The Other Cugel’s Saga: Michael Shea’s A Quest for Simbilisby Fletcher VredenburghAt the end of The Eyes of the Overworld (1966), Jack Vance’s rogue, Cugel the Clever, found himself once again stranded in the very same distant part of the Dying Earth to which he’d been sent at the beginning of the book by Iucounu the Laughing Magician, on a mission to retrieve a magical lens.And that’s where he remained for over a decade. It wasn’t until Michael Shea decided he would spin a new tale about Cugel that the seemingly forsaken reprobate was freed from his literary chains.What separates pastiche from fan fiction? Only permission. Of course, talent should play a role too, but it’s not necessary. Fortunately, Michael Shea possessed both. Shea asked Jack Vance for permission to write a sequel to The Eyes of the Overworld, and Vance gave his consent, even declining to take half the advance from DAW Books that Shea offered him. And so A Quest for Simbilis (1974), Shea’s first novel, was born.Deposited yet again in the far North, Cugel decides to sail his way back to Almery instead of taking the overland route he’d previously traveled. Meanwhile, Mumber Sull, Thane of Icthyll, is cast out when his town is suddenly overtaken by a foreign power. Sull sets out to request relief from the great wizard Simbilis, who has long since vanished from the region, but is still considered Sull’s liege and the ruler of Icthyll’s environs. Upon setting sail, Sull finds Cugel, adrift, dehydrated, and starving. Cugel, unable to prevail upon the dispossessed Thane to help him sail home, is instead convinced by Sull to join him to find the sorcerer and gain his aid.While not a collection of previously published stories like The Eyes of the Overworld, Shea’s book is also a picaresque tale, comprised of episodes of Cugel dashing from pot to frying pan to fire. This time around, the societies aren’t nearly as oddball, but the monsters and landscapes are far more weird and unpleasant. While clearly striving to imitate Vance, Shea’s own considerable gifts, ones that would flower into wonderfully dark blossoms in his own Nifft the Lean (1982), create a different sort of story for Cugel.For all its cynicism, betrayals, and terrors, there is a strong quality of opérabouffe in The Eyes of the Overworld, with...