For example, Mad Max Fury Road is post apocalyptic, but it also seems clear in that movie that the earth is dying. Here, in one volume, is Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Award-winning author Jack Vance’s classic Dying Earth saga comprising The Dying Earth, The Eyes of the Overworld, Cugel’s Saga and Rhialto the Marvellous.

Among Vance's earliest published work is a set of fantasy stories written while he served in the merchant marine during the war. In the end, however, there is a glimpse of hope - hope that comes not through cunning sorcery but through knowledge, giving this fantasy story a path into the land of science fiction, giving a he of something new to the world of old. Vance's stories written for pulps in the 1940s and 1950s cover many science fiction themes, with a tendency to emphasis on mysterious and biological themes (ESP, genetics, brain parasites, body switching, other dimensions, cultures) rather than technical ones. It seemed particularly glaring at first, since it opens with male wizards creating and chasing around beautiful, naive women, and the only strong woman is an aberrant creation who is easily talked down and made to change her mind. I thought Cugel's Saga retconned a bit of the previous novel's ending, it's the longest book in the series and by the end of it I was glad for a new bunch of characters in Rhialto The Marvellous.Among his awards are: Hugo Awards, in 1963 for The Dragon Masters, in 1967 for The Last Castle, and in 2010 for his memoir This is Me, Jack Vance! The tongue-in-cheek reversals were simply not constant enough to make the world suitably subversive. Though they can look at the wonders and pretend they are really there, humans can never truly inhabit or escape to these utopias as their physical bodies remain stuck on the Dying Earth and will die with the sun regardless. Vance plied many trades for short stretches: a bell-hop (a "miserable year"), in a cannery, and on a gold dredge, before entering the University of California, Berkeley where, over a six-year period, he studied mining engineering, physics, journalism and English.

More recently, he produced the slighter and almost whimsical tales of the magician Rhialto the Marvellous; Vance's poetic and comic strains of invention work effectively in tandem. The Moon has disappeared and the Sun is in danger of burning out at any time, often flickering as if about to go out, before shining again. It felt like Vance realized he had to do something there since he had spent the whole series building up to it, but wasn’t really interested in that part. Also in a sign of the times, the magic intensive fantasy world receives a scientific angle that allows it to reach out to more hardcore SF fans. The Dying Earth collects all of these stories, tragic, comic and charming--they take us to one of the strangest places and attractively affected styles in all fantasy.

While Vance's stories have a wide variety of temporal settings, a majority of them belong to a period long after humanity has colonized other stars, culminating in the development of the "Gaean Reach". The Compleat Dying Earth (first omnibus) publication contents at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. Earth grows cold; man gasps his last; why forego merriment, music, and revelry for the abstract and abstruse?

The journey has about everything: like Ulysses he escapes enchantment through music, like Perseus he rescues a damsell in distress and later fights a gorgon - a creature from the demoniacal dimensions that threatens the ruined museum and demands human sacrifices. Much of his work has been translated into several languages, including Dutch, French, Spanish, Russian, and Italian. Every few centuries there are massive geological upheavals which kill most of the population, resulting in a long line of fallen civilizations.

Jack Vance’s genre defining, fundamentally influential 1950 fantasy novel about swords, sorcery and ancient technology while the red glow of a dying sun spins over a far future earth is a SF/F gem.

He is also a wizard of considerable power, from whom Mazirian stole the secrets of unnaturally long life. The entire Jack Vance output from Underwood-Miller comes close to a complete collection of Vance's previously published works, many of which had not seen hardcover publication.Vance wrote the stories of the first book while he served in the United States Merchant Marine during World War II. For example, it seems clear the towers the viewpoint character grows up in are ancient grounded spaceships. And this is strange, strange magic, of the kind that would fascinate nerds like me for decades to come.