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100 Years of Jack Vance
Jack Vance playing banjo and kazoo, San Francisco, 1979 ~ photo by Hayford Peirce
Today is the birthday of the American writer Jack Vance (1916 – 2013). If Jack were still with us he’d be 100 years old today: it’s his Centennial! Jack’s books have given me countless hours of amusement, wonder, and escape over the last four decades, since I first found The Dying Earth on a paperback rack at a local drug store in Camillus, New York. I paid $1.75 for the slender volume of loosely connected stories, took it home, and was miraculously transported to the strange far-future fantasy inhabited by Turjan of Miir and Pandelume, the lovely but unfortunate T’sais, Guyal of Sfere – and of course, Chun the Unavoidable. The next week I returned to the drug store and found The Eyes of the Overworld, and trudged with Cugel and Firx across a strange and outlandish world, often laughing at Cugel’s intrepid antics or cringing at his relentless scheming. I was hooked. Jack’s stories were an unfailing source of delight and as I got older his characters became a part of my interior world, with whom I could find respite at times from the stress and pressures of my daily life.
Dreaming of Middle Earth
my original boxed set fell apart decades ago, but this is what my first copies of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings looked like
When I was a child growing up in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, there was a boxed set of books on a shelf in my parents’ study. The cardboard box contained four paperbacks and was decorated with strange symbols and the word TOLKIEN on a field of gold. The entire package was shrink-wrapped and had never been opened, and it sat there there for a long time – weeks or months, I guess, maybe even a year or two – sitting on the shelf with the other books next to it, quietly minding its own business and waiting for me. Sometimes I would pass by it and notice it, read the titles and wonder what it was, what was TOLKIEN, and what was a hobbit, anyway?
My Top 21 Science Fiction Novels of All Time
Introducing Off Topic: because one cannot live on Music and Education alone.
After more than a year of writing Off The Podium, I decided to let out the leash a little and allow myself to write about something else, from time to time. This blog will continue to primarily feature my writings on Music and Education! But once in a while it’s good to change it up.
So now for something completely different: my carefully curated list of My Top 21 Science Fiction Novels of All Time. If this is not your thing, just move along. This is not the post you’re looking for!
Walter Bitner 