18 November, 2001
The Eyes of the Overworld
Jack Vance
1966
158 pp.
This story is set in the same milieu as Vance's The Dying Earth: a world at the end of its time, whose sun is a dying ember. It might be our world, or just one like it. In this world lives Cugel, a disreputable adventurer, theif, and all-round blackguard. He comes up with a cunning plan to rob a powerful wizard, Iuconnu the Lauging Magician, and of course gets caught. Said wizard compels Cugel to go on a quest to fetch an artifact from a far away place.
The Eyes of the Overworld relates the tale of this quest. It was originally published as a magazine serial, and the structure of the novel reflects that. Each "chapter" is a stand-alone story relating some adventure Cugel has on his journey to bring the artifact (one of the "Eyes of the Overworld") back to Iuconnu.
The Dying Earth is a brilliant work, and everybody who's into SF should read it. The Eyes of the Overworld has the same beautiful/weird setting, a world which is both futuristic and primitive. (In Eyes, the "primitive" side is more evident than the futuristic one.) However, it's not as enjoyable as The Dying Earth, mostly due to the main character. The stories in The Dying Earth feature a number of unrelated people, who cover a wide spectrum of personalities. Some of them are heroes, some are lovers, some are naifs, some are villains. The stories in Eyes, on the other hand, only feature one person, and not a very nice one at that. "Cugel the Clever" is arrogant, greedy, and rather irritating. While he's "clever" at getting himself out of fixes, he's not very clever at avoiding the fixes in the first place. Most of the enjoyment I got from this book came from schadenfreudian satisfaction at the misfortunes that befall Cugel because of his own bad nature. He's a nasty guy who regualarly gets his comeuppance. At least once per chapter.
I read The Eyes of the Overworld in the Tor omnibus Tales of the Dying Earth. In addition to Eyes and the original The Dying Earth, there are two more novels in the book (Cugel's Saga and Rhialto the Marvellous), but I think I'll leave those for another time. For one thing, I need to get the taste of Cugel out of my brain.