Ray Lafferty is indeed another brilliant stylist, and sui generis writer, overlooked by the mainstream. His politics were also unique, somewhat conservative, highly Catholic, and just odd. I’ll never forget the time he wrote the 1979 Worldcon committee (which I ended up being Director of Operations for, and retroactive Vice-Chair), denouncing us all as Nazis for allowing the Worldcon to become “politicized” by allowing Guest Of Honor Harlan Ellison to use it as a forum to campaign for passage of the ERA (the convention being held in Arizona, one of the few remaining states that had not passed the ERA, and thus was being boycotted by NOW, and Ellison was a huge supporter of NOW, doing many speaking/fund-raising engagements on its behalf). (Harlan’s solution was to keep his commitment to show up at the con, a commitment made long before the boycott, but to vow not to spend a penny in the state, and to urge everyone else to do their best to spend no money in Arizona; he rented an RV and lived out of it throughout his week in town, while also talking up the ERA at every opportunity he could.)

Now, this “politicization” of the Worldcon was surprisingly controversial, as many fans took the view that somehow the world of science fiction should be isolated from Outside Politics (such as the mere idea that women should have equal political rights—but, then, that idea wasn’t even accepted in the country as a whole, of course), so Lafferty was hardly the only person to contribute to what became a huge uproar in the sf world at the time, but he was the only person to somehow find it a reason to call the organizers “Nazis.”

On the other hand, you could find him at endless numbers of sf conventions, wandering the halls late at night, from party to party, always a drink in his hand, always aimiably soused, and more often than not until he was dozing off in a lobby chair in the no longer early morning.

Sf writers can be peculiar, and Lafferty was, unsurprisingly, one of the more peculiar. And brilliant as a stylist.

This was pretty much the standard model of (John W.) Campbellian sf of the era. Although Vance was not particularly one of Campbell’s proteges, and published all over the magazine landscape of the time, particularly in Galaxy, it seems a point worth mentioning as regards this theme.

“in 1968 The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction ran an ad denouncing the war in Viet Nam that was signed by many of the leading SF writers of the time. A few issues later they ran a counter ad”

It was both the June, 1968, issue of Galaxy, and The Magazine of Fantasy And Science Fiction, actually, to be nitpicky.

I thought it was great to see Jack Vance get such mainstream recognition, myself, even if it came so late; at least he was alive to see it, unlike Phil Dick.

As far as solecisms go, the wondrous thing is that in the seeming oddity of his word choices, Vance actually redefines and expands how words can be used. Any reader familar with his work can have no doubt that he is in complete command of his vocabulary and diction. The occasional true lapse might occur once or twice in a whole book (and it is difficult to say how many of these are the results of editorial interference). It’s an amazing balancing act, pure artifice sustained at great length. His imitators have been many, but they never match the man’s ear, the balance of the phrases, sentences, paragraphs.

“Sf’s no good,” they bellow till we’re deaf.
“But this is good!” “Well, then, it’s not sf.”
Kingsley Amis dixit.

Speaking of tone, there really is a large spectrum of Vance styles. The Dying Earth & Cugel stories are at one extreme; the Araminta Station, Alastor, and Lyonesse novels in the middle; and the Demon Princes and others at the other.

I think it was “The Dragon Masters” I read first, bought as a double-ACE with “The Last Castle” in L.A. in the summer of 1973.

Exactly right.

Well, look what happens to her. And then look what happens to Glyneth—lively female character, then she marries, and poof! disappears from Book 3, ‘cause she is having babies.

Iucounu pointed to a cage. “This will be your conveyance. Inside.”

Cugel hesitated. “It might be preferable to dine well, to sleep and rest, to set forth tomorrow refreshed.”

“What?” spoke Iucounu in a voice like a horn. “You dare stand before me and state preferences? You, who came skulking into my house, pillaged my valuables and left all in disarray? Do you understand your luck? Perhaps you prefer the Forlorn Encystment?”

“By no means!” protested Cugel nervously. “I am anxious only for the success of the venture!”

“Into the cage, then.”

…

Cugel said, “Since I am now committed to this enterprise, and unlikely to return, you may care to learn my appraisal of yourself and your character. In the first place-”

But Iucounu held up his hand. “I do not care to listen; obloquy injures my self-esteem and I am skeptical of praise. So now—be off!”

1. 17 I don’t recall the Institute ever being credited with possessing immortality. That, OTOH, is the theme of “To Live Forever,” in which the Amaranth (Class Five) are immortal. In a society of scarcity, the Emigration Office executes citizens when they reach their appointed age; strict selection (meritocratic or corrupt) allows a small proportion of each cohort to move to the next higher Class with longer life (the classes are Brood, Wedge, Third or Slope, Verge, and Amaranth). Typically for Vance, the hero is a refugee from the system (why, we learn at the end) who has become a free individual with no fixed life expectancy but also no chance of becoming Amaranth. So he destroys the system.

I can’t remember what Vance I first read, it may have been a Dying Earth story or “The Dragon Masters”. It was well over 35 years ago, in any event. In 1976 I had hoped to welcome Vance to Denmark, but his travels took him past, though I received a courteous letter from South Africa. In 1977 I persuaded Poul Anderson to introduce us, and we (fiancée and I) visited the Vances in Oakland a couple times. I am sorry to hear that his wife died, and I hope he manages to finish his autobiography.

Many, if not most of Vance’s sf novels and stories share the theme of an individual (reminiscent in more ways than one of Van Vogt’s “competent man” or Heinlein’s system-breakers) who, without always intending to, breaks open a stagnant society: see all those mentioned as well as “The Dragon Masters”, “The Last Castle”, “The Miracle Workers”, the Durdane trilogy, the Araminta novels, etc. etc. “The Moon Moth” is odd man out here, as it ends with the outsider protagonist being accepted by the rigidly hierarchical society to which he is emissary. Whether any sociology can be developed from this scheme I don’t know.

Trivia dept.: “Baron Bodissey” is the nom de guerre of a right-wing American blogger who runs the website “Gates of Vienna”.

Finally, a candidate for sociological analysis might be “The Gray Prince”, a stand-alone novel about a planet with a strange apparent history, settled by technological Earthers on one continent and neo-feudal land-barons on another. Again, the story revolves around the undermining of this system by outsiders, although Vance springs a huge surprise about the history of the planet along the way. The novel is execrated by many for its apparent glorification of the feudal culture of the land-barons, but that requires not reading between the lines. And who wouldn’t want to be a land-baron, anyway?

Dorothy Parker’s more famous quip, that Katherine Hepburn’s acting “ran the gamut from A to B,” gets it right.

…inevitably…

“My interest was cursory” – “cursory” means perfunctory or superficial. Applying it to one’s interest in something is incorrect or at least unidiomatic.

Not so. It is perfectly correct and idiomatic English to say, for example, “X took only a cursory interest in politics”.

“I thought to see” is an antiquated way of saying “I thought I saw” but it is also correct – it can also, equally correctly, mean “I expected to see” but obviously it doesn’t in this case.

The “somewhat limited gamut” line is also entirely correct. “Gamut” means a range – like the word “range”, “gamut” alone normally implies a wide range – the character has only a limited range of facial expressions.

(b) Are ungoverned societies all the same?

(c) In Vance, to what extent are hierarchies innate or actively chosen? Take, for example, the ostensibly hierarchical, but actually fiercely egalitarian society found in ‘Big Planet’. I forget which one – guests sleeping in book room. But Henry will work it out.

(d) ‘IPCC’ – morphic resonance or what?

(e) Before writing ‘Showboat World’, did Vance ever encounter the museum ship ‘Success’?