Showboating Review
Jun. 6th, 2012 10:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantuaHey,
I was looking for a short, breezy read and stumbled across the Kindle edition of The Magnificent Showboats of the Lower Vissel River, Lune XXIII South, Big Planet by Jack Vance. Vance pretty much writes one kind of story (maybe two), but it's always a treat to watch his imagination at work.
For this story, we travel to Big Planet -- a world 24,000 miles in diameter, but lacking significant deposits of heavy metals so it's density is low enough to allow humans to live there. The planet is a refuge for a vast collection of human groups who live in isolation and quickly become "quirky". This particular story focuses on the Showboats, large floating theaters that ply one of the planet's many rivers and put on a variety of shows.
Apollon Zamp is an owner of one of these showboats and he learns of a competition to select a showboat to perform in far-off Mornune. A successful performance there will be wildly profitable and Vancian characters are nothing if not motivated by profit. So off he goes and he has lots of misadventures along the way.
Again, it's a short, dreamy piece and it's just fun to read.
later
Tom
I was looking for a short, breezy read and stumbled across the Kindle edition of The Magnificent Showboats of the Lower Vissel River, Lune XXIII South, Big Planet by Jack Vance. Vance pretty much writes one kind of story (maybe two), but it's always a treat to watch his imagination at work.
For this story, we travel to Big Planet -- a world 24,000 miles in diameter, but lacking significant deposits of heavy metals so it's density is low enough to allow humans to live there. The planet is a refuge for a vast collection of human groups who live in isolation and quickly become "quirky". This particular story focuses on the Showboats, large floating theaters that ply one of the planet's many rivers and put on a variety of shows.
Apollon Zamp is an owner of one of these showboats and he learns of a competition to select a showboat to perform in far-off Mornune. A successful performance there will be wildly profitable and Vancian characters are nothing if not motivated by profit. So off he goes and he has lots of misadventures along the way.
Again, it's a short, dreamy piece and it's just fun to read.
later
Tom
no subject
Date: 2012-06-06 05:19 pm (UTC)