Howard and James’ Ten Vance Favorites
We’re celebrating the release of DCC Dying Earth all this Month with articles in honor of Jack Vance. Howard and James’ Ten Vance Favorites Recently the Skull issued a decree to various minions, bonded thralls, pseudo-sandestins, and temps from the secretarial pool to provide for his edification a list of their favorite works from the great and powerful wordsinger Jack Vance. Much of these replies were inferior, riddled...
Classic Covers: More From Jack Vance
We’re celebrating the release of DCC Dying Earth all this Month with articles in honor of Jack Vance. With hundreds of titles in dozens of editions in as many different languages, a catalog of Jack Vance’s prolific output is a feast of diverse and changing visual styles over many years. With cover illustrations as varied as Frazetta-style sword-and-sorcery, heady new age semiotics, surreal horror, literal Tolkien fantasy,...
The Dying Earth: A Case for Sword-and-Sorcery
We’re celebrating the release of DCC Dying Earth all this Month with articles in honor of Jack Vance. The Dying Earth: A Case for Sword-and-Sorcery by Brian Murphy Travel into the future: to an earth with a dwindling red sun that meekly fills a dark blue sky; an earth that is on the brink of dying out; an earth where science and magic mean the same thing. ~ back cover blurb, Tales of the Dying Earth, Tor Books In 1950...
What is the Dying Earth?
What is the Dying Earth? by Bill Ward “A dim place, ancient beyond knowledge. Once it was a tall world of cloudy mountains and bright rivers, and the sun was a blazing white 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...
Where to Start With Jack Vance
We’re celebrating the release of DCC Dying Earth all this Month with articles in honor of Jack Vance. Where to Start With Jack Vance by Bill Ward John Holbrook “Jack” Vance (1916-2013) was an extraordinarily prolific and award-winning author across multiple genres, but it is for his work in the science fiction field that he is most celebrated. ‘Science Fiction’ as a genre and marketing category is an extremely big...
Vancian Quotations
We’re celebrating the release of DCC Dying Earth all this Month with articles in honor of Jack Vance. Vancian Quotations by Bill Ward “When you want to describe something that’s flamboyant, weird and strange, anything a little bit outrageous, wicked or nasty, you don’t do it by exposition, which can become long-winded and tiresome. You have one of your characters describe it to somebody else . . . this is almost a trade secret:...
Classic Covers: Jack Vance
One of the benefits of being an extraordinarily productive and highly-reprinted genre writer during the mass market paperback publishing boom of the mid-twentieth century is you get a terrific amount of amazing visual art forever associated with your name. Jack Vance, author of over 60 books (whenever you see ‘over’ a certain number, that’s a pretty big clue that the author in question is so prolific that it’s...
New to DCC? Here’s Where to Start With Appendix N!
Our Appendix N Archeology and Adventures in Fiction series are meant to take a look at the writers and creators behind the genre(s) that helped to forge not only our favorite hobby but our lives. We invite you to explore the entirety of the series on our Adventures In Fiction home page. New To DCC? Here’s Where To Start With Appendix N! by Jeff Goad So you’re new to DCC RPG and you might have heard that...
Appendix N Archaeology: The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series
Our Appendix N Archaeology and Adventures in Fiction series are meant to take a look at the writers and creators behind the genre(s) that helped to forge not only our favorite hobby but our lives. We invite you to explore the entirety of the series on our Adventures In Fiction home page. Appendix N Archaeology: The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series by Michael Curtis More than a decade before Gary Gygax assembled...
A Look at Jack Vance’s The Blue World
Sic Semper Tyrannis Piscis: A Look at Jack Vance’s The Blue World by Bill Ward The water world has no name – nor seasons, nor strife, nor struggle. The weather is placid, the conditions mild, the planet’s vast all-encompassing ocean lacks tides, storms, or surges of any kind. Life on the Home Floats is gentle, food is easy to acquire and dependably regular, and conflict virtually unknown. In the twelve generations since...
Jack Vance’s Planet of Adventure/Tschai Series
Single Terran Scout Seeks Space-Boat: A Look at Jack Vance’s Planet of Adventure Series by Bill Ward “A strange rumor has recently reached Zsafathra, to the effect that all men originated on a far planet, much as the Redeemers of Yao aver, and not from a union of the sacred xyxyl bird and the sea-demon Rhadamth. Furthermore, it was told that certain folk from this far planet now wander Old Tschai, performing the most remarkable...
Jack Vance’s Influence on Dungeons & Dragons
Jack Vance’s Influence on Dungeons & Dragons by Bill Ward “Turjan … descended to his study … The tomes which held Turjan’s sorcery lay on the long table of black steel or were thrust helter-skelter into shelves. These were volumes compiled by many wizards of the past, untidy folios collected by the Sage, leather-bound librams setting forth the syllables of a hundred powerful spells, so cogent that Turjan’s brain...
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