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Big Planet (Gollancz S.F.)
 
 
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Big Planet (Gollancz S.F.) [Kindle Edition]

Jack Vance (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews) |
Kindle Price: £4.99 includes VAT* & free wireless delivery via Amazon Whispernet
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Product Description

Product Description

The objective of the mission from Earth to Big Planet was to ensure that the whole world didn't fall under the domination of the tyrant Lysidder. But when the mission spacecraft crash-lands, the survivors are faced with a 40,000 mile trek across the vast and unknown surface of the planet.

About the Author

Jack Vance was born in 1916 and educated at the University of California in mining engineering, physics and journalism. During the Second World War he served in the Merchant Navy and was torpedoed twice. He started contributing stories to the pulp magazines in the late 1940s and published his first book, The Dying Earth, in 1950. Among his many books are To Live Forever, The Dragon Masters, for which he won his first Hugo, The Blue World, Emphyrio, The Anome and the Lyonesse sequence.

Product details

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 295 KB
  • Print Length: 96 pages
  • Page Numbers Source ISBN: B001EOFZP6
  • Publisher: Gateway (29 Sep 2011)
  • Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
  • Language English
  • ASIN: B0061QGHUY
  • Text-to-Speech: Enabled
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #64,375 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

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More About the Author

Jack Vance
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
This is a typical Vance space adventure, if you like Vance, you'll love it. Join Claude Glystra as he and his party are stranded on the aptly named Big Planet. The heros must travel 40,000 miles across a hostile planet filled with misfits exiled from Earth, to the safety of the Earth compound. Along the way they beat a variety of challenges using only their wits and determination. Vance's imagination packs this with high adventure whilst Vance's description of characters, places, smells, sights and sounds give a real feeling of being along with the survivors in their attempts to reach safety. Along the way, you'll encounter combat, romance, desparate escapes, odd technology (in a world with virtually no metal) and trickery. Great stuff.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Vintage Vance 4 May 2002
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
Not his strongest ever, but a great example. Have you noticed Vance's ability to create a world that is credible but nothing like Earth? This was probably his first, as this text dates back to 1952, but it hasn't aged too badly. Big Planet with its disparate societies, lack of metal and immense distances, is a definitely alien world. It's well worth a visit.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Not really his best 15 Feb 2005
By Davywavy2 VINE™ VOICE
Format:Paperback
A crew of spacefarers on a diplomatic mission crash-land on a planet many times the size of earth (but less dense, so it retains earth-like gravity), leaving them stranded, pursued by enemies, and almost 40,000 miles from their hope of rescue. As a premise, this sounds promising, but Vance really underdelivers; his trademark dialogue (superlative), and creation of exotic cultures is present in spades, but the book lacks the sense of scale (as appears in, say, Bob Shaw's 'Orbitsville') and so leaves this reader wondering why the planet is so big when the narrative makes little enough of it.
Compared with other travelogues Vance has written (Eyes of the Overworld and Cugels Saga are the obvious choices), this book doesn't stand up well: it's an early work and you can tell, as he is plainly still developing the skill and style which would flower in later books. The ending feels rushed and is, overall, just unsatisfying in comparison with the author's later work.
If this was any other writer, I'd give it four stars. For vance, three and a half because we know that he wrote other - much better - books later in his career.
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