Posted by John Robinson on April 08, 1999 at 22:11:42:
In Reply to: A little gem you may have missed posted by Drusilla on April 07, 1999 at 22:17:09:
: After reading most, allright, many, of the posts below re writers like Jack Vance. Or shall we say... "If you like Vance you may like this." Because I do not find that Vance, Peake, Wolfe have so very much in common except that they are all masterful writers, who, while we ramble on about style - blah de blah de blah, invite us into strange and beautiful countries. Here is another strange country for you R. A. MacAvoy 'Lens of the World', trilogy. Hard to find, worth the search. And, oh, what about Brian Aldiss? (I mean, really, if you are going to bring Robert Heinlien into this. Pah!) Try 'Hellconia', incredible, beautiful, difficult, strange.
: BTW. I so emphatically disagree with prior posts re Michael Shea. Shea is Not Vance nor does he want to be. You have mistaken Shea's tribute to the 'picaresque' style of novel, a old form originating in Medieval Spain, for an emulation of Vance. Both Vance and Shea owe a debt to this form, though Shea's is much more direct. Shea draws on almost all of the picaresque elements, knavish anti-heros, who may occasionally seem 'good' only in contrast to the uttererly villianous behavior of their antagonists, cheerfully and uncritically stumbling through a world replete with horrors. When was this ever a Vance theme? Vance's characters may be picaresque but his theme is not, not ever. Shea uses the first person voice and assumes a comic-heroic style of expression. Vance's protagonists never speak in the first person and Vance's humor is dry,ironic and civilized - as are his worlds. Shea's humor is rambunctious and very very dark, and his worlds are unredeemably chaotic. Nifft the Lean is horror-fantasy, with inventive, rich and strange landscapes. Vance also produces such landscapes. But the similarity really ends right there.
Of course Shea is not Vance. "Nor does he want to be" - well maybe he wants to be and maybe he doesn't. I quote (loosely) from the SF Encyclopedia - Shea - most of his few sf stories border on horror. His books, which are both witty and disquieting, include "A Quest For Simbilis" - derived, with permission, from Jack Vance's "The Eyes Of The Overworld" plus "Nift The Lean" and "In Yana, the Touch of Undying" both showing Vance's influence less explicitly. So I would say the other writers you mention might be liked by people who like Vance, but Shea is writing his view of the Vance uninverse.
John