Hard-Luck Diggings: The Early Jack Vance | ||||||||
edited by Terry Dowling and Jonathan Strahan | ||||||||
Subterranean Press, 296 pages | ||||||||
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A review by Rich Horton
Such a collection has particular interest, I think, to readers fairly familiar with Vance. For one thing, it is
probably more likely to feature stories even a Vance aficionado may not have seen. (For example, I have read a
very great deal of Vance's work indeed, included any number of stories tracked down in old pulp magazines -- I'll
happily cop to being an aficionado -- but this book includes two stories I'd not previously encountered.) Secondly,
a writer's early work can be useful in showing the roots of his later (perhaps more
successful) work, in showing him working towards his true voice. Vance is an interesting beast in this sense, for
heavy hints of his later, well-known, voice were very evident in his first book, The Dying Earth, but
as Hard-Luck Diggings shows, he often suppressed that voice in his early work, striving instead to hew
to commercial expectations.
For all that, the voice would burst through, and so would the ironic attitude so central to much of Vance's work,
and some of his ideas and obsessions.
I've confessed to being a Vance aficionado, and so I feel driven to suggest a few early stories I think the
editors ought to have included! Perhaps a few of these were left out mainly because they are already
well-known. Certainly that explains the absence of any of the Dying Earth stories, and probably
it also might be why such very fine early stories as "The Potters of Firsk," "The Gift of Gab," "The Men Return,"
and "The New Prime" do not appear here. Other than those I'm left with one story I'd have liked to have seen, an early novella
that I quite enjoyed that seems very little known: "Chateau D'If" (aka "New Bodies for Old").
Such quibbling aside, this is a very enjoyable book. As more or less promised, it's not by any means Vance at
his best. But Vance was ever a writer determined to entertain, and entertain he does. The book does include a
couple of fairly prominent stories. "DP!" is one of his harder-hitting pieces, about the sudden appearance and
distressing mistreatment of "trogs," early humans who had been driven underground millennia before. "Dodkin's
Job," the latest story here, and the only one from Astounding (which also printed "The Potters of Firsk" and
"The Gift of Gab"), is amusing social SF about a perfectly Organized society, and a man who, from the position
of Class D Flunky, manages to subvert the system. The other somewhat better-known story here is the
longest, "Abercrombie Station," notable for featuring an early prototype of the women in many later Vance
stories: Jean Parlier, an orphan who murders her abusive foster father and ends up agreeing to marry a rich
misfit on the title space station, a haven for obese people. Even though that story appeared in an
earlier Best of Jack Vance collection, it has never been a favorite of mine, though as noted it does interestingly
prefigure a certain type of Vance character.
As noted, a couple of the stories were new to me, one because it first appeared in an obscure mystery
magazine. Vance of course wrote quite a few mystery novels, some outstanding, including an Edgar
winner. "The Absent-Minded Professor" is a lesser work, but amusing, about murderous academic rivalry in a
university astronomy department.
The other new story is also sort of a crime story, "The Phantom Milkman," about a woman who comes to a
remote cabin to escape her abusive husband, only to be confused by the mysterious milk that keeps being
delivered, all the while concerned about her husband's attempts to find her. It's a definite departure for
Vance, a good example of an early experiment for him.
The book also includes nine further stories, including the title piece, which is the first Magnus
Ridolph story, "Hard-Luck Diggings," and hence introduces his first series character; and also such interesting
work as "Where Hesperus Falls," "Shape-Up," and "The Masquerade on Dicantropus." As implied, little here
besides "Dodkin's Job" and "DP!" is close to top-shelf Jack Vance, but the book is still quite worth the time
of anyone who enjoys this master's work.
Rich Horton is an eclectic reader in and out of the SF and fantasy genres. He's been reading SF since before the Golden Age (that is, since before he was 13). Born in Naperville, IL, he lives and works (as a Software Engineer for the proverbial Major Aerospace Company) in St. Louis area and is a regular contributor to Tangent. Stop by his website at http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton. |
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