Big
Planet (1957) is Jack Vance’s third published novel. Barely longer than a novella, the book
nevertheless features many of the ideas and imaginative storytelling that would
come to make the writer so well known in fantasy circles. Big Planet itself home to a seeming unlimited
variety of wild cultures, species, and fantastical creatures, the storytelling
is full-on planetary adventure. Though
the idea would later be revised and expanded in The Tchai (Planet of
Adventure) series, this is the roots of fantasy travelogue.
Big
Planet is the cross-planetary adventures of Claude Glystra
and his crew after they crash land in strange circumstances on the titular
planet. Landing at a point far distant
from the only civilized locale on the massive world, Glystra and the others,
with a limited amount of supplies, set off on the 40,000 mile journey with little
hope of surviving the wilds. Making
matters worse, they know a traitor exists in their midst. Bajarnum de Beaujolais, a self-made ruler who
hopes to build a power base on Big Planet, has an agent planted among
them. The other schemes the delusional
Bajarnum has cooked up are for Glystra and the reader to stumble into.
