{"id":58,"date":"2011-08-02T02:16:00","date_gmt":"2011-08-02T02:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/they-dont-write-em-like-that-anymore-jack-vances-city-of-the-chasch\/"},"modified":"2011-08-02T02:16:00","modified_gmt":"2011-08-02T02:16:00","slug":"they-dont-write-em-like-that-anymore-jack-vances-city-of-the-chasch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/they-dont-write-em-like-that-anymore-jack-vances-city-of-the-chasch\/","title":{"rendered":"They Don’t Write ’em Like That Anymore: Jack Vance’s City of the Chasch"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n<\/a>City of the Chasch<\/em>\n<\/div>\n
Tschai, Planet of Adventure:\u00a0 1<\/em><\/div>\n
Jack Vance<\/div>\n
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This is the first book in a tetralogy.\u00a0 I picked it up along with books 3 and 4 when I was in high school, but couldn’t find the second volume.\u00a0 This was in the pre-intenet days.\u00a0 I eventually did come across it, but never got around to reading it at the time.<\/div>\n
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I’m at a conference this week, and needed something to read on the plane when I had to keep the Nook turned off.\u00a0 (Preparing for the conference is why I haven’t posted anything here lately.)\u00a0 I had only read this book in the series, and that was…a long time ago.\u00a0 I couldn’t remember a thing about it and decided to give it another try.<\/div>\n
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I loved it!\u00a0 This is an old fashioned planet story, about an Earthman on a lost world trying to make his way home through all sorts of exotic alien races.\u00a0 It’s the sort of stuff that’s in far too short supply these days.\u00a0 <\/div>\n

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The story goes like this.\u00a0 Adam Reith is a scout on a ship from Earth that has been sent to investigate a distress signal that was sent over 200 years previously from the planet Tsachai, which until now was unknown humans.\u00a0 Just as his scout ship is leaving to visit the planet’s surface, a missile destroys it and damages his scout vessel.\u00a0 <\/div>\n
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He survives the crash with injuries, and is taken in as a slave by a tribe of humans.\u00a0 It seems there are humans on this world, along with a number of mutant human races, and four aliens.\u00a0 The Chasch, and there are three varieties of them, are lizard-like.\u00a0 The Dirdir are tall and thin.\u00a0 The Wankh aren’t described much in this book, but they’re the focus of the second volume.\u00a0 Fourth are the Pnume, which are the ony native race.\u00a0 They live underground and are feared by the other three races.\u00a0 Each of the races has a subspecies of human that works as their slaves.\u00a0 Each subrace of human has a different story of how humans came to the planet.<\/div>\n
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Shortly after he crashes, the Blue Chasch find and carry off his spaceship.\u00a0 Since repairing it is his only chance of getting home, the book focuses on his quest to recover the ship.\u00a0 Throughout the course of the book, Reith travels across the planet, picks up several companions, rescues a gorgeous woman, and fights a number of battles.\u00a0 <\/div>\n
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One of the things about this book is its use of classic sword-and-planet tropes, such as swords alongside advanced technologies.\u00a0 What makes it rise above being a standard sword-and-planet tale is that it contains plenty of the Jack Vance wit and exoticism.\u00a0 There’s a scene where Reith and his companion Traz, formerly the chieftan of the tribe that found him, are watching a Dirdirman (human servant of the Dirdir) sleeping in an abandoned city.\u00a0 The Dirdirman is being watched by a Phung, which is\u00a0related to the\u00a0Pnume.\u00a0 The\u00a0whole\u00a0description of the Phung’s behavior\u00a0reads like a description of a mime.\u00a0 It was hilarious.<\/div>\n
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This was an enjoyable book on many levels.\u00a0 Not just the adventure, but the imagination Jack Vance displays.\u00a0 I’ll definitely be reading the rest of the series and reporting on it here.\u00a0 This wasn’t a long book.\u00a0 The DAW edition, shown at the top of the page, is only 156 pages long.\u00a0 If you like fre-wheeling adventure with a bit of wit and depth, and you haven’t read these books, you should check them out.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

City of the Chasch Tschai, Planet of Adventure:\u00a0 1 Jack Vance This is the first book in a tetralogy.\u00a0 I picked it up along with books 3 and 4 when I was in high school, but couldn’t find the second volume.\u00a0 This was in the pre-intenet days.\u00a0 I eventually did come across it, but never […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13,65,91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jack-vance","category-sword-and-planet","category-tsachai-planet-of-adventure"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3P5pJ-W","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}