Jealous….?
I am sitting with my very own uncorrected advance copy of SONGS OF THE DYING EARTH in my coldblooded Vulcan hands, complete with the gorgeous cover illustration by Tom Kidd, who also did the interior illustration. The headpiece of the page for ‘Guyal the Curator’ (my own modest offering to this feast of splendor) has a Tom Kidd illustration, showing Magnatz the titan looming over the hills of Sfere.
The first story in the book is by Robert Silverberg, and the final story is by Neil Gaiman. In between, are tales by Dam Simmons, Mike Resnick, Kage Baker, and Tanith Lee. Yes, that Kage Baker, who wrote the ‘Company’ stories; yes that Tanith Lee, who wrote everything from ‘Tales of the Flat Earth’ to ‘Silver Metal Lover.’
As a fan, not merely as a huckster hawking his wares, I assure you this is the most impressive, the most lumenous, the most astonishing line up of famous names I have ever seen in an anthology: and the tales all take place in Jack Vance’s crytpical, over-refined, puzzling, and morbid backdrop of eriee magnificance: the Dying Earth, where humanity sags beneath the pressure of a thousand forgotten eons, the sun flickers like an exausted ember, footpads and rogues haunt the twilight cities, and monsters gambol in the twilight forests, while magicians cram their brains with the extracted lore of polydimensional thaumaturgy.
For those of you impatient to read the next installment of George R.R. Martin’s GAME OF THRONES — and I am one of your number — please be patient. Mr. Martin both helped edit this anthology, and contributed a story to it. He had to do it. Dennis Lanning of the Legion of Time returning from the future aboard the Chronion, appeared in a time-vision to Martin and assured him that, unless this anthology was successfully printed this year, the utopia of far distant Jonbar would never come to pass, but instead the future be occupied by the subhuman Gyronchi, ruled by the demonic but beautiful Sorainya!
So, while you are waiting, rush out a get a copy of this, or else just reread his DYING OF THE LIGHT (which I recall as ‘After the Festival’ when it appeared in magazine form.)
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
