The Dying Earth - Reviewing Appendix N
I am going to start a new series this year. Partly this is to encourage myself to read more (as I feel I have been lacking ever since I started writing this blog) but also because I am very curious about the roots of, not just Dungeons & Dragons, but RPGs in general. And since Dungeons & Dragons has, in some way or another, touched every other RPG, be it video games or pen-and-paper, it makes sense to look at what has influenced it.
If you are wondering how I am choosing what books to read, well, it is very easy. In the back of the Dungeon Master’s Guide (1979), for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, is a list of media that was inspirational to Gary Gygax, which is simply known as Appendix N since… well, that’s where it is located. I am going to pick a different book to read from - though there are a few where it is just an author, in which case I will select a book from their work.
You can find that list reprinted here:
Anderson, Poul: THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS; THE HIGH CRUSADE; THE BROKEN SWORD
Bellairs, John: THE FACE IN THE FROST
Brackett, Leigh
Brown, Frederic
Burroughs, Edgar Rice: “Pellucidar” series; Mars series; Venus series
Carter, Lin: “World’s End” series
de Camp, L. Sprague: LEST DARKNESS FALL; THE FALLIBLE FIEND; et al
de Camp & Pratt: “Harold Shea” series; THE CARNELIAN CUBE
Derleth, August
Dunsany, Lord
Farmer, P. J.: “The World of the Tiers” series; et al
Fox, Gardner: “Kothar” series; “Kyrik” series; et al
Howard, R. E.: “Conan” series
Lanier, Sterling: HIERO’S JOURNEY
Leiber, Fritz: “Fafhrd & Gray Mouser” series; et al
Lovecraft, H. P.
Merritt, A.: CREEP, SHADOW, CREEP; MOON POOL; DWELLERS IN THE MIRAGE; et al
Moorcock, Michael: STORMBRINGER; STEALER OF SOULS; “Hawkmoon” series (esp. the first three books)
Norton, Andre
Offutt, Andrew J.: editor of SWORDS AGAINST DARKNESS III
Pratt, Fletcher: BLUE STAR; et al
Saberhagen, Fred: CHANGELING EARTH; et al
St. Clair, Margaret: THE SHADOW PEOPLE; SIGN OF THE LABRYS
Tolkien, J. R. R.: THE HOBBIT; “Ring trilogy”
Vance, Jack: THE EYES OF THE OVERWORLD; THE DYING EARTH; et al
Weinbaum, Stanley
Wellman, Manley Wade
Williamson, Jack
Zelazny, Roger: JACK OF SHADOWS; “Amber” series; et al
Each of my reviews will focus on what aspects I think have influenced different parts of RPG, as well as my opinion on the book, whether you should read it, pros, cons, as well as some books I think might be a good match with what I already read. If you want to read along, and I encourage you to do so, next month I am going to read a book from the father of the sword and sorcery genre, Conan by Robert E. Howard. Though, more specifically since it is a bunch of short stories, I will be reading: The Phoenix on the Sword, The Scarlet Citadel, The Tower of the Elephant, Black Colossus, and The Slithering Shadow - these are the first five stories written by Howard in Conan’s universe.
The Dying Earth by Jack Vance
We are looking at The Dying Earth series written by Jack Vance, more specifically, I read the first part also named The Dying Earth (1950) which is made up of six short stories, Turjan of Miir, Mazirian the Magician, T’sais, Liane the Wayfarer, Ulan Dhor Ends a Dream, and Guyal of Sfere. My version of the book is Tales of the Dying Earth (2012) and it changes the positions of the story so that Mazirian the Magician is before Turjan of Miir, which is a… good choice… I think.
I’ll talk about it later.
The stories themselves are not long reads with most only taking about twenty to thirty minutes to read, and the longest being forty minutes. In total, it is about 156 pages split among the six short stories. The book was published in 1950, so 24 years before the release of Dungeons & Dragons in 1974, so the stories have been around for 73 years in total - so they have had quite the time to ooze into the miasma of pop culture, RPGs, and more.
Lastly, there are three other collections after The Dying Earth, though I have not read them or looked up that much information about them. So if there is something in my review that touches on any of their elements, feel free to share it down below as I am unaware of what is in them.
The Dying Earth Genre
Before I properly begin this review, I just want to mention that these books are part of the subgenre, Dying Earth. This subgenre is apocalyptical, but not in the sense of some sort of catastrophic destruction, but rather the slow and steady decay of the earth. There was not one moment that caused the destruction of the world and sent it careening into the void, but rather time simply marched on and the world slowly decayed from age.
