The Dragon Masters and The Last Castle are Jack Vance’s most famous novellas. Falling short by just a hair, The Miracle Workers is also a well
thought out piece of short fiction from the grandmaster of sci-fi, fantasy, and
everything between. So similar in
quality in fact, the editors of the Vance Integral Edition (VIE) thought fit to
group this story with Vance’s two award winning novellas in a single edition—a
shout in support of its quality.
The
Miracle Workers is the story of Keep Faide, its wars,
its attacks to establish position, and sometimes its need to just plain survive on the
strange planet they inhabit. The other Keeps
attacking in overt fashion, Keep Faide also faces inroads from the devious First Fols, a group native to the planet who seek to obstruct all of
mankind’s efforts at domination. Beyond
their foam billowing, wasp spitting ways, the Fols erect forests filled with
traps and snares where none exited before, and if not careful, may just be
plotting to take back over the world they once called their own. Lord Faide and the men under his control must
go to wits’ end defending what they believe is their own. Lord Faide’s problem is, his wits have a
short road.
Like the complacency motif of The Last Castle, much of the knowledge backing the technology that
originally brought humanity to the planet has been lost in The Miracle Workers. Lord
Faide may have a floating car, but he knows only how to make it go forward and
back, the technical knowledge of its power systems, weaponry, etc lost. Large guns protect the Keeps, but nobody
bothers to maintain them, their functionality severely in doubt come war
time. Battles are instead fought the old
fashion way. Knights on horseback with
sword and shield must do their best despite the knowledge mankind once had, giving the story a strong medieval feel.
Technology may be missing, but there is one fighting
technique that has lasted the ages: hoodoo.
Vance’s term for voodoo, the practitioners of hoodoo, called jinxmen,
use dolls and magic to creep inside the heads of their enemies, making them see
and fear things that do not exist. All
manner of demons and other forms of horror and haunting are used by the jinxmen
in battle to defeat their enemies.
Competition is also tight within Chief Faide’s ring of hoodooers. Being head jinxman, as Hein Huss is for Faide
Keep, requires looking both forward and backward over your shoulder during battle.
In the end, The
Miracle Workers is a fun piece of short fiction that falls short of Vance’s
two more well-known novellas for only a couple of reasons. The structure not as pure as The Dragon Masters and theme not as
developed as The Last Castle, The Miracle Workers nevertheless
displays all of the imagination and cleverness that are Vance’s trademarks,
making this a story worth tracking down for anyone who calls themselves a fan
of the author. (For those interested, try also M. John Harrison's Viriconium books. The Pastel City in particular has many parallels to Vance's novella, though Harrison's book is more vibrant and rich thematically.)
Once Lord Faide and his armies started fighting the First Folk, the story became very exciting. It seemed that whatever they did as an army was failing. You want to know how Faide would defeat the indigenous tribes.
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