Comments on: Polyphemus https://www.michaelsheaauthor.com Horror, Fantasy and Science Fiction Author Thu, 27 Jun 2013 15:43:06 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.1 By: MIchael Shea https://www.michaelsheaauthor.com/books/polyphemus/comment-page-1/#comment-1859 Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:38:10 +0000 http://www.michaelsheaauthor.com/books/polyphemus/#comment-1859 In reply to maillot de foot 2013.

Thank you so much. I’ll keep it coming.

]]> By: maillot de foot 2013 https://www.michaelsheaauthor.com/books/polyphemus/comment-page-1/#comment-1828 Tue, 11 Jun 2013 01:37:17 +0000 http://www.michaelsheaauthor.com/books/polyphemus/#comment-1828 Awesome blog. I enjoyed reading your articles. This is truly a great read for me. I have bookmarked it and I am looking forward to reading new articles. Keep up the good work.

]]> By: MIchael Shea https://www.michaelsheaauthor.com/books/polyphemus/comment-page-1/#comment-1818 Fri, 07 Jun 2013 03:16:52 +0000 http://www.michaelsheaauthor.com/books/polyphemus/#comment-1818 In reply to a.i.b..

Thank you so much for your estute appraisal. I’m always pleased to find that Jack is as well loved by others as he is by me. All the best, Michael

]]> By: MIchael Shea https://www.michaelsheaauthor.com/books/polyphemus/comment-page-1/#comment-1817 Fri, 07 Jun 2013 03:13:29 +0000 http://www.michaelsheaauthor.com/books/polyphemus/#comment-1817 In reply to George “Rusty”Locke.

Hey George
Thanks for your shared admiration of Jack, and your willingness to sample my hommage to him, written forty or so years ago when I first encountered his work. He was a brilliant, generous man. I will make bold to suggest to you IN YANA THE TOUCH OF UNDYING and my Nifft the Lean series, which continue to reflect my debt to Jack. Thank you so much, Michael

]]> By: George "Rusty"Locke https://www.michaelsheaauthor.com/books/polyphemus/comment-page-1/#comment-1816 Thu, 06 Jun 2013 22:26:13 +0000 http://www.michaelsheaauthor.com/books/polyphemus/#comment-1816 Thank you Michael. Having just purchased and read “A Quest for Simbilis” I have, with great joy, added it to my Vancian
collection (which also includes “Songs of the Dying Earth”). Losing Jack
was sad,but his booms, rife with
swollen conversations and burbling with
images and words spoken in places
I have never been will live forever.

]]> By: a.i.b. https://www.michaelsheaauthor.com/books/polyphemus/comment-page-1/#comment-1810 Wed, 05 Jun 2013 12:40:00 +0000 http://www.michaelsheaauthor.com/books/polyphemus/#comment-1810 The titles you cite, as well as so many other books by the incomparable and irreplaceable Jack Vance, each with its own richly imagined idiosyncratic world (Tschaï, Durdane, Lyonesse, Maske…), are members of a select category of inexhaustible works, in that they bear infinite rereading, a category in which I would also include Nifft the Lean. It is what you aptly call the untethered imagination that gives rise to this inexhaustibility, by creating not only coherent and consistent otherworlds, but also otherworlds within otherworlds (Irerly, Tanjecterly, Cugel’s “Nowhere” exhibit). The topos of the descensus ad inferos may be argued to be essential to Vance’s work (it is present not only in his fantasy, but also his science fiction, notably in The Pnume). Descents to the subworld situate his work within the same fictional continuum as proto-novels in which journeys between different worlds are a structuring element (Lucian of Samosata, Rabelais), and are intrinsically linked to the serio-comic style. A Quest for Simbilis and Nifft the Lean both draw in a highly original way upon this essential element of Vance’s work and also therefore tap into a fictional tradition much older and deeper than realism.

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