- Paperback: 218 pages
- Publisher: Gollancz; New edition edition (20 July 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0575071176
- ISBN-13: 978-0575071179
- Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 16.2 x 1.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,071,945 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Charley Lysidder, the Bajarnum of Beaujolais, was ruthlessly expanding his empire on the Big Planet. The objective of the mission from Earth was to ensure that the whole world didn't fall under the domination of the tyrant. But, when sabotage brought down the spacecraft carrying the mission, the priority changed. The survivors of the crash faced an epic 40,000 mile trek to deftly, across the vast and unknown surface of the planet, harassed by monsters and the native people, and by each other.
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.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Typical Vance at his best,
By A Customer
This review is from: Big Planet (Gollancz S.F.) (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.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Vintage Vance,
By A Customer
This review is from: Big Planet (Gollancz S.F.) (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.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not really his best,
By
This review is from: Big Planet (Gollancz S.F.) (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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