for that matter. While the characters here may be connected to grand events, this was a fantasy of short stories, not novels. Instead of a painstakingly described mythos, this thrived on brain-watering mysteries and jolt endings.
Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth hit the stands in 1950. A collection of six perfect, interlaced stories set in a time when Earth’s sun is sputtering out and no line remains between sorcery and science, it didn’t exactly produce the literary paradigm shift that Tolkien did, but it has had its pull. Gene Wolfe, Tanith Lee and numerous other authors were influenced by Vance. Gary Gygax also drew heavily from it when crafting the magic of the original Dungeons and Dragons.
I’d read about it often before finally tracking down a tattered paperback copy (it seems to come in no other form). The feeling I got when I finally immersed myself in its pages was that, growing up, these were the fairy tales I’d always wanted.
Hope faded from T’sais’ eyes. “I wish to go to Earth,” she said presently. “The sky of Earth is a steady blue, and a red sun moves over the horizons. I tire of Embelyon where there is no voice but yours.”
“Earth,” mused Pandelume. “A dim place, ancient beyond knowledge. Once it was a tall world of cloudy mountains and bright rivers, and the sun was a white blazing ball. Ages of rain and wind have beaten and rounded the granite, and the sun is feeble and red. The continents have sunk and risen. A million cities have lifted towers, have fallen to dust. In place of the old peoples a few thousand strange souls live. There is evil on Earth, evil distilled by time…. Earth is dying and in its twilight…” he paused.
T’sais said doubtfully: “Yet I have heard Earth is a place of beauty, and I would know beauty, even though I die.”
“How will you know beauty when you see it?”
“All human beings know beauty… Am I not human?”
“Of course.”
-from T’sais
Vance originally wrote the Dying Earth stories while serving in the Merchant Marine during World War II. Getting his first publication in the science fiction magazines of the day, Vance then managed to get all six stories published in one book just as a new decade was rolling around. He’s a rare figure for sci-fi, straddling in theme and time the twilight of the old pulps, the rise of the Deviant Age of the 60s and 70s and after (his most recent novel was published in 2004).
When some of the Deviant Age’s wordsmiths began drawing from fantasy sources besides the traditional epic, his works sprung out of obscurity (as did Howard and Lovecraft’s, but those are stories for other days). The Dying Earth got its first hardback printing in 1976, long after its debut. Vance would later write more stories and novels set on the world of the Dying Earth — they’re good, no doubt — but this volume stands perfectly by itself.
All six stories show a mastery of plot and concision. The characters, while quickly growing on the reader, are broadest archetypes, with just enough depth added to take them past the usual fairy-tale type. While creating an utterly immersive world, Vance never feels the need to let us in on every detail. There is no need to know why the immensely powerful mathematician Pandelume cannot be seen, or why exactly Valdaran the Just is so hell-bent on hunting down all black magic. Vance has the wisdom to know a good mystery is often more delicious than the answer.
He also has the sense to set the scene without fanfare. The stories begin simply (“Turjan sat in his workroom” “Through the dim forest came Liane the Wayfarer”) and plunge directly into the action, relying on its strength to pull the reader along through the last days of Earth. To be sure, not all the pulp influences sit well (“Quiet, vixen!” said Turjan, “lest I lose patience and stun you!”) but “Once upon a time” could easily be inserted before any of them, they’re that grandly basic.
Liane felt a presence. He leapt back, rapier half-bared. A stooped old man stood watching him. He spoke in a feeble, quavering voice: “And what will you have in the Old Town?”
Liane replaced his rapier. “I seek the Palace of Whispers. Perhaps you will direct me.”
The old man made a croaking sound at the back of his throat. “Another? Another? When will it cease?…” He motioned to the corpse. “This one came yesterday seeking the Palace of Whispers. He would still from Chun the Unavoidable. See him now.” He turned away. “Come with me.” He disappeared over a tumble of rock.
Liane followed. The old man stood by another corpse with eye-sockets bereft and bloody. “This one came four days ago, and he met Chun the Unavoidable … And over there behind the arch is still a great warrior in cloison armor. And there— and there—” he pointed, pointed. “And there— and there— like crushed flies.”
He turned his watery blue gaze back to Liane.
“Return, young man, return— lest your body lie here in its green cloak to rot on the flagstones.”
-from Liane the Wayfarer
And what action it is. The unforgettable chase scene that forms the crux of Mazirian the Magician fires the blood and the Green and Gray zealots of Ulan Dohr have the metaphorical punch of a good Twilight Zone episode. In what might be my favorite of the whole lot, Liane the Wayfarer has one of the most masterfully woven surprise endings around (and yes, Chun will always terrify me).
In a genius move, Vance writes with no difference between his characters’ grandiose spells (Excellent Prismatic Spray!), flying cars and growing people in vats. All of the above just represent different varieties of forgotten lore capable of shaping the slowly-ending world to their own aims. In the end, there is little difference between the dire wizard and the mad scientist.
Yet for its title and the overall theme of decayed glory, The Dying Earth is part of its time, optimistic for all its fears, especially in its final story, Guyal of Sfere, a tribute to that insatiable, geekish curiosity mocked by the mainstream no matter the generation. Yeah, Earth may be dying, but there is still vitality, love and well, fun. Vance was far, far ahead of his time here: the overall sense is one of limitless possibility, the feeling that lies at the heart of all great science fiction and fantasy. Anything can happen.
Question: In their tone and theme, much of The Dying Earth reads as fairy tales from another time. What are today’s fairy tales and how do they speak to you?
