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The Moon Moth and Other Stories

Page 33

by Jack Vance

1. Big Planet (1952)

  2. The Magnificent Showboats (1975) (aka The Magnificent Showboats of the Lower Vissel River, Lune XXII South, Big Planet) (aka Showboat World))

  Demon Princes

  1. The Star King (1964)

  2. The Killing Machine (1964)

  3. The Palace of Love (1967)

  4. The Face (1979)

  5. The Book of Dreams (1981 )

  Planet of Adventure

  1. The Chasch (19648 (City of the Chasch)

  2. The Wannek (1969) (Servants of the Wankh)

  3. The Dirdir (1969)

  4. The Pnume (1970)

  Durdane

  1. The Anome (1973)

  2. The Brave Free Men (1973)

  3. The Asutra (1974)

  Alastor Cluster

  1. Trullion: Alastor 2262 (1973)

  2. Marune: Alastor 933 (1975)

  3. Wyst: Alastor 1716 (1978)

  Lyonesse

  1. Suldrun's Garden (1983) (aka Lyonesse)

  2. The Green Pearl (1985)

  3. Madouc (1990)

  Cadwal Chronicles

  1. Araminta Station (1988)

  2. Ecce and Old Earth (1991)

  3. Throy (1992)

  Gaean Reach

  1. The Domains of Koryphon (1974) (aka The Gray Prince)

  2. Maske: Thaery (1976)

  Other Novels

  Vandals of the Void (1953)

  The Rapparee (The Five Gold Bands/The Space Pirate) (1953)

  Clarges (To Live Forever) (1956)

  The Languages of Pao (1958)

  Gold and Iron (Slaves of the Klau/Planet of the Damned) (1958)

  Space Opera (1965)

  The Blue World (1966)

  Emphyrio (1969)

  The Dogtown Tourist Agency (aka Galactic Effectuator) (1980)

  Collections

  The World-Thinker and Other Stories

  The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories (aka Gadget Stories)

  Son of the Tree and Other Stories

  Golden Girl and Other Stories

  The Houses of Iszm and Other Stories

  The Dragon Masters and Other

  The Moon Moth and Other Stories

  Autobiography

  This is Me, Jack Vance (2009)

  Jack Vance (1916 – )

  Jack Vance was born in 1916 and studied mining, engineering and journalism at the University of California. During the Second World War he served in the merchant navy and was torpedoed twice. He started contributing stories to the pulp magazines in the mid 1940s and published his first book, The Dying Earth, in 1950. Among his many books are The Dragon Masters, for which he won his first Hugo Award, Big Planet, The Anome, and the Lyonesse sequence. He has won the Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Awards, amongst others, and in 1997 was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America.

  Copyright

  A Gollancz eBook

  Copyright © Jack Vance 1975

  All rights reserved.

  The right of Jack Vance to be identified as the author

  of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2011 by

  Gollancz

  The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Orion House

  5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane

  London, WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette UK Company

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 0 575 10993 3

  All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real

  persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  *Kiv: five banks of resilient metal strips, fourteen to the bank, played by touching, twisting, twanging.

  *Stimic: three flute-like tubes equipped with plungers. Thumb and forefinger squeeze a bag to force air across the mouth-pieces; the second, third and fourth little fingers manipulate the slide. The stimic is an instrument well-adapted to the sentiments of cool withdrawal, or even disapproval.

  *Krodatch: a small square sound-box strung with resined gut. The musician scratches the strings with his fingernail, or strokes them with his fingertips, to produce a variety of quietly formal sounds. The krodatch is also used as an instrument of insult.

  *Skaranyi: a miniature bag-pipe, the sac squeezed between thumb and palm, the four fingers controlling the stops along four tubes.

  *Gomapard: one of the few electric instruments used on Sirene. An oscillator produces an oboe-like tone which is modulated, choked, vibrated, raised and lowered in pitch by four keys.

  **Double-kamanthil: an instrument similar to the ganga, except the tones are produced by twisting and inclining a disk of resined leather against one or more of the forty-six strings.

  *In Drewe’s book Sulwen’s Planet he remarked: “Color is color and shape is shape; it would seem incorrect to speak of human shape and human color, and Wasp shape and Wasp color; but somehow, by some means, the distinction exists. Call me a mystic if you like…”

  *Utilis: a world cognate to Palaeocene Earth, where, by Alan Robertson’s decree, all the industries, institutions, warehouses, tanks, dumps and commercial offices of old Earth were now located. The name ‘Utilis’, so it had been remarked, accurately captured the flavor of Alan Robertson’s pedantic, quaint and idealistic personality.

  **Alan Robertson had proposed another specialized world, to be known as ‘Tutelar’, where the children of all the settled worlds should receive their education in a vast array of pedagogical facilities. To his hurt surprise, he encountered a storm of wrathful opposition from parents. His scheme was termed mechanistic, vast, dehumanizing, repulsive. What better world for schooling than old Earth itself? Here was the source of all tradition; let Earth become ‘Tutelar’! So insisted the parents and Alan Robertson had no choice but to agree.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Gateway Introduction

  Contents

  The Kokod Warriors

  The New Prime

  The Men Return

  Ullward’s Retreat

  Coup De Grâce

  Dodkin’s Job

  The Moon Moth

  Green Magic

  Alfred’s Ark

  Sulwen’s Planet

  Rumfuddle

  Website

  Also By Jack Vance

  Author Bio

  Copyright

 

 

 


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