Customer Reviews

The Gray Prince: A Science Fiction Novel

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Those hasty readers who sought, and therefore found, "racist filth" here have seriously misunderstood the meaning of Kelsse Madduc's "magnificent joke."

[WARNING: SPOILER FOLLOWS]

The whole point of the book is that the "oppressed" "native" Uldra are not natives but off-world conquerors -- of the Erjin, who are THEMSELVES off-world conquerors, of the autochthonous Morphotes, for whose welfare not one of the bleeding-heart societies of the planet cares a bent farthing.

A further irony is that Uldra and Erjin alike are separately, and actively, plotting to regain their conquests by wholesale slaughter. The Morphotes? They kill on a retail level, so far as I recall....

The only ones, in fact, manifesting a trace of fellow-feeling for the other races of the planet (native and other) are the wicked nasty "colonialists."

Vance ventures in the world of politics in The Grey Prince with an ironic tale where the oppressed are found to be oppressors and the self-righteous prove to follow disguised self-interest of grandeur and fame. Curiously, this time the main Vancian character is introduced as somewhat of a villain, the storytelling evolving to show his true side as well as his "noble" rivals - whose true face is not as noble as it appears. The ending, as always, shows an admirable ironic witt.

An intelligent, educated critic at how real world politics can degenetate between natives and colonials, with a keen reminder that "abstract" interest groups rarely defend their members' grassroots views.

Interesting for the student of politics as for the SF fan looking for inspiring social dynamics.

A returnee to the planet Koryphon discovers changes and mysteries in the behavior of his old friends. The displaced former masters of Koryphon are subservient to human immigrants, who are trying to agree upon a formal relationship with them. Typically humanity cannot agree, and the differences between advocates degenerates to opposition and conflict. The urban factions promote their solution based upon abstractions formed through social fashion and educated consensus. Those who deal most with the native population are faced with the threat of externally imposed order and loss of their way of life. Told in Vance's typically elaborate manner the story shows how the most convoluted human and alien relationship must be understood internally, by the participants, to reach a working relationship. The tale hinges on enlightened self interest of the characters as they all pursue individual goals; not at all transparently. An exemplary Vance title, with all his sense of! ! wonder and roundabout manner of getting to the real point of the story. Well worth a read!!

Vance delivers his straight-faced wit and fully conceived worlds almost to perfection with The Gray Prince. In the far future, newcomer land barons and longtime inhabitant nomads clash on the planet Koryphon. But this is only the backdrop. The characters are completely believable and well thought-out. They each have their own interests and motivations. Who are the good guys? Vance leaves that up to you. Refreshingly, he does not preach. He just writes a great story.

If I could, I would assign this book 3.5 stars. The Gray Prince is interesting in the vein of the vastly superior Emphyrio by Vance (i.e. this is not one of Vance's whimsical and zany Dying Earth type books) but its characterization is minimal. The ideas are fairly original and complex and have led to confusion among some of the less thoughtful reviewers.

These less-educated reviewers resemble the princess in the fable "The Princess and the Pea," claiming to detect a pea of racism under forty mattresses and are hallucinating visions of "racist filth."

Why? Ostensibly, Vance modeled a world of 5 cultures, the first 3 of which are human:

1) Human "Nomads" civilization resembling Amerinds

2) Human "Land-barons" inhabiting Vance's typical Manses, which rule the wild lands

3) Human "Urban effetes" living in the north

4) Erjin slaves

5) Morphote "planet's original indigenous race"

Two of the three human cultures - the Nomads and the Urban Effetes - subjugate the Erjin race. Hypocritically, these 2 human slaveholding cultures denounce the Land-barons for "stealing" the Nomads' land, even though the Land-barons are not slaveholders. Vance's allegiance is with the Land-barons. This leads the reader to make a decision on whom to support:

1) The slaveholding Nomads whose land was "stolen" by the Land-barons

2) The Land-barons who do not hold slaves and merely inhabit land that the Nomads themselves had stolen from a race who had stolen it from the indigenous race on the planet (the Morphotes).

The readers decrying this as "racist filth" are choosing to support the slaveholding Nomads over the Land-barons because -- well, it's hard to avoid the conclusion -- the readers are racist. They assume the Land-barons represent Europeans and the Nomads symbolize Amerinds so the Land-barons just hafta be bad. Furthermore, since Jack Vance is of European descent he just must be a jack-booted purveyor of racism (Likely, these confused readers would think differently if Jack Vance were of Amerind descent, which means that the author's race, not his ideas, determines whether these readers charge him with racism). These readers don't just insult Jack Vance; they insult all SF fans.

One major point of the book is that some people (like the readers decrying "racist filth") view "stealing" land as worse than subjugating people. Another point of the book -- SPOILER COMING -- is that the species that is ostensibly victimized and enslaved (the Erjin) are actually offworld conquerors of the original indigenous race, Morphotes. Humans conquered the erjin who had previously conquered the Morphotes.

