Short Review: Jack Vance - Dying Earth

While listening to some videos on Dungeon Crawl Classic, the autoplay feature led me to a video on the Dying Earth campaign setting. It immediately struck a chord. Even the artwork looked like it's just my cup of tea. The kind of postapocalyptic world that is so far in the future that it's unrecognizable to our society, where fungy grow as tall as trees, the sun has become a red giant, Mutants roam the land and human society has regressed to feudal societies. Stuff that looks like a mix of Morrowind, Nausicaä, the Saga Games, Gamma World, even Elex and Numenera. In the video I learned, that both the campaign setting and the original Dungeons and Dragons was inspired by a book series that is collected under the title "Tales from the Dying Earth". Written by Jack Vance, it has a lasting influence on tabletop and video game rpgs, since it's impact on original D'n'D. 

The first book with the title Dying Earth containes 6 short stories that mostly stand on it's own with only few overlapping things. Each has it's own protagonist, mostly pretty shady characters, cruel magicians and rogues, vat-born creatures and pilgrims. The theme of the stories connects them, life has little worth, technology has been forgotten and is now seen as magic, the sun could burn out at any time, so the future is literally in the dark. Their connection to classic RPG's lies in the details: Spells have to be prepared before they can be cast, which influenced how magic worked in old D'n'D and old JRPG's like the first Final Fantasy. They even use spells which made their way into the Spell Books of the table top games like Prismatic Spray. The stories read mostly like small RPG campaigns, the protagonist has some kind of goal, be it ancient knowledge, a beautiful woman or the quest given by a king. 

Here lies the weakest part of the first book - the fact, that the stories feel somewhat simple and the characters one-dimensional, there is barely anything deep about their struggles. Even overcoming the challenges is often done by the casting of one spell or one strike of the dagger/sword. Still, the atmosphere of the work was able to draw me in and keep me going despite all the problems. This bleak yet weirdly colorful world ruled by anti heroes and mad man, living plants, ghosts and ancient flying cars is able to rouse my imagination and makes me want to create something of my own in that setting, a short story, a tabletop campaign or a RPG Maker Game. Let's see if my criticisms get corrected in the other 3 books.