Planet of Adventure

While the Demon Princes may be a more "mature" work (although with Vance, you are dealing with an author who produces material that is orders of magnitude better than almost every other author out there) Planet of Adventure is, in my humble opinion, the finest pure sci-fi adventure I have ever read (knocking "The Stars My Destination off its perch" and the aforementioned "Demon Princes"). If, while reading Planet of Adventure, you don't fall in love once or twice, find yourself gripping the pages with horror or fascination every twenty or thirty minutes, or feverishly search for further sequels when you are finished.....there is something wrong with you.

I typed in "Jack Vance" figuring that only a few of his books would still be in print--and John Clute's review in the NY Review of SF had alerted me to the appearance of yet another Vance novel, Lurulu. I was surprised to see Planet of Adventure still around. Wow, 35 reviews for this collection of 4 novels and the absolute worst review is 4 stars! And I bet every single reviewer is a guy, too! Women do not seem to care for Vance. Anyway, it's as other reviewers say--this is can't-put-it-down adventure with an occasional touch of humor. Adam Reith, a Star-Trek style human, crash-lands on the planet Tschai and overcomes a staggeringly stacked deck to free himself from the planet. There's that word, "free," and while Vance's works all grapple with it, I think he explores the meaning of freedom most fully in this series. The four alien races that rule their portions of the E-type planet have human slaves. And the slave mentality, encouraged at times by various myths promulgated by the alien masters, is what Adam encounters. No human has any clue that he is a member of something called the human race, and that humans are a powerful force in the universe. Each group of humans adapts to slavery in a different way, most contemptibly by some humans' surgically modifying themselves to be more like their masters, the Dirdir. All of the books are readable, but The Dirdir is my fave. The aliens, code-of-honor guys (think Samurai, Trojans, Marines) are believably and even sympathetically developed. As always, Adam is able to figure out a way to defeat them. The last time I read this one I was struck by a number of points of comparison between Adam and the 9/11 terrorists, if one were to look at it from the POV of the dominent Dirdir culture. Food for thought. In each of the groups of humans, Adam encounters one person who is persuaded by Adam's example to join forces with him. The ways in which they work to cast off their conceptual chains give each one real dimension of character (the emblem-bearer is the first and best-developed of these freedom-seekers). I didn't think about any of this stuff the first time I read these novels. I was just swept away by the compelling action. Warning: Do NOT start one of these novels after dinner or you are going to be one sorry, sleep-deprived individual by the next day.

Planet of Adventure is a brilliant book. This is not a phrase I use lightly. It well and truley deserves this moniker. I have read thousands of science fiction and fantasy books but only a few scale the heights of Planet of Adventure. I consider it Jack Vances best work. Its one of those books that you will re-read several times in the course of ones life. Its that good. Five stars does not do it justice. It is probably one of the 20 best science fiction books ever written and definitely in the top 100. It has that power to totally absorb you - the way only great books can.

There is something strangely beautiful about the way Jack Vance writes dialogue-his characters all sound stately and formal, using language best described as courtly, deadpan explicit, absurdly erudite... oh heck! it's really hard to explain it, but you will notice it right away. This typical Vance style is not as pronounced as it is in his "Dying Earth" series, but it's there, adding an unlooked for source of humor and fun to his stories of shipwrecked spaceman, Adam Reith. Besides a pronounced writing style, Vance is a superb story teller, as anyone who has read his "Demon Princes" stories will attest. So, I am primarilly writing this for Vance fans who haven't yet read the Tschai series-you won't be disappointed, this is Jack Vance at his best. But if you've never read anything by the author, I suspect you will find this book entertaining and just a plain fun read. A perfect book to go to sleep with, to read from cover to cover, over and over again. I absolutely loved it, from the first time I read the series, to now.

As a youth I enjoyed the stories of H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith tremendously in their ability of transporting the reader to strange worlds with colorful, prosaic descriptions. A freind recently turned me on to Vance's Planet of Adventure series and once again, in the great traditional style, he succeeds. However my greatest delight was in discovering what a crack-up his side characters are. For instance, in most of Vance's books there are Innkeepers who take great elaborate pains to extract money from travellers in some of the most clever negotiations I've ever read. At times pages are devoted to these Monty Pythonesque transactions! Does Vance hold a beef on Innkeepers or what? Great Books!