(urth) This Week in Google Alerts: Will No One Rid Me Of This Troublesome Writer?

James Wynn crushtv at gmail.com
Tue May 10 08:59:34 PDT 2011


Pleasure I get from The Dying Urth stories is the irony and subtle humor.
It's the way that whenever Cugel is about to be outsmarted, he refers to 
himself as "Cugel the Clever". It's the way certain plot details are 
described rather than explained.//////
Terry Pratchett owes as much to Vance as Wolfe, but I can see that Wolfe 
learned more from Vance than the plot element of a dying sun.

J.

On 5/10/2011 10:03 AM, Sergei SOLOVIEV wrote:
> I read Vance partly because he was mentioned with great respect by 
> Gene Wolfe
> as one of the writers who influenced the New Sun series (with his 
> "Dying Earth").
> Honestly, I was disappointed by literary quality of his work. The 
> characters are
> in general very schematic, the language is sometimes interesting but 
> dialogues
> are extremely artificial, nobody does speak like this, the composition 
> very linear
> (Vance does use most of the time "travelogue" plan - "Ports of call" 
> and travels
> of Cugel are typical examples). It doesn't mean that there is no 
> impressive episodes/ideas -
> and great deal of intelligent irony that I like. I liked "Guyal of 
> Sphere" for example.
>
> Best
>
> Sergei
>

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