Posted by Ned on December 03, 1999 at 20:25:12:
I consider Jack's stories a lot like the meals he had his characters eating, lots of "exotic" courses, but hardly ever any meat and potatoes. By this I mean that he hardly ever wrote what I would call "deep thinking" science fiction stories, but they were still great worlds to get lost in, and contained characters that were "civilized" even when committing terrible acts. And I usually improved my vocabulary by at least one word per story.
There were many times when my life was completely intolerable, so Jack's worlds were havens that never failed to provide shelter for me. "Dragon Masters" and the adventures of that scoundrel Cugel especially helped me through some very tough times.
Thanks for that, Jack.