Dying Earth

This article is about the fantasy series. For a discussion of similar works, see Dying Earth subgenre.

Dying Earth

Author	Jack Vance
Illustrator	Brom
Genre	Fantasy
Publisher	Science Fiction Book Club

The Dying Earth is a series of picaresque fantasy fixups (novels created from older short stories) by American author Jack Vance.

Works

The series consists of the following works:

• The Dying Earth (collection of linked stories, 1950)
• The Eyes of the Overworld (novel, 1966)
• Cugel's Saga (novel, 1983)
• Rhialto the Marvellous (three linked stories, 1984)
• Tales of the Dying Earth collects the entire series.

Michael Shea's novel A Quest for Simbilis, set in the same fictional world published in 1974, is an authorized sequel to Eyes of the Overworld. This book was published nine years before Vance's own sequel. In 2010 Shea wrote another authorized story belonging to the Dying Earth series and featuring Cugel as one of characters: "Hew the Tintmaster", published in the anthology Swords & Dark Magic. Shea's novel Nifft the Lean also owes much debt to Vance's creation, since the protagonist of the story is a petty thief (not unlike Cugel the Clever), who travels and struggles in an exotic world.

Songs of the Dying Earth is a tribute anthology to Jack Vance's Dying Earth series edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois and published in 2009 by Subterranean Press.

Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun is set in a slightly similar world, and was written under Vance's influence. Wolfe suggested in The Castle of the Otter, a collection of essays, that he inserted the book The Dying Earth into his fictional world under the title The Book of Gold.

In the Vance Integral Edition of Vance's complete œuvre, three of these books have had Vance's original titles restored:

• The Dying Earth was retitled Mazirian the Magician.
• The Eyes of the Overworld was retitled Cugel the Clever.
• Cugel's Saga was retitled Cugel: the Skybreak Spatterlight.

Setting

The stories of the Dying Earth series are set in the distant future, at a point when the sun is almost exhausted and magic has reasserted itself as a dominant force. The Moon has disappeared and the Sun is in danger of burning out at any time, often flickering as if about to go out, before shining again. The various civilizations of Earth have collapsed for the most part into decadence and its inhabitants overcome with a fatalistic outlook. The Earth is mostly barren and cold, and has become infested with various predatory monsters (possibly created by a magician in a former age).

Influence

The series has lent its name to a whole sub-genre of science fiction that uses an entropically dying earth as the setting. Its importance was recognised with the publication of Songs of the Dying Earth, a tribute anthology edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. Each short story in the anthology is set on the Dying Earth, and concludes with a short acknowledgement by the author of Vance's influence on them.

The original creators of the Dungeons & Dragons games were fans of Jack Vance and incorporated many aspects of the Dying Earth series into the game. The magic system, in which a wizard is limited in the number of spells that can be simultaneously remembered and forgets them once they are cast) was based on the magic of Dying Earth. In role-playing game circles, this sort of magic system is called 'Vancian'. Some of the spells from Dungeons & Dragons are based on spells mentioned in the Dying Earth series, such as the prismatic spray. Magic items from the Dying Earth stories such as ioun stones also made their way into Dungeons & Dragons. One of the deities of magic in Dungeons & Dragons is named Vecna (an anagram of Vance).

Many other role-playing settings pay homage to Vance's series by including fantasy elements he invented such as the darkness-dwelling Grues. There is an official Dying Earth role-playing game, published by Pelgrane Press, which places players into Vance's ancient world populated by desperately extravagant people.

The Archonate stories by Matthew Hughes take place in "the penultimate age of Old Earth," a period of science and technology that is on the verge of transforming into the magical era of the time of the Dying Earth.^{[citation needed]}

See also

• Characters of The Dying Earth
• The Excellent Prismatic Spray - magazine devoted to the Dying Earth role-playing game and Jack Vance

External links

• Pelgrane Press
• Vance Integral Edition