This makes for a melancholy setting, where people know the earth is dying. People know that it isn’t much longer until the sun finally winks out, but they can’t do anything about it. The sun may last for yet another thousand years, but it will end all the same, no matter what they do or what advances in technology happen. Due to this, the stories in this setting can feel bleak and hopeless, but there is always hope, though typically such hope is placed in the hearts of the naïve or young.
Review
Without beating around the bush, I am just going to tell you what I thought of the book and my ranking. After that, I’ll talk more about what I did and did not like, what I think are good takeaways from the book, and more.
3.5/5
The book is OK, but I don’t see myself wanting to revisit the setting or its stories. I’m glad I finally read it and I’m glad I experienced it, but I don’t think I’ll be a repeat visitor. I think the setting is incredible and very interesting, but I find the characters to be problematic, not very deeply written, and lacking in any reason for me to care about them and their success in the setting. I’d definitely be interested in the setting though, and it’s lucky that Dungeon Crawl Classics has a series of books set in this universe that will be released soon.
I’ll also state that I don’t read a lot of short stories, though I am a fan of Ray Bradbury’s short story collections like The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man. So perhaps some of my gripes stem from my lack of knowledge of the format.
I think others should read the books, but to do so with the understanding that they were written 70+ years ago and the problems that come with that, the chief one being that women take a backseat to men, are not as fleshed out, and ultimately end up being a ‘reward’ for the men to earn and protect. Other than that, the setting is incredible and one I want to steal things from going forward - which would probably be the only reason I end up reading any more of the books in the series.
Now, I’m going to spend the rest of this article talking about what events unfold in the book, more information about the pros and cons, as well as takeaways that I had.
What is the Dying Earth
The Dying Earth is best described by the character of Pandelume, a wizard or immortal of such power that no one should dare look upon him, to T’sais, a woman grown from a vat who is unable to see beauty in the world:
“Earth… A dim place, ancient beyond knowledge. Once it was a tall world of cloudy mountains and bright rivers, and the sun was a blazing white ball. Ages of rain and wind have beaten and rounded the granite, and the sun is feeble and red. The continents have sunk and risen. A million cities have lifted towers, have fallen to dust. In place of the old peoples a few thousand strange souls live. There is evil on Earth, evil distilled by time . . . Earth is dying and in its twilight . . .”
The Dying Earth is earth, but thousands upon thousands of years in our future where our advanced science has become lost to us. Even mathematics is said to have become a forgotten science, and only a select few wizards even know its formulas. Speaking of wizards, in this alternate reality of earth, there is magic that can be harnessed by wizards, and wizards, it seems, can be just about anybody. They just need to find a bit of sorcery and learn it.
I personally believe that all of the ‘magic’ in this world is simply the work of nanites or microscopic machines that allow magic to function and that the magic that wizards use is simply computer language and shorthand for the nanites to do their work, but I will profess that that is just my imagination and there is no evidence that it works like that in the book. Instead, magic is just accepted as reality and, during human evolution, we had magic and science working hand-in-hand to create a perfect society before it crumbled.
Mazirian the Magician
In the book, we are given six short stories that follow six different perspectives. The first is Mazirian the Magician, which is about a wizard, Mazirian, trying to force a rival wizard, Turjan, to give up the secrets of how to grow living creatures. Mazirian is then distracted by his search for knowledge by a woman who he is attempting to kidnap, torture, enslave, and more. Mazirian is not a good dude.
This is the story where we get our first description of magic and how wizards prepare their spells. It even states that Mazirian could learn four of his most formidable spells, or six lesser spells, forcing the spellcraft into his mind. He eventually decides to ‘force five spells upon his brain’ which are Phandaal’s Gyrator, Felojun’s Second Hypnotic Spell, The Excellent Prismatic Spray, The Charm of Untiring Nourishment, and the Spell of the Omnipotent Sphere.
First off, those are fantastic names for spells, and, while I have no idea if this is where that naming for spells came about, I am very happy that Dungeons & Dragons persists with naming their spells similar, like Aganazzar’s Scorcher or Bigby’s Hand. Secondly, I love the description of forcing the spells into your mind, and they even talk about having a ‘headful’ of spells when they prepare their spellcraft - though there is no talk of a cool down or how long until they can prepare new spells.
