Today is August 28. There are a number of birthdays of note today [Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873), Jack Kirby (1917-1994), and Vonda N. McIntyre (1948-2019)], but it’s late, I’m tired, and I still have things to do tonight.
So, I’m only going to look at one of today’s birthday authors, Jack Vance (1916-2013).
Vance was a master of science fiction and fantasy as well as a mystery author. I’ve not read nay of his mysteries, so I’m not sure what the quality of those are.
Judging by the first of the Demon Prince novels, which is a mystery to some extent, I suspect his mysteries are very good.
I’m going to focus on his quintet of space oepra novels, known as the Demon Prince novels.
In spite of the name, they are not fantasy. They are most definitely scieince fiction. Five criminals, so evil they are known the Demon Princes, make an example of a colony planet, sort of a Don”t Mess With Us demonstration. One man and his nephew escape. The man trains the nephew to take revenge on them.
The nephew grows up and goes after a different Demon Prince in each book. The first three were written in the late sixties, the last two in the early eighties.
Vance said he waited that long to finish the series because he wanted to come up with something really good.
He succeeded.
The endings of both books packed a punch when I read them. Even though I was in high school at the time, I still remember them. I also remember the first one’s ending, because in that one, which of the three people traveling witih the protagonist is the Demon Prince is the mystery. (I didn’t solve it, but in hindsight, I should have.) I don’t remember much about the second and third books except that I enjoyed them.
DAW published a nice set of them. They’ve also been collected in a two volume omnibus. These are books written by Jack Vance, so they have a level of depth and imagination lacking in most space opera, even the best space opera.
I picked up the omnus volumes at the Friends of the Library sale a few years ago. I’m hoping to work them into the rotation at some point soon.
Have you read any of this series? If so, what did you think?