Vance's final conclusion is that all SF worlds where humans reside are "stolen" from the indigenous inhabitants. The only way humans can avoid committing this crime is to remain on Earth and wait for the sun to die (a la Dying Earth), or hang out in generation ships and expire when supplies deplete, or people a lifeless world and die when stores are gone.

Furthermore, every intelligent alien race will be faced with the choice of dying on their own world as their sun extinguishes or "stealing" worlds similar to their own, presumably harboring indigenous lifeforms (intelligent or otherwise) in a Darwinian race to avoid extinction.

Apparently, these ideas were lost on the readers who see only black and white in the Gray Prince.

This is certainly not one of Jacks better books and I would give it a 4 but one has to try and bolster its rating after reading what has been written about this book.This book will keep you entertained and disregard those that slate it from their high horses.

Many have tried to define the essential difference between those fraternal twins of the imagination: science fiction and fantasy. It usually ends in some notion of the setting being in the future versus the past. Definitions differ, but to me it is simple enough, and not a matter of something as trivial as setting. It is a fundamental philosophical difference. Science fiction is not so much about the future as it is about the modern. Sci-fi defends modernity, in fact revels in it. Its basic belief is that man makes "progress" and that the future will consist of more and more of this "progress", in some upward spiral of ever increasing (and ultimately superficial) materialistic excess, leading finally to the stars and beyond. Fantasy, on the other hand, is not so much about the past as about the rejection of modernity; it wants to take us not into external, material excess but into the internal world, a better world that might once have existed, or, if it never did, the world as it SHOULD exist.

Since modernity is the central farce, the pivotal lie of our decadent time, it should be no surprise that science fiction has produced nothing that could be called literature, whereas fantasy has produced the greatest classics of the last century or so.

Jack Vance is NOT a science fiction writer. Like his friend, the great Frank Herbert, he writes science fantasy, which I would describe as fantasy fiction using the trappings of alien planets, spaceships, rayguns and so on as mere tropes; fantasy in a different costume. Unlike science fiction, which is anti-literature, science fantasy is distinctly against the current of the modern world.

There was never much room for doubt where Vance's sympathies lie, but none whatever to anyone who has read this one, which is perhaps his greatest masterpiece.

This book, the Gray Prince, might not be Vance's best novel in the purely literary sense- that would probably be the first Dying Earth book - but it is certainly the most significant of his books. Indeed, this is the book that justifies and legitimizes Vance's career. Vance is, of course, superb in all aspects, from the sentence level on up, but the thematic depth of his work can be overlooked if one is not aware of his philosophy. This work makes that philosophy explicit and so is the key to how we must read the rest of his books. Unlike Herbert, who wrote a single transcendent classic, Vance is the kind of writer whose oeuvre itself is his statement. And without a philosophy, his literature, as much fun as it is, would be lacking the heft that elevates it to greatness. This is that statement, and it is a statement of truth that some find hard to accept, as every great statement must be.

For precisely that reason, you are going to be discouraged from reading this book by the annointed experts, who of course are granted such imaginary status precisely because they champion the rottenness that is modernity. Even by some who imagine themselves to be Vance fans, I have seen it called "strident", "ill-starred", or a "polemic". The book is not a polemic; it is a description of the way history works. The theme is a deeper and better exploration of the same theme explored in Vance's award-winning "The Last Castle" - civilizations grow soft and weak; they then get over-run by barbarians, just as they deserve, and the evolution proceeds apace, in the only way it has always proceeded - by a preponderance of intelligence and violence. There is, and never will be, any "progress" in the way modernists believe it; only endless struggle in the context of the great historical cycles that define man's destiny. The way Vance is able to show all sides of this story through these characters, and the way he manages to write a short novel without concentrating on a single protagonist, makes this one of his very best plots.

One thing science fiction is supposed to do well is predict the future, but here a science fantasy novel does a far better job of it, since I have not seen a better description of the current most decadent empire of modernity circa 2010 than is presented here, in a book written in the early 70s. A phony demagogue "messiah", the "Gray Prince", preys on the weakness of a dying, delusional society, with predictable consequences. At least Vance's story, fantasy as it is, has a happy ending...the real world story will not.

This is not a review as such, but contains a piece of information which none of other the reviewers have covered. Much SF is simply discussion of human history in an alien guise. The issues covered in this book are the old arguments about the merits of 'civilization' vesus 'savagery', and what to do about it (Or, if you like, the idea that one way of life is better than another). The older, imperial idea that colonization was the way to spread 'civilization' is out of favor with many people now, but some of these same people support it in other ways. Such as claiming that 'women are oppressed and every one must save them' from some traditional society, which their own multi-cultural principles say they should leave alone.

'The Gray Prince' is a book which explores these themes, but it is rooted in a specific case, of which I think many of its readers are unaware. It is this: the whole development of the plot is heavily influenced by what happened in the 1970's to the African country of Rhodesia (now known as Zimbabwe).

