Lurulu

by Jack Vance

Book Overview

Rejoin the adventures of Myron Tany, rebellious scion of a wealthy family, as he tours the Galaxy on a very questionable interstellar freighter, in a crew of actors, musicians, thieves and other ne'er-do-wells.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312867271
• ISBN13: 9780312867270
• Release Date: December 2004
• Publisher: Tor Books
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.81 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

A satisfying and wistful ending to a spectacular career

This is the most recent and final book by Jack Vance and it is the sequel to Ports of Call (so buy both books and read the other one first; I imagine they will be combined in future as they are a single work). For reasons below, I consider it one of his finest novels and absolutely required for anyone who has read more than a dozen Vance books. The story here is carried forward by stops in a journey, each episode sketched with ease. The action, worlds and characters are new, yet they deliberately evoke his past themes. From a few pages, fans may recall entire past novels. Vance can therefore write sparingly, and yet marshal a many-hued nuance that is rich and satisfying. Working thus, Vance delivers a single story that tours the best of his voluminous life's work, illuminated now from the full bloom of his perspective in older age. Dispensing with incidentals, he comes to the essence of each situation and communicates a total world-view that transcends and unites his earlier individual works. By the end, you get it... and you are filled with an ineluctable joy and sadness. It's a feeling that only deepens when you realize that Vance's last novel was both a masterpiece and an endpiece to his career, and that you have experienced his great art for the very final time.

Fine Coda to Great SF Literary Career?

I've read Jack Vance's work off and on for years now, but it's only until I stumbled upon "Lurulu" - most likely his last novel - that I realize now that he may be one of science fiction's finest literary stylists. "Lurulu", the sequel to "Ports of Call", is more of an engaging fictional wanderjahr across the galaxy, than your typical space opera replete with starships blasting away at each other and mysterious alien cultures. Once more First Officer Myron Tany and Captain Adair Maloof are the main protagonists and crew of the merchant ship Glicca, as she travels from planet to planet in the Gaean Reach. Tany has some unexpected good fortune thrusted upon him towards the end of this novel, and without disclosing how "Lurulu" ends, will say that it does end at a rather surprising, but satisfying note. If this may be Jack Vance's last novel, then I think it is is merely a fine coda to a great career writing elegant tales of science fiction and fantasy.

sparkling entertainment

Vance modestly describes this book as containing the left-over material from Ports of Call. The stories are not new to a reader of Vance - a hunt for a sex criminal, a foolish religious sect, a dramatic performance that goes wrong, these we have seen before. What delights about this book, however, what prompts me to give it five stars, is the language. Vance has always been known for his startling turns of phrase, his carved and graven prose, but this is the best and most consistent example of it that I can remember seeing. Where in previous books the wit came in flashes, here I saw the full illuminations.

