Heroes Behaving Badly: The Wondrous and Bastardly Creations of Jack Vance by Brian Murphy Cugel the Clever probably isn’t a guy you want to invite to dinner. You’d be guaranteed belly laughs and an unforgettable night’s entertainment … until later, when the check comes due. And you discover he made off with the priceless silverware set you inherited from your grandmother, and tried to make time with your wife. Bastard! Cugel is a loveable rogue, nicknamed “the Clever” for good reason; he consistently escapes harrowing scrapes and near-death through pluck and quick-thinking, which makes him and his adventures entertaining for the reader, even when he’s behaving badly. Which is quite often. That Jack Vance can make us love a not-so-nice hero speaks to his skill as a writer and the incredible thematic and stylistic flexibility of the sword-and-sorcery subgenre. Some critics claim that sword-and-sorcery heroes must contain some degree of virtue, if not be outright virtuous, else we would not enjoy their stories. Cugel is certainly not without any virtue, though sometimes you have to squint to see it. But it doesn’t matter all that much; his roguish charm has a virtue all its own. Sword-and-sorcery has its rogues, and we love them, too. Cugel’s stories (initially published as short pieces in the likes of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Flashing Swords!, later collected in The Eyes of the Overworld (1966) and Cugel’s Saga (1983) are part of a series of interconnected stories set in The...