Customer Reviews

Showboat World

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Showboat World is probably my favorite Vance story. Some of my other favorites include Trullion, Araminta Station, and The Moon Moth. Apollon Zamp has more character flaws than almost any other Vance "hero" besides Cugel. In my humble opinion, this story would adapt well to film. Brad Pitt would have to put on a few pounds but would be a natural for Zamp. I know there is a role for Patrick Stewart in there somewhere. Can you imagine the showboats? The opera singers and orchestras? The jugglers, clowns, contortionists, midgets, mimes, actors, and so much more! Where is Cecil B. DeMille?

Tells the story of ship captain Apollon Gamp's journey upriver to play at a kings showboat competition - a rather simple framework for a compelling and gorgeous collage of thieves, artists and discordant cultures. The Showboat itself is a gorgeous hybrid of Mississippi boat and travelling opera; requiring stage magicians, dancing girls, catapults and a hereditary caste of engineers.

Along the way Zamp has to deal with (for example) a town that are run by the 'Actuarialists' who require the removal of all references to death or birth from the theatre program. Or Port Whant where wearing yellow is a sexual invitation. Indeed all luxuriance of imagination that we have come to expect from Vance.

Of course he must deal with equally rascally competitors - Lemuriel Boke who wore 'striped garments of black, red and brown, and adorned his head with the triple tiered bonnet of an Ultimate Pantologist; he blanched his skin stark white and spoke in a cellar deep voice.' Or Umber Stroon who, in contrast, 'used terms of grandiloquent vainglory in connection with himself and equally striking figures of disparagement in regard to his competitors.' And a dozen others. Naturally both the journey and winning the contest require every resource of artistry and connivery.

Obviously the novel has a number of similarities with the better known 'Space Opera' but the episodes are probably a bit better because the show boat captains are mixing with human (albeit exotic) rather than alien cultures -- where Vance is a little weaker. The plot, meanwhile, is considerably stronger and just as witty.

_Showboat World_ takes place on Big Planet, which was introduced in _Big Planet_ (duh). Here we follow the story of Apollon Zamp as he attempts to travel a great length to enter a showboat contest. The novel is a vastly entertaining picaresque, as he depicts how rival showboat owners attempt to sabotage each other's efforts; how the showboat owner must manage his performers, who do not shrink from stealing from him; how entertainments must be modified to avoid riling the inhabitants of the various towns and cities along the river, each with its own unique culture. The beguiling female lead, Damsel Blance-Aster, provides an element of mystery that is only resolved at the end of the novel. Highly recommended.

Had to rate this just to help overcome the injustice of the one star review above. This is a book I've read time and again over the last 10 years and it never fails to amaze me. Vance's language alone takes you to another planet. The vistas and cultures he creates are savagely beautiful and ironic. His characters are loveable, laughable, inventive and twisted up in plots, sub-plots and intrigues that are mad works of clever comical genius.
Jack Vance is wildly unlike any other author in the world. He can show you life in a light unlike any you have previously imagined...A true gift that only a great book like this can achieve.

Big Planet is populated by Earth's misfits. The massive landmass and low human population of the planet results in small settlements populated by drastically different cults/beliefs/social structures isolated from each other. Showboat captains ply the rivers of the lower Vissel basin offering entertainment to the disparate communities -- carefully navigating local customs in order to extract maximum profit. Enter an assortment of rogues, reinterpreted bizarre renditions of Macbeth, glass legged water walkers, grotesques, museum ships, taverns, and shapely mime girls....

Showboat World is solid adventure in a well-realized and vividly described world by one of the masters of science fiction and fantasy, Jack Vance. Although this novel takes place in the future on a colonized planet, the plot and society is solidly in the realm of fantasy. The tone throughout is light-hearted and witty and the ending highly contrived. Overall, the work lacks any forward plot movement (which is fine considering the general river meanderings these showboats perform) but is great, inventive, and peculiar fun.

