(urth) The Distant Suns of Gene Wolfe

[Joel Sieh]

On 6/4/07, aaron <aaronsingleton at gmail.com> wrote:

> Any other Vance fans subscribe to the list?
>

Learned about Vance a few years ago from this list, but just started Tales
of the Dying Earth.  It's fun so far.  It doesn't have the complexity of
Wolfe's writing, but the language and descriptions are just as rich and
flavorful, if not more so.  When I envision the world Vance describes, it is
super-saturated with color and ornamented with strange debris.  I like it.

One observation....  I've heard that Tolkien's work was a large inspiration
for the Dungeon and Dragons tabletop games.  Just after reading about 100
pages of Tales of the Dying Earth, I'd say that it looks like the D&D
creators took a LOT of inspiration for their magic systems from it, much
more than anything they would have gotten from Tolkien.  Gandalf's magic was
much more organic, subtle, and undefined than the mechanisms and
descriptions (including spell names) I've seen in the book I'm currently
reading.

--Joel
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