Learn about Rhodesia (taking care to note *all* the different points of view) and see if you do not agree that this is what Vance is doing.

I give the book four stars because the development of the 'clash of cultures' theme is very good. It misses a fifth star because of a flaw which is endemic to many SF stories; containing actual different races of sentitent beings, which may well have different needs. Therefore, in this type of story, racial thinking actually has an objective basis in fact. On Earth we have only one race, the human race, so stories about real, different races do not apply perfectly.

Still, I have to admit, that did not spoil 'Lord of the Rings' for me.

Many have tried to define the essential difference between those fraternal twins of the imagination: science fiction and fantasy. It usually ends in some notion of the setting being in the future versus the past. Definitions differ, but to me it is simple enough, and not a matter of something as trivial as setting. It is a fundamental philosophical difference. Science fiction is not so much about the future as it is about the modern. Sci-fi defends modernity, in fact revels in it. Its basic belief is that man makes "progress" and that the future will consist of more and more of this "progress", in some upward spiral of ever increasing (and ultimately superficial) materialistic excess, leading finally to the stars and beyond. Fantasy, on the other hand, is not so much about the past as about the rejection of modernity; it wants to take us not into external, material excess but into the internal world, a better world that might once have existed, or, if it never did, the world as it SHOULD exist.

Since modernity is the central farce, the pivotal lie of our decadent time, it should be no surprise that science fiction has produced nothing that could be called literature, whereas fantasy has produced the greatest classics of the last century or so.

Jack Vance is NOT a science fiction writer. Like his friend, the great Frank Herbert, he writes science fantasy, which I would describe as fantasy fiction using the trappings of alien planets, spaceships, rayguns and so on as mere tropes; fantasy in a different costume. Unlike science fiction, which is anti-literature, science fantasy is distinctly against the current of the modern world.

There was never much room for doubt where Vance's sympathies lie, but none whatever to anyone who has read this one, which is perhaps his greatest masterpiece.

This book, the Gray Prince, might not be Vance's best novel in the purely literary sense- that would probably be the first Dying Earth book - but it is certainly the most significant of his books. Indeed, this is the book that justifies and legitimizes Vance's career. Vance is, of course, superb in all aspects, from the sentence level on up, but the thematic depth of his work can be overlooked if one is not aware of his philosophy. This work makes that philosophy explicit and so is the key to how we must read the rest of his books. Unlike Herbert, who wrote a single transcendent classic, Vance is the kind of writer whose oeuvre itself is his statement. And without a philosophy, his literature, as much fun as it is, would be lacking the heft that elevates it to greatness. This is that statement, and it is a statement of truth that some find hard to accept, as every great statement must be.

For precisely that reason, you are going to be discouraged from reading this book by the annointed experts, who of course are granted such imaginary status precisely because they champion the rottenness that is modernity. Even by some who imagine themselves to be Vance fans, I have seen it called "strident", "ill-starred", or a "polemic" (and of course in this site we see the usual labels modernists hang on anything they cannot understand). The book is not a polemic; it is a description of the way history works. The theme is a deeper and better exploration of the same theme explored in Vance's award-winning "The Last Castle" - civilizations grow soft and weak and egalitarian, that is, modernistic; they then get over-run by barbarians, just as they deserve, and evolution proceeds apace, in the only way it has always proceeded - by a preponderance of intelligence and violence eliminating the weaker and the stupider. There is, and never will be, any "progress" in the way modernists believe it; only endless struggle in the context of the great historical cycles that define man's destiny. The way Vance is able to show all sides of this story through these characters, and the way he manages to write a short novel without concentrating on a single protagonist, makes this one of his very best plots. But it is the message that makes the book a real accomplishment.

One thing science fiction is supposed to do well is predict the future, but here a science fantasy novel does a far better job of it, since I have not seen a better description of the empire of modernity circa 2010 than is presented here, in a book written in the early 70s. A phony demagogue "messiah", the "Gray Prince", preys on the weakness of a dying, delusional society, with predictable consequences. At least Vance's story, fantasy as it is, has a happy ending...the real world story will not.

In this story Jack Vance has included all the components for another of his intriguing science-fiction novels - except for one. There is the carefully worked out interaction of off worlders and the natives, the interplay of geography upon culture against the fascinating backdrop of the Gaean Reach - what is missing is a exceptional plot to tie all these element together. The result is a somewhat pedestrian story that happens to be set on another planet.

Two hundred years ago space explorers compelled cessation of huge tracks of tribal land from the nomadic natives. Today the lands are baronial estates and the natives, finally aware they have been swindled, are plotting to have their lands returned.

The story focuses on one of the founding families and their struggle to fight off rampaging natives and their meddling off world supporters. Various stereotypical characters abound: the strong willed daughter, the handicapped son, and the faithful native servant - you get the picture.

Nonetheless this is vintage Vance and I give it four stars. Not a classic but still a good read.