The Dying Earth Series by Jack Vance
The Dying Earth Series, created by Jack Vance, is a collection of fantasy novels and stories set in a distant, decaying future where Earth is nearing its end. The series consists of three novels and one story collection that reads like a novel, each featuring a loosely connected setting and recurring characters. The first volume introduces readers to a medieval-like world where magic has supplanted science, and humankind survives in scattered pockets amidst dangerous creatures.
In this richly imaginative landscape, characters such as Turjan of Miir and Cugel the Clever navigate a series of episodic adventures filled with challenges and encounters with sorcery, trickery, and strange beings. The series incorporates themes of creation, betrayal, and the pursuit of power, as seen in Turjan's creation of life and Cugel's numerous escapades. The fourth book, Rhialto the Marvellous, shifts focus to a magician embroiled in political intrigue among sorcerers, exploring themes of justice and vengeance.
Together, the stories blend elements of fantasy and, in some cases, traditional science fiction, offering readers a glimpse into a world that balances wonder with peril as it faces its inevitable decline.
On this Page
The Dying Earth Series
First published:The Dying Earth (1950), The Eyes of the Overworld (1966; serial form, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1965-1966), Cugel’s Saga (1983), and Rhialto the Marvellous (1984)
Type of work: Novels
Type of plot: Fantasy—medieval future
Time of work: The twenty-first aeon, far in the future
Locale: Primarily Ascolais and Almery
The Plot
Jack Vance’s stories of the dying Earth consist of three novels and one collection of stories that reads as a novel. The series is loosely linked by a shared setting and repeated characters. Each individual volume stands on its own, and within volumes, the particular chapters form largely self-contained episodes.
The first volume, The Dying Earth, sets the stage and establishes the basic premises. The novel, more accurately a collection of stories, is set in the distant future. As Earth itself and human history near their end, rogues and charlatans abound, and science has been replaced by magic. The setting is more medieval than futuristic. Humankind is few and scattered, with small, isolated pockets of people spread across the wilderness. Travel is dangerous, because creatures such as deodands, flesh-eating ghouls, and pelgranes, winged ravagers of the air, wait for the unwary or the luckless.
The Dying Earth introduces these themes through the stories of such characters as Turjan of Miir, who wishes to create life in his castle laboratory. Lacking the proper knowledge of incantations, he turns to the powerful, mysterious Pandelume, who aids Turjan in return for a favor, the theft of a magical amulet. Aided by Pandelume’s spells, Turjan succeeds, creating a beautiful woman, T’sain, who becomes his companion. In a following story, Turjan is captured by a rival, Mazirian the Magician, who tortures Turjan to gain his secret powers. T’sain saves her creator and lover.
Such is the pattern of stories in The Dying Earth. Characters appear only to be replaced by others, such as Ulan Dhor, who travels to the ancient city of Ampridatvir, where he wakes the sleeping god-king Rogol Domedonfors, unleashing devastation. Ulan Dhor’s story is the only one in the series that departs from fantasy into more traditional science fiction, as Ulan Dhor escapes using a flying machine found in the ancient city.
The two novels that feature Cugel the Clever, The Eyes of the Overworld and Cugel’s Saga, are picaresque tales in which a series of adventures befalling the protagonist are laid on a simple, sturdy framework. In the earlier work, Iucounu the Laughing Magician traps Cugel robbing him and casts a spell to send Cugel far beyond Almery, where he must secure the Eyes of the Overworld (special lenses with magical powers) and return them to Iucounu. To ensure Cugel’s diligence, Iucounu clamps a barbed creature named Firx to Cugel’s liver. Whenever Cugel delays, Firx’s agitations painfully remind him of his duties.
Cugel acquires the Eyes of the Overworld through typical trickery and returns to Almery, along the way encountering numerous adventures in a variety of settings and managing to escape harm, and sometimes even death, by his wits. He rids himself of Firx as his first step in taking revenge on Iucounu, something he ponders at every step back to Almery. In the novel’s final scene, however, Cugel is outtricked by Iucounu and finds himself on the same desolate beach where he began his long journey home.
Cugel’s Saga begins at this point. Like the preceding novel, it is a tale of Cugel’s return, again progressing through territory filled with dangers presented by sorcerers, strange beasts, and stranger human beings. Early in the novel, Cugel escapes from the wizard Twango, carrying with him Spatterlight, a scale from the creature Sadlark, who long ago crashed to Earth from the higher realms. Twango has been painstakingly salvaging Sadlark’s scales and selling them, through an intermediary, to an unknown sorcerer.
When Cugel returns to Almery, he is confronted by Iucounu, who demands Spatterlight, for it is the Laughing Magician who has been collecting the scales. Cugel surrenders the treasure but tricks Iucounu into destroying himself. Cugel claims the wizard’s magnificent palace as his own.
The setting remains the same but the characters change for the fourth book in the series, Rhialto the Marvellous. Rhialto, a magician, joins a number of fellow wizards to form a loosely knit association to protect their interests. The association is guided by the Blue Principles, which are intended to protect these unscrupulous sorcerers from attacking one another.
Rhialto is accused and convicted of offenses against the Blue Principles, and then, through ever increasing difficulties, must prove himself innocent and wreak ven-geance on his enemies, most notably Hache-Moncour, who is motivated by envy of Rhialto’s elegant style. Because Rhialto the Marvellous is a true Vance hero of the dying Earth, he is successful, and Hache-Moncour’s punishment is suitably apt.