Posted by Parsifal Pankarow on February 04, 1997 at 22:55:20:
In Reply to: Source for Yipton? posted by Parsifal Pankarow on February 04, 1997 at 22:52:59:
: In Vance's best recent work, "Araminta Station." we have his ongoing exploration of a question that seems to have intrigued him lately: who is to do Society's scut work?
: In "Night Lamp," he sidesteps the question by having the servant class be nonhumans, genetically engineered. In "Wyst," it was dealt with from a Marxist perspective (Vance's satire of Marxism, that is).
: But Yipton is more disturbing. The origins of the Yips are deliberately left vague, but they are definitely human and, as we see, they have a claim on the larger society, in return for their menial labor. Yipton, in its origins, seems an amalgam of Bangkok, Jakarta, Tijuana, and the West Bank.
: Who knows which of these places Mr. Vance has been to? And how and when did this question (Who does the scut work?) start to intrigue him?