The story continues with Mazirian following after the mysterious woman, utilizing his spells, and almost capturing her. Luckily, for her, he is eventually killed by a grove of black trees that lash out at anyone that gets near it, though the woman, T’sain, becomes previously wounded.
It is then revealed that T’sain knows the wizard, Turjan, who is kidnapped and heads back to Mazirian’s labs, releases Turjan, and then promptly dies. Turjan then reveals that T’sain was grown in a vat (the secrets Mazirian was looking for) and that he will make a new version of her with her perfect mind.
Turjan of Miir
This story follows the wizard Turjan, the same as the one in the first adventure, but set before Mazirian the Magician. In it, Turjan is trying to solve the same puzzle that Mazirian was trying to force the answer out of him, how to create living creatures in a vat without them just being horrible creatures that soon die due to lack of will.
Eventually, Turjan decides that his only bet in learning how to create living creatures is to seek the aid of Pandelume who is said to know all spells, all incantations, cantraps, runes, and thaumaturgies that ‘have ever wrenched and molded space’. See, in this future earth, there were a thousand spells known to sorcery and wizards, but in this dying age, only a hundred spells remain, and many of them only a handful of wizards know them and refuse to share their knowledge with others.
Turjan travels to Pandelume’s realm, which exists in an ‘other world’ in the land of Embelyon created by Pandelume. When Turjan arrives, he is first encountered by a woman… who tries to kill him immediately but is thwarted because Turjan, beyond just being a powerful wizard, is a master at swordplay. She then runs off into the forest once she is bested, but not killed because Turjan thought she was too beautiful to kill… which will save this woman more than once.
Turjan makes a deal, completes a task, and then is taught how to create living creatures as well as given ‘the secret of renewed youth, many spells of the ancients, and a strange abstract lore that Pandelume termed “Mathematics”’. Turjan’s first creation is a beautiful young girl who is quickly slain by that woman from before, and Turjan finds out that the woman, T’sais, has a wrinkle in her brain that causes her to see all beautiful things as evil and disgusting, and it makes her a murderhobo. It’s nice to see several of my players represented in the book.
He then grows a new creature and names her T’sain and she is basically an exact twin of T’sais. This is the same T’sain found in the previous story who rescues Turjan before dying. T’sain then teaches T’sais how to view the world with love and see beauty, which doesn’t really work, but it is enough to change T’sais and make her realize that maybe she shouldn’t murder and destroy things. This only takes T’sain about a minute, which makes it seem like T’sais can just have her mind changed whenever and is easily manipulated. Turjan and T’sain then leave Pandelume’s realm and return to earth.
In previous collections of the stories, this story would come before Mazirian the Magician, but I like that it comes after. This way you don’t know anything about Turjan and T’sain in the first story. Otherwise, if you read this one first, you’d be spoiled for the reveal and you would already know the mysterious woman is T’sain trying to save her creator.
T’sais
This next story might be the weakest for me. It follows T’sais, the evil murderhobo living creature grown from a vat, as she leaves her home in Embelyon, the realm created and controlled by Pandelume. He warns her that earth is very dangerous, but she won’t change her mind and basically tells him to banish her forever from Embelyon as she no longer wishes to be trapped in this realm.
Arriving on earth, she appears in the forest and immediately witnesses a man, Liane, torturing a husband and wife for information. The woman eventually dies due to the torture, and it is now that T’sais charges in with her magical rapier and stabs Liane. I don’t think he dies from the wound, but rather is left unconscious to bleed out on the forest floor while the husband takes his dead wife and walks deeper into the woods, leaving T’sais alone.
T’sais wanders the world and is quickly kidnapped by three men who wish to rape her. She eventually fights free, uses her magical rapier to kill the three men, and runs into a Deodand, a demonic-humanoid (who inspired the fiendish Demodands/Gehreleths on the prison plane of Caceri). The Deodand tries to eat her, but she is able to escape and runs through the forest and eventually finds a small cottage where she ducks inside and the Deodand can not follow due to a locked door and a man inside who claims to be a wizard and will kill the demon with magic.
T’sais then falls unconscious and the man inside the cottage takes care of her, nurses her to health, and shows T’sais that not everyone in the world is a horrible creature that wants to harm her. The man, Etarr, has a problem though. His face was taken from him and he was given the face of a horrible demon by a sorceress he once thought he loved. He reveals to T’sais, that he has found out where the sorceress, Javanne, will be in two days and T’sais convinces him to take her with him.
