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Tales Of The Dying Earth: The influential science fantasy masterpiece that inspired a generation of writers (FANTASY MASTERWORKS)

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After working on a degaussing crew for a period, he left about a month before the attack on Pearl Harbor. It is particularly unforgiving because Tales of the Dying Earth uses a larger vocabulary than your average novel. Liane the Wayfarer, a "bandit-troubadour", is a vain, venal, overconfident, sadistic, and thoroughly amoral adventurer. Here grew trees like feather parasols, trees with transparent trunks threaded with red and yellow veins, trees with foliage like metal foil, each leaf a different metal – copper, silver, blue tantalum, bronze, green indium. The Earth is mostly barren and cold, and has become infested with various predatory monsters (possibly created by a magician in a former age).

I know Pratchett tried to do something similar in his work, but sadly, I've never found his writing funny.I fell in love with Jack Vance reading this novel and I can not for the life of me understand why I never read any Jack Vance before. For example, Mad Max Fury Road is post apocalyptic, but it also seems clear in that movie that the earth is dying. But the stories are much more about magic than they are futuristic, as the notable people all have magical powers, the ability to retain spells/rituals and all have dozens of awesome magic items. I know gritty and real are the buzzwords of the day, but while The Dying Earth is nothing of the sort, it's full of magic and whimsy and now I realize how good of a job the authors of Songs of the Dying Earth actually did. He is also a wizard of considerable power, from whom Mazirian stole the secrets of unnaturally long life.

Another series often cited as a pillar of the genre is Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun, along with its sequel, The Urth of the New Sun, both of which I just recently read. Smith described Zothique as the last inhabitable continent on a far future Earth, where technology has regressed to the level of classical or medieval times. An early 1950s short story series features Magnus Ridolph, an interstellar adventurer and amateur detective who is elderly and not prone to knocking anyone down, and whose exploits appear to have been inspired, in part, by those of Jack London's South Seas adventurer, Captain David Grief. The second-to-last story in the book, "Ulan Dhor," follows the journey of the titular novice sorcerer in his quest for the lost city Ampridatvir, once ruled by Rogol Domedonfors, a wizard of great power.

Like the others, the setting is the far future with the sun nearing the end of its life and the world growing colder.

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