An Amusing Little Quiz for Jack Vance Fans
I stumbled by mistake across the following:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-597375.html
A poster with the energetic name of Rocketeer proposes the following quiz:
An amusing little quiz for Jack Vance fans
1. Name the five Demon Princes.
2. Name the four alien races (not counting humans) on Tschai.
3. Who sent Cugel the Clever far away across the Dying Earth?
4. Who was Zap210?
5. In what novel did a travelling showman, owner of a tattered tabard, become involved in a dynastic struggle?
6. In what novel did stranded Earthmen ride the monoline?
7. Name the Galactic Effectuator.
8. Extra credit: name three of Kirth Gersen’s romantic interests.
I would hold my fansmanship of Jack Vance to be merely nuncupatory were I unwilling to answer. I neither used internet nor turned toward my extensive bookshelf of Vanceania for reminders. This is based on raw memory alone.
Fellow Vance fans! I invite you to join me without looking below the cut, where I place both my answers and then the real answers.
Warning: I assume I have spelled each and every name wrong. This is just my memory without looking at anything or using any reminders.
1. This one is easy:
Attel Malagate the Woe, a Star-King
Kokor Hekkus the Killing Machine, a Hormogaunt of the legendary planet Thamber
Viole Falushe, born Vogel Finschner,a sybarite
Lens Larque of the planet Darsh, who has erected a peculiar monument to himself.
Howard Alan Treesong, lord of the overmen, a Chaoticist.
2. Another easy one:
The Chasch, further subdivided into the Old Chasch, the Blue Chasch, and the ferocious Green Chasch.
The Wankh, who are a coherent peoples occupying fortresses of black glass overlooking the seas of Durdane.
The Dirdir, who are savage and mercurial, but whose energies absorbed in the intricacies of their multiple sexes.
The Pnume, who stand aloof, and occupy extensive underground warrens. Their relationship to the savage Phung is a matter of speculation.
3. Another easy one: the first time, Icounno the Laughing Magician. In the sequel it was the hapless footpad himself, due to an inverted pervulsion of the spell of the Agency of Far Dispatch. Cugels accomplishments as a thaumaturge, are, to put the matter delicately, less impressive than those of Phandaal the Great.
4. ZAP210 is a girl of the Pnumekin, whom Adam Reith encountered during various escapades and escapes. She departed with him aboard his ship, and is one of the very few Vance heroine is with the hero by the story’s end.
5. Showboat World.
6. This is a guess: it was Adam Reith traveling among the Yaonese, who are better conceptualists than engineers. And yet I am not sure: perhaps their track was called the Wheelway.
I am trying to think of other Vance books starring as stranded Earthmen. Ifness in the Faceless Man trilogy is not stranded, and their transport is called the Balloon-Way. Keirth Gersen is not an earthman, but was born on Mount Pleasant. Ghyl Tarvoke is from Ambroy. If this question is a reference to some obscurer book like Nopelgarth or Houses of Iszm, I am not going to get the answer.
7. Rudolf Magnus.
8. Another easy one: Pallas Atwrode is a clerk at the college where Malagate the Woe is hidden; Iphaneusia Asperaz-Tockhe is the lady of Thamber who sells herself to Interchange to escape the attentions of Korkor Hekkus; Alice Wroke is the young lady who is an agent of Howard Alan Treesong who bungles an attempt to seduce Gersen, a man of somewhat more austere habits than one might expect for one of his vocation as a professional nemesis.
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1. Attel Malagate / Malagate the Woe (Gersen tries the ale at Smade’s Tavern and has a row with a Beauty)
Kokkor Hekkus (Gersen is kidnapped and takes an interest in handicrafts)
Viole Falusche (Gersen meets a poet and a girl from Eridu)
Lens Larque (Gersen plays hadaul and acquires shares in the Kotzash mining company)
Howard Alan Treesong (Gersen takes up the flute and learns something of the mortuary arts)2. Chasche (Meurglys points out that there are two varieties of Chasch, Blue and Green), Wankh, Dirdir, Pnume
3. Iaconnu the Laughing Magician
4. A Pnumekin and Adam Reith’s love interest in The Pnume; eventually they consummate their love in the cabin of a cog during a thunderstorm (a lovely little cameo of a scene).
5. Showboat World
6. Big Planet (I seem to remember that Kirstendale, where everyone works half-time, is on Big Planet, too.)
7. Miro Hetzel
8. Alice Wroke, Pallis Atwrode, Alusz-Iphigenia Eperje-Tokay (Malacandra adds Drusilla Wayle/Zan Zu from Eridu (Gersen also meets one of Drusilla’s sisters at the end of that novel) and Jerdian Chanseth)
As I suspected, I got #6 wrong. I totally misspelled and only half-remembered the name of Alusz-Iphigenia Eperje-Tokay.
I conflated Magnus Ridolph with Miro Hetzel, and remembered his name backward, Darn.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