Plot Summary (limited spoilers)

Apollon Zamp owns one of the top two showboats of the lower Vissel River, the Miraldra's Enchantment, replete with contortionists, mime girls, grotesques who perform entertainments "characterized by brisk pace, flair, sudden shocks and impacts" emphasizing "farce, mummery, prestidigitation, eccentric farces and reenactments of notorious atrocities." His bitter rival and the owner of Fironzelle's Golden Conceit, Garth Ashgate, specializes in rather more elaborate dramas performed at a leisurely pace.

The first half of the work follows Zamp's journeys up and down various rivers performing at unusual locals and competing (often nefariously) with Ashgate. At a competition, Zamp is declared to be the winner and the representative of the lower Vissel to a competition at the court of a distant king. Ashgate sabotages his vessel and Zamp is forced to find aid elsewhere. And of course, there's a blonde appropriately named Damsel Blanche-Aster who refuses the entreaties of the various showboat captains and pursues her own secret agenda.

Zamp, with Damsel Blanche-Aster in tow, eventually meets up with Gassoon and his museum ship, the Universal Pancomium. In order to reach the court of the distant king, Zamp agrees to resurrect (with various ammendments) the ancient Earth drama, Macbeth.... but first they must brave the savages of the steppes and reach the Bottomless lake...

Final Thoughts

Although never exactly entering the realm of outright comedy, the work maintains a lighthearted tone throughout. I feel that the great world Vance has constructed would be best served with a more serious plot.... However, that's my personal preference. All in all, the work is great fun, the world interesting and original, and anything with floating museum ships is worth reading. And the final descriptions in the last third of the novel of the reinterpreted Macbeth is worth the price alone...

A masterpiece of mannerisms. How anyone could give this one star staggers me. Presumably the grounds were non sf? If so we might be rejecting thousands of other books with only loose relations to the genre. The comedy alone is worth ten extra stars, the carefully conceived main characters and the meticulously crafted bit part actors make this book one to be read over and over again. The small insular groups who are he audience of each show are tremendously conceived. Possibly one of Vance's best

This is an interesting Vance story. It is set on Big Planet, a planet so big he can do pretty much whatever he wants. Much of the story is a set of a dozen or more vignettes of varied societies along the riverbank. Re-read yesterday, VIE edition.

Zamp, as noted elsewhere, is just a grade above Cugel in the Scoundrel department (actually I suspect they are equal, Zamp almost never had the chance to forcible coerce the main female protagonist). The broad underlying theme of the competition and the voyage it entails, the curious alterations to MacBeth to make it more generally appealling (is this historically accurate as well?), the ongoing stops in new villages, all add to the layered aspects of the story.

The ending climax is somewhat surprising (I didn't catch it, on first or second reading), and the ending of magnaminity between the remaining protagonists is a theme that pops up many times in vance writings (in Lurulu to finish, IIRC).

This is a very entertaining story. I suspect Vance wrote under a clear page limit, (no evidence for this but it seems to be common practice, both in the 70s and now), and it is a shame, because the book is too short.

This is one of my very favorite non-magical Vance works, and it is amazing. I want a Showboat so BAD after I read (and reread) this book...! I would call mine "The Golden Conceit." LOL

It reminded me of that for some reason. Possibly the costumes the showboat captains wear ("Lemuriel Boke wore striped garments of black, red, and brown and adorned his head with the tripled tiered bonnet of an Ultimate Pantologist").
Big world is a post-tech world settled by misfits and malcontents that grew into communities each as individual as their founders. think old wild west or firefly but with idiocyncracies.
showboats run up and down various rivers, docking and providing entertainment. Apollon Zamp commanding the Miraldra's Enchantment, accepts an invitation to contest by King Waldemar at the Mornune Festival...
not my cup of tea, maybe its someone's though. I'd've voted 2 1/2 stars, btween not liking and OK if possible.

I quite agree with the review by James Beerbower. This is a caleidoscope of hypothetical cultures, traversed by a group of people who get by on an almost animal cunning. However it escapes me why anyone would call this SF or even would want to read it.