Review of "The Houses of Iszm" by Jack Vance

According to his autobiography This Is Me, Jack Vance!, the author constructed his own home.  The wood home is also an idea that plays out in much of Vance’s fiction, Son of the Tree, The Cadwal Chronicles, and “Dream Castle”, included.  It’s also the main behind the novella The Houses of Iszm, the subject of this review.

The Houses of Iszm is the story Farr Sainh, a botanist from the University of Los Angeles, who arrives at Iszm on a sabbatical intending to study the planet’s unique tree life in which its people make and sell homes.  Security on Iszm strict due to the value of the trees, Sainh undergoes a variety of procedures having his identity verified, and even after being allowed entrance, is monitored continuously by the paranoid Iszic.  Quickly becoming involved in another species attempts to steal some of the famous Iszic trees, Sainh’s adventures roll from there.

Review of "Son of the Tree" by Jack Vance

Son of the Tree is a novella from very early in Vance’s career.  Written in 1950, the story presents some of the basics of style that would later become Vance’s signature, but by in large is simplistic story-telling with few bright spots.  

Almost as if having a laugh at writing itself, the protagonist of Son of the Tree is Joe Smith.  Essentially a galactic vagrant, Smith finds himself on the planet Kyril searching for the man who stole his love.  Quickly getting caught up in events surrounding Kyril’s gigantic tree of life and the rival Druids and Mangs fighting for its control, Smith soon finds saving his own skin is of more importance than getting revenge.  

Son of the Tree’s pacing is brisk even for Vance.  Events continually on the move, readers barely have a chance to settle in one location before being whisked away to another.  It would have been nice, for example, to see the peoples of Kyril given a little more detail and color.  Like two other of Vance’s short works, Telek and “Chateau D’If”, Son of the Tree feels as though it would have been better expanded into a novel, interplanetary revenge and culture coups too much for only 100 pages.  

Review of "Blue World" by Jack Vance

What’s to be said about Jack Vance that hasn’t already been said.  The man is simply one of the most imaginative writers of the 20th century.  His sci-fi fantasy styled adventures deceptively simple, the complexity of being human hides just below the surface, rearing its head in profound fashion in the middle of all the humor and fun.  Vance’s 1966 Blue World is no different.

Our hero this tale around, Sklar Hast, is an assistant hoodwink living on Tranque Float.  Not a con or charlatan, Hast literally winks the hoods—in more complex Morse Code fashion—of the communicator devices located on the floats of their lily-pad archipelago, passing news between themselves.  At the outset of the story, Sklar’s life is relatively simple.  He sits in when the master hoodwink is away, teaching apprentices at other times.  Tranque Float’s ancestors, having escaped their home planet in Pilgrim fashion two centuries prior, traded one oppression for another.  The world they crash landed on, the unnamed Blue World, is covered in water, habitation possible only on the giant lily-pads.  And if survival isn’t difficult enough, fighting for food are the kragen—water dragons submerged just beneath the waves always looking for a meal.  Internal politics drawing to a head, at the outset of the tale Hast’s close knit community is experiencing a reprisal of the oppression it once escaped from.

Hast proves himself a typical Vancian hero.  Dissatisfied with the offerings he and his community are obliged to provide the largest of the water dragons, the great King Kragen, Hast sets about finding a way for the people of the archipelago to free themselves of the supplicatory burden.  Barring his way are the intercessors, men whose caste responsibilities include overseeing regular offerings of delicious sponge to the King.  The disagreement which unfolds between Skarl and the intercessors comes about in a fashion only Vance can describe.  The comedic, over-formal dialogue that is his trademark, though toned down compared to The Demon Princes or Tales of the Dying Earth, remains a force.  The direction Hast and his followers’ convictions take them, developing as possible only in fantasy, will have readers smiling in appreciation of the superior storytelling skills.

Though Blue World will never be accepted by academia, the parallels to history and literature are numerous.  Visions of Moby Dick spring to mind reading of the hunt for King Kragen, while just by the beast’s name Norse and Icelandic myths come to life--mysterious sea creatures who appear from the depths, attacking helpless mortals.  Furthermore, the doctrine Barquan Blasel and his fellow intercessors propound runs an eerie parallel to dogma the propagandists backing the Crusades must have spun.  And lastly, there is a book within a book, one which survived the ancestor’s crash landing on the planet.  Treated with profound reverence, it is called the Analects.  Quotes like “Whoever is willing to give will never lack someone to take.”, put the reader firmly in mind of Confucius and his brand of one-line wisdom, yet spun as only Vance can. 

In the end, Blue World is more great stuff from Vance.  It is fantasy adventure as best it can be.  The unique imagination, comedic dialogue, Campbellian hero, brisk plot, detailed motifs, and storytelling all exist in spades.  Paralleling the fun is Vance’s keen eye for human virtue and vice in their simplest yet most affective forms, not to mention the inability of humanity to escape the cycles of civilization and disarray which mark the passage of history.  Readers who love Vance but have not read Blue World, don’t be afraid; this is more great stuff.  Readers who are unaware of Vance will find this one of many great entry points into his oeuvre.

(This review has also been posted at www.fantasyliterature.com)