5 stars for the single novel Ports of Call + Lurulu

I have some individual points of disagreement in detail with my reviewing predecessors, but they are not important, compared to the following: Lurulu is not the second book in a series. It is the second half of a single novel, of which Ports of Call is the first half. And while the first chapter of Lurulu summarizes Ports of Call nicely, it is no substitute for reading the real thing. Would you be satisfied with a one-chapter summary of Pride and Prejudice up to the point where Elizabeth rejects Darcy's offer of marriage, and then continuing on with the rest? You--as a serious reader--will do yourself a disservice if you do not read Ports of Call before tackling Lurulu. Another point: this is not the right place to begin an acquaintance with Jack Vance, who indeed is one of the great writers of the 20th Century (and not only among genre writers), any more than you should make your first acquaintance of Verdi's operas with Otello and Falstaff. If you do not yet know Vance, I would suggest starting with The Demon Princes or The Planet of Adventure, omnibus volumes of his brilliant multinovel planetary adventures (which of course are much more than that), which have the considerable virtue of being in print and purchasable from this site. Once you have begun to get a sense of Vance's inimitable style--utterly atypical of the science fiction genre, yet of trememdous influence on it--as presented in the works of his maturity, you will be ready to experience the mastery displayed in the works of his old age: the Lyonesse trilogy, the Cadwal Chronicles, Night Lamp and, finally (or dare we hope--not?) Ports of Call + Lurulu. The other side is this: if you are not captivated by The Demon Princes or The Planet of Adventure, then you are pitiably immune to Vance. Bottom line: read this, by all means. But read it after reading its first half and after reading enough mature Vance to be sufficiently prepared for its uniqueness and to be convinced of your receptiveness to it. Not everybody is, just as there are poor souls immune to Jane Austen. And while you're at it, read the rest of Vance. The man has been writing for more than six decades. He has produced an immense body of work of unbelievably high quality. Much of it is not in print, but is available from used bookstores and catalogued at ABEbooks. Many are not aware of his excursions into the genre of mystery under his full name, John Holbrook Vance, and a number of pseudonyms (under one of which he won an Edgar). These are works of varying quality, but the best of them are as good as it gets (The Fox Valley Murders, The Pleasant Grove Murders, The House on Lily Street, The View from Chickweed's Window and especially The Dark Ocean, which incredibly never found a publisher other than Underwood-Miller. And then there is the immensely disturbing Bad Ronald, a portrayal of a psychopath so true that it leaves one feeling uncomfortable with one's emotions and desires, much like Nabokov's Lolita, another of

Long-awaited conclusion for the "Ports of Call"

Intentionally or not, "Ports of Call" and "Lurulu" are Vance's "Candide" in form as well as in spirit, and the very discernible morale of his story is surprisingly Voltairian: neither idealistic self-abnegation nor accidental wealth bring peace and fulfillment to human mind. A man is best off doing something pertaining to his inborn nature, cultivating his chosen garden and spending his free time taking a dram or two of "ardent liquor" while conversing with his good old friends. "Lurulu" is a wise and somewhat tired ending to the less tired "Ports of Call." It brings the scant plot threads of "Ports" to their disparate conclusions -- sort of. One of the main ideas of both "Ports" and "Lurulu," however, is not the plot in itself, it is a farewell kaleidoscope of Jack's favorite planet-vistas, which become noticeably bleaker and sketchier to the end. The other major idea of these two half-books is a search for the nature of human happiness, fulfillment and destiny, which is shown to be quite futile. The best thing in life is, Vance concludes, a relative isolation of a small group of the detached observers of life, preferably well-heeled, in the constant state of mental, emotional, and physical escape. Dismal thoughts it evokes, indeed. Life is not unlike an onion of delusions: the more you peel them, the more you cry, and in the end there's nothing. Many Vance's readers would feel that these last two books are anticlimactic, overly schematic, too founderous, even unconvincing time to time, and -- let us not mince the words -- lacking in novelty, in engrossing situations and in well-shaped, likable characters. All true. Even Vance's fortissimo, his descriptions of alien landscapes and weird customs, are devoid of their former vividness and conviction. Reconsider, however. Maybe "Lurulu" is not such an anticlimax after all. Jack Vance always had a penchant for the cold, somewhat frustrating touch of reality in the last paragraphs of his books. Perhaps, "Lurulu" serves well as one large, cold, somewhat frustrating conclusion to all of his life's work. Jack makes several strong statements: not surprisingly, against the ugliness and immorality of religion, against the ugliness and immorality of modernist ("avant-garde") art. To the end he remains a humanist, a preacher of doubt and moderation, of reasonable kindness without mandatory compassion, of self-restraint without self-punishment, of minimizing the inevitable sufferings we all cause each other in order to survive. Taking into account Jack's age, his blindness, and the substandard milieu he must lean upon and endure, Jack Vance remains a miracle giant of mind and spirit, an enviable example of graceful, endlessly forgiving genius who illuminated the dusk of the Western civilization with his (last?) Voltairian smile of reason.