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Radio War Nerd EP #165 — Jack Vance & Gene Wolfe (Patreon)

Published:
2019-01-18 20:47:40
Imported:
2026-06
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Recorded: January 15, 2019

The War Nerd takes a break from the grim realities of real-life wars, to talk about two of his favorite SFF authors: the under-appreciated Jack Vance, and the more justly rewarded Gene Wolfe. 

This episode continues the ongoing RWN series on war & literature: EP #160—WWI Poetry; EP #145—VS Naipaul; EP #129—Best & Worst War Novels; EP #119—Chechen Guerrilla Songs; EP #107—War Nerd Iliad; EP #94—Romance of the Three Kingdoms; RWN #89—Central African War Lit; RWN #64—Sci-fi & Fascism; RWN #51—"The Spike"; RWN #34—Ancient War Epics; RWN #21—War Songs & Poems; RWN #9—Dune.

Suggested Readings

Jack Vance: Dying Earth series; Demon Princes series; Planet of Adventure series.

Gene Wolfe: Book of the New Sun series; The Fifth Head of Cerberus; Soldier of the Mist.

John Dolan: "Jack Vance Made Worlds, Over and Over Again" 

Total time: 2:17:27

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here 

Files

Comments

Charles

Great episode. I was first introduced to Vance through Dungeons & Dragons. He was listed in 'Appendix N' of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide back in 1979--a sort of bibliography of influences on the game. This appendix must have gained Vance a few followers. Oh, and Wolfe is a literary god.

JoR

Great episode, the literature analysis is a good change of pace. While there are basically an infinite amount of potential show topics to cover, I hope that you cover the Mongols and their conquests soon. It's sort of like having a history of football podcast and not covering the 70's steelers (I know you guys love your analogies haha). I know that John doesn't want to cover certain topics without a guest that knows the topic well, although I feel that the research John and Mark do for episodes on their own is good itself (recent example being the Franco-Prussian war). However, maybe Carl Zha has adequate knowledge on the topic, especially regarding their China Conquest? Either way the show is great as always.

maledei

I really enjoy the BA anecdotes since I fly there next week as well... Maybe there should be a war nerds Meetup, or city tour to historical monuments... Actually maybe that's an additional income idea for you guys, the history of Rome podcast did a couple of week long excursions to Italy as well ;)

Tim Smith

The discussion of Vance reminds me of two more recent bits of SFF: New Dr. Who and the video game Dark Souls. It sounds like Vance is dramatically better, in terms of technique and depth, than Dr. Who, but it seems to me that a lot of the appeal of the show is the jumping through different crazy worlds, often including dying ones. The contrast, though, is interesting: Dr. Who is dripping with pathos, and insofar as it has a perspective, it's a very standard broad sort of liberalism (it breaks through this at times, when it's at its best) , probably because of the audience it needs to appeal to, and because it's written by a group of TV writers rather than one guy with a particular perspective. I think Vance would have liked Dark Souls, though; you're a person cursed with the inability to die fighting your way through a world where everything, including the ability of time to move properly, is falling apart, nominally on a quest to keep it alive a bit longer, but with minimal guidance. The world is full of imaginative horrors all presented in an understated and often disorienting way. I suspect there's an audience for Vance among the discerning dweebs of today who are into this sort of thing; maybe he'll get the canonization he and John Kennedy Toole deserve, and which Toole eventually got.

Charles

It strikes me that Dark Souls could also be fruitfully linked to Wolfe with its deep history only really discernible through careful examination of environmental clues and item descriptions. Any sort of traditional exposition feels almost incidental. Both benefit from repeated visits too.

James Christensen

Banner Saga makes for an interesting Vance compare-and-contrast. You guide a bunch of armed refugees through a dying Nordic landscape. It's less episodic than the Vance novels I've read, because the clan is moving too fast to soak in any one location for long. Characterizations are broad but effective. If somebody dies, the game usually moves on immediately. I suppose Banner Saga resembles something Vance might write were he somehow forced against his will to create a world where all the humans shared a language, similar customs, and a (objectively correct) cosmology.

Ellen Harold

Little known about (by me) war, the Rif war, where Petain and Franco served. Poison gas used against “natives”. Vincent Sheean wrote about it in Personal History. Great book.

Theophylact Pay (née Buy)

Great episode. My uncle (also East Bay native) pushed Vance on me when I was a pretentious high schooler obsessed with Tolstoy. Good on him. I have a question though. Who is this Professor Dudley that Ames wrote about? Trying to track down some information about this seemingly macabre situation but the internet isn’t turning much up...

Ilias

I absolutely love the literary episodes.

Ellen Harold

Sheean didn’t mention poison gas in Personal History, as I recall. (He wrote about living among Arab fighters.) It was mentioned in a letter to the editor in London Review of Books this week. Sorry to be so off topic. Am writing from my phone.

Ellen Harold

Berber rebels, I should have said.

Henry

Added Dying Earth to the ole kindle. If anyone is looking for good silly world building it's hard to do better than Discworld. War with Newts is another good SFF war novel too.

Jimothy Realname

A question for John: How frequently do you worry about being hit by a bug meteor, and how often does the phrase "Out of the ashes of Buenos Aires" run through your head?

Ronald Dahlgren

Outstanding episode. I appreciate the diversionary episodes we a few times a year. Even better when it's about SFF work I may have missed out on!