July 20th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
This is good. Also: recent Vance-related Metafilter post
July 21st, 2009 at 5:33 am
Our fairy tales are born, live and die on the internet, or at least those of a mythological bent, rather than the cautionary tale variety, are.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about forums, chatrooms, MMOs, blogs or whatever, the internet is built around human, albeit remote, interaction. Where people interact, stories are born and people will tell and re-tell those stories. The internet is almost tailor-made for stories to spread, flourish and achieve mythological status. Some never make it past their original peer group, others go as far as the mainstream. Some even make it onto t-shirts.
The flipside of this is the equal rapidity with which these tales die out. I’m often reminded of how, in Transmetropolitan, aliens make contact and their entire culture is popularised, used and then dumped by humanity in a couple of years. We have fairy tales that are hundreds of years old, myths that date back to ancient civilisations, but globally popular, modern-day legends that will be lucky to be more than a tired old joke next week.
July 21st, 2009 at 10:31 am
daniel: The NY TImes profile is excellent. Thank you for the link.
BigJonno:
Our fairy tales are born, live and die on the internet, or at least those of a mythological bent, rather than the cautionary tale variety, are.
Can you give some examples?
July 21st, 2009 at 2:25 pm
The one that sprang to mind as I was writing was the infamous Leeroy Jenkins. A guy runs into a room while playing World of Warcraft and wipes his raid. The video is posted on the internet (which many claim was staged anyway) and the guy becomes a legend, appearing on t-shirts, in the WoW CCG and miniatures games, all across the internet. “Doing a Leeroy” has become common MMORPG jargon. In the office I worked in at the time, people who never played WoW, who didn’t even game all that much, knew who Leeroy Jenkins was. It was flogged to death and everyone got sick of it and in a couple of years no-one outside of WoW players will ever give it more than a passing thought.
Events outside of the internet itself are passed on in the same way. Look at the recent Susan Boyle phenomenon. You can buy fan made Su-Bo dolls. Will anyone care in year or two?
It’s that kind of thing that reminds me of tales shared by the fireside, ones that get passed on and grow with the telling until they become overblown and fantastic. It’s just that here, on the internet, it happens ridiculously quickly. Instead of these stories achieving a true, lingering, legendary status, they are quickly forgotten as we move on to the Next Big Thing.
July 21st, 2009 at 11:21 pm
In a world where everything is random and slowly falls apart I find that my own fairytales are the neat stories, with endings that make sense and that leave no questions – Jeff Noon and Iain Banks perhaps.
Vance I read a lot of late 80s and then again late 90s. Perhaps time for some more of that. Never liked his fantasy setting stuff though.
Perfect chewing-gum-for-the-brain would be something along the lines of The Adventures of Jack (or Bobby) Shaftoe.
As the godfather of my best friend’s kids, is it a bad thing to already have a plan for their future reading?
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:39 am
Fantastic article – I’ve been thinking about Jack Vance lately, and this gave me renewed determination to hunt down his books. I’ve only read “Liane the Wayfarer” before, and can remember every image from the story so perfectly. It feels like such a whole world – as if you’ve found a perfectly preserved scrap of a tapestry, and can almost-but-not quite puzzle out what made up the rest of the image – and the ending is such a disturbing violation. :P Brrr.
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:00 pm
I don’t think I’d consider internet memes/fads to be fairy tales, exactly. As Jonno points out, they tend to be ephemeral and flash-in-the-pan, and I think that for something to obtain the status of mythology or folklore it has to *last*.
I feel that many of our old fairy tales are still up to the job, though we often modernize or otherwise alter them in the retelling to make parts more applicable to our own society. But the story of Little Red Riding Hood is still the story of Little Red Riding Hood even if you set it in a city and switch the wolf for a more urban and urbane and human sort of predator. Certain patterns, motifs that really resonate with us will stick around for as long as human beings are human beings.
Maybe we have managed to add a few new creatures and archetypes to our collective imaginary menagerie in recent decades, though– Romero’s zombies spring (okay, shamble and groan) to mind. I don’t think they’re flash-in-the-pan.
July 24th, 2009 at 5:57 am
A good murder mystery is the modern Hero’s Journey. I’ve been wolfing down James Lee Burke mysteries lately, since I spent some of my formative years in New Orleans, where a lot of the stories action takes place.
Damaged hero
Quest for justice
Monsters (the human kind)
Battles with same
Dark nights of the soul
Justice dealt
Injustice dealt
I find them thrilling, and they deal with things I’ve sort of known lay below the surface of a town I knew long ago as a kid but still visit every few years.
Serial killers are the modern boogeymen, human predators. Their lairs and killing grounds are still remembered, and (generally) avoided as if cursed considered cursed.
The internet sn’t a good substitute, because nothing visceral happens on it. It may show us awesome and awful things, like the haunted painting on eBay, but it’s not an agent of them. In fact, it’s probably killed urban legends. Internet memes and chain emails are just a continuation of the fads and manias recounted in books like Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness of Crowds, or Work Hard And You Will Be Rewarded.
September 1st, 2010 at 1:44 pm
Jack Vance is one of the best author coming out of America and he will be remembered such as in one hundred years. An equivalent of Poe and Lovecraft. Dick starts to gain some recognition theses days.
J.V. will follow, just wait for him to die.
For people who love fantasy AND dark humor, the adventures of Cugel, located in the Dying Earth of this blog post, are a must read. A must read 10 times.