Ports of Call and Lurulu

This book is an anthology containing what will probably be Jack Vance's last two works of Science Fiction - PORTS OF CALL and LURULU (I've provided a scanned image of the SFBC book cover, which you can link to above). The two works generally focus on the space-faring adventures of Myron Tany. Myron graduates from university, where against his parents' wishes he concentrated his studies more on space-related topics, than on a purely practical business regimen. In fairly short order, he manages to obtain the captaincy of his eccentric and aging Aunt's spaceship (which she acquires via a defamation lawsuit), and sets out with her to search for a fountain of youth on a distant planet. The Aunt is easily swayed by good-looking suitors, and she eventually takes up with another in a string of false-intentioned suitors, who she replaces Myron with as Captain of her spaceship. Luckily, Myron is able to hook up a crew slot in the four-crew space-merchant ship GLICCA, and begins to travel to strange and distant ports of call throughout the Galaxy. **** PORTS OF CALL (1996) - You can't help considering that Jack Vance was about 80 when he wrote this story. It is almost like going back in time, and reading a SciFi story from the 1960's. His deep vocabulary is quite impressive, and I found myself consulting a dictionary every few pages or so. Unfortunately, some of the technical areas don't fair so well - for example, the computer technology seems like something out of the late 1980's, and was basically out-of-date even before the book was written. There is one particular section of the book that is extremely engrossing; it involves Myron making the acquantance of a waitress during a visit to a tavern on a planet where taking of off-worlders' "pelts" is not unheard of... very eerie. *** LURULU (2004) - Jack Vance was about 88 when he finished writing this story. While it is quite a bit shorter than PORTS OF CALL, it is consistent in quality. I found a few particular sections of the book to be of superb interest, and enjoyed the book to the point that I was sorry when I reached the end. I recently read Jack Vance's Hugo-winning novella DRAGON MASTERS (1963), and it ranks with the best SciFi I've ever read... and now that I've had more of a sampling of his work, I'm becoming a big Jack Vance fan.