reading "classics"
Jan. 3rd, 2003 12:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
egypturnashNow and then, I'll see a re-issue of a "classic" of SF or fantasy. Sometimes I'll pick them up. Some, like Lord Dunsanay's 'The King of Elfland's Daughter', are genuine classics, well worth reading in their own right, as well as seeing reflections of everything they influenced. Some doesn't fare as well - much of Moorcock's work, for instance, has interesting ideas, but truly awful writing. (I will refrain from commenting on Tolkien here, but I will note that Leiber's tales of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser are somewhere in the middle - when he's not fascinated by his writing for its own sake, he really knows how to buckle his swash.)
Which brings me to the semi-'classic' I picked up the other day, and read: an omnibus volume of all (I think) of Jack Vance's 'Dying Earth' books. Dating back to 1950 for the earliest ones, these are odd books. The setting is a time far, far in the future, when the sun is waning; the Earth is covered in the remnants of aeon upon aeon of civilization, and magic reigns supreme. The writing is decent, occasionally quite evocative, but my ultimate feeling is that these books are significant for only two things:
1. This is where the 'Name's Adjectival Non/Verb' spell naming scheme so beloved of D&D comes from. (I believe it's even where D&D got the idea of spells erasing themselves from the memory of the caster; I seem to recall a direct reference to this in the 1st Ed. AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide.)
2. The setting rather obviously inspired Gene Wolfe's 'Urth of the New Sun'.
What little character Vance gives to his viewpoint characters is rather unpleasant; the several characters induced to journey across the Dying Earth mostly get into situations because of their greed. Cugel "the Clever" bumbles through two whole books with vengeance on the wizard Iucounu as his goal, but both he and Vance conveniently forget that his failed attempt to rob said wizard is why he's teleported halfway across the planet in the first place. Like many fantasy/sf novels of the time, the earlier books were first published as short stories; perhaps this helps explain the grating nature of Cugel: funny in a small dose, annoying in a large one.
"Classic" is a hard term to pin down. Nowadays, it's overused as a marketing tool; every Disney animated feature is an instant inflatable 'classic' when it's re-released, videogames are dubbed 'classic' if someone has pleasant memories of playing it a year after it was released. 'Dying Earth' is not a classic: a little influential, interesting enough to have had a fair number of reprints in its day, but not something I feel any richer for reading.
Which brings me to the semi-'classic' I picked up the other day, and read: an omnibus volume of all (I think) of Jack Vance's 'Dying Earth' books. Dating back to 1950 for the earliest ones, these are odd books. The setting is a time far, far in the future, when the sun is waning; the Earth is covered in the remnants of aeon upon aeon of civilization, and magic reigns supreme. The writing is decent, occasionally quite evocative, but my ultimate feeling is that these books are significant for only two things:
1. This is where the 'Name's Adjectival Non/Verb' spell naming scheme so beloved of D&D comes from. (I believe it's even where D&D got the idea of spells erasing themselves from the memory of the caster; I seem to recall a direct reference to this in the 1st Ed. AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide.)
2. The setting rather obviously inspired Gene Wolfe's 'Urth of the New Sun'.
What little character Vance gives to his viewpoint characters is rather unpleasant; the several characters induced to journey across the Dying Earth mostly get into situations because of their greed. Cugel "the Clever" bumbles through two whole books with vengeance on the wizard Iucounu as his goal, but both he and Vance conveniently forget that his failed attempt to rob said wizard is why he's teleported halfway across the planet in the first place. Like many fantasy/sf novels of the time, the earlier books were first published as short stories; perhaps this helps explain the grating nature of Cugel: funny in a small dose, annoying in a large one.
"Classic" is a hard term to pin down. Nowadays, it's overused as a marketing tool; every Disney animated feature is an instant inflatable 'classic' when it's re-released, videogames are dubbed 'classic' if someone has pleasant memories of playing it a year after it was released. 'Dying Earth' is not a classic: a little influential, interesting enough to have had a fair number of reprints in its day, but not something I feel any richer for reading.
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Date: 2003-01-03 01:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-03 01:40 pm (UTC)