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This volume includes Vance’s first published story (“The World-Thinker”) and a selection of other stories including the novella “Telek”.
Contents: The World-Thinker, Dream Castle (“I’ll Build Your Dream Castle”), Seven Exits from Bocz, The God and the Temple Robber (“The Temple of Han”), Telek, Men of The Ten Books, D.P., Noise (“Music of the Spheres”), The Absent Minded Professor (“First Star I See Tonight”; “Murder Observed”), The Devil On Salvation Bluff, Where Hesperus Falls, The Phantom Milkman, A Practical Man’s Guide, The House Lords, The Secret

All Jack Vance titles in the SFGateway use the author’s preferred texts, as restored for the Vance Integral Edition (VIE), an extensive project masterminded by an international online community of Vance’s admirers. In general, we also use the VIE titles, and have adopted the arrangement of short story collections to eliminate overlaps.

The first book in the 5 volume Demon Princes saga. The protagonists parents were murdered by a posse of 5 galactic criminals, the “demon princes”. He vows revenge, and eliminates them one by one. In the process Vance does what he excels at: creating strange worlds, environments, customs, and adaptations that humans have made to live in these conditions.

Jay Vickers was an ordinary man, or so he thought. All he wanted was to be left in peace to finish his next book. However, strange things started happenin – from his discovery of a mouse that was not a mouse, to the visit of an old neighbor that was not a man. Or at least he was not an ordinary man.

For as it turned out, neither was Jay Vickers. This is the story of human mutation – the next step in the evolution of the species. What if mutants walked among us already? What if they were organized? What if they had unbelievable powers, such as the ability to cross between alternate worlds or dimensions at will, or to intuitively reach the absolutely correct answer by intuition or “hunch”, or to telepathically reach out to the stars?

Such supermen would automatically try to conquer lesser men, would they not? Or would they do everything in their power to free the rest of humanity from slavery and suffering? Just what would the political and corporate powers-that-be do to keep their power and their slaves? How would mutants undermine the power of these bosses to set mankind free?

This is a story of unlimited freedom, of worlds without end, ready for the taking. It is also the story of powerful, benevolent beings that exist only to help those who need that help. This is a future of a lop-sided mechanical culture of technology that could provide creature comfort for a few, but not human justice or security for the many. It is a future of hate, and war, and worry. Nothing like the way the world really turned out – after all, there couldn’t really be an underground of mutants working to free humanity . . . could there?

Early in human history, certain individuals were born who live on, unaging, undying, through the centuries and millennia. We follow them through over 2000 years, up to our time and beyond – to the promise of utopia and the challenge of the stars. A milestone in modern science fiction and a New York Times Notable Book on its first publication in 1989, this is one of a great writer’s finest works.

The sails were the product of the Old Technology, lost long ago in the depleted Earth, and they were priceless. For with those fantastic sheets of etheric material, ships could sail the sky and even brave the radiant tides between worlds and stars.

The alchemists who had replaced scientists still sough the ancient secrets, and Rachad, apprentice to such a would-be wizard, learned that the key to his quest lay in a book abandoned in a Martian colonial ruin long, long ago.

But how to get to Mars? There was one way left – take a sea vessel, caulk it airtight, steal new sails and fly the star winds in the way of the ancient windjammers.

Here is an intriguing, unusual and colourful novel of ships that sail the stars riding before the solar breeze that blows between worlds.