The two travel to Javanne’s position and finds a cult of witches, demons, and more all having a big orgy with Javanne at the center of it all. During the orgy, knights of some holy order appear, killing demons, smoting witches, and just destroying evil where they see it. Javanne is able to escape before being kidnapped by Etarr and T’sais and is forced to help them. Etarr wants his old face back, but it is impossible because the demon that he was forced to swap faces with is dead now.
Etarr and T’sais realize the only thing they can do to fix Etarr’s face is to travel a great distance to a god bound to a single site in the world. They travel there where the god gives them their rewards based on their life choices. T’sais’ brain is fixed so she can see beauty, Etarr’s face is fixed, and Javanne is turned into a horrible demonic creature and cast away. Etarr and T’sais then travel back home together.
Liane the Wayfarer
This one I actually like quite a bit because of the twist at the end. It follows Liane, who I think is the same Liane as the one in the previous story but never specifically states so. He is a thief, rogue, and wants to sleep with every woman he meets.
Which is how Liane finds a witch and decides he will bed her, but she will only agree to it if he goes on a quest for her, retrieving the bottom half of her tapestry from a man named Chun the Unavoidable. He agrees immediately and travels to Chun’s lair where he finds the bodies of a bunch of men all killed by Chun.
He finds the tapestry in question and tries to take it, but is quickly run down by Chun and killed, even after using a ring of invisibility or maybe it allows him to travel to a reflective plane to escape. We then cut to the witch being given two long threads, that she quickly adds to her tapestry, weaving them into their proper position. Obviously, for everyone she sends to their death at the hands of Chun the Unavoidable, she gets just a few more threads to add to her tapestry, and since it is half done...
Ulan Dhor Ends a Dream
This story is interesting, though kind of suffers from being a short story (which I will explain down below). Ulan heads to an ancient city called Ampridatvir where he is to find two ancient documents that will grant him lost knowledge and great power.
On his journey there, he finds two citizens of the ancient city who claim that only green-clothed people live in Ampridatvir, that red-clothed people are raiders who seek the ancient documents, and everyone else is a demon. Later on, he meets a woman who tells him that only gray-clothed people live in Ampridatvir, red-clothed people are raiders, and everyone else is a demon. There are also literal demons, called Gaun, in Ampridatvir.
Ulan wears green and red, so he is in a bit of a predicament. Green-clothed and gray-clothed people literally do not see each other, but they see red and only raiders wear red, and raiders are to be killed so that the people can keep their ancient documents safe. At this point, Ulan must escape with the woman from before, Elai, and they head into the city where he finds air-cars and learns how to fly them.
Ulan then hatches his plan where they use the air-car to fly into the temples where the ancient documents are safeguarded by green-clothed and gray-clothed people and steals both documents. The two documents can be combined, revealing how to control the city of Ampridatvir and its powerful machine/computer soul. Ulan and Elai head to the computer controller, turn it on, and it restores the city, but then tries to kill everyone in the city, as well as enslave Ulan and Elai and use them as the progenitors of its new citizens. Ulan kills the computer and the two escape into their air car as they escape from the city, returning to Ulan’s homeland… where they probably live happily ever after.
Guyal of Sfere
Our final short story follows Guyal, a very inquisitive mind, who is traveling from the known world to the forgotten one so that he can reach the “Museum of Man” and ask the Curator all of his questions. This is a long journey where Guyal faces a variety of challenges but eventually arrives at a city just outside his destination.
In this city, he breaks a law (though no one would call it very fair) and is forced to pick the most beautiful woman in the village. He chooses one, Shierl, and they are the ‘tribute’ to the Museum of Man… turns out, they aren’t tributes so much as they are sacrifices to a demon that has taken up residence in the Museum. They escape being the plaything of the demon and find the Curator who is able to protect them but is an ancient being who has lost their grasp on reality, which has allowed them to ‘forget’ to age. They fix the Curator’s memory and this reminds the Curator to get old, which causes him to begin dying.
The Curator helps them defeat the demon before he dies and then transfers curatorship of the Museum to Guyal and Shierl. The two stay in the Museum, tending to all knowledge of mankind, turning their back on civilization in favor of knowledge.
The Good
So Jack Vance does a lot of good in his books and it is easy to see why they have survived for so long. He has a very fun way with words and there can be quite beautiful phrases. I particularly like whenever he takes a moment to talk about magic and how the wizard must force the words into their mind.
In addition, I find the technology charming when it is given its own life. In Ulan’s story, they revive a machine that is charming and amusing, despite how deadly it turns out to be. In Guyal’s story, this indescribable technology saves the day in such a strange way, by ‘unweaving’ a demon’s cellular structure, that it shows a strange world worth discovering and exploring.
The world of the Dying Earth is as beautiful as it is morose. It isn’t a place I’d ever want to live, or really visit, but it has a hidden beauty to it that creates a longing in your heart that you have hope that the world will get better. That it will start dying and begin living again. It’s a well-imagined world, even if the more you read, the more you don’t know about it.
Prose
So one of the strong parts of the book is also a weakness for it, but I think it remains positive for me though I ended up having to look up half a dozen words in each short story. I don’t know if this is just because of the time period, or maybe Vance just had a very large library of words that he used. I do appreciate it though since now I have more words to use as well like caparison, puissance, oast, and many, many others.
But, if you don’t like how wordy I can be in writing, you aren’t going to like Vance’s style.
The Bad
This section is going to be a bit longer than The Good, but don’t take that to mean that it is a bad series.
Casual Misogyny
I am going to be straightforward. Every woman is described based on how beautiful they are and that sets u their worth. In addition, every woman that the book considers worth talking about is very beautiful and is just the arm candy of the man. The only woman with any type of agency is T’sais, but her story takes the back seat to Etarr’s mission of getting his face back. At the end of their story, they end up together even though there is little to show that they are a good couple.
Just like in all the other short stories, a beautiful woman ends up with a man (who maybe is handsome, but the story never tells us that because men just aren’t described in that way). Even in Mazirian the Magician, while Mazirian dies, Turjan still is rejoined with T’sain… though she quickly dies at the end, so I suppose not every short story ends with the two living together, though he does pledge to grow her a new body around her brain. Take that as you will.
In addition to this causal misogyny, many of the interactions between men and women are focused on a sexual nature, often with the man forcing it, or wanting to force it, with the threat of violence. The three men that kidnap T’sais talk about how they wish to rape her and they get into a fight amongst themselves about who gets to do it first because she might be a virgin. Mazirian wishes to enslave T’sain and force her to serve against her will. Liane does the bidding of the witch, but makes a promise to himself that he will make her regret forcing him to do this quest so that he can have sex with her. Elai tells Ulan that she has never had a mate, so you know she is a virgin. Turjan’s first living creature grown from a vat is a young girl that he makes in the image of a prostitute he once saw. His second is in the image of a woman that he wanted to bed, but couldn’t since she wanted to kill him. It creates a situation where in this world, it seems like a woman’s value is only based on her beauty and sex, which does the setting a disservice.
Brief Descriptions
I haven’t read a lot of short stories, so maybe my problem is more with the genre and not The Dying Earth specifically. You only have a limited number of words to tell your story, you have to be quick, but I feel that Vance spends a lot of time describing the world, but not enough time spent talking about the action.
In Guyal of Sfere, there is a single paragraph that talks about Guyal beginning his journey, taking a ferry up the River Scaum on an old barge, his magical protections waver while he is on the water (and not the road), the barge-tender tries to kill Guyal for his stuff, Guyal kills the barge-tender and, and he makes it to the other side of the stream. But in that same story, Vance will spend two paragraphs telling us the history of the land that the main character doesn’t know about and doesn’t really deepen our understanding of the story that much, just of the world.
Another example is in Ulan Dhor Ends a Dream where the main character gathers up both McGuffins in the span of a single page, but spends pages arriving at the city. It is so rushed that you have to reread it a few times to realize that the events happen and how quickly the main character succeeds at this impossible quest he was given.
Takeaways
This book has a lot of good things to take away from it. I like how wizards force spells into their minds, I like the different demonic creatures within it, I like the magic and technology, the feelings of a dying world, and the glimmer of hope we are given.
What I am going to take away from this book will be descriptions of alternate worlds, as Vance has a great way of describing such beautiful places, as well as preparations of magic, creating a place in my world that feels as if it is dying like how the earth is dying in this book, as well as naming a lot of spells with fancy names like Phandaal’s Critique of the Chill and The Excellent Prismatic Spray.
Other Media
If you like this book and want something similar, I can recommend the following pieces of media that have stuck with me over the years.
Prince of Fools (2014) by Mark Lawrence / The Red Queen’s War series
The Time Machine (1895) by H.G. Wells
I am Legend (1954) by Richard Matheson
Dark Sun Campaign Setting (1991) by TSR Inc.
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