Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2014-04-14 06:41 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2014-04-14 06:41 pm
[ SECRET POST #2659 ]
⌈ Secret Post #2659 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 062 secrets from Secret Submission Post #380.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
Re: Fantasy/sci-fi book recommendation?
Re: Fantasy/sci-fi book recommendation?
If you actually read his dialogue out loud, it's completely improbable. Nobody talks like that. Within the book, it doesn't matter. He's built up his world so well.
I love particuarly how he uses excerpts at the start of chapters from made-up encyclopedias, scientific papers and magazines to add to the humour while weaving the sense of it being in a fully-developed universe.
On the other hand, there are definitely problems with his work. Huge shades of racism and sexism. A lot of the sexual content involves female rape or attempted rape. I'm thinking the Lyonesse series, although it's not the only case.
Although his worldbuilding is usually quite well thought out and nuanced, he does sometimes fall into the pulp cliches of the time. The Gray Prince is only just readable for me for reasons of barely-veiled racism. Although it's also interesting as a period piece on attitudes to other cultures. I don't know much about Jack Vance's life, but from his writing alone I assume he was a sailor stationed overseas and had some contact with locals, probably in Asia.
Re: Fantasy/sci-fi book recommendation?
Like, you mention The Gray Prince, which is kind of a fascinating example for the same reasons it's atypical, because the politics is much more on the surface. You said barely-veiled racism, but you could be more precise - it's thinly-veiled apologia for Rhodesia. Apologia of a very specific sort, to be sure (I have a lot of thoughts about this) but still apologia (and IIRC he had visited Rhodesia shortly before he wrote the story). And it's one of those things where once you notice it, you can see a lot of similar things throughout his work, although much more submerged. There's a lot of stuff like that.
I think he's still worth reading, for all that. You don't have to agree with him on any of that stuff, and the style and the fervid imagination and the irony and the humor are still there. And I definitely agree that it's almost a period piece, something out of a specific time in history and a specific milieu, turned into material for science fiction. Hell, at the very least he's much more straightforward and honest and intelligent about it than a lot of science fiction writers of his generation were.
Also, that's a pretty amazing guess on his biography - he did, in fact, serve in the Merchant Marine, I believe in southeast Asia.
Re: Fantasy/sci-fi book recommendation?
There's always sailing in a Vance book. It's a motif of his. At first I thought it was just a hobby (it probably is as well) but there's too much detail on a more professional level (like in Night Lamp) for it to be anything else.
There's also a certain type of woman Vance goes for in the books. Short haired (a cap of curls is the frequent description), petite, young, with an unformed, almost pre-pubescent body. That's another cause for concern, how lovingly he describes his heroines' lack of womanly growth. Although they're also usually strong, independent characters it's a little unsettling. Older women with larger figures, or god forbid, a mature sex life, are usually presented as evil shrews.
I decided not to find out too much about Vance's biography precisely because I feared I might find out details like the Rhodesia thing. I'm guessing it was a commentary on the rise of local black polititians there who refused to know their colonial place. It's one of his weaker books, for sure. It suffers from Vance himself not being as nuanced in own his argument as he usually is. Now I know that it's about Rhodesia I'm sad. Although I've met white people from Zimbabwe, in this day and age, who are still a whole lot more racist than this dated book.
Some of my favourite books of his are where there's an environmental storyline (like the Cadwal books, and some of his short stories). He does that very well and feels even ahead of his time. It's the economic and political pressures that he deals with well. Human weakness that has nothing to do with the unspoilt nature itself. Although nature itself in his books is also dangerous and terrifying.
I agree he's a period piece, and a reminder that attitudes about colonialisation were complex and also accepted by intelligent people. Like when I read Aristophanes, and the place of slaves and women is just taken for granted, even if it's humorously and intelligently explored.
I've never met anyone who was even more into